D&D 5E Sage Advice August 17th

[Celtavian]

1.) Getting to quasi-"invulnerable" range (AC 28-30) requires a lot of specific investment by the paladin. Giving up two-handed weapons/GWM in order to have a shield; giving up other fighting styles for Defense; giving up Smiting spells and other concentration spells for Shield of Faith; multiclassing to sorcerer or wizard for Shield spell; giving up Counterspell and AoOs in exchange for Shield (this makes you a worse tank--even Sentinel won't help you protect the party if you blew your reaction already on Shield); getting another PC to give up their concentration to Haste you.

Of course you must add in that putting magic items in the game also adds to the invulnerability.

2.) If you're letting the sorc Haste you, you just inherited new vulnerabilities along with the spell. If the Stone Giant hits the sorc with a thrown boulder, you lose your next turn. Haste creates risk and ties you more strongly to the party, which means more than ever that attacking the party is attacking the paladin. The paladin can't afford to just ignore the rest of the party.

True. The sorcerer has a good Con save. If he has warcaster, he has a good chance of making Concentration checks.

3.) The paladin is relying on buff spells, so he's vulnerable to delays. If the fight is going sour, the enemy can potentially break contact and open the range for a few minutes while the buffs wear off. I've found that players get very nervous about leaving active hostiles in the neighborhood--they're not equipped to simply ignore the enemy right back, they will pursue. Which leads to...

The PCs usually have superior ranged attacks. Choosing to go range may make the paladin have to sit tight, then the superior ranged strikers get to start to hammer.

4.) The paladin is still vulnerable to things that bypass AC, like falling damage from getting shoved into a spiked pit, or hitting a ghast's poison cloud. Aura of Protection helps somewhat, but it mostly just compensates for non-proficiency. It's only Wisdom and Charisma saves where a paladin feels semi-invulnerable. On Dex and Con saves he feels strong-ish but he still hates having to make repeated saves. See above #1 for opportunity cost: if he's got Shield of Faith up he doesn't have Bless to protect his saves. Combine #3 and #4 to encourage the paladin to get ahead of the party and chase the monsters into an area where this weakness can be exploited.

Aura of Protection helps a ton. It makes them less vulnerable than anyone but a high level monk. Cleric or bard usually casts bless. So paladin ends up with both.

5.) The paladin's AC-based defenses are mostly magical in nature. In an anti-magic field, or after a Dispel Magic, he's exactly as durable as a Defense-specialized Champion Fighter in the same plate armor + shield, and perhaps less durable than the equivalent barbearian or rogue.

Sure, throwing an antimagic field or hitting the paladin with a dispel magic is highly effective. Though at the moment I think he can still smite in an antimagic field and he still gets all his other nifty stuff.

6.) And of course there's the infamous Grapple/Prone combo. It's often not worthwhile against characters with low AC because you can just kill them, but the harder it is for you to hit someone, the more actions it's worth spending degrading their defenses. Remember that the paladin only gets one attempt per round to break the grapple, and he can be grappled by more than one opponent at a time.

The grapple/prone tactic. Very effective if it works. A vengeance paladin can misty step out of it. A group of creatures using their actions to grapple/prone someone often ends up getting hammered by the other party members.

You always have the option of going after other PCs, but the above ideas illustrate how you can threaten the paladin personally, in ways that are about as threatening to the paladin as they are to the other PCs.

Paladin is one of the toughest classes in the game. Paladin/warlock or paladin/sorcerer adds to that sickness. It's a very powerful class with fewer weaknesses than other classes. They even get a more powerful animal companion horse than the a low level ranger beast companion. That is really odd to me.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Oh, I forgot to add:

The paladin/sorc has to either invest in Warcaster, or end his turn with his weapon sheathed, in order to have his reaction free for Shield. If he sheathes his weapon, his ability to threaten monsters with AoO is further reduced and they are even more likely to bypass him, unless he can establish a reason for them not to.

(Or unless they are dumb. And playing monsters dumb is a legitimate choice, but the DM can't then legitimately complain about not being able to threaten the PCs, because the solution is so simple: use monsters which are not dumb.)

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Wow, good catch.

In any case, with the initiative variant I use (Speed Factor/AD&D variant), all turns happen simultaneously so there's no asymmetry: you can Ready your full attacks. But you make a good case for inconsistency in the RAW.

I sent him a message to ask him to clarify it. Hope to get a reply by Sunday's game. Big fight looming with Giants and a White Dragon.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

You don't lose the fighter's Extra Attacks on a readied action. Extra attack kicks in any time you take the attack action. A readied action can be an attack action. You simply ready the attack. Thus, you get your full suite of attacks on a readied action.

What you can't do, is take, say, the second attack from a second weapon on a readied action, since that second attack is a bonus action.

Well Jeremy Crawford's take on ready and grappling has me confused about the issue so I'm hoping for clarification from him. In any event I'm not sure its that big a deal if they can take extra attacks.

 

[Celtavian]

Well Jeremy Crawford's take on ready and grappling has me confused about the issue so I'm hoping for clarification from him. In any event I'm not sure its that big a deal if they can take extra attacks.

Crawford has already confirmed Extra Attacks do not apply on a Ready Action. Only one grapple attempt would be allowed on a Ready Action. The rules are extremely clear on both of these matters. I'm not sure why anyone would think they were unclear.

 

[Mistwell]

You don't heal at night with the goodberries. You keep them for the next day. One of these scenarios is improving the effect of a spell by ~60%. The other one is improving a spell by 400%.

They run out in 24 hours - might be useful, might be useless, depends on when you need them. You're definitely burning 8 hours right away that way of that 24 hours. And Aura of Vitality can be more useful in combat that goodberry, as 2d6+4/rd is actually pretty decent healing as opposed to 4 hp from a goodberry (though a thief with the fast hands ability might like to pop one each round).

And yes, one scenario improves the effectiveness of the spell more than the other. So? My point is, the quantity of healing granted by a spell, on a per-spell-level basis, is already higher than the goodberries. Which demonstrates not that you'd never choose goodberries, but simply that the premise that a spell that heals that amount breaks the game has already been proven to be false. Another spell already essentially did this, and nobody had issues with it. So you can not like this ruling, you can not play with this ruling, and I think your game will be fine without this ruling. But to say this ruling breaks the game due to the quantity of healing - probably false, as another spell was already essentially doing that quantity of healing and nobodies game broke from it as far as I know.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

They run out in 24 hours - might be useful, might be useless, depends on when you need them. You're definitely burning 8 hours right away that way of that 24 hours. And Aura of Vitality can be more useful in combat that goodberry, as 2d6+4/rd is actually pretty decent healing as opposed to 4 hp from a goodberry (though a thief with the fast hands ability might like to pop one each round).

And yes, one scenario improves the effectiveness of the spell more than the other. So? My point is, the quantity of healing granted by a spell, on a per-spell-level basis, is already higher than the goodberries. Which demonstrates not that you'd never choose goodberries, but simply that the premise that a spell that heals that amount breaks the game has already been proven to be false. Another spell already essentially did this, and nobody had issues with it. So you can not like this ruling, you can not play with this ruling, and I think your game will be fine without this ruling. But to say this ruling breaks the game due to the quantity of healing - probably false, as another spell was already essentially doing that quantity of healing and nobodies game broke from it as far as I know.

the idea with goodberry is simple, lets say you have 5 spell slots tonight before bed (we will call 8pm bedtime) you loose nothing casting it 5 times and getting 5-50 berries each healing 4hp that last until 8pm the next night. That means that you have 20-200hp of healing the next day, and it only get worse if you don't use them because nothing happens. because then the question becomes "What is your full allotment of spells?"

in my game I could imagin a cleric/druid (or a bard/cleric taking the spell) with 10+ spell slots per day, and the night before a big dungeon making 500 berries, for 2,000hp of healing...

wow I can't belive I didn't realize how bad this was to start with...

a 10th level druid has 15 spell slots each makes upto 10 berries... even if the DM ruled roll 1d10 (I don't think that is the way it should work but lets go with it for the example) you would average 73-75 berries. when it's 1hp each that's a big boost... when it's 4hp each... omg that's around 300hp... ONTOP of spells...

 

[Celtavian]

the idea with goodberry is simple, lets say you have 5 spell slots tonight before bed (we will call 8pm bedtime) you loose nothing casting it 5 times and getting 5-50 berries each healing 4hp that last until 8pm the next night. That means that you have 20-200hp of healing the next day, and it only get worse if you don't use them because nothing happens. because then the question becomes "What is your full allotment of spells?"

in my game I could imagin a cleric/druid (or a bard/cleric taking the spell) with 10+ spell slots per day, and the night before a big dungeon making 500 berries, for 2,000hp of healing...

wow I can't belive I didn't realize how bad this was to start with...

a 10th level druid has 15 spell slots each makes upto 10 berries... even if the DM ruled roll 1d10 (I don't think that is the way it should work but lets go with it for the example) you would average 73-75 berries. when it's 1hp each that's a big boost... when it's 4hp each... omg that's around 300hp... ONTOP of spells...

About all this would do is save you a lot of coin on healing potions, coin you don't really use for anything else in 5E. It would have near zero material effect on the game other than to extend the adventuring day a bit. It would take an enormous amount of time to eat that many goodberries. You're exaggerating the effect on the game.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

About all this would do is save you a lot of coin on healing potions, coin you don't really use for anything else in 5E. It would have near zero material effect on the game other than to extend the adventuring day a bit. It would take an enormous amount of time to eat that many goodberries. You're exaggerating the effect on the game.

I don't know how you play but it would be A HUGE change to my group... as is we argue over short rests now...

lets go worst cas scenero then I will roll back to a more normal one, a cleric druid with 10 spells per day that can summon 500 berries tonight and tomorrow hit the dungeon with full spells.

My group fo 5 advetures each take 100 berries and put them away for use later... after the first fight 3 of them are hurt bad enough to be at or close to half hp and 1 is a few points down the last is untouched... normally the cleric/druid would drop a spell of a channel on a few of them, but not today, they each pop 3-8 berries (so 12-32hp back) now even if we say 'it's an action to eat a berry' that's 8x 6 seconds... so we will call that 1 minute. They all go into encounter 2 with full hp and the cleric used no resources to heal them..

now encounter 2 they get hit hard (bad rolls plus a mistake in tactics, it happens) the fighter drops and the cleric has to heal him mid combat (No berry here they use a real resource) after the fight though, there is no need to rest for an hour or regroup, or wst more resources, the fighter can pop 10 berries and get back 40hp...if that's not enough pop 5 more and be at the healing spell+60...well he is doing that anyone else can popl 5 or 6 berries and be back to full...

It turns the entire hp economy on it's head, and frees up a bunch of spells the cleric/druid can use on other things...


ok lets head back to a more sane scenero, a 7th level druid makes 40 1hp berries... even just that extra 40hps is the difference in droping 3 or 4 healing spells, at no cost...


now you say "What's the difference between these and healing potions?" and I say, nothing, unless you combine them. Use potions and berries between encounters and potions and spells in... you have just massively increased the longevity of your party, AND given the healer the ability to save spell slots for buffs/debiffs/damage/control spells... yea, it is a big difference.


edit: you know the time thing really bugs me here... you say it would take a lot... well lets take a 200 berries (that's 800hp) and give it to a 9th level fighter... he has 8d10+10+10xcon mod hp... lets give him a 14 con, 30+8d10 so average 77hp... he could get brought down to 0 get a spare the dying cantrip up to 1hp, then get him back up to full with 19 berries, witch could be pop a handful, or take 19 actions... say 20 rounds so 2 minutes. he can do this 10 times in a day... before taking a short rest, the 11th time he could use his second wind and take the 10 left for 40 more hp...

 

[Remathilis]

I don't know how you play but it would be A HUGE change to my group... as is we argue over short rests now...

lets go worst cas scenero then I will roll back to a more normal one, a cleric druid with 10 spells per day that can summon 500 berries tonight and tomorrow hit the dungeon with full spells.

My group fo 5 advetures each take 100 berries and put them away for use later... after the first fight 3 of them are hurt bad enough to be at or close to half hp and 1 is a few points down the last is untouched... normally the cleric/druid would drop a spell of a channel on a few of them, but not today, they each pop 3-8 berries (so 12-32hp back) now even if we say 'it's an action to eat a berry' that's 8x 6 seconds... so we will call that 1 minute. They all go into encounter 2 with full hp and the cleric used no resources to heal them..

now encounter 2 they get hit hard (bad rolls plus a mistake in tactics, it happens) the fighter drops and the cleric has to heal him mid combat (No berry here they use a real resource) after the fight though, there is no need to rest for an hour or regroup, or wst more resources, the fighter can pop 10 berries and get back 40hp...if that's not enough pop 5 more and be at the healing spell+60...well he is doing that anyone else can popl 5 or 6 berries and be back to full...

It turns the entire hp economy on it's head, and frees up a bunch of spells the cleric/druid can use on other things...


ok lets head back to a more sane scenero, a 7th level druid makes 40 1hp berries... even just that extra 40hps is the difference in droping 3 or 4 healing spells, at no cost...


now you say "What's the difference between these and healing potions?" and I say, nothing, unless you combine them. Use potions and berries between encounters and potions and spells in... you have just massively increased the longevity of your party, AND given the healer the ability to save spell slots for buffs/debiffs/damage/control spells... yea, it is a big difference.

So it's time to ban goodberry?