D&D 5E Is it fair to cast save-or-suck spells on the players?

Henry said:

More personally, in sports, a benched player worth a ---- doesn't take off because he/she didn't get to play, or because they can't play -- they stay for the team to the end of the match, because they're a team. To me, that says as much about character as taking off because you got sidelined does.

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It's interesting people keep mentioning sports.

In fencing, once you're eliminated from the tournament, it's considered non-mandatory but courteous to stick around for at least a while and root for your friends and other fellow fencers who are still in the tournament. If you get eliminated early on, you're not necessarily expected to stick around for the finals several hours later, but if you had a close friend and they ended up winning the tournament, and you had left right after you were eliminated and were at home watching a movie the whole time they were fencing, you might feel at least a little chagrined.

I mention this only to say that different sports have different expectations. D&D doesn't necessarily have to be like fencing.

I will say that if a player does choose to stick around after being eliminated from a game session, it is rude if the DM doesn't take the player's feelings into account. GM4P said his DM explicitly denied him opportunities to run monsters, make a new PC, or even talk to the other players. I call that bad form on the DM's part. I don't think GM4P was necessarily obligated to stick around, but it should have been made possible for him to do so and still have fun. That's what I try to do for my players and I hope I succeed.

Quickleaf said:

During the shift from 4e to 5e, one of the criticisms leveled at 5e were the spellcaster stat-blocks requiring lots of looking things up. It's a legitimate criticism that is increasingly valid the higher level you play.

However, including all the spell info (even in condensed form) causes the stat-block to swell to an unmanageable size.

Currently, I'm writing a high-level adventure. One thing I decided early on was to include a Spell Index of all spells that appear in the adventure in condensed form, with the idea being the DM would print it out (~5 pages) and be able to look up, on the fly, for example sacred flame (bad example, I know, but only finished cantrips so far):

[SECTION]Sacred Flame Action; 60 ft; one creature you can see; Dex save (no benefit from cover); 1d8 radiant damage, 2d8 (5th), 3d8 (11th), 4d8 (17th)[/SECTION]

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That would be wonderfully handy.

Looking up spells is the main reason we use our phones/tablets while gaming, but a few pages of paper with the relevant spells summarized could work even smoother (certainly so if you're averse to having gadgets at the table, obviously) .

Fanaelialae said:

Actually, from what I gather they planned reasonably well (figured out how to get two anti-magic fields going, spread out so that the dragons couldn't roast them with breath, etc.) given what they had to work with (only one full caster in the party, a cleric; the second anti-magic was from a Ring of Wishes in case you're wondering). In fact, according to the OP, there is a very high probability that they will defeat the lich queen without a single death. Their complaints appear to have little or nothing to do with failure, but rather seem to be centered in frustration at being unable to participate.

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This is true I may have been a bit harsh as I'm the guy that plans S.W.A.T level of tactics. In my eyes they made a few errors again being a bit harsh did things differently to me. Biggest offender I would say was splitting up.

But hey they are winning with no deaths so play on. I apologize for the rambling nature of this post.

Charles Rampant said:

I'm liking the idea now that some Githyanki chase him with a set of dimensional shackles, say, and these shackles are designed to teleport the user directly back to Tu'Narath once put on... so the player can have a wee side fight, defeat the Gith, and then use the shackles as a jumpstart back into the action. How his non-arcana trained character learns that is the wrinkle. However, since the players recruited him in Sigil, and he might thus be a native, it might not be that unbelievable that someone nearby can tell him...

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Well, you can always have the champion stumble into the Gith as they slap a pair of shackles on a captured kinght. As the knight vanishes off to wherever, one of the Gith says "That's another prisoner for our master. Strong warriors are always needed, the stronger they are, the better we get paid, " at which point they see the champion and say "oh, looks like our lucky day!"

Charles Rampant said:

Is it fair to cast save-or-suck spells on the players?

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Short answer: yes.

Long answer: yes, it is.

[MENTION=32659]Charles Rampant[/MENTION], reading the other thread, I think that part of the issue is that your party has left itself a big glaring weakness in terms of spells in that they have no counterspell nor many of the common escapes (short range teleport vs. forcecage, etc.)

So this comes across a bit more like "we only made ranged characters, melee attackers are unfair". This really should be standard fair for them once they've hit 19th.

Now, if up to this time you've only been throwing opponents at them that do HP damage, which the seem to accept having to mitigate, it could be that they didn't feel like that was part of the "environment". But if that's been happening I don't get where it's coming from.

The fact that they were traveling to another plane made some of the spells rougher in ways that normally only apply to foes, and it's not considered a design failure when you get to banish a foe. The fact that at 19th level they had no way to rejoin the party is a bit surprising, either to pull the banished character back, to have the banished character get there under their own power, or to have the banished character utilize items/NPCs on their home plane to get back. Maybe not in time for the fight, but one fight isn't an "unfair" amount of time to sit out, even if it is a climatic one.

BTW, fair and fun are two different circles in a Venn diagram. The overlap is a sweet spot. Since from your other thread the players could have walked away with their mission accomplished and instead chose to engage an storied and epic githyanki lich queen with additional liches, a dragon, and other servitors means that if the foes pull out the whoop-ass that's fair.

Azurewraith said:

This is true I may have been a bit harsh as I'm the guy that plans S.W.A.T level of tactics. In my eyes they made a few errors again being a bit harsh did things differently to me. Biggest offender I would say was splitting up.

But hey they are winning with no deaths so play on. I apologize for the rambling nature of this post.

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I'd say they did okay with what they had. The real error was in at the political/policy level, not the military level: they started an unnecessary fight against a superior force that was fully capable of wiping them out. They're winning anyway due to enemy mistakes (i.e. DM lenience) but that's not a position you want to put yourself in deliberately.

Tactically though they've done okay with what they had.

Hussar said:

All the relevant information is right there. He knew he was stuck and wouldn't be able to participate for the rest of the session AND HE WAS RIGHT.

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All we actually know is that in the situation where he walks away from the game to see a movie, the DM didn't expend effort to make sure there was a way to bring back a character without a player nor did the other players try to pursue a route that could do it.

Many DMs would have worked out ways to get him back, but if he's made it clear he's leaving the game for the night working out something to get his character back in when he's not there would actually be more disruptive.

I currently have a player who's out because of the birth of a child. We wrote his character out of the story and neither me as DM nor the other players are looking to bring his character back early. Same thing here - he's made it clear he's not going to be at the session, start of the next session is the right time to bring him back, not early.

jgsugden said:

Here is a problem I've seen in a lot of games.

The DM assembles an overwhelming force and throws it at the PCs. The DM then proceeds to have the enemy use horrible tactics, cheats die rolls in the favor of the PCs, and in other ways coddles the battle so that the PCs win.

That is not fun for many players. Personally, it bugs the heck out of me.

This may be what we're seeing here.

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Please, please, PLEASE go read the link to the original thread in the first post.

The players could have gotten everything they wanted and left peacefully, but instead decided to challenge a storied and epic githyanki lich-queen in her stronghold after knowing how much was against them.

And then, the DM came on these forums and asked if he should hold back and was given the advice time and time again to go fori. The players have unambiguously shown you they want a deadly and epic battle, to do otherwise is to undermine their agency.

There is literally no way it could be further from DM power trip to stomp on players. The DM gave a peaceful full-success option including dropping the illusion so the players would know all of what they were facing, and the players said "hold my beer, let's do this".

Hemlock said:

The real error was in at the political/policy level, not the military level: they started an unnecessary fight against a superior force that was fully capable of wiping them out.

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Based on my years of experience, it's a rare group of players that is willing to back down from a fight like this. While it's arguably the smarter choice, it's also the less heroic option (more Black Company and less Fellowship of the Ring).

For a certain type of player, it's the same as being given no choice at all. While they certainly don't want to their character to die, surrendering to the enemy is even worse (from their point of view, walking away with a token gift because they're not sure they can win is the same as surrender). Furthermore, it often only takes one such player since in many parties if one guy attacks the others will back his play even if they don't agree with it. Trust me, I've been both the guy who refused to back down and the guy trying to convince the guy who won't back down to back down.

The point is that for some players, this is not an error in judgment but rather the expected style of play.