D&D 5E D&D 5e Basic Set: Things that make you go "what?!"

[FitzTheRuke]

But if you are wearing non-heavy armor your tree-stump status comes into play again? It may be the better to just do away with DEX penalties to AC. In this way your tree stump status can better be implied in the mechanics?

Ol' Tree-Stump is gonna get rocked by anything that asks for a Dex Save, armour or not.

And it makes sense that he'd rather be in armour than not if he's crap at getting out of the way...

SURE, it would be a little better smulation-wise if his handicap was somehow reflected in his AC, but it works mechanically for the game this way. He's still terrible at getting out of the way of stuff, but usually his armour saves him. It's not ideal, but it's not really worth worrying about either. (IMO, 'natch)

 

[Particle_Man]

It makes for an interesting dichotomy between the dex fighter that dumps str and the str fighter that dumps dex. Both have their advantages.

 

[Particle_Man]

This made me go "what?" at first but now I like it:

If fighter A has a reach weapon, fighter B can start 10' to the east of A, go to 5' north of A, go to 10' west of A, and not draw an aoo, since fighter B never left fighter A's reach.

If fighter A does not have a reach weapon, fighter B could not do that trick.

I think the simplicity of the Aoo rules more than makes up for this edge case oddity, however.

My newest "what?" is minor: It is possible for a LG halfling to carry around mummified elf fingers, depending on their trinket roll. Ew.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

My newest "what?" is minor: It is possible for a LG halfling to carry around mummified elf fingers, depending on their trinket roll. Ew.

As long as he doesn't carry then around stuck in his ears I'm fine with that.

 

[Thaumaturge]

As long as he doesn't carry then around stuck in his ears I'm fine with that.

WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU.

...

WHAT FINGERS?

THAUMATURGE.

 

[Sadras]

The Sleep spell caught my attention ... (snip)...In the end, this might be OK as it keeps the Sleep relevant even at high levels. As a DM it would be fun to Sleep a high level party that is on the edge of a TPK and finish them off with a Sleep spell.

I used the Sleep spell in one of our sessions against the wizard/leader of the party during one of their Temple of Elemental Evil forays. It was an epic sword&sorcery duel between an evil wizard and the PC fighter-mage, while the rest of the party was engaging a black dragon and a half-orc barbarian (already 2 out of the 5 PCs had dropped).

It was the most exciting duel I have ever run, 4-5 rounds of tactical play and this was before the sleep spell so things were already at a high. I told the PC the enemy wizard cast a spell and that his character began to feel a little drowsy and then began rolling the sleep-spell die on the table, open for all to see. Needless to say, if the PC went down, the fight would have been over with an inevitable TPK.
When the PC realised that it was cast at a much higher spell slot level he began to worry (it was cast as a 3rd level spell). I could see the nervousness in everyone's eyes despite the teasing from the other players, calling the wizard PC a hedge wizard because he was about to be bested by a sleep spell. The player/PC plays to this massive ego so the others generally rag him.

I finished 1 hit point away from his current hit point total.

Tense Combat Encounter - check
Awesome that Party Survived - check
Memorable - check

Whatever the problems or abuse that could occur, thankfully I have never experienced it, but after that fight I'm a huge fan of it.

 

[Particle_Man]

The only trouble I can see with the sleep spell (and its meaner cousins the power word spells) is that there is an asymmetry with DM and Player knowledge. The DM might know what the PC's hp are when casting sleep but the PCs generally don't know what the NPC hp are beyond vague descriptions like "he seems to be breathing heavily and is covered with wounds, but is still attacking". So the PC has less information to guess when to use sleep than the DM has. Unless the DM plays open table where everyone knows everyone's current hp.

 

[Stalker0]

It was the most exciting duel I have ever run, 4-5 rounds of tactical play and this was before the sleep spell so things were already at a high. I told the PC the enemy wizard cast a spell and that his character began to feel a little drowsy and then began rolling the sleep-spell die on the table, open for all to see. Needless to say, if the PC went down, the fight would have been over with an inevitable TPK.
When the PC realised that it was cast at a much higher spell slot level he began to worry (it was cast as a 3rd level spell). I could see the nervousness in everyone's eyes despite the teasing from the other players, calling the wizard PC a hedge wizard because he was about to be bested by a sleep spell. The player/PC plays to this massive ego so the others generally rag him.

This is something I've realized in 10+ years of gaming (damn I've gotten old!)

If the dice had gone the other way, the player might have died, the party might have died...the campaign might have ended as an unremarkable exercise.

But the fact that it didn't....makes it a tale that your group will probably tell from years to come.


Over time, I've had both experiences. I have had characters just go down due to the bad rolls, forever forgotten. And at the time it sucks. But ultimately, it is worth it!

It is worth having those risky moments, it is worth having characters die in obscurity, so that there are times when scenes and characters become immortal in a gaming groups mind.

 

[DreamChaser]

Anyone else think it's weird that Lockpick and Disable Trap aren't skills any more? I would have thought lockpicking in particular would be the very definition of 'something very specialised that only a trained professional can do'. And yet anyone can pick locks in 5th ed. I would have at least thought the Thief archetype would have some sort of bonus to make them better at locks...

This actually makes perfect sense to me. If you've learned to use thieves' tools, you've learned to do a range of things with them, including investigate a trap, identify lock types, pick a tumble lock, trip a combination, disable a dart trap, etc. These are covered by multiple ability scores (Int and Dex mostly) and they are things that don't inherently make you better at other applications of dexterity and intelligence.

Just because you've learned to identify what kind of trap is around doesn't mean you're great at investigating a crime scene: That is a separate thing.

 

[Stalker0]

On the one hand, they finally have poison rules I like:

Basic Poison: DC 10 con check, take 1d4 damage. Simple, clean, done and done.


On the other...5 vials of poison costs as much as raising someone from the dead!