D&D 5E Sage Advice August 17th

[FormerlyHemlock]

Good post Arial. I have to nitpick though:

If he has to climb a ladder, impose penalties for using only one arm and make it almost impossible to climb a steep ladder with no hands. He then has to choose to put both sword and shield away, or choose only one of them to keep in hand. Weapons can be drawn as a free interaction, but donning/doffing a shield takes your action. Attack him as he climbs. If he only keeps his shield then he cannot attack back.

He can still shield bash as an attack, which means he can probably Push enemies prone (which knocks flying enemies out of the sky) or aside (which knocks enemies off the ladder, although Shove Aside is done at disadvantage per DMG rules). On a ladder that's actually probably a better move than a regular longsword attack, if your enemies are on ladders too. Or you could just attack with your shield as an improvised weapon for 1d4+STR. Failing that, you can head-butt for 1 + STR. But Pushing is probably the best choice.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Seems to me your paladin is super melee focused. Nothing like a bunch of skirmishers with flaming oil to humble that sort of PC quickly. Just need to be creative. And if you're still trying to figure out why this PC is still so good, look at why they have three stats that are really high with plate mail+1. In all of the games I've played, PCs don't even get plate mail until well into tier 2, and magic plate mail wouldn't show up until the mid teens. At which point the creatures they are fighting would have much higher bonuses to hit anyway.

 

[Kobold Stew]

Crawford has stated that by RAW multiple Paladin protection auras stack. That's absurd. He seems to think the stacking rule only applies to spells. I recall reading somewhere that similar effects do not stack of any kind. Some of the similar effects are DM call. I'm starting to run into stacking rule problems, especially with AC.

what is the source for this, please? I don't see it in the SA compendium.

At the moment the paladin can easily get his AC to 24. He's wearing +1 plate, a shield, defensive fighting style, and he casts shield of faith. If the paladin also cast shield that would raise it to 29. If he stacked haste, that would be 31. If at high level they eventually stack foresight on him, he would be nearly unhittable. I can't hand him anymore magic items without further exacerbating the problem with an overly high AC. If I build a creature to hit the paladin, he can straight tear the rest of the party apart. It's becoming an issue in encounter design.

The player is investing in AC. What does it matter if you can't hit him?
* If he can cast shield, the player has spent a feat to get magic initiate, or has multi classed.
* Haste only applies if another character casts it on the Paladin, in which case you want to let it work.
* Shield of faith uses up spell slots, and requires concentration.
* many attack spells require a dex save, and don't target AC (starting with Cleric cantrip: sacred flame).
It's the Paladin's job to put himself in the front row. If he doesn't do that, and the other players get torn apart, he's letting the party down. That's not your problem -- it's theirs: because of one player's defensive choices, they are losing heavily on attack power.

 

[Celtavian]

The biggest problem with the proposed solutions is they don't take into account a party. They focus on how to handle the individual paladin player. If the enemies waste actions on the paladin, that is a win for the party. If the creatures ignore the paladin and go after the other PCs, the paladin attacks them with impunity. He doesn't do weak damage. If the PCs decide to spread out too far enabling solo attacking, they get ripped apart because Bounded Accuracy is built with the idea that doing more hit point damage is the balancing factor over AC. So you get higher CR creatures doing a lot of damage that rip apart the easily hit PCs, while having no incentive to fight hard to hit PCs like the paladin or other heavy armor users.

It's an unusual situation I'm dealing with in a campaign focused on giants. Giants do heavy damage with a high hit roll. The AC disparity really stands out as does the damage differences. If the giants attack the paladin, he survives quite well with shield of faith and dodging to let the other PCs kill the giants. If the giants attack the other PCs, they plow through their hit points like a katana through tissue. They hit them much easier. It sort of ends up in this odd situation where the paladin is standing strong, while the other PCs are in various stages of nearly dead or fallen. They can't take the hits. I wish the AC disparity wasn't so high with this Bounded Accuracy thing because the damage disparity isn't near as great as the AC disparity. Paladins can bring it with damage.

I'll get it figured out. I think I'm going to hand out some magic armor to the other PCs. Close the AC gap some.

 

[Celtavian]

what is the source for this, please? I don't see it in the SA compendium.

Crawford has stated the stacking rule only applies to spells. Go look at a fairly recent Sage ruling where he says the two auras not stacking would be a house rule.

The player is investing in AC. What does it matter if you can't hit him?

It matters because other PCs are easily hit. So you have one character that can't be hit and the rest of the PCs that can be smashed hard. He's not investing a great deal in AC. It's all very easy to obtain. If it were a serious investment, I wouldn't mind it.

* If he can cast shield, the player has spent a feat to get magic initiate, or has multi classed.

I hope he doesn't multiclass to get shield. At the moment he doesn't have it. It's theoretical that he could.

* Haste only applies if another character casts it on the Paladin, in which case you want to let it work.

Vengeance Paladin can cast haste.

* Shield of faith uses up spell slots, and requires concentration.

So? So do a lot of spells. If you don't get hit, you don't make concentration rolls.

* many attack spells require a dex save, and don't target AC (starting with Cleric cantrip: sacred flame).

Not every creature has spells. Why this assumption all the time?

It's the Paladin's job to put himself in the front row. If he doesn't do that, and the other players get torn apart, he's letting the party down. That's not your problem -- it's theirs: because of one player's defensive choices, they are losing heavily on attack power.

No kidding. That's they problem. They avoid the paladin, the party gets torn apart. They attack the paladin, they can't do much to him. Why bother?

What part of this is not being understood? It's like I explain how Bounded Accuracy works with the focus on higher CR creatures doing more damage to account for lower ACs. These creatures tear up the non-paladin character and are encouraged to avoid the paladin due to high AC. That's the problem with encounter design as a DM. Designing encounters that one character can survive with ease in group battle but vice versa isn't true puts you in an odd situation as a DM where you have to be careful not to kill everyone by not bothering to attack the paladin.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I'm with Celtavian that paladins are probably overpowered. The one in my game has a 20 strength and charisma at level 5 (we rolled stats, IN ORDER no less!), but even still. He uses a flail and shield, ankheg plate, and an amulet of protection +1, so he's sitting at AC 21, plus his heavy armor mastery which reduces any damage he takes even more. I could try and load up on multiple weaker critters to try and swarm him, but due to the stupid encounter building guidelines, they use up too much of a budget (and deal poor damage, because god forbid a humanoid creature in the monster manual actually have a stat above 14). The thief is sporting an 18 AC (19 if she dual wields) and the warlock a 15 with her mage armor.

The real issue I'm dreading is him handing out a +5 to all saves vs spells (he's oath of the ancients), when 5E explicitly tried to do away with massive bonuses. It's insane that this one class just breaks the entire bounded accuracy/defense model. I've already told him he gets that ability on a trial basis, and it probably wont stay.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I hope he doesn't multiclass to get shield. At the moment he doesn't have it. It's theoretical that he could..

So your example earlier about how he is unhittable was based at least some part on theory?

I guess then my answer to you would be don't worry about things that haven't happened. I mean, my monsters could be toting .50 cal chain guns, but until they do, I'm not going to worry about it in the game.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yep. Ready Action is far more rules-complex and counter-intuitive than just allowing someone to choose to push their initiative later. I mean, if we allowed weird cycling around of initiative or the like, sure, that'd be dumb, but just holding to later? Pffft.

See, I find the opposite to be true. Readying is simple with minimal impact because exactly what will be done and the trigger event have to be declared on that player's turn. So if the trigger event occurs, they take their stated action. Simple.

Delay is well named because I've watched players debate for several minutes about which character should go first in order to optimize tactics. The game grinds to a halt. And as I said in an earlier post, it relies on the characters' knowledge of a game mechanic, so it's totally a meta game thing, to me.

The biggest problem with the proposed solutions is they don't take into account a party. They focus on how to handle the individual paladin player. If the enemies waste actions on the paladin, that is a win for the party. If the creatures ignore the paladin and go after the other PCs, the paladin attacks them with impunity. He doesn't do weak damage. If the PCs decide to spread out too far enabling solo attacking, they get ripped apart because Bounded Accuracy is built with the idea that doing more hit point damage is the balancing factor over AC. So you get higher CR creatures doing a lot of damage that rip apart the easily hit PCs, while having no incentive to fight hard to hit PCs like the paladin or other heavy armor users.

It's an unusual situation I'm dealing with in a campaign focused on giants. Giants do heavy damage with a high hit roll. The AC disparity really stands out as does the damage differences. If the giants attack the paladin, he survives quite well with shield of faith and dodging to let the other PCs kill the giants. If the giants attack the other PCs, they plow through their hit points like a katana through tissue. They hit them much easier. It sort of ends up in this odd situation where the paladin is standing strong, while the other PCs are in various stages of nearly dead or fallen. They can't take the hits. I wish the AC disparity wasn't so high with this Bounded Accuracy thing because the damage disparity isn't near as great as the AC disparity. Paladins can bring it with damage.

I'll get it figured out. I think I'm going to hand out some magic armor to the other PCs. Close the AC gap some.

I think you do need to close that AC gap a bit. I think you maybe jumped the gun on magic platemail and combined with the party's tactics basically be to buff the paladin's AC and have him act as a wall, it's creating an issue.

Close that AC gap a bit, definitely. Also, giants? Hell they should be able to grapple the paladin pretty well...which would then grant advantage on attacks targeting him while he is grappled. So if one giant grabs him, the others should then be able to do some damage to him and force his next action to be escaping.

And, finally, as others have said, I don't think it's wrong to have the other party members attacked by dangerous foes. Maybe they should be buffing their own AC instead of solely the paladin's? Have the Giants lpb stones over the paladin's head to hit the casters, forcing concentration checks to maintain his AC buffs.

Throw in a giant shaman or an ogre mage who can dispel the effects or otherwise counteract them. ogre mages can fly and turn into gaseous form...they can get right by the paladin to threaten the rest of the party.

If that's dangerous for them, then too bad. They shouldn't be putting all their eggs in one basket.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I'm with Celtavian that paladins are probably overpowered. The one in my game has a 20 strength and charisma at level 5 (we rolled stats, IN ORDER no less!), but even still. He uses a flail and shield, ankheg plate, and an amulet of protection +1, so he's sitting at AC 21, plus his heavy armor mastery which reduces any damage he takes even more..

How is this possible? Even if you rolled natural 18s for STR and CHA, you only get one feat by level 5, which was used on Heavy Armor Mastery.

 

[Celtavian]

My group's paladin has Heavy Armor Mastery as well. He took Sentinel at level 4. He likes to go into battle, dodge, and use AoOs to hold tough enemies in place. Let the higher damage PCs tear up the creature. It all works very well until I create an encounter where the monsters don't engage the paladin. Then the other PCs end up getting torn up due to having lots of weaknesses to exploit. I'm surprised at how little the paladin has to challenge him. Even the fighter in the other campaign had to deal with Wisdom saving throws and the frightened condition, not Mister Paladin. Paladins get a lot of stuff.

I just found out they get Find Steed which allows them summon a CR 1 creature that can attack people. I was scratching my head how a Paladin could obtain what is in essence a pet that can do more damage and is better than a dedicated Ranger Beast Companion. I was like, "What the heck? On top of everything else, the paladin gets to summon a steed that works better than a familiar or low level dedicated ranger pet? That's goofy." Not sure what the game designers were thinking with the paladin, they may have loaded the class with too much. He bought his horse barding. I think it has an AC 16 now. As good an AC as the bard.