D&D 5E Chill touch vs Troll regeneration

[Fanaelialae]

No. It is not an over-reaction. I often wonder why I have to explain this. Here is the sequence:

1. Regenerating or healing creature.

2. Focus fire. Chill touch. Dead.

3. Next creature.

4. Focus fire, Chill Touch. Dead.

Doesn't matter if its a troll, Strahd, Juiblex, or the like. A cantrip makes regeneration, healing, and the like completely useless to parties that know what it does and ensure they have, basically nearly every party that understands the rules. It makes regeneration useless because as soon as they know a creature has some means of regaining hit points, chill touch will be used to shut it down.

The only resistance to this spell is immunity to spells of at least cantrip level. Otherwise anything that regains hit points in any way can be shut down long enough to kill it even to the point of waiting for it to be close to death.

I don't agree with your argument. If a player is smart enough to use the right tool for the right job, then they should be rewarded. Is Fire Bolt broken because it's highly effective against Treants? Is Moonbeam broken because it's great against lycanthropes? Using the right tool for the right job is what smart players are supposed to do. It's appropriate that if they make good tactical decisions, that the fight will be easier than it would otherwise be.

Chill Touch is certainly nice when there are enemy healers around, however it's hardly the only way to shut down healing. Counterspelling, or a monk stunning the enemy cleric in his face are both effective. Even just a Minor Image or Silent Image wall can block line of sight to the damaged enemy.

There are also plenty of ways to shut down Chill Touch without cantrip immunity. You have to hit with the spell, so anything that makes that difficult (Shield, Mirror Image, Invisibility) makes it likely that the caster will simply waste a round that he could have otherwise used casting something more effective.

In a recent session, we were up against some Oni. My arcane trickster rogue has Chill Touch for just such an occasion, but after thinking about it for a second I realized I was better off simply attacking. Chill touch would have dealt an average of 19 damage (2d8 + 10 regeneration). Sneak attack dealt an average of 25 damage (1d4 + 5 + 5d6). That's before accounting for crits (I scored one during the fight) which sways the argument towards sneak attack even more.

Chill Touch is a great spell to have when you want to shut down a creature's ability to heal but don't want to use a spell slot. However, it is not a be all end all situation. There are plenty of situations where it is an inferior choice. Just look at trolls. Why cast Chill Touch for d8 damage when you can cast Fire Bolt, deal d10s, and shut down their regeneration?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

In my experience, it does. Then again my players use the tactic I stated. They focus fire on the creature with the mage using chill touch to keep it from regaining points. They do this against enemy priests that try to heal themselves. They did against two Legendary Creatures that had healing attacking abilities. Once they noted the creature was regaining hit points in some fashion, tactical switch to chill touch and focused damage. The cantrip became a better damage dealer than a much, much higher level spell.

If you played every edition, then you remember having to track down all pieces of the troll and burn it real good. It took more work than casting a cantrip and more resources.

That, however, is more about the change to trollish regeneration and not so much about Chill Touch. You could replicate the exact same effect in 5E if you had 2nd edition-style trolls: they can't regenerate damage from acid or fire, but they don't die unless and until you inflict 100% of their total HP in fire/acid and/or hunt down all their dismembered body parts and kill them. With this change, all Chill Touch does (if it hits) is give you an extra round to chuck troll body parts in a bonfire.

Since this change is 100% to trolls and 0% to Chill Touch, you don't even need to consult your players to be fair before changing it. DMs can make up any kind of monster they want and it's none of the players' business, as long as it's still fun. IMO this kind of troll would be a lot of fun.

 

[Jediking]

In-combat regeneration has never been regen's strongest point, anyway. Regen is primarily for hit-and-run tactics, which vampires excel at BTW.

Trolls aren't known for their bimonthly book club meetings, but I would assume they would use Disengage/Dash away or dive into a nearby swamp if the seemingly easy meals it ambushed started throwing fire at it. Or not and the players feel good about having the means to make this regularly tough encounter easy.

A lot of it depends on how the DM plays the creature. If a player can shut down a huge threat with a cantrip, it's not a huge threat. It might be a strong and tough creature that can trade blows, but that's just a sack of hit point. Vampires are smart and would do hit-and-run. Maybe a stupid troll won't. But an Elder Troll probably would, I assume people have tried to kill it with fire/acid before and it has thought up something after reading his books.

I am not disparaging anyone who thinks Chill Touch can be overpowered in these situations, but there are ways to change the situation without changing the creature. Environment, tactics, plans, minions, etc. And just cancelling out a player's tool that seems tailor-made for this situation isn't good. If I carry around a battering ram and find a normally-unbreakable door, I would feel pretty great about lugging it around for 10 sessions.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

One potential advantage of Chill Touch over Fire Bolt is that the troll may be less likely to bolt when you hit it with the Chill Touch, since they likely don't have the same atavistic fear of necromancy that trolls traditionally do for fire.

 

[dave2008]

I don't understand why you're making these arguments.

Its as if there were a series of easily acquired low-level spells and effects that completely shut down Tiamat, that would be okay in your book.

Tiamat is not a good example, she is immune to cantrips, but I agree with your point.

Say you have a monster with regeneration 40.
By your line of reasoning, a mere cantrip will - all by itself - be responsible for 120 points of damage. That sound reasonable to you?

But all of this ignores the main question:

It would be so easy for WOtC to have avoided the problem, not making the job of running a high-level NPC perceptably more difficult, and we wouldn't need to have yet another interminable "don't change anything the game is perfect as is" discussion... *sigh*

Agreed, but since I don't like house ruling spells or player abilities, I think I will just add cantrip immunity to most of my epic monsters.

 

[Celtavian]

That, however, is more about the change to trollish regeneration and not so much about Chill Touch. You could replicate the exact same effect in 5E if you had 2nd edition-style trolls: they can't regenerate damage from acid or fire, but they don't die unless and until you inflict 100% of their total HP in fire/acid and/or hunt down all their dismembered body parts and kill them. With this change, all Chill Touch does (if it hits) is give you an extra round to chuck troll body parts in a bonfire.

Since this change is 100% to trolls and 0% to Chill Touch, you don't even need to consult your players to be fair before changing it. DMs can make up any kind of monster they want and it's none of the players' business, as long as it's still fun. IMO this kind of troll would be a lot of fun.

What we can all make up isn't relevant to the base design of the game. I make quite a few monsters. It doesn't change the flaws in the base design of the game. It means I know how to use the rules to accomplish what I want to accomplish. Base regeneration and other hit point regain effects are defeated by a cantrip that in my opinion is too powerful. It seems like a bad design decision.

 

[Celtavian]

Tiamat is not a good example, she is immune to cantrips, but I agree with your point.




Agreed, but since I don't like house ruling spells or player abilities, I think I will just add cantrip immunity to most of my epic monsters.

And that creates another design conundrum. If you make a monster immune to cantrips, you might hurt a class that uses them as their standard form of damage like a warlock or eldritch knight. You have to be careful when granting spell immunity because you don't want to make certain classes base attack abilities useless. I'd just make them immune to effects that stop the target from regaining hit points.

 

[jaelis]

If you really dislike chill touch, why not ban it from your game? It would be annoying to let a player take it but then not let it work.

 

[Celtavian]

If you really dislike chill touch, why not ban it from your game? It would be annoying to let a player take it but then not let it work.

Stuff doesn't work all the time. It would be no different than making a creature immune to fire. You don't use it all the time, but sometimes you use it. The creature is immune. If the player gets annoyed, screw him. Immunity to fire and other types of damage and effects exist. There's no reason to believe some are immune to negation of hit point regain effects.

 

[CapnZapp]

I think the basic problem can be summed up thusly:

Easy ways to shut down significant features of solos are bad.

I agree you can't just remove individual cantrip from the game. Blanket immunity against whole categories of features are also bad because it's impossible to fully investigate the consequences.

Look, even if Chill Touch is "just" a cantrip, when a level 17 caster uses it, it's not "just" a cantrip any longer. Now it's a feature that costs the full action of a level 17 caster! That is, the opportunity cost of this action is "could've cast Wish but didn't".

To me, this means that if a Wizard 17 spends his whole action on shutting down regeneration he should have a very reasonable chance of doing so. The regen is after all only shut down for a single round. And you do need to hit the monster's AC (though admittedly that won't be too difficult).

So if Tiamat or Juiblex is advancing upon the party amidst its most trusted half dozen guards and consorts, fine. Chill Touch does great damage (4d8 plus whatever the regen rate is). But the Wizard would probably have made great damage anyway.

And if the other monsters also have regen, theirs aren't turned off.

But when the monster is solo, everything changes.

Then the group has five actions to Juiblex' one. Suddenly spending one of them on keeping regeneration out of the picture isn't so expensive anymore. It creates a new fight, where the group has four actions to Juiblex' one - but now his entire side doesn't have regeneration at all any longer!