D&D 5E Helping melee combat to be more competitive to ranged.

[pemerton]

Spirit Guardians is, of course, not the only auto-damage effect in 5E. The exact same thing would have happened with a Wall of Fire, or even (as happens sometimes) with regular jars of flaming oil from the PHB, each of which does 5 HP to anything that passes through it.

<snip>

In AD&D, a 9th level spellcaster would have not only won the encounter, but also taken over the whole gnoll tribe as the new chief. (Thanks, Magic Jar!) 5E magic is generally weaker and more tactical. At 8th level, an AD&D wizard could have produced a 2d4+2d6+8 Wall of Fire which would be approximately 100% lethal to all the 2 HD (2-16 HP) gnolls that charged into it, and that Wall of Fire would last for as long as he cared to keep concentrating on it, or else eight minutes if he decided to just walk away instead of concentrating on it. There are probably other options too which I'm overlooking due to being decades out of practice with AD&D.

I think WoF is an interesting example. (And one that I overlooked and shouldn't have.)

The way WoF's damage works is not clear from the spell description - is the damage inflicted upon creation of the wall, upon entering that distance, periodically? And does a charging gnoll take damage for crossing the 20' then the 10' zone? It's a long time since I've run that spell, but my default instinct is not that the damage is "per round".

But the other difference, to my mind, is that the Wall of Fire is clearly visible to the gnolls as a wall of frickin' fire. They can tell that they may well char up if they run through it. Whereas the spirit guardians look like spectral angels. Who would expect them to be more dangerous OA-dealers than Conan, or a non-spectral angel?

 

[pemerton]

Spirit Guardians is a great spell. My players use it quite often and it's really effective. But it does not trivialize every combat. It does not even trivialize every combat against low HP enemies.

I wouldn't expect it to trivialise every combat. It's particularly effective against low-hp melee combatants. Whether that is "too effective" is a matter of taste.

I don't see the problem of there occasionally being the perfect solution to a problem. If you wan't charging, slavering gnolls without longbows to attack the party, do so. If they happen to have a cleric with Spirit Guardian who thinks to use it and they beat the encounter in a round, good for them!

If that's not the outcome you or your party want, next time, have the Gnolls use longbows and attack from a distance, or have one hoard throw themselves at the party while another shoots arrows at the cleric.

The outcome of one encounter, specifically tailored on both PC and Monster side to a narrow circumstance in the PC's favor to show a particular outcome, doesn't mean that the spell isn't functioning within acceptable limits of design.

Acceptable to whom?

On another thread discussing some similar issues, [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] said "My view is that the mechanics are there to simulate the fiction. They serve the fiction. My fiction does not serve the mechanics." This was elaborated as "I prefer for the fiction to matter more than the mechanics. Like in the example above, I don't care if the game mechanics would allow a group of 5 level 10 PCs to defeat 300 orcs. In such a case, the "reality" of the fictional world we are creating is more important to me than the mechanics, and I would have the PCs fail."

If I dislike the fiction of a 3rd level cleric spell giving OA-style capabilities, vs many low-hp enemies, that are on a par with being guarded by the best knights of the realm, why shouldn't I change the mechanics? Why should I instead have to change my fiction (eg turn my gnolls into archers)?

 

[CapnZapp]

Are you saying that you predicted and CapnZapp confirmed that he was letting the aura do damage as soon as the cleric moved it over the gnolls, as opposed to when they enter the aura or start their turn in it? (That would explain why he says they needed to take damage two times before melee attacking, which makes it twice as strong against the gnolls as it should be by RAW.) If so, good for you, although if so I didn't read that exchange between you.

I didn't spell it out because I thought it was a given, but my mistake - the way the aura counts as difficult terrain means that someone charging the Cleric will (probably) not reach him in time to do an attack.

This means the attacker has to endure the damage twice: in the first round when entering the aura, in the second from starting in it. Before even getting the chance to make an attack, I mean. Obviously it's better if this damage doesn't reduce you to tatters.

This means Spirit Guardians make you practically immune to melee attacks from anyone that doesn't have the Hit Dice. This is why I want variants of humanoids with CRs up to at least 5, and why I'm disappointed by the MMs strong focus on CR 1/2 and CR 1 humanoids.

The moving forward bit is to inflict damage on anyone trying to stay at the edge of the aura. In practice it extends the danger zone by at least ten feat (assuming you will want to return to your original position at the end of your turn).

 

[CapnZapp]

Been out of this thread for a while, but have been reading with great amusement, and wanted to come back in to emphasize this excellent point from Hemlock, and to say how lucky we are that WotC has a team of testers that clearly understand how to test the game and have done a phenomenal job. Do things occasionally get missed? I'm sure they do. They didn't have three years after finalizing the design to tease out every possible outcome, but I am positive that the testing they did was done with sound methodology and has led to a game with a very strong foundation for 99% of players.

I do have one other general thought on a subject that I've seen come up again and again in this thread. I keep seeing posters say that melee combat is "ineffective" in 5e. This is simply not true. It may be less effective than ranged, but at the base assumptions of the game, melee combat is more than enough to overcome challenges. That is, when facing a CR appropriate foe in an adventuring day budgeted for the correct PC level, melee builds are perfectly capable of doing what needs done. DPR builds by design in 5e make combat easier, and thus less challenging. It was the goal to allow for players to build characters without DPR in mind. The base DPR of each class is more than enough to overcome the assumed challenge level of the game.

Now if you want melee to be better than ranged, fine, do it! Make whatever changes you want to your game to have it be so. Nerf ranged or power up melee or both! I'm happy to discuss and suggest how that can be accomplished. Just understand that none of it is necessary to play the game as designed and that the discussion is about how to homebrew your rules to get what you want out of the game.

Sorry, but you don't get to say this without being held accountable.

"At the base assumptions of the game, melee combat is more than enough to overcome challenges." So this means the designers are absolved from the very practical impact of all that's changed?

WHY has all these changes been made? How on earth can you even suggest dropping virtually every check on ranged makes the game better?

"None of it is necessary to play the game as designed"
You don't get to tell us what's necessary. You can't say how the game was designed.

This statement is designed to bury any criticism under the rug. As if the design could have been pretty much ANYTHING or NOTHING and we should still just accept it's all good to play "as designed".

This is pure bull crap. Why do you so readily accept these, to me mind, outright apologetic rationalizions? Why should the designers get away with everything?

If you are inclined to defend the design of 5E, be my guest. But at least then let's discuss specific design choices and how the rules have been changed, instead of making sweeping generalizations coated in heavy obeisance.

Thank you.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

I didn't spell it out because I thought it was a given, but my mistake - the way the aura counts as difficult terrain means that someone charging the Cleric will (probably) not reach him in time to do an attack.

This means the attacker has to endure the damage twice: in the first round when entering the aura, in the second from starting in it. Before even getting the chance to make an attack, I mean. Obviously it's better if this damage doesn't reduce you to tatters.

This means Spirit Guardians make you practically immune to melee attacks from anyone that doesn't have the Hit Dice. This is why I want variants of humanoids with CRs up to at least 5, and why I'm disappointed by the MMs strong focus on CR 1/2 and CR 1 humanoids.

The moving forward bit is to inflict damage on anyone trying to stay at the edge of the aura. In practice it extends the danger zone by at least ten feat (assuming you will want to return to your original position at the end of your turn).

Yeah, looking at this more closely, the fact that it acts as difficult terrain and is mobile makes it considerably different than something like Wall of Fire, and at a lower level.

One simple solution, based on the name of the spell, is to provide a fixed number of guardians. That is, at third level there are 3 guardians, and thus can target three creatures that enter the radius. The difficult terrain effect can remain as well. For each spell slot level above 3rd, it adds another guardian.

The duration is a bit long as well, but essentially irrelevant as even if it lasted for a minute it would outlast the duration of most combats. Obviously, the strategy would be to target the cleric with ranged attacks to break their concentration, and this is probably what is considered its mitigating factor.

Again, I don't fault the scenario, as he stated he was testing the mob rules, and this made it clear that a spell like this breaks the mob rules for low level creatures. That in itself doesn't concern me too much, while I get the appeal of a big mob scene like this, the only viable option I see for characters in a situation like this is to push their way, battered and barely hanging onto life, to a means of escape. But that's my preference.

 

[Imaro]

As the DM with the gnolls, I can tell you what the specifics were, so you don't have to guess (and especially not make guesses meant to strengthen your own discussion points).

The encounter was meant to trial the mob rules of the DMG, where the DM makes a single melee attack roll for, say, half a dozen enemies. The purpose was to see if characters approaching the end of tier II (I can't remember their exact level) are sturdy enough to withstand weak enemies numerous enough to justify the mob rules. Hence, I used regular Gnolls with their bites and spears but no longbows. Feel free to disagree with this, but please don't use it to make assumptions on the overall issue.

The mob rules do auto-damage based on the AC of the defender vs. the number of creatures attacking the target and their to hit vs. targets AC... there are no rolls involved.

Assuming an 8th level cleric with +2 Con mod = 59 hit points and also assuming plate and shield... AC 20 so for every 4 gnolls attacking him he would take an automatic 1d4+2 [4.5 dmg] (bite) or 1d8+2 [6.5] (spear in 2-hands).

Another choice of mine was that any Gnoll that witnessed the death of an ally through the Spirit Guardian area would attempt to avoid entering it. But that these Gnolls would otherwise not know the aura's exact purpose. If they could attack somebody without a magical shimmer, they would.

Now, in order to get within their spear's short range, they must come awfully close to the area. This enables the Cleric to catch plenty of them by simply moving forward ten feet or so. So it's no surprise many were caught, either by charging into the field or by being too close.

Those who charged was slowed down by the spell's other effect, ensuring almost no gnoll survived to make melee attacks at all (since they need to survive two helpings of damage; an not inconsiderable amount of damage given that the Cleric cast the spell at his highest spell level; level 4 I believe)

At least one round there were probably two dozen ranged attacks at the Cleric. It wouldn't surprise me if he took 40 attacks in total. But with outstanding AC and actively dodging, very few were hits. And with optimized Concentration checks (proficiency and advantage) none came even close to disrupting his Spirit Guardians.

Huh? Mob rules do automatic damage. Two dozen attacks is 6*5.5(ranged) = 33... or 6*6.5(melee)= 39 points of damage. 40 attacks with thrown spears is 10 * 1d6+2 or... 5.5*10= 55 points of damage. Even if we up his AC to 22 we only need 5 attacks for auto damage so 8*5.5 = 44 points of damage. That's the lion share of his hit points right there. I'm not understanding how with the information you are providing this battle went the way you are claiming... The cleric should have been hurt and making numerous concentration checks to hold onto that Spirit Guardian spell.

Had the Spirit Guardians failed, he could not have withstood all the incoming attacks himself. If he was super-unlucky the first Gnoll breaks his concentration; but more likely he would survive to bring back up the spell again. Of course, this would be noticeably weaker, since it would probably be cast at a lower level, and there would be no time to dodge. In all these cases, the rest of the party would have had to move in to help out.

I think this may have more to do with a mis-use of the mob rules than Spirit Guardian...

EDIT: In other words, based on the information provided, the number of times he took damage means he would have been making alot of concentration checks which in turn kind of points to him failing at some point in this combat through sheer number of rolls called for. I think that... along with the damage he should have taken... doesn't really support the conclusion you came to based on this (faulty) experiment about mobs vs. tier 3 characters.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

I think WoF is an interesting example. (And one that I overlooked and shouldn't have.)

The way WoF's damage works is not clear from the spell description - is the damage inflicted upon creation of the wall, upon entering that distance, periodically? And does a charging gnoll take damage for crossing the 20' then the 10' zone? It's a long time since I've run that spell, but my default instinct is not that the damage is "per round".

But the other difference, to my mind, is that the Wall of Fire is clearly visible to the gnolls as a wall of frickin' fire. They can tell that they may well char up if they run through it. Whereas the spirit guardians look like spectral angels. Who would expect them to be more dangerous OA-dealers than Conan, or a non-spectral angel?

It's inflicted on any creature that ends its turn inside or within 10 feet of the "hot" side of the wall, or the first time it enters the wall on its turn.

The "first time it enters" wording in a lot of these bugs me, because somebody who has enough movement can run back and forth through the wall of fire as many times as they want within their move rate and only suffer damage once. I understand why they end up wording things this way, to fight certain abuses, but it still bugs me. I'd probably change it.

As for the spectral angels - any of the gnolls that have seen Raiders of the Lost Ark! Or at least those that saw their companions just get slaughtered.

 

[pemerton]

It's inflicted on any creature that ends its turn inside or within 10 feet of the "hot" side of the wall, or the first time it enters the wall on its turn.

The "first time it enters" wording in a lot of these bugs me, because somebody who has enough movement can run back and forth through the wall of fire as many times as they want within their move rate and only suffer damage once.

On WoF - [MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION] and I were talking about the AD&D version, which doesn't have a "per turn" wording - that seems to be introduced in 3E.

Re "running back and forth" - well, maybe only spending a short time in the AoE should be less harmful than hanging out in it for 6 seconds? Some of this sort of stuff is an artefact of "stop motion" initiative and action economy.

 

[OB1]

I wouldn't expect it to trivialise every combat. It's particularly effective against low-hp melee combatants. Whether that is "too effective" is a matter of taste.

Acceptable to whom?

On another thread discussing some similar issues, [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] said "My view is that the mechanics are there to simulate the fiction. They serve the fiction. My fiction does not serve the mechanics." This was elaborated as "I prefer for the fiction to matter more than the mechanics. Like in the example above, I don't care if the game mechanics would allow a group of 5 level 10 PCs to defeat 300 orcs. In such a case, the "reality" of the fictional world we are creating is more important to me than the mechanics, and I would have the PCs fail."

If I dislike the fiction of a 3rd level cleric spell giving OA-style capabilities, vs many low-hp enemies, that are on a par with being guarded by the best knights of the realm, why shouldn't I change the mechanics? Why should I instead have to change my fiction (eg turn my gnolls into archers)?

I'm not arguing that you can't or shouldn't change the fiction in your game, you absolutely should if you feel it is necessary, I'm arguing that the design of the spell is acceptable in the vast majority of use cases, and therefore doesn't require change.

Sorry, but you don't get to say this without being held accountable.

"At the base assumptions of the game, melee combat is more than enough to overcome challenges." So this means the designers are absolved from the very practical impact of all that's changed?

WHY has all these changes been made? How on earth can you even suggest dropping virtually every check on ranged makes the game better?

"None of it is necessary to play the game as designed"
You don't get to tell us what's necessary. You can't say how the game was designed.

This statement is designed to bury any criticism under the rug. As if the design could have been pretty much ANYTHING or NOTHING and we should still just accept it's all good to play "as designed".

This is pure bull crap. Why do you so readily accept these, to me mind, outright apologetic rationalizions? Why should the designers get away with everything?

If you are inclined to defend the design of 5E, be my guest. But at least then let's discuss specific design choices and how the rules have been changed, instead of making sweeping generalizations coated in heavy obeisance.

Thank you.

Sorry Capn, but you aren't criticizing the game, you are complaining about it, and there is a huge difference.

Criticism of art requires examination of the author's intent versus the actual result in the intended audience.

Complaining about art means saying that you don't agree with or "like" the intent of the author.

The intent of 5e's game design could not be clearer. Using the CRs and experience per day guidelines in the DMG, any PC built using the core rules (no feats or MC) who put their highest stat in their primary attack stat (as per the guidelines in the creation of every class and using standard array, this would be a 15/+2) will be effective. This was done so that players can play any race and use any feat or MC combination without fear that their PC will not meet the base expectation of the game, allowing for thousands of possible combinations. Some are much more powerful than others, and as such, will make the game less challenging in the combat pillar, just as giving magic items to a PC will. That is the intent.

Because of this, the fact that the designers made a mistake and made a few feats a bit more powerful than intended doesn't hurt the overall design intent of the game and therefore doesn't require fixing. I've made the same argument about the PHB Ranger from the other side. Many people Complain that the Ranger is underpowered, and it is less powerful than many other classes on a pure DPR scale, but the class does meet the minimum requirements as written.

So because I like that intent, and I enjoy the fact that instead of a game with only one or two effective builds per class there are hundreds, and that allows me to play the character I want without worrying about not holding my own in combat, or to challenge myself by creating builds below the expected curve, I don't complain about the design, but am more that willing to offer advice to those for who do not like the intent to make the game work better for them, while also arguing against changing the fundamental design of the game.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I didn't spell it out because I thought it was a given, but my mistake - the way the aura counts as difficult terrain means that someone charging the Cleric will (probably) not reach him in time to do an attack.

This means the attacker has to endure the damage twice: in the first round when entering the aura, in the second from starting in it. Before even getting the chance to make an attack, I mean. Obviously it's better if this damage doesn't reduce you to tatters.

Great, then we're on the same page with respect to the rules* and the cleric's tactics, because this is indeed what I initially assumed, since it's the standard way to use Spirit Guardians--but it also means that gnoll tactics are the major variable, as per the math I outlined. Gnolls who start out more than 25'+ away from the cleric and then charge into the aura, and then Dash again to get themselves within 5' of the cleric, will have an 80% chance to die before getting any attacks. Gnolls who are willing to do that after seeing 80% of the dozen or more gnolls before them get shredded doing the exact same thing are clearly some kind of berserker. (In fact, they're likely clambering over the corpses of the previous gnolls.)

If that's the case, then this isn't even about 5E or Spirit Guardians: those gnolls would apparently run through fire or a Wall of Fire or an army of zombies or off a cliff to attack the PCs, in AD&D or 5E. How surprised am I that they died gruesomely and ineffectually at the PCs' hands? Not at all.

* Technically it's not difficult terrain--instead it halves your speed, which is cumulative with difficult terrain, which makes it even better.

This means Spirit Guardians make you practically immune to melee attacks from anyone that doesn't have the Hit Dice. This is why I want variants of humanoids with CRs up to at least 5, and why I'm disappointed by the MMs strong focus on CR 1/2 and CR 1 humanoids.

Even if they do have more Hit Dice, that just means you need to stack a Wall of Fire and Spirit Guardians to do 9d8 (38.25 after saves) instead of 4d8-save-for-half (15). The root problem is their lemming-like desire to attack with their bare hands through any obstacle.

The moving forward bit is to inflict damage on anyone trying to stay at the edge of the aura. In practice it extends the danger zone by at least ten feat (assuming you will want to return to your original position at the end of your turn).

Anyone you damage this way is almost guaranteed to get at least one attack (82% chance per earlier discussion--there's a 23% chance of rolling at least 22 damage, times 0.75 chance of a failed save which applies the full 22 damage, equals 17.5% chance of killing the gnoll before it attacks), which means that even against an AC 20 target the 70 gnolls can expect 14 hits per round, about 70 HP of damage.

Gnolls who end their turns outside the aura don't have to endure the damage twice before attacking, and if they have any sense at all they won't. If they don't have any sense and will charge through an army of faerie guardians just to get to the PCs, then they can be killed any number of ways--the fact that the cleric used Spirit Guardians instead of Silent Image and a pit trap is practically just a detail. ("Practically" because I'm not a mind reader, and maybe you have reasons as a DM to make them react differently to Spirit Guardians than a pit trap or Wall of Fire--you did say that you had it be just a "slight shimmer". Was that because the gnolls would have paused in their headlong rush if they'd been able to see what was slowing and killing them? But based purely on what you've said I have to assume that they would have charged through any obstruction.)

I am not saying that was a bad encounter or that you are a bad DM.

Edit: oh, wait, when you say "assuming you will want to return to your original position at the end of your turn," are you talking about the cleric moving forward and then back while Dodging? When I first read your post I had assumed that the cleric moved forward to make additional gnolls start within his aura, because that is the standard Spirit Guardians tactic. But there's no point in moving backwards again, since that just takes those gnolls right back out of the aura again before they have a chance to take damage. If the cleric does that, nothing happens. No gnolls enter the aura during his turn (in the 5E jargon sense--the aura moves over them, but they do not "enter" it), no gnolls take damage, and he's back in his original position when they start their turns, so exactly the same gnolls take damage as if he hadn't moved.