werecorpse
Adventurer
No there isn't, it's a con save or drop the held item (if you make the save you hold onto it and still suffer disadvantage). If cast on armour you can't drop it you just suffer disadvantage.
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D&D 5E Heat Metal Rules Interp / Minor Nerf
- Thread starter Kusodareka
- Start date
No there isn't, it's a con save or drop the held item (if you make the save you hold onto it and still suffer disadvantage). If cast on armour you can't drop it you just suffer disadvantage.
Sounds like it's time for my Smith's Tools Expertise skilled Artificer Gunsmith to create the innovative quick-release heavy armor system. Wonder if there's Kickstarter in the Realms lol.
Anyhow, there's a Con Save against the disadvantage and there's also disrupting concentration. If these are all humanoids the players are facing, they should be smart enough to know to go after the caster first. If the players are going to do cheese like cast from the shadows and then run off and teleport because the rules say they can then have a smart a just as cheesy NPC boss stay back in the shadows to watch how the PCs fight and have him face them off later. He'll see the Heat Metal, prepare himself and then face off. Maybe he'll back my Gunsmith's Kickstarter, or maybe he'll prepare a way to Misty Step out of his armor or some other protections. It would be funny as hell if the PC casted Heat Metal, then ran away from the battle and just sat hidden in his corner concentrating on his Heat Metal, giggling to himself in satisfaction, not realizing that the armor is already off and sitting at the feet of all the melee combatants as they struggle on without him. He'd be concentrating forever
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That's a whole lot of assumptions. Why not just make them immune to fire damage. Half-Dragons all around!
Except ... oh yeah. I don't cheat to win. If I'm going to change something I'll change it for everyone and try to come up with a compromise that works for everyone.
I don't want to change the enemy - I've established that they're pseudo-Roman legionnaires.
Brandegoris
First Post
Well we cant have you go changing the Romans! That would be tragic! LOL
Ultimately whatever works for your group is good. As a GM I find it harder and harder to balance aspects of the game because it seems that Rules lawyering has become more and more prevelant over the years.
Not a bad thing In general but it means the DM does get blindsided sometime when the designer drops the ball
Ultimately whatever works for your group is good. As a GM I find it harder and harder to balance aspects of the game because it seems that Rules lawyering has become more and more prevelant over the years.
Not a bad thing In general but it means the DM does get blindsided sometime when the designer drops the ball
werecorpse
Adventurer
The damage is only suffered if caster concentrates - so it's not constant- so taking a blast of 2d8 fire damage makes you suffer disadvantage? What if you have 100hp? what if instead you get hit by a fire Ray every round for 2d10 or a fireball? (I know, I know don't try and make sense or look for consistency blah blah but still...)
I find the disadvantage to be most debilitating (and game interfering, hp loss is ok) and have considered ruling that it only applies if the heat metal is cast on a held weapon that can be dropped (ie if you want to just do the damage cast it on the armour, if you want to either make then drop their sword or suffer disadvantage cast it in the sword). Thoughts?
I find the disadvantage to be most debilitating (and game interfering, hp loss is ok) and have considered ruling that it only applies if the heat metal is cast on a held weapon that can be dropped (ie if you want to just do the damage cast it on the armour, if you want to either make then drop their sword or suffer disadvantage cast it in the sword). Thoughts?
Brandegoris
First Post
I think an easy fix would be to just alter the duration? It says 7 Rounds. Just make it 1d4 rounds?
werecorpse
Adventurer
The 5e spell has a duration of "concentration up to 1 minute" or 10 rounds.
I think you might be looking at an earlier edition which didn't have these issue. I recall the 1e version had a 7 round duration.
I think you might be looking at an earlier edition which didn't have these issue. I recall the 1e version had a 7 round duration.
werecorpse
Adventurer
double post
Geeknamese
Explorer
Not sure why you're calling it cheat to win. The game isn't PCs vs. DM, it's PCs and DM creating a fun and challenging shared narrative experience. I love smart NPC bosses and my players do to. You know what else we like? Recurring NPCs bosses. I mean if a DM wants to run scenarios like it's Final Fantasy or Zelda where you dungeon crawl and then get to the big boss then wipe them out and that's the type of game that makes everyone happy, more power to you.
It's a missed opportunity though. Smart, fleshed out NPCs with agendas and background traits who know when to run and fight another day, plot against the PCs, hit them where it hurts like their backgrounds or money or items or foiling their plans...those are the best bosses. A smart boss NPC would send out mooks to test the PCs mettle and reassess to fight them another day. I use pseudo-Roman Legionnaires in my game too as the policing force. If the Legionnaire boss learns of the tactic, he can wear studded leather armor or something. Maybe he'll ambush the PCs instead targeting the caster first.
If you've setup the set piece boss encounter and you have the boss there solo with no cronies...Heat Metal or not, that's going to be a meh battle. Not sure why a boss, wouldn't just escape with odds like that.
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I don't want an adversarial relationship. That's the whole point of talking to the group and saying "This isn't working for me, let's talk about what we can we do to fix it."
From a story standpoint, at the point in the campaign where the bard was spamming heat metal, they were a speck. An annoyance, not one that would draw major attention yet. The bosses were not fighting just the PCs, although they were one opponent. As far as swapping out armor ... a drop of 6 points of AC is huge.
But you've never had a boss fight with one primary opponent? Really? That's what legendary monsters are for. I like a variety of encounters. Some easy, some hard. Some with a ton of opponents, some with a few.
Before I changed the rules I felt constrained in my encounter choices. Never have one important guy in armor (or have a mage handy to dispel), certainly never a high level in heavy armor supported by mooks.
In any case, we found a compromise that worked for us. If it doesn't matter to you, don't change.
Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
You say that the game is not rock-paper-scissors but then you go on to explain that the answer to someone throwing Rock (Heat Metal) is to throw Paper (Dispel Magic). My point is precisely that it SHOULDN'T be Rock, Paper, Scissors. If they throw Rock (Heat Metal), I should be able to throw anything I want back and still be effective. If I don't have Paper, I should be able to throw Rock back or Scissors or Wood or Escalator for that matter and still have a chance to win.
Part of the change they made to the game was that every spell that causes problems for a long time has a save every turn to go away or to only have a fairly minor effect. That way no matter what spells the enemy casts on you, you don't need to have a specific counter for it. Someone can cast Hold Person on the fighter and it's likely to last one round before they can move again. They can cast Bane on the fighter, but he'll still be able to hit with only 1d4 removed from his attacks. Heat Metal is a major effect (2d8 damage per round while essentially giving -4 to -5 to all attack rolls and ability checks) with no saves after the first one.
It should be also noted that Heat Metal is a 2nd level spell, as I keep noting. Dispel Magic is a 3rd level spell, so you can't even use scrolls of it until you are 5th level. Monsters won't have Dispel Magic prepared 99% of the time. It is too powerful in either the PCs hands or the enemies hands.
It doesn't affect everyone, that's true. But there is almost always a valid target in the party. And that target gets hit with a spell that's more powerful than all the other 2nd level spells. That's my point. If you know there will be someone with armor in the group, why would you prepare any spell that isn't Heat Metal at 2nd level, since they are all worse than it?
And monsters can just hide. The first time we ran into this problem, we were all 2nd level. No one in the group could cast Dispel Magic, we weren't high enough level. The enemy Lizardfolk Shaman cast a Heat Metal on our Fighter with 20 hitpoints, then immediately hid behind a wall 80 ft away from the party. We were in a swamp where it was difficult terrain so we could only move at half speed. We couldn't target him with any spells or ranged attacks because he had full cover. Also, there were a bunch of lizardfolk that ran up and engaged us in melee the same round, so leaving melee to go after the Shaman would mean a bunch of opportunity attacks.
At an average of 9 damage per round, that means the Fighter had 2 rounds to stop the spell or he was unconscious(since the damage is dealt on the enemies turn and the first damage happens when the spell is cast). If it rolled 1 point above average twice then the fighter only had one round. And he had to try to hit the shaman with disadvantage on his attacks. What's worse is that while the fighter was unconscious, there was no way for them to stabilize since they were taking continual damage and auto failing death saves.
It was pretty much guaranteed to take down the fighter. If the Shaman had cast any other spell in the PHB that was second level, the fighter was likely fine. A Scorching Ray needs to roll to hit 3 times, which had a good chance of failing since they were against the fighter. If only two attacks hit for average damage (14 total), then the fighter doesn't even drop. Melf's Acid Arrow averages 15 damage. None of those spells have the extra effect of giving disadvantage for as long as the spell continues.
The power level of a 2nd level spell should be doing about 14 points of damage with no secondary effects. This spell will last 95% of the time at least 2 rounds. That means it averages 18 points of damage WITH a secondary effect. Without a save every round, this spell is just way too good. If it's cast on a weapon that can be dropped then it's perfectly fine (and perhaps a bit weak) as a spell. But on armor, it lasts too long and there are too few ways to stop it.
I solved this problem as a DM by refusing to target armor with the spell so it doesn't feel unfair. But that doesn't mean it isn't a problem.
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