D&D 5E Player angry about enemies climbing rope with Rope Trick

[Mordhau]

I don't see why people are so concerned about realistic behaviour. We're talking about a purely game artifact - it's so abstract and open to interpretation any response could be plausible.

The point of Death Saves is to give PCs a pretty good chance of survival. If you don't want that reduce the number of death saves.

 

[James Gasik]

It doesn't sound like we are still talking about beasts.

Not after the first two sentences, no. But I thought it was a nice way to loop the discussion back around to the "monsters know stuff" statements.

For monsters to have knowledge of X, a monster has to survive seeing X in play. If the players murder everything they encounter, no one survives to see X. if the enemies cut and run, they do.

 

[Oofta]

The bolded bit is the real problem behind this whole train of thought: what is being accepted is in no way logical. Nor is it consistent even with itself, never mind anything else.

If the PCs aren't indicative of the setting then a very good argument can (and IMO should) be made that they really don't belong there.

If PCs get death saves then Hobgoblins get death saves. So should Ogres, Mind Flayers, and any other living being bigger than a turnip. That's consistent. And yes, the Hobs will still end up dying far more often than the PCs because odds are they don't have available on-the-fly healing; and that's fine too, as long as the underlying mechanics - in this case, death saves and their application - are consistent.

In 5E it's up to the DM to decide if the enemy gets death saves or not. The only reason they don't is for speed of play and convenience. If I have a healer on the opponent's team, bad guys can pop back up as well and get death saves.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Is it really reasonable to have a meal when you're being attacked?

What a hungry monster will do is grab the downed prey and run. They don’t need to defeat the party, the halfling sorcerer is a perfectly good meal, so yes, they will grab (with their teeth) and run.

 

[Oofta]

What a hungry monster will do is grab the downed prey and run. They don’t need to defeat the party, the halfling sorcerer is a perfectly good meal, so yes, they will grab (with their teeth) and run.

I actually find that the group freaks out most when a predator does this. It's the ultimate "Oh **** if it gets away Bob is gone!" moment. Of course since it's Bob they may just shrug and decide to retreat from the battle after all but that's a different issue.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Not at all. Do what works for you. I ignore CR and encounter balance entirely. But speaking about the default rules of the game can be helpful.

It seems to me that if there is a category called “Deadly” and there is nothing telling the DM to not design Deadly encounters, the implication is that making 5e deadly is a possibility, and thus 5e is as deadly as you want it to be.

What, exactly, is the problem?

 

[Bill Zebub]

Of course since it's Bob they may just shrug and decide to retreat from the battle after all but that's a different issue.

I mean, the post you are quoting specifically said it was a halfling. So, yeah.

If Bob were a gnome, on the other hand, then they probably intentionally offered him up.

 

[James Gasik]

Mind you, the rules could make running easier. I once had a Troll try to carry off a downed party member, and he didn't get 10' without being turned into so much charred Troll steak...

So while I accept the idea of predators trying to make off with their prey, there has to be a good opportunity to do so. Having a PC in melee range (and other PC's with ranged attacks) can make this kind of difficult.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I believe that is during casting, not after it is cast.

It doesn't matter if it's from a drunken baboon's secondhand screeching's... that DC is at odds with the rest of 5E's flattened numbers. A trained practitioner has a coin flip to ID magic missile or shield. That's a poorly set DC.

It's literally from the edition that had a dozen different types of specific bonuses (and multiple stacking unnamed ones) and expected player's to take advantage of multiple ones.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Mind you, the rules could make running easier. I once had a Troll try to carry off a downed party member, and he didn't get 10' without being turned into so much charred Troll steak...

So while I accept the idea of predators trying to make off with their prey, there has to be a good opportunity to do so. Having a PC in melee range (and other PC's with ranged attacks) can make this kind of difficult.

Enhh.. I think it probably plays out mostly the way it's intended and mirrors how it works with predators. Predators don't usually get to take their meal with them unless and until significant outside threats are gone or sufficiently far away that their speed/ability to hide make a clean getaway a possibility.