D&D 5E 5e, Heal Thyself! Is Healing Too Weak in D&D?

[Mannahnin]

Isn't this discussion in the context of how many of the horde of minions a PC can take out in a round?

Partially; I was engaged in a bit of a tangent about the fact that WotC was extremely conservative about giving multiple attacks as an At-Will; that Twin Strike became a somewhat controversial outlier because other martial classes couldn't get anything similar. Part of the design philosophy was to speed up individual combat turns by reducing the number of rounds on which a character made multiple attack rolls; apart from some small AoEs (Burst 1 or Blast 2 or 3) for Wizards (especially, though other casters did get them too), powers that made multiple attack rolls were normally Encounter or Daily.

 

[Eric V]

Good, then please tell me, what is the frequency of minion-only combat ? I don't think I ever did one. Minions are minions to someone. If there are only real minions, the heroes tear through them in a nice 2 sentences narrative that does not require combat.



Cool, it's faster, but because it does not happen (or so infrequently compared to other combats), what is the benefit exactly ?



Whatever the edition, they are not really a threat in and of themselves, you know, mostly an annoyance and maybe, in the best cases, necessitating a tactical decision.

Sigh.

Why does it matter what the frequency is? The answer, of course, is "How often the DM wants such a combat."

It's faster and provides a cool movie-type scenario. That's all we were discussing. Please don't move the goalposts.

As well, the term "minion" is not really meant to be taken so literally; they don't have to be serving a "master."

 

[Eric V]

No. The gnolls holding a character will allow any gnolls to hit the character with advantage. Meaning it costs two gnolls to give up to 6 other gnolls an advantage to hit. If you décide that the two holding gnolls are occupying the se space as the character, then it 8 gnolls which will have advantage to hit the held and restrained character. That is the strength of a hoard.

Right. It's advantage on all attacks, not just the next one. If I ever DM 5e again, I will remember that. Although, presumably you'd give the target cover from ranged attacks due to having two gnolls grappling him/her?

 

[Lyxen]

Why does it matter what the frequency is?

Do I need to remind you that you are the one who, while admitting that 5e combat is way quicker, absolutely wanted to argue that minions only combat is quicker with 4e, as if it was an argument for that way of managing minions ? Hence the very relevancy of the question of the frequency, because that advantage remains totally theoretical and non applicable for the huge majority of the fights.

It's faster and provides a cool movie-type scenario.

See above, this "quickness" is irrelevant, since it's for almost non-existent cases (and in any case you admit that 5e combat is significantly quicker).

As for the "movie-type" I'm still waiting for a demonstration. There are many cases where the "minions" of the genre take more than one hit to go down, and actually go back up.

As well, the term "minion" is not really meant to be taken so literally; they don't have to be serving a "master."

They don't, although, once more, I'll give you the 4e definition: "Minions are designed to serve as shock troops and cannon fodder for other monsters (standard, elite, or solo) [...] Use minions as melee combatants placed between the PCs and back-rank artillery or controller monsters.", which implies the actual presence of other monsters in at least a vast majority of the cases.

Since combat, which might or might not include "minion-types" is way faster in 5e than 4e, it clearly shows that the theoretical advantage of not counting hit points is a very marginal effect, which is absolutely confirmed by my personal experience through 40+ years of roleplaying all editions of D&D.

 

[Mannahnin]

Right. It's advantage on all attacks, not just the next one. If I ever DM 5e again, I will remember that. Although, presumably you'd give the target cover from ranged attacks due to having two gnolls grappling him/her?

If the grappling gnoll or gnolls were on either side or behind the target, potentially not. But assuming you're swarming the victim with a bunch of gnolls to hit them in melee, yes, they'd probably wind up with cover from any gnolls shooting from a distance.

Edit: Hang on, does Grappled even give Advantage to other attackers? I don't believe it does in 5th edition.

Normally to get Advantage out of grappling in 5E you need to FIRST grapple the target, THEN knock them Prone, so your allies who are also within 5' of the target can get Advantage to attack the prone target.

Am I forgetting a gnoll special ability?

 

[Lyxen]

Right. It's advantage on all attacks, not just the next one.

It's why @Helldritch is using grapple rather than the help action, it lasts as long as the creature remains grappled.

Although, presumably you'd give the target cover from ranged attacks due to having two gnolls grappling him/her?

Cover is not counted in 5e as in 4e where basically only terrain counted (as per its description), and it's not about counting lines from corners where enemies are suddenly included. 5e recognises that it's way more circumstantial than that, and lets the DM decide based on this: "A target has half cover if an obstacle blocks at least half of its body. The obstacle might be a low wall, a large piece of furniture, a narrow tree trunk, or a creature, whether that creature is an enemy or a friend."

The scenario about the 8 gnolls assumes that they are all around the target, so whether grappling or not, it's pretty clear that anyone firing at the target would have at least one gnoll in the way, which would give cover.

Now, if the target was an ogre, it might be more debatable, and also debatable if the target was a carrion crawler (still large, but lower to the ground, etc.). The important point is that the DM decides based on circumstances, and that grappling might be one of these circumstances, or it might not, for example if the grapplers are on the opposite side of the shooter, and there is no gnoll on that side, etc.

 

[Eric V]

Do I need to remind you that you are the one who, while admitting that 5e combat is way quicker, absolutely wanted to argue that minions only combat is quicker with 4e, as if it was an argument for that way of managing minions ? Hence the very relevancy of the question of the frequency, because that advantage remains totally theoretical and non applicable for the huge majority of the fights.



See above, this "quickness" is irrelevant, since it's for almost non-existent cases (and in any case you admit that 5e combat is significantly quicker).

As for the "movie-type" I'm still waiting for a demonstration. There are many cases where the "minions" of the genre take more than one hit to go down, and actually go back up.



They don't, although, once more, I'll give you the 4e definition: "Minions are designed to serve as shock troops and cannon fodder for other monsters (standard, elite, or solo) [...] Use minions as melee combatants placed between the PCs and back-rank artillery or controller monsters.", which implies the actual presence of other monsters in at least a vast majority of the cases.

Since combat, which might or might not include "minion-types" is way faster in 5e than 4e, it clearly shows that the theoretical advantage of not counting hit points is a very marginal effect, which is absolutely confirmed by my personal experience through 40+ years of roleplaying all editions of D&D.

It's not theoretical. It's objective, and good for the DM to know when designing encounters.

Based on actual experience, if I DM 5e again, I know not to design an "against the horde!" type of fight.

Based on actual experience, if I DM 4e again, I know I can absolutely design an "against the horde!" type of fight and have it work well.

This is all relevant.

 

[Lyxen]

It's not theoretical. It's objective, and good for the DM to know when designing encounters.

Based on actual experience, if I DM 5e again, I know not to design an "against the horde!" type of fight.

Based on actual experience, if I DM 4e again, I know I can absolutely design an "against the horde!" type of fight and have it work well.

This is all relevant.

And based on experience with all editions, I know not to run a combat using 4e, horde or not, because it takes ages and requires pushing figurines on a map (and I don't have a 100 orc figurines), whereas in 5e (and in BECMI / AD&D before) I never had any problem running them in particular using theater of the mind:

• Player: "how many orcs can I catch in my fireball ?
• DM: "Where they are the most dense, I'd say about 20, done, they are burnt to a crisp, there's only 80 left, a bit shaken by the blast, next ?"

Much more cinematic and waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy quicker.

 

[Ovinomancer]

And based on experience with all editions, I know not to run a combat using 4e, horde or not, because it takes ages and requires pushing figurines on a map (and I don't have a 100 orc figurines), whereas in 5e (and in BECMI / AD&D before) I never had any problem running them in particular using theater of the mind:

• Player: "how many orcs can I catch in my fireball ?
• DM: "Where they are the most dense, I'd say about 20, done, they are burnt to a crisp, there's only 80 left, a bit shaken by the blast, next ?"

Much more cinematic and waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy quicker.

Ah, so you do not care how many hitpoints the orcs actually might have or how much damage a fireball actually does or if the orcs manage to save or not, so it's like all of these orcs just really have 1 hitpoint. That's a cool idea, makes things very fast, shame it's never been done before.

 

[James Gasik]

And you know what, I agree, but it just shows the heart of the problem. The SYSTEM decided to implement forced movement because it's a nice boardgame trick and it generates technical combos, and the narration explanation where just strapped on, however implausible it is.

I mean, 5e isn't any better about this. Why does Repelling Blast push people 10 feet, exactly?