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

[Lyxen]

4e does not have a 'physical' damage type. Any purely physical damage is simply untyped.

So how does a ghoul damage you with a "physical" area of hunger ?

You're talking about creating a realistic world, 4e is about creating a cool narrative. Everything is in service of the rule of cool.

OK, I can go with that as an explanation, and again, I'm not disparaging that play style, I'm just explaining why it's not the one I prefer.

Admitedly, 4e was no designed for that purpose. You're not supposed to mix characters of differing level, especially not to that extant. You might not like it, and that's fine, but it's just not something the game was built to handle.

I agree (and I['ve pointed out the reasons for these limitations), but I really wish other people were more clear and open like you about these limitations.

I don't know how often people actually do that kind of thing either, where they have shared campaigns between DMs and Adventurer of up to TWENTY level apart (why the hell would lv 20 dudes want the Lv 1 scrubs around anyway?? As baggage handlers?)

It's just that the lvl 20 are not around all the time, nor can they do everything. But we've had successful parties with widely different levels, just because of the characters which were available that evening to the participating players.

It's a game, it's always artificial. 4e makes no qualm about that fact, and it's neither good or bad, it just is and it's clearly not to your preferences. Personally I enjoy how transparent 4e is about its designs.

And I enjoyed it as well, until ti struck me as a lot more artificial than what my expectations were. Just a matter of taste, and it's good to be open about it.

I mean... do you actually set up your world THAT much in advance anyway? I sure don't. I don't know what the 'order' of encounters is in advance, I just throw naughty word at the PC when it feels appropriate and decide on the spot if it should be hard or not. I don't go around the dungeon, planning at what point they'll level up, putting enemies at the 'right spot'.

Well, I don't have a dungeon anyway. But to give you an example in my Avernus campaign, the players can go anywhere on the plane (and actually have found a few shortcuts to other planes, through the Infinite Staircase as well as through an artefact that they are assembling). I just know what happens to be at various locations, and it's up the players to do the reconnaissance and decide whether they want to do something about it. And sometimes, just like in the fiction, they choose another way, or a different approach, or exploit an opportunity. I don't modifiy monsters, I don't make some minions because they are lacking or have gained levels.

I don't say "If PCs go towards the North they'll encounter an ambush by bandits, but if they go South they'll reach the next town with problem". No! I go "I'll have the PC encounter an ambush by bandits regardless of where they go". And if the PC fail to find the 'Letters of Noble Incrimination' on one of the bandit, I'll just put it elsewhere later.

That's a very, very different way of playing (not better or worse, just different), and that's for me a facet of the problem that I faced with 4e. the DM had spent time preparing encounters to be technically interesting, and I can respect that, but some encounters really felt fed down my throat whether I wanted to avoid them or not, because of that. In particular, we could not just "skim" an encounter, once the DM had decided that there was going to be a fight on his terms because he had balanced it that way, we had to go that way and spend the evening on it. There was no escape, no cleverness, no avoiding once the grid was pulled out...

I hate how the most optimal thing to do in 5e is often to just... Attack attack attack attack. Anything else is suboptimal most of the time except for a few spell based situation (like Sleep early on)

On that, I agree, the options are relatively limited for some classes, it was a strength of 4e to have balanced things more.

That's a nasty trick for focus fire, but it does keep a large portion of the enemy forces busy on a single guy.

It does, but it's what the PCs do as well, because of action economy, every enemy taken out of the fight makes it way safer.

That's not a fair point. 4e could do that too if it had the proper VTT support.

I agree, but as I explained just after, I have the freedom to use a whole palette of solutions (including creating 1 hp monsters if I want, by the way) because the game is extremely open and focuses on speed (at, I agree, the detriment of complexity and balance).

 

[James Gasik]

No, why should it be ? For example, in Spelljammer, the stars are not other suns, they are just lights on the periphery of a crystal sphere.

Also, this is why you have to read the entire description: "You open a gateway to the dark between the stars, a region infested with unknown horrors..." This is Cthulhu (well probably more Azatoth, but you get the idea), not real space.

And Armor of Agathys doing 5 damage to someone who hits you in melee due to "spectral frost" but doesn't do any cold damage to anything nearby you is also ok? I mean, it really feels like spells get a free pass a lot of the time for no other reason than "well you cast a spell, it's magic, we don't have to explain it".

A Magmin can set itself on fire, but you don't take damage for hitting it (at least, not until it explodes). Well that's ok, it's supernatural?

Meanwhile, the Storm Herald Barbarian can get so angry they tap into "primal magic", allowing them to deal fire damage on people up to ten feet away from them. Sure, why not, I guess.

But a zombie making me take untyped physical damage! Beyond the pale! : )

 

[Ovinomancer]

Look, it's not that complicated. Compared to 4e, which forces me to roll for every single orc (after placing them on the grid to make sure that they fit in the cube, of course), for 5e I have multiple solutions. First, I can average everything and do it the way I described, which allows me to have, after the blast, full strength orcs, wounded orcs (and I know how weak they are) and dead orcs. Statistical, done in a flash without even rolling one dice, and perfectly in line with the rules.

Okay, here you're just wrong. 5e requires you to roll saves individually as well! If you're ignoring the rules to institute your preference to average, that's not unique to 5e -- you can do this for 4e if you wanted as well. The claim that 5e just allows you to do whatever is false -- it does not. There's no rules text saying saving throws are optional. You're relying on the omnipresent ability to ignore rules as you want, and saying that 5e allows this while 4e does not, but you can ignore rules whenever you want. 5e is not special in this regard.

Or I can use my VTT, place the orcs where I want (not on a grid, just copy paste wherever it makes sense, draw a circle, and I will know exactly which orcs are wounded and by how much and which are dead.

And I can use the VTT for 4e. These arguments are not actually ones that land. Claiming games are faster because of automation tools that you only allow for one side is a weird flex. Also, your "not using the grid" is facetious -- you're using a map and space and grids are just simplifications here. It's trivial to do the same with 4e, even with pushes and pulls because you can either use the same kind of general eyeballing or you can use the measurement tools for actual distances. VTT is a complete red herring.

Both way quicker than any 4e method I've seen. And, depending on the number of orcs and the time I want to spend about it, I can use any method intermediary there but, because these are just lowly orcs and it's much easier, I will in general use the TotM method which is the fastest there is and more than descriptive enough. And you know what, the best thing is that I won't even have had to tailor my minions to the PC level before the encounter, so I had already gained time before the battle.

Yes, I suppose that if you decide to ignore rules for 5e and enforce them for 4e or if you use automation tools for 5e and forbid them for 4e or if you just do both of these at the same time, your 5e example is faster. But, and this is important, it's not because 5e is faster but because you've chosen to ignore rules and automate one-sidedly.

Nope, it will also depend on the attack, and where it goes, how strong it is, etc. It's not binary, and it will encourage the players to think, maybe attack again the orcs which were wounded instead of saying, as in 4e "I don't care where the fireball went or if orcs are wounded, they have exactly the same chance to survive anyway", which is frankly breaking the suspension of disbelief.

To you, maybe, but that's not normative. That your particular version of mental workspace doesn't accommodate this is, as previously noted, only an autobiographical tidbit -- it's not a normative statement about the system.

And we can see that here, because you've required bringing in a different workspace to defend your points -- you had to move the goalposts to attempt to preserve your argument. We were talking about fireballed orcs, but you have to shift to non-fireballed orcs to make your point -- which changes the scope of the discussion. You've shifted to talking about how 5e orcs are NOT like minions when your original point was that 5e did faster minion-style fights because fireballs always worked. No one is saying 5e orcs, with non-1 starting hp, aren't different from minions -- this has been the argument all along. You're were just here claiming that this very fact doesn't even matter for running large horde style encounters because fireballs are even more effective. But, that depends very much on the luck of the dice which is exactly what it depends on in 4e. If we now need to consider that follow-up attacks might not kill remaining orcs after a 5e fireball but don't really care about the 4e fireball, you've just undermined the entire thrust of your argument because you're saying it will take more effort and time to resolve the 5e cases than the 4e ones. But you've attempted to shift your argument from "it takes less time in 5e" to "it's breaking my personal suspension of disbelief" as if these arguments are interchangeable whenever you need to maintain the point that 4e is just bad, mmkay.

No worries, I can use exactly any creature I want for minions, also facing 100 orcs the wizard will probably use a higher level fireball to guarantee the result, problem solved (because yes, 5e has that flexibility as well).

Oh. Well, in 4e, a wizard of sufficiently high level won't ever be facing vanilla orc minions, so this is entirely moot -- you cannot compare. If you do make this encounter in 4e, you're doing very odd things and the orcs won't even be able to hurt the PCs. For example, the Orc Drudge, a level 4 minion, is only a viable opponent up through 9th level, according to 4e. So we won't ever see 100+ Drudges going against a PC of sufficiently high level to compare to a 5e PC capable of upcasting fireball. THAT 4e PC is facing larger, more dangerous threats in the world, not hordes of low level orcs. This is a fundamental difference in how 4e structures the fictional space compared to 5e. Any claims of high level 5e PCs facing CR 1/2 orcs has no applicable parallel in 4e. The very construction of horde encounters is on different types of genre emulation and fictional structures.

Nope, sorry, the denigrating started the other way, basically "5e sucks because it does not have the wonderful minions mechanic".

Oh, yes, "but they said it first." Even if your assertion is correct, which I highly doubt it was anything like this, this doesn't mean it's free game to fire back by just trashing other games and expect to be absolved of having that pointed out.

Yes, exactly what I said when I was told the sentence just above, which was just repeated recently by the way, so you might want to change your attitude as well.

No. You're trying to say that someone said something mean, so that means you get to say mean things, too. The point I was making is that if you're going to try and justify the mean things you say with reasons, you should really actually have those reasons, otherwise it's makes you look like you aren't really understanding the nature of the difference and are just enjoying saying mean things. And, again, this is assuming you're correct in your formulation of what was said about 5e, which I strongly doubt is accurate at all.

Personally, I don't care if you hate 4e. I don't care if you blatantly say so, so long as it's not turned into edition warring. I'm mostly interested in good arguments. So if you're going to say that 4e is objectively bad because of X, bring your A game because I'm going to hold that statement to the fire. You saying you really don't like 4e? Go ahead.

I knew it, you're just a minion, see how ridiculous it is ?...

Yep -- dangerous, but if you're actually capable I should be easy to dispatch. And yet....

 

[Ovinomancer]

I feel like @Eric V is getting unfairly jumped on with strategies that are implied as things a good gm should have done to make a gaggle of gnolls with 14(+2) strength +2 proficiency bonus & no proficient skills dangerous. We don't know what level the players were in his example at the time it happened, but we do know that with the gnolls needing a 17+ to hit the players had a respectable 21ac & I figure it reasonable to say the players were probably into tier3 (level 11+). That's not how grapple works.

Spoiler: PHB195 Grappling

W hen you want to grab a creature or wrestle with it, you can use the Attack action to make a special melee attack, a grapple. If you’re able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them.

The target of your grapple must be no m ore than one size larger than you, and it must be within your reach. Using at least one free hand, you try to seize the target by making a grapple check, a Strength (Athletics) check contested by the target’s Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (the target chooses the ability to use). If you succeed, you subject the target to the grappled condition (see appendix A). The condition specifies the things that end it, and you can release the target whenever you like (no action required).
Escaping a Grapple. A grappled creature can use its action to escape. To do so, it must succeed on a Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check contested by your Strength (Athletics) check.

Moving a Grappled Creature. When you move, you can drag or carry the grappled creature with you, but your speed is halved, unless the creature is two or more sizes smaller than you.

Athletics or acrobatics as appropriate is an extremely common skill for strength & dex based characters who will almost certainly have a +5 from the attribute alone & another +4 or +5 if proficient in either to ensure that the gnoll will need to roll 1-5points higher on the grapple attempt. With an average 10.5 on a d20 that's still probably a 15+. A second gnoll could use the help action to give the first advantage, but unlike in the past when gm's best friend & bonus types could stack advantage is a one & done thing.

Two of the eight adjacent squares are filled by gnolls working on this grapple assuming no other PC's are taking others that leaves a possible six adjacent squares.

Assuming the gnoll gets the ~15+ with advantage they can benefit from this...

Spoiler: appendix A Grappled condition

• A grappled creature’s speed becomes 0, and it can't
benefit from any bonus to its speed.
• The condition ends if the grappler is incapacitated
(see the condition).
• The condition also ends if an effect removes the
grappled creature from the reach of the grappler or
grappling effect, such as when a creature is hurled
away by the thunderwave spell.

Although I can't seem to find it someone mentioned pins, The only reference I could find in the PHB about pins was 167 point2 in the grappler feat. Prone from a pin would give advantage if such a rule exists, but at this point it takes a second round & another ~15+ roll to successfully pin the PC assuming the party didn't just pop the 22hp grappling gnoll to reset things.

Pin was definitely a thing in 3.5 grapple where it looks like just being grappled made you flat footed (no dex to AC) & being pinned imposes a -4 to AC.

The other N-2 gnolls in the gaggle still needed to make their single attack one by one hoping for a 17+ when their slot being tracked in the initiative comes up on both the first & second turn the grapple is attempted. attacks & Aoe's could need any or all of the gnolls to take damage or save. Since the AOE probably won't kill the gnolls they need to have physical/digital token mapped to specific HP totals just as with the initiative slots if not using side initiative to paper over a problem caused by the gaggle of gnolld BA should have made dangerous in more ways than book keeping.


TL;DR: How does grapple accomplish what you are saying it would do in order to fulfil BA's goal of making trash monsters dangerous in large groups without just making the combat dangerous to any chance of excitement in the resulting slog? If accomplishing the goals of BA requires the GM to make a bunch of changes to the low level monsters & maybe even invent new rules/mechanics before the gaggle of low CR critters are a threat have we really gained anything over doing that same thing to create a gaggle of minions that combine into a threat if BA was not there to impact every other monster right down to the design of healing too?

Just a point of clarification, if you are prone you grant advantage to adjacent attackers (disad to ranged ones). If you are grappled your speed is 0. You can combine these two things into a poor man's mechanical pin by grappling a target and then shoving them prone. The effect of this is that the target has all of the problems of being prone but cannot stand up until the grapple is escaped because their speed is zero and they need to spend half their speed to stand. Half of nothing is nothing.

 

[Lyxen]

And Armor of Agathys doing 5 damage to someone who hits you in melee due to "spectral frost" but doesn't do any cold damage to anything nearby you is also ok?

Why not, you are the one who specifically got close and hit said armor with your weapon...

I mean, it really feels like spells get a free pass a lot of the time for no other reason than "well you cast a spell, it's magic, we don't have to explain it".

Yes, indeed, and that's another difficulty that I had with 4e, specifically creating power sources that were NOT magic and them having effects (and in particular healing, back to this thread) that clearly had to be magical.

A Magmin can set itself on fire, but you don't take damage for hitting it (at least, not until it explodes). Well that's ok, it's supernatural?

No, it's just not hot enough. Contrary to a balor, for example.

Meanwhile, the Storm Herald Barbarian can get so angry they tap into "primal magic", allowing them to deal fire damage on people up to ten feet away from them. Sure, why not, I guess.

4e did way worse with primal power, actually, again it's all a question of degree.

But a zombie making me take untyped physical damage! Beyond the pale! : )

And still noone has ever been able to explain what it did...

 

[Ovinomancer]

And Armor of Agathys doing 5 damage to someone who hits you in melee due to "spectral frost" but doesn't do any cold damage to anything nearby you is also ok? I mean, it really feels like spells get a free pass a lot of the time for no other reason than "well you cast a spell, it's magic, we don't have to explain it".

A Magmin can set itself on fire, but you don't take damage for hitting it (at least, not until it explodes). Well that's ok, it's supernatural?

Meanwhile, the Storm Herald Barbarian can get so angry they tap into "primal magic", allowing them to deal fire damage on people up to ten feet away from them. Sure, why not, I guess.

But a zombie making me take untyped physical damage! Beyond the pale! : )

Spells have always gotten a free pass. They are bundles of narrative authority in the hands of the players that can drastically alter the fiction in play -- things that are anathema in any other context for many. But, because magic, allowed to pass. Magic gets this in almost every arena in D&D -- magic can override the player's ability to control their PC's actions and thoughts, magic can force the GM to accept a change in the fictional situation, if magic does a thing it's fine but nothing else can do that thing, etc. It's so ingrained that it's a major blind spot -- so many don't even notice that there's this big thing here because they just excuse it because magic. But magic isn't any more or less real than anything else in an RPG, so it really shouldn't have any such special privilege.

 

[James Gasik]

I do see one difference with the "fireball vs. weak monsters" scenario. The game mechanics allow the weak monsters to be damaged even if they save, and they could still die, if the damage is sufficient.

The shorthand for not actually giving minions real hit points and not dying until they take a real hit tripped a lot of people up at first. The narrative you have to understand is that it's not that they really only have one hit point. They have as many hit points as they need until they take that solid hit. To a character in the game, a minion is just a weaker opponent- they don't think "I only need to stab this guy with a pin and he'll die!" they just go, "blast, if only I could get a good hit in on this guy, he'll go down".

 

[Voadam]

I do see one difference with the "fireball vs. weak monsters" scenario. The game mechanics allow the weak monsters to be damaged even if they save, and they could still die, if the damage is sufficient.

Yes, but as Ovinomancer points out this means that 4e minions can be quicker and easier to handle in combat because you don't have to track the hp of wounded minion types the way you do for wounded monsters that are not 4e minions. If all the affected non-4e minions die from the damage regardless of save though that can be quicker, but this seems a bit more of a corner case, particularly with 5e's monster hp escalation.

 

[Lyxen]

Okay, here you're just wrong. 5e requires you to roll saves individually as well!

No, it does not, read the sections about the role of dice, it's not even Rule 0, not even an option, 100% core rule from the DMG: "The extent to which you use them [the dice] is entirely up to you." Using average damage is used everywhere in the MM, for example.

5e is not special in this regard.

You'll find that it is, if you read all the rules. And once more, it's not even rule 0.

Also, your "not using the grid" is facetious -- you're using a map and space and grids are just simplifications here. It's trivial to do the same with 4e, even with pushes and pulls because you can either use the same kind of general eyeballing or you can use the measurement tools for actual distances. VTT is a complete red herring.

Again, I've got a whole range of possibilities that I don't have in 4e, where I need a grid and roll everything (unless you want to use rule 0, but you'll find that it's way weaker in 4e than in 5e).

But, and this is important, it's not because 5e is faster but because you've chosen to ignore rules and automate one-sidedly.

Nope, 100% core rules here.

To you, maybe, but that's not normative. That your particular version of mental workspace doesn't accommodate this is, as previously noted, only an autobiographical tidbit -- it's not a normative statement about the system.

But it is, actually. There are tons of orcs running towards me, it's part of me projecting myself in the game world to decide which I'm going to attack and how, the ones that barely survived a fireball or the ones which are still intact. It's visual, it means something. 4e has a tendency to equalize all that to the technical, and in particular with minions, where it does not matter.

And we can see that here, because you've required bringing in a different workspace to defend your points -- you had to move the goalposts to attempt to preserve your argument. We were talking about fireballed orcs, but you have to shift to non-fireballed orcs to make your point -- which changes the scope of the discussion.

Are you kidding me ? From the start, it's my example, I said 100 orcs, deal with them, and how the fireball only affected some of them ? No, it's your inability to deal with the situation in 4e terms that causes you to want to equalise everything to minions with 1 hp. I can perfectly deal with three types of foes, dead, wounded, intact.

You've shifted to talking about how 5e orcs are NOT like minions

They are not 4e minions, no, because it's an abstract concept that I dislike.

when your original point was that 5e did faster minion-style fights because fireballs always worked. No one is saying 5e orcs, with non-1 starting hp, aren't different from minions -- this has been the argument all along. You're were just here claiming that this very fact doesn't even matter for running large horde style encounters because fireballs are even more effective. But, that depends very much on the luck of the dice which is exactly what it depends on in 4e.

Not necessarily, see the first point above.

If we now need to consider that follow-up attacks might not kill remaining orcs after a 5e fireball but don't really care about the 4e fireball, you've just undermined the entire thrust of your argument because you're saying it will take more effort and time to resolve the 5e cases than the 4e ones. But you've attempted to shift your argument from "it takes less time in 5e" to "it's breaking my personal suspension of disbelief" as if these arguments are interchangeable whenever you need to maintain the point that 4e is just bad, mmkay.

It's bad for this, because it does not take into account the narrative of what happened. The firecube in 4e CANNOT statistically wipe out all the minions, which is SILLY. Depending on its strength, the fireball in 5e can wipe them all out, or leave some wounded, which are easier to finish off. Much better narrative, very easy to visualise.

Oh. Well, in 4e, a wizard of sufficiently high level won't ever be facing vanilla orc minions, so this is entirely moot -- you cannot compare.

Yes, he will not, because the system will forbid it. Restrictive system, unable to simulate Minas Tirith. Once more, better game designers than you or I have said it, 5e has been designed to be more open-ended system than 4e.

If you do make this encounter in 4e, you're doing very odd things and the orcs won't even be able to hurt the PCs.

Which is stupid, because then Boromir would not die. Again, a limitation of the system.

For example, the Orc Drudge, a level 4 minion, is only a viable opponent up through 9th level, according to 4e. So we won't ever see 100+ Drudges going against a PC of sufficiently high level to compare to a 5e PC capable of upcasting fireball. THAT 4e PC is facing larger, more dangerous threats in the world, not hordes of low level orcs.

Well, it's simple then, you don't need to face the Mordor hordes, you win by default, gee, why did they go through all the bother ?

This is a fundamental difference in how 4e structures the fictional space compared to 5e. Any claims of high level 5e PCs facing CR 1/2 orcs has no applicable parallel in 4e. The very construction of horde encounters is on different types of genre emulation and fictional structures.

And my point is exactly that, by forcing 4e PCs to face only equal level foes in controlled numbers you are creating a system that, although technically much more perfect, cannot accommodate the situations that are in the genre, despite the fact that they are very entertaining.

One of my battle in Avernus had 8th level PCs with about 200 red/madcaps and unlikely allies facing a horde of were creatures plus some devils, with infernal war machines in the mix. It was absolutely epic, sometimes the PCs faced adversaries of their level, sometimes scores of lowly devils, all dangerous to them, and applied appropriate tactics or died. I did NOT limit myself to formal technical fights of creatures of the level of PCs, I never did before 4e and I never did since. Because, in particular, players LOVE slaughtering hordes of foes, especially if THESE EXACT SAME FOES were causing them problem before.

Oh, yes, "but they said it first." Even if your assertion is correct, which I highly doubt it was anything like this, this doesn't mean it's free game to fire back by just trashing other games and expect to be absolved of having that pointed out.

The difference is that I'm NOT trashing 4e, I'm just explaining why, my objectives being different, it's not as suitable to me. But I've never badwrongedfunned anyone playing 4e with different objectives in mind, just like in my exchanges with less biased people.

No. You're trying to say that someone said something mean, so that means you get to say mean things, too. The point I was making is that if you're going to try and justify the mean things you say with reasons, you should really actually have those reasons, otherwise it's makes you look like you aren't really understanding the nature of the difference and are just enjoying saying mean things. And, again, this is assuming you're correct in your formulation of what was said about 5e, which I strongly doubt is accurate at all.

Just read the rules, you'll see. And I'm not being mean, I'm just pointing out things that matter to me in a funny way, which people with a sense of humour appreciate, for example @James Gasik who said he liked his firecubes.

Personally, I don't care if you hate 4e. I don't care if you blatantly say so, so long as it's not turned into edition warring. I'm mostly interested in good arguments. So if you're going to say that 4e is objectively bad because of X, bring your A game because I'm going to hold that statement to the fire. You saying you really don't like 4e? Go ahead.

Thanks, it's exactly what I'm saying, I don't like 4e as it does not map to the way we are playing. And I don't like the minions mechanics, although I found it clever at start, because it does not model the fantasy that I have, that of the genre to me.

However, I completely agree that if you have other preferences and objectives, it might be the better mechanic FOR YOU. It's not to me, because the bounded accuracy hs cleverly removed the need for that mechanic.

Yep -- dangerous, but if you're actually capable I should be easy to dispatch. And yet....

And yet, you are backing away on all fronts, so...

 

[Lyxen]

I do see one difference with the "fireball vs. weak monsters" scenario. The game mechanics allow the weak monsters to be damaged even if they save, and they could still die, if the damage is sufficient.

And it also allows the complete wiping out of "minions" if the damage is sufficient, which 4e statistically forbids, and for me that is an even stronger limitation of the system.