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

[James Gasik]

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.

Which is fair, I just figured I'd point that out. Well having found the ghouls in question, in E2: Kingdom of the Ghouls, I do have to admit we're given no lore for them, other than they worship the God of Ghouls and you are in his realm.

This is more a problem of adventures that create new monsters than anything else, however. If the Abyssal Horde Ghoul appeared in a monster book, it probably would have had some lore that could explain how their aura worked. Since they were made for that adventure, all we're told is that they use their auras to quickly consume their prey.

But this isn't really a novel thing- the Bodak has a damaging aura as well, and the only clue it grants as to how it works is...it does Necrotic damage.

 

[Mannahnin]

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.

Helldritch, where does the rule that grappling causes Advantage come from? Is that a gnoll special ability I'm forgetting? Or are you perhaps importing it from 3.x as a house rule?

Usually in 5e grappling itself doesn't do that. Being Prone does give adjacent attackers advantage. And a common interpretation of the rules is that a Grappled creature can't stand up from Prone because their speed is 0 (and standing requires half your movement). So folks sometimes use a strategy of grappling and knocking enemies prone to leave them stuck prone and let allies shank them with advantage in melee.

 

[James Gasik]

Also, heck yeah I like firecubes! If you're playing on a grid map, who wants to get out a template, compass, or draw a circle to figure out who gets caught in the blast? Quick, easy, efficient, thank you very much.

 

[tetrasodium]

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.

Spoiler: PHB195/196 shove

Using the Attack action, you can make a special melee attack to shove a creature, either to knock it prone or push it away from you. If you’re able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them.
The target of your shove must be no m ore than one size larger than you, and it must be within your reach. You make a Strength (Athletics) check contested by the target’s Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (the target chooses the ability to use). If you win the contest, you either knock the target prone or push it 5 feet away from you.

That fills in for the how to knock prone other than using the same check a second time with grapple to prone instead of shoving, but it still needs a second ~15 to successfully shove them down before the other gnolls start maybe being a threat if they can roll 17+ with advantage in large numbers to make that beefy 1d8+2 (avg 6.5) add up. even a 10 con wizard at level 11 is going to have 44hp & need to get hit six or seven times before they care, a 21ac character is almost certainly not going to be a ten con wizard & can be expected to have significantly more HP.

Did we really need BA to make ten con wizards fear gaggles of low CR monsters? I can't speak for 4e but don't recall many wizards of any non-gish level who couldn't be made to feel mortal terror just by having a skeleton/zombie/etc move towards them in past editions.

 

[Undrave]

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...

Obviously I'd like the PC notice the upcoming ambush with the right Perception level and then they can try to skip it or even turn it around on the bandits.

Going in another direction is not being particularly clever, especially if you never knew there was an ambush that way. Using a Streetwise check to learn rumours in town about the safest path out, finding out that bandits have been attacking people to the North near the Bramble Woods, and deciding to take the long way around that area? That's totally fine.

PC using knowledge to avoid encounters or run directly into them is perfectly fine in my way of playing, I just don't want to reward dumb luck. Basically, the entire universe is in a quantum state of flux until the PC 'observe' it.

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

Probably the same way a swarm of scarabs, rats, or stirge do? Basically it's an attack that inflicts damage on a miss and it just always misses so no need to roll. Admittedly it's a weird name and I'd just make it a stench aura or something that is just painful when you're too close

I like swarms, they make for fun battlefield control, so I'd like these ghoul guys.

 

[Undrave]

Also, heck yeah I like firecubes! If you're playing on a grid map, who wants to get out a template, compass, or draw a circle to figure out who gets caught in the blast? Quick, easy, efficient, thank you very much.

We need t-shirts that say "I believe in Firecube Supremacy"

 

[Helldritch]

Helldritch, where does the rule that grappling causes Advantage come from? Is that a gnoll special ability I'm forgetting? Or are you perhaps importing it from 3.x as a house rule?

Usually in 5e grappling itself doesn't do that. Being Prone does give adjacent attackers advantage. And a common interpretation of the rules is that a Grappled creature can't stand up from Prone because their speed is 0 (and standing requires half your movement). So folks sometimes use a strategy of grappling and knocking enemies prone to leave them stuck prone and let allies shank them with advantage in melee.

Exactly. But they will not let the grapple go. Once you are grappled, the foe(s) can move with you. Putting you down in a prone condition after is not only logical, but necessary. I thought that bit was evident... apparently it was not. Thank you for clarifying it.

 

[Manbearcat]

These conversations are never going to get anywhere until we can all agree on the following:

* HP are not meat. They cannot be. They may be in small part meat in very, very particular and infrequent circumstances...but they're virtually never meat in any part.

* Position is not a fixed thing in combat and so it cannot possibly be a fixed thing in D&D whether you're playing on a grid or TotM. If you've never been in an actual fight, never seen an actual fight, never been involved in combat sports, then let me disabuse you of your notion that martial artists are statically stuck in the same spot over even the smallest fraction of time (not even a second, let alone 6 solid seconds!). They're circling left, circling right, advancing, retreating, feinting w/ attacks which involve all manner of movement and every appendage and their head, leaping. Same goes for D&D. If you're interpreting your PC standing next to a monster for 6 seconds as static, rock-em-sock-em robots...with respect, your fiction is utter nonsense.

Play the game with fixed position and in fixed intervals of 6 seconds. But imagine stuff that makes actual sense and map it as best you can to the suite of resources being deployed by the participants of the combat.

* Attack rolls are not singular instantiations of a single attack for the overwhelming % of play particularly for martial exchanges. If you've never been in an actual fight, never seen an actual fight, never been involved in combat sports, then let me disabuse you of your notion that martial artists engage in exchanges that are reliable in their frequency (eg I attack you 1/2/3 times every 6 seconds!...all the time...forever!). Exchanges happen with crazy suddeness and intentional lack of frequency (because human operating systems are pattern-finding machines and the last thing you want as a martial artist is to have "your puzzle solved"). In one 6 second interval, you might throw 10 strikes including a double leg takedown attempt and including a few more feints to detect patterns or create openings. The next 6 seconds you may through nothing (merely circling or advancing and retreating). The next 6 seconds may be more of the same or less of the same. Totally infrequent. Any attack matrix is utter nonsense. It is a complete gamist construct meant exclusively to facilitate functional play. If you are perceiving an attack matrix as process simulation...with respect, your fiction is utter nonsense.

Play the game with fixed attack frequency/numbers and in fixed intervals of 6 seconds. But imagine stuff that makes actual sense and map it as best you can to the suite of resources being deployed by the participants of the combat.

* Same goes for AC and Defenses and anything of the like. They're all constructs. They make no sense whatsoever under scrutiny (neither quantitatively nor qualitatively) given what happens in actual fights/martial combat. They're the other end of the game construct equation to resolve collisions in the gamestate. If you're looking at them through a lens of process simulation...that is on you. As is either (a) course correcting or (b) admitting that you're attempting to look at gaming constructs meant to resolve gamestate collisions as something even close to approaching a 1:1 relationship with a shared fiction that makes any sense whatsoever within the framework of what actual martial combat entails (including how the OODA Loop of each participant manifests and resolves) and what it looks like to participants and onlookers alike.

---

So yeah. If HP and Position and Attacks and Defenses are all just basically gamist constructs meant to resolve gamestate collisions...then the shared imagined space is pretty well up for grabs.

Ravenous Abyssal Ghouls advance with deranged hunger and speed and implacability and randomness with claws and jaws and spittle which you have to keep away from your flesh and your eyes. If all you're doing is spending your gas tank and its costing you because you're heart rate is increased dramatically and you're dealing with an adrenaline dump and your muscles are tiring...then yeah, the 5 HP aura is just exhaustion damage which makes you less capable of maintaining for an extended duration.

Or you recoil because of the impact to your creed/alignment or your deity recoils at this abomination and, because they work through you, you feel it; 5 HP damage.

Or any other genre appropriate explanation for interpreting the completely nonsensical gamist constructs colliding in D&D gamestate space (regardless of edition...and by the way, D&D 4e's forced movement + movement + marking/OA attack + interrupt system + at-will/encounter model is the first D&D game engine that remotely actually felt anything even approaching what it felt like to assume the OODA Loop of an actual martial artist...in a fight or a grappling match) which you then have to map onto the shared imagined space.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

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...

this isn't a 4e only problem. I first ran into the "i made the encounter now you run the encounter" in the late 90's in a 2e (although back then the DM called it 3e because he was useing alternate books) and the DM built a golem that was to guard the door to an anctiant treasure vault (whole room was an encounter) and we got there, it warned us not to attempt to get past it... so we said "Okay we got plenty of loot" and went to leave...
DM wasn't happy.

having said that in 3.5 I did something that I am sure others would say is just as bad... the PCs were in a city and I left 3 main plot hooks (plus a dozen NPCs if they just wanted to kick around town a bit) 1 in teh wasteland to the west, 1 going south to the large lake, and 1 going east toward the capitol... I am sure you just noticed what I missed.
so when a player said "Hey what's north and what is going on there?" my answer was "Nothing... I have nothing, just a mountain range and my notes are entirely blank other then to say 'dwarven city'" so after I was honest they wanted to go north to find the dwarven city... I said "No" and instituted a rule that lasted through all of 4e and now into 5e... "If your characters are not interested in the adventures presented they are welcome to go else were, but they become NPCs and you must draw up PCs interested in the actually hooks"

 

[Ovinomancer]

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.

Okay, that's a bad take. The section is talking about using dice in places where it's up to the GM how to resolve an issue -- it's not a blanket statement. It's specifically looking at those places where things are not defined and the GM is using the normal loop to determine things. Combat has specific rules, and that counters the general advice here (specific beats general).

The second reason this is a bad take is because this is something you could and can always do in any game. You can always choose to ignore the rules, or supplant them with something else. I have no idea where the specious argument that this is unique to D&D started, but it really can't die soon enough.

So, on two counts your argument here that 5e is somehow special in this regard fails.

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

I have read them. Apparently you seem to have missed the surrounding rules, otherwise you'd also have to claim that rolling for everything all the time is also mandated by 5e, and that rolling most times but not always is also mandated alongside ignoring the rules. You cannot select one of the paths and declare it the controlling rule, outside of the fact that the scope of those discussions is narrow and do not implicate clearly stated specific rules. You actually do have to reach for rule 0, here, or you're arguing contradictions -- you're claiming to be able to state which sentences in the books are real rules and which are not (because there are three paths presented equally and you're saying only one matters).

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).

You do not have to use a grid in 4e, just like you don't have to in 5e.

Nope, 100% core rules here.

Again, only in the sense that you have the power to declare what core rules are and discard immediate contradictions to that declaration. Another bit of special pleading.

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.

No, because I get very similar things from 4e, and even manage in games that are even less about fictional cause and effect. You're putting forth your personal imagination hangups as if they are normative. They aren't, trivially proven, because I do not posses those same hangups. Mine are completely different.

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.

No, your claim was that 5e handled 100 orcs more quickly than 4e. We can all scroll up to see where you made this claim. You've now shifted to a "breaks my ability to imagine it" to defend "handles faster." Not at all the same argument.

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

Ah, they aren't a thing because you dislike that thing, regardless of anything else. Once again you present an autobiography of preferences as if they're actually normative. And doing so while agreeing with what I said but responding as if you're disagreeing.

Not necessarily, see the first point above.

There's no first point above. There are many points, and I have no idea where you think you should start numbering them. However, since I've addressed everything up until this point, it's fairly moot which you mean -- it doesn't actually address the point I was making here which was that you shifted what you were arguing about to preserve the defense of your claim 4e minions are just bad. You presented a case, that case was challenged, and you shifted cases while pretending it was the one you were arguing all along.

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.

It can statistically wipe out all the minions. You mean to say it's very unlikely to do so. Well, so is the 5e fireball. Whether or not this is silly is, again, autobiographical about your thinking. The 4e "firecube" can also wipe out all the orcs or leave some wounded and easy to finish off. Narrative is flavor here, not required. You still have to hit the orcs in both cases and do damage sufficient to remove all hp.

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.

Unable to simulate Minas Tirith? That's not at all true, I can run that scenario in 4e quite well. You keep making sweeping statements that aren't at all true when it's pretty clear what you mean is "I wouldn't use it for such because I have preferences otherwise." This isn't an indictment of the system, it's just more of your autobiography.

As for 5e being more open ended, I can't parse what context you mean this. In terms of fiction allowed? Nope, there's no story that can be told in 5e that can't be told in 4e. In terms of system math? Nope -- bounded accuracy is arguably tighter than 4e's math, which was really just a slight codification of 3e's. In terms of... I don't know what you think this means. I'm very certain you can't find a designer quote that actually makes this case in any way how you seem to intend to be using it -- that 5e is a more capable system.

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

Only if you decide to make Boromir X level and then use the wrong kind of orc minion. By the by, Boromir wasn't killed by orcs, but Uruk-Hai, which were decidedly more dangerous than orcs. So maybe I'd be using the level 9 orc minion template to match Boromir's low tier II level.

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 ?

Why would you say this? It seems to have completely missed the point and responded by expressing an opinion based entirely on missing the point. There are other orc minions, I was pointing out that you wouldn't be fighting the lowest of the low at higher level because they are not an interesting challenge. The heroes of LotR could have been killed by any given orc they faced (unlikely at that might have been) and treated them as if they were always dangerous, but they killed them in droves. Even a level 20 fighter needs two hits, on average, with a longsword to kill the average orc (9.5 average damage from longsword, maybe 11.5 with fighting style, 14.5 with a +3 magic weapon). Is this the better option? A 20th level fighter in 4e is murdering orcs much more effectively -- one of the basic fighter at-wills kills two orc minions per hit (provided they're hordish).

The point is that neither of these systems is best. They are different. They will model a thing in different ways. So far, you've managed to show this, but have failed to show any real benefit of one over the other.

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.

+/- 5 levels, usually, not same level. 5e does a similar thing via bounded accuracy, they just made the math so flat that everything fits in just about the same bubble as +/- 5 levels in 4e.

As far as situations in the game, do you make encounters with 29,833 Ancient Red Dragons against 1st level PCs in 5e and expect the PCs to be able to battle through? No? Is it because 5e doesn't accommodate that situation very well? The answer to these rhetoricals is no, of course not, this is silly. But it does show that there are conceptual spaces that work in 5e and ones that do not. 5e doesn't just handle everything, it handles what it handles. That this aligns with your preferences is just autobiographical again -- you keep telling us about yourself and mistaking it for objective statements about the games. 4e has a slightly different conceptual space. Some things work better in 4e than in 5e, other things do not. Because they are different games. However, all of your attempts are pretty hollow to showcase these differences because you're affording 5e great latitude (including adding automation as a feature of 5e while denying it elsewhere -- glad to see you dropped that) but holding 4e to bad expectations. I say bad because they're not at all what that game even tells you it's made for but rather some random bit you've invented and added all kinds of non-present restrictions just to try and make 4e look bad.

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.

I'm not at all sure why you think this can't play out in 4e. This is exactly what minions allowed for in 4e, as well as elites and solos. You're trying to assert that there's a requirement for exactly the same math in 4e, but 4e had tons of variations available at a single CR level, plus the ability to easily move +/- 5 levels, and more with consideration. The reason that 4e has the +/- 5 level thing wasn't because it required only same levels stuff, but because it's math made lower or higher CRs mathematically untenable. A CR 1 against a 10th level party couldn't even land a blow using the math of the system. So, to make this work, 4e added variability to monster types so that the math could work well but you still got the variability in challenge and need for tactics. I mean, claiming that 4e wasn't an extremely detailed tactical game -- far more so than 5e -- is just weird! As is claiming that tactics didn't have a large impact on play. If you're up against level +5 anything, your tactics are going to be critical. If you're up against over-budget anything, lower or higher, your tactics are going to be critical to survival.

But, that said, if you didn't limit yourself prior to 4e, then you shouldn't have felt required to limit yourself in 4e, because what happens outside the bands 4e was explicit about existed in earlier editions in an unspoken way. 3.x was particularly bad about this, were the math was such that if you didn't stay close in CR to the guidelines, creatures rapidly because totally overwhelming or utterly useless. As I said above, 4e's math system was pretty much just a clearer version of what 3e did. In the AD&Ds, this also happened, but not as much, because AC and THAC0 were at least bounded, but the magic system made all of it mostly irrelevant pretty quickly anyway. If you went against magic, level parity was critically important.

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.

Um, no. Let me try and make this simple. You are making statements about 4e that it cannot do certain things and is a poor game because of this. Other people are telling you that they absolutely did those things and that they worked out great. You maintain that they are wrong about what they actually did. That is badwrongfunning.

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.

Ah. I'm disagreeing with you because I like a sense of humor. I am defective, so that explains my inability to understand why 4e is bad at thing but 5e is great at thing. Another strong argument!

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.

No problems at all with anything you said here. The reasons you give around it, trying to show how this is objectively true because of how the rules work, are just bad, though. Stick to "I don't like it."

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.

You keep making normative statements, and defending that you intend to make normative statements, and then pivot. It's very hard to follow what kind of argument you make, as you move blindingly fast between your motte and your bailey.

For reference, motte and bailey arguing.

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

<Checks position, hasn't moved.>
Sure. If you say so.