D&D (2024) Is anyone at WOTC paying attention to what they print any more?

[Charlaquin]

View attachment 395682
From Reddit.

Who are these characters? I love their designs.

 

[Lidgar]

Actually no. What I wrote above is part of the action. For an action it uses Paralyzing tentacles and makes one bite attack.

I see. Yeah, that's pretty bad then. I'd run it as Dex save to initlially avoid, then Con saves to end the condition if the initial Dex save failed. Or maybe the challenge rating just needs to be amped up a tad...

 

[Maxperson]

“Specific beats general” doesn’t actually resolve this problem, because the specific rule “you can repeat this save, ending the effect on a success” and the general rule “you automatically fail dexterity saves” don’t conflict with each other. Both of these rules can be applied, with the result that you make and automatically fail the save.

The resolution here is to make the save to end the condition a Constitution save. I would guess that was the original idea - the initial Dave made sense to be Dexterity because it’s about dodging the tentacle, but a save to end the Paralyzed condition as a result of some a toxic agent on the tentacles would normally be Constitution. But, someone must have thought they could save wordcount by rolling the two different saves into one, and didn’t consider why the saves were made with two different abilities.

I disagree. There is an inherent conflict. "...and repeats the save at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success."

The ability lets you end on success, which means it also has to allow success or that part of the sentence would not be there. Without the wording about being successful, there wouldn't be written conflict, but the intent would still be clear that you should be able to succeed.

 

[ECMO3]

I don't think the dex save needs to be there at all. The crawler has to roll to hit, right? Usually when a hit roll is required for an ability, a save isn't.

Actually no, it is part of an action.

 

[TwoSix]

Why not just a to hit roll followed by a con save?

That would make sense also.

I think for simplicity's sake, they don't usually make monsters where a single ability will have 2 saves; Save Type 1 to avoid the initial effect, and Save Type 2 to resist an ongoing condition placed by the effect. This is a specific use case where that simplification causes a conflict with the narrative of the ability.

If I was doing that monster, the tentacle attack would have been Ability A. The poison would have been Ability B, applied by a successful use of Ability A. And since it's a single target, I almost certainly would have had the tentacle as a melee attack, not a Dex save. A tentacle is exactly the sort of thing your shield, or armor, or a shield spell should protect you from.

 

[darjr]

Why not just a to hit roll followed by a con save?

It was that way in 2014.

 

[Maxperson]

Actually no, it is part of an action.

Really? As an action it auto poisons you unless you make a dex save? Okay, then maybe dex to avoid and con saves on future rounds would make sense in that case.

 

[jayoungr]

Viscous weapon changes

Is that particular typo yours or theirs?

Also, regarding the carrion crawler stat block: I wonder if that was originally a CON save (to resist poison), and then someone changed it to DEX (to dodge the tentacles) without noticing how it interacted with the condition.

 

[Maxperson]

Interestingly, I'm looking at the 5e version and the Carrion Crawler has to hit you and the save to resist is con. Seems odd that they would have changed that.

 

[Maxperson]

Is that particular typo yours or theirs?

Also, regarding the carrion crawler stat block: I wonder if that was originally a CON save (to resist poison), and then someone changed it to DEX (to dodge the tentacles) without noticing how it interacted with the condition.

That's probably exactly what happened. Since they shifted it from needing to hit and then make a con save to a special ability that just paralyzes you, it would make sense for the change to dex to have happened like that.