D&D 5E 5th Edition has broken Bounded Accuracy

[Celtavian]

So what were you doing when you asked me how I would beat a dragon using your party, then? (Quoted below.) Were you deliberately wasting my time, or just trying to pose as an expert by asking questions you thought would stump everybody? Why did I even bother writing #293 then? Boy am I glad I never wasted any time writing down any of the other tactics I thought of while shopping at Costco shortly after that (e.g. it's possible to have your cake and eat it too: the bard doesn't need to cast Heroism to beat fear, so he can indeed Polymorph into a giant ape and throw rocks), since you clearly weren't even going to appreciate the tips.

Is this an alias of emdw45? I was talking to him specifically, not the forum in general. You wrote a post with that party. I'll go look for it.

 

[Hussar]

I'm rather presuming that you'd not only negate disadvantage, but, also have more buffs as well. But, hey, leave it at 20 points (or 19.4 if you like). Not going to make that huge of a difference. Four rounds instead of 3. Whoopee. I mean, Hemlock claims 30-40 for the three casters, plus 20 for the fighter types, that's 50-60 points per round. Dragon still dies on the 4th round. If the dragon backs off to recharge its breath, the PC's can heal between attacks, something the dragon can't do.

I'd say that when everyone is doing ballpark similar damage, the game is working exactly the way it should be. Everyone's contributing, everyone's doing something. Fantastic.

 

[Celtavian]

I'd also point out that Celtavian's fighter types made absolutely no attempt to be at least competent at ranged attacks. Paladin has shield mastery and battle master is heavy armour and GWM feat and toughness. But, besides that, even without any bonuses, the White Dragon has to be at least 60 feet away in order to attack the party. It can never be further than that. So, our fighter types are getting 4 attacks per round, with bard and cleric buffs, sure, at disadvantage, doing about 10 points of damage per hit. 30- 40 points per round and the dragon isn't going to live that long. Never minding what the evoker is pumping out. There's no reason this group, as a group, from the ground, can't deal 50-75 points of damage per round.

An adult while dragon has 200 HP and an AC of 18. There's no reason the fighter types aren't hitting better than 50%, even with disadvantage (and with frightful presence, they're going to be eating disadvantage anyway), considering the range of buffs this party can put on. This party, without fly, should be putting the dragon down in three rounds. Four at the outside.

So, why did we need to make the fighter types fly again?

How are they hitting 50% of the time with at 8th level? Let's see. 8th level. 18 strength. +7 to hit. Disadvantage. I don't think that is 50% hits. You calculate that at 50% at 8th level?

When he had all of that you listed, he was much higher level. Adult dragons were much easier. We made them fly because he hit them quite often with GWM and had a dragon-slaying sword. So he did up to a 100 DPR with Action Surge. Adult dragons were much easier by level 12 or so still using fly.

So you would choose an inferior option like throwing non-magical javelins over using fly to bring your GWM fighter with the dragonslaying greatsword into battle against the dragon? Is that a good enough reason to cast fly both at 8th level and 15th?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Yes, I noticed that people were having trouble with my generic login "emdw45" so I set Enworld to recognize my Usenet rec.games.frp.dnd alias from the 1990s.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I'm rather presuming that you'd not only negate disadvantage, but, also have more buffs as well. But, hey, leave it at 20 points (or 19.4 if you like). Not going to make that huge of a difference. Four rounds instead of 3. Whoopee. I mean, Hemlock claims 30-40 for the three casters, plus 20 for the fighter types, that's 50-60 points per round. Dragon still dies on the 4th round. If the dragon backs off to recharge its breath, the PC's can heal between attacks, something the dragon can't do.

I'd say that when everyone is doing ballpark similar damage, the game is working exactly the way it should be. Everyone's contributing, everyone's doing something. Fantastic.

If the dragon dies on the fourth attempt at strafing (probably the 12th round, unless the dragon delayed to let party buffs like Haste run out), the evoker has probably already died on the second so the party's damage output has dropped even further. And once the cleric is dead, there's nothing preventing the dragon from resting up before finishing off the rest of the party. I don't think this story ends well for the PCs--but thanks for explaining your meaning! At least now I know I'm not missing anything.

 

[Celtavian]

Okay, with that party to work with against a CR 13 white dragon (Deadly threat), here are my thoughts/observations. Bear in mind that I never play clerics, so I may overlook some cleric tricks, but:

First, your evoker isn't really online yet as an evoker (that really happens at level 14), so your primary damage dealers are your melee warriors. Under those conditions, spending concentration on Fly so they can engage is clearly your best choice. You did the right thing for the party you had. Furthermore, the key to winning this battle is going to be to concentrate all your eggs in the melee warriors' basket so they can kill the dragon.

Yep.

Second, Death Ward is awesome insurance against things that have huge damage rolls, like dragons. It could be like having an extra 50 HP under the right circumstances, and allows you to not panic if a warrior goes down to only 20 HP. Your cleric can cast it twice, so it should be pre-cast on both warriors.

Cleric player is bad at playing clerics. He didn't have much up at all. He's always been bad at playing clerics. We try not to let him play clerics any longer. at least I do.

Third, Aid may not be huge, but it's always worth casting if you can afford it, so your cleric will pre-cast Aid III for 10 bonus HP on himself and the two warriors.

See above. When I play a cleric, I use the spells recommended. Clerics are extremely powerful. If had been better, it would have helped immensely.

Fourth, during battle the cleric can spend his concentration on Bless to protect the warriors, and he can cast Spiritual Hammer if geography permits and then spend his actions either 1.) Healing wounded warriors, 2.) Casting Sacred Flame on the dragon for minor damage and then casting Sanctuary on whichever warrior has last attacked. Legendary Resistance is basically useless against Sanctuary, or rather it burns through Sanctuary very quickly if the dragon expends it there, rendering it more vulnerable to counterattack from the wizard and bard. I would suggest Guardian of Faith here as a good non-concentration spell, but the cleric has spent both of his 4th level slots already.

Wish we had a better cleric player because this sounds great.

Fourth, without knowing what your lore bard's magical secrets are it's hard to say what he can do. If it were me, he'd have Conjure Animals and summon up a flock of disposable owls to clutter the battle and do damage. If he doesn't, well, I could either cast Heroism III on the cleric and warriors to protect against Frightful Presence, or I could Polymorph myself into a giant ape and chuck rocks at it. Heroism is a safer play and allows me to use Cutting Words to protect the warriors from melee attacks (expend it on rolls in the 7-11 range), and also lets me give Inspiration to boost saves/attacks. If the dragon runs out of Legendary Resistances from Sanctuary I could switch to Confusion or Hypnotic Pattern.

Bard's concentration slot was spent on bless. Yes, that's how bad our cleric was. He was a healbot played as an extra because no one wanted to play a cleric. The player that plays clerics badly didn't pay much attention to optimizing him. Now that I'm playing a cleric, I'm finding out all these nifty tricks.

Fifth, the wizard will mostly be maintaining Fly IV on the two warriors, but he can spend his actions chucking Fireballs at the dragon for 28 points of damage apiece unless the dragon makes his weak Dex save or expends a Legendary Action.

Yep. Pretty much what I did. Though he did make a few of those saves because of random luck. At 8th level my save was 15. Even with +3 or 5 that is a roughly 40 to 50% success rate.

Sixth, the paladin of vengeance will do what he does best and smite the dragon, hoping for critical hits to blow his big spells. And the battlemaster fighter will action surge and power attack the dragon and use superiority dice with Precise Strike to turn near misses into hits. He's got five d8s, and he's also got Bless and Bardic inspiration, so with luck he'll inflict around 75 DPR over the course of the first two rounds.

Yep.

Ah. This post. I didn't respond to this post because we did pretty much what you posted sans effective cleric play. People were claiming our tactics were bad and we had a lot of other options than casting fly.

If you have been following the conversations, I'm responding to folks that want to tell me that our tactics weren't necessary. You didn't do that. You stated tactics we used. Sorry for not responding. But you pretty much listed our tactics other than the cleric stuff.

 

[Hussar]

If the dragon dies on the fourth attempt at strafing (probably the 12th round, unless the dragon delayed to let party buffs like Haste run out), the evoker has probably already died on the second so the party's damage output has dropped even further. And once the cleric is dead, there's nothing preventing the dragon from resting up before finishing off the rest of the party. I don't think this story ends well for the PCs--but thanks for explaining your meaning! At least now I know I'm not missing anything.

Yes and no. The party has a life cleric, a bard and a paladin. This group has a crapton of healing. But, yeah, fourth attempt at a strafe. If the dragon's backing off for two rounds (or so) between runs, that gives the party a lot of time to repair damage. Take the 8th level Evoker. Probably somewhere in the neighbourhood of 40 HP (give or take) So, a failed save drops him. Ok. But, it's not enough to kill him outright. The Paladin has him back on his feet in the next round. If not the paladin, then the cleric and the bard. The fighter's got enough HP to simply eat at least one breath weapon, and quite possibly two.

You don't start healing from your negative amount, you heal from 0, so, the paladin LOH is worth 40 single round which puts our wizard back to full from negatives at least once. Both the cleric and the bard have 4th level spells. That means at least 1 death ward (or should) which keeps the wizard up. Command spells readied at 60 foot range to "Grovel" make the dragon thud into the ground if it fails its save. A bevy of Cure Wound spells, you are facing a dragon after all.

IIRC, the paladin is a Oath of Vengeance paladin right? (I can't be asked to look it up). Abjure Enemy, range 60 feet makes the dragon go thud on a failed save or 1/2 speed on a success. That nicely keeps Mr. Dragon in range of javelins for a couple of rounds, even on success.

IOW, there are a ton of options available to this party besides flying the paladin. Now, apparently I missed that the paladin had a dragon slaying sword, so, my bad. I was going on the basis of a fairly standard party. Which isn't to say that flying the paladin isn't an option. Of course it is. And a pretty good one at that. But, it's hardly the only option available. It's not like the party is completely screwed if it lacks a Fly spell or a bevy of ranged fighters. The party is still perfectly effective on the ground. It might take a bit longer, but, meh, not that big of a deal.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

You don't start healing from your negative amount, you heal from 0, so, the paladin LOH is worth 40 single round which puts our wizard back to full from negatives at least once. Both the cleric and the bard have 4th level spells. That means at least 1 death ward (or should) which keeps the wizard up. Command spells readied at 60 foot range to "Grovel" make the dragon thud into the ground if it fails its save. A bevy of Cure Wound spells, you are facing a dragon after all.

IIRC, the paladin is a Oath of Vengeance paladin right? (I can't be asked to look it up). Abjure Enemy, range 60 feet makes the dragon go thud on a failed save or 1/2 speed on a success. That nicely keeps Mr. Dragon in range of javelins for a couple of rounds, even on success.

Good point about Oath of Vengeance and half-speed. I'm not so confident about Grovel (I thought we were talking about adult dragons? Legendary Resistance can be burned through but it's nontrivial) but yeah, it's worth trying too.

Another suggestion: a bevy of Cure Wounds spells might heal 15-20 damage per PC on the first strafe (less as PCs run out of spell slots), which is far less than the 50-odd damage PC you'll suffer from the breath weapon--so DO NOT BUNCH UP! Even if your guys are all melee-oriented, you should still keep a separation between them so they can't all get hit with the same breath weapon.

It would be amusing if one or more PCs took cover behind another PC encased in Otiluke's Resilient Sphere.

 

[Hussar]

Just to be clear [MENTION=5834]Celtavian[/MENTION]. No one, certainly not me, is saying that your tactics weren't a good idea. They are. They work (obviously) and are effective. My point is that your tactics are not the only ones available to a melee party. You don't need to fly the melee guys. You don't need to have ranged specialists. Sure, it might make the fight easier if you do, it might not (depending on whether or not the dragon turns the paladin into a lawn dart after toasting the wizard's concentration) but, it's not like it's so much better that you'd be stupid to do anything else.

At worst, you're killing the dragon two rounds ahead of me. My point is, I'm still getting the job done. Sure, you might have struck on a really effective tactic for your specific group. Maybe, I dunno. But, AFAIC, you're getting the job done about one round faster, maybe two, than I am. This is not a huge deal.

Now, when you move into ancient dragons and 90 foot breath weapons, yeah, I think the throwing party is hosed. I don't think you can keep it up. The dragon can strafe and get out of range too easily. I'd be heading underground or indoors as fast as possible, just to limit their manoeuvrability.

 

[Hussar]

/whoops, double post