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

[Psikerlord#]

No it really shouldn't.

They're trying to avoid the stupidity of 3e readied actions where combat became a Mexican stanf-off.

I dont know what that means, but whatever problem it is, it is not avoided vs rogues or casters with ready action, just warrior types.

In general terms the balance fix is for multiattack PCs being able to ready their multiattack, to keep them on par with rogues and casters. We do this in our game and it works better imo, or at least I've seen no downside to it in practice.

 

[DaveDash]

I dont know what that means, but whatever problem it is, it is not avoided vs rogues or casters with ready action, just warrior types.

In general terms the balance fix is for multiattack PCs being able to ready their multiattack, to keep them on par with rogues and casters. We do this in our game and it works better imo.

It becomes far more optimal to stand back and ready an action when you can ready full actions, since you may potentially kill something as it approaches you, and you can remain back in position so you cant be flanked as easily.
If both sides do this, you end up with melee Mexican stand off.

It also becomes far too easy to game the initiative system when everyone can reorder their full actions effectively, and people doing it all the time slows down combat.
Then how do you resolve readied actions when 5+ of them go off at once?

The current system is designed for a very purpose to avoid these pitfalls from other editions and to speed up combat. Its effective a use it or lose it system, making it more like earlier editions when it's meant to be simultaneous, not an "order" to be games by the players.

 

[the Jester]

Tasha's hideous laughter drops speed to 0. 1st level spell.

Color spray also works.

Lower level spells but subject to legendary resistance I guess but not all dragons have that.

Web works depending on room shape and can be argued to work the first round (making them start to fall) without an anchor but I'd rule it shouldn't.

Just a few more options to halt flyers

Also, a paladin of vengeance's abjure enemy channel divinity option.

 

[Hussar]

Have to admit, we've been playing full actions on a ready all the way along. It's far too gimpy the other way. And a group that tries to take advantage of this by gaming the system opens itself up to all sorts of problems. Remember, you can't move on your readied action (although, to be fair, you can ready a move). Any group that tried to stand back and wait for everything to come would be eating all sorts of ranged attacks.

I get a sense that DM's use fairly homogenous opponents. You meet a group of orcs, all armed the same. You meet a group of Umber Hulks, etc. A mixed group, particularly if you use the 4e design advice of using lots of "skirmisher" type monsters mixed with soldiers and brutes means that the whole "Mexican Standoff" scenario results in the PC's losing actions and eating lots of ranged attacks.

But, then again, I'd love a group that actually stood off and didn't attack. Now we have a chance for role-play. Do a bit of back and forth. Maybe the encounter won't result in combat at all. Fantastic.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

That's not really what's happening at all.

There's a bunch of posters spouting conjecture based on theory crafting, and a small set having played through a lot of this saying "Hmm no I don't think so".

I'm still waiting to hear examples of high level combat from other posters.

Brainstorming on someone else's behalf is always a form of theorycrafting. When someone solicits ideas for overcoming a challenge with a given party, you've never played that party, and if you say "You should cast spell X" they can always come back and say, "We don't know X." What you expect from a reasonable person is that they will take the suggestions which work for them and ignore the others, but what Celtavian likes to do is zero in on the one suggestion which isn't feasible for him and complain about it. "What if you can't find any purple worms? FAIL, you obviously don't really play D&D"--I have 4th level PCs who've had the dubious pleasure of running away from purple worms and would therefore know where to find them. Celtavian doesn't apparently, but he uses that as an excuse to give up on the problem instead of finding a solution that works within his constraints, and then to smear the people brainstorming on his behalf, "That will never work. You obviously don't know how hard we have it!" Other times he raises spurious objections (like claiming that a white dragon's ice wall lair action is some kind of a showstopper for a necromancer's skeletons instead of a barely-noticeable speed bump) and takes the opportunity to sneer at people for "theorycrafting". Sorry, no. You've obviously never played with Inspired Leadership skeletons, Celtavian, nor read and understood the rules on white dragon lair actions, so your sneers are ironically misplaced.

There's no use trying to help someone who isn't listening. Don't Say Things That Can't Be Heard.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

In general terms the balance fix is for multiattack PCs being able to ready their multiattack, to keep them on par with rogues and casters. We do this in our game and it works better imo, or at least I've seen no downside to it in practice.

Thanks for that data. I've considered doing the same, mostly to clean up some cognitive dissonance with Speed Factor Initiative as opposed to for balance reasons, but it's good to know that it hasn't caused any issues at your table.

 

[Psikerlord#]

It becomes far more optimal to stand back and ready an action when you can ready full actions, since you may potentially kill something as it approaches you, and you can remain back in position so you cant be flanked as easily.
If both sides do this, you end up with melee Mexican stand off.

It also becomes far too easy to game the initiative system when everyone can reorder their full actions effectively, and people doing it all the time slows down combat.
Then how do you resolve readied actions when 5+ of them go off at once?

The current system is designed for a very purpose to avoid these pitfalls from other editions and to speed up combat. Its effective a use it or lose it system, making it more like earlier editions when it's meant to be simultaneous, not an "order" to be games by the players.

Readying your attack action with a trigger being approached = enemies shooting you full of arrows. I see no issue there. As for delaying, that doesnt happen much either, as players mostly want to kill things quickly. When it does happen it is for tactical reasons and enhances the game ime. Doesnt slow it down any, from what I can tell.

 

[Celtavian]

Tasha's hideous laughter drops speed to 0. 1st level spell.

Color spray also works.

Lower level spells but subject to legendary resistance I guess but not all dragons have that.

Web works depending on room shape and can be argued to work the first round (making them start to fall) without an anchor but I'd rule it shouldn't.

Just a few more options to halt flyers

None of this works against adult dragons.

Why would flier enter color spray range? Flier in a room? Totally negates his advantage. If you have anchor points, he's still hanging in a web above you that you can't get to. He doesn't drop to the ground, he hangs in the web.

 

[Celtavian]

Dude. You're preaching things as being absolute truth, throwing around words like undisputable, no empirical evidence, and DPR when you're failing to account for all tactics available to enemies and party members. Whenever someone calls you on this and presents you with evidence to the contrary, you throw a hissy fit and default to a "well you just don't understand the game, my position is infallible, such badwrongfun" argument that doesn't hold water--as neither arrogance or bluster make for convincing arguments. I seem to recall that, according to you, I am the least-informed poster on these boards and I don't understand the basic principles of D&D rules. You rely on hyperbole not only in your point of views (my position is "indisputable") but also when you verbally abuse and put down those who disagree and, dare I say, prove you wrong.

Case in point, the above statement about ranged being "more powerful" than melee and it not being disputable. Yeah. If your DM is a moron, I guess I could see that being the case.

I'll humor you, though.

Range is laughably easy to shut down because it relies on LoS against a distant foe. Assuming the archer is hanging back, all you have to do is kill their LoS with first level spells like fog cloud or silent image positioned near their target to block view. Or a sleet storm in between the caster and the archer, archer can't see through, has to move through difficult terrain and make dex saves or become prone, so repositioning takes forever. The blocking LoS doesn't do much against melee combatants, since they can just run through the fog or the illusion and whack the caster, but archers have to waste rounds disbelieving the illusion or running around to restore LoS. Generally, he's forced to waste rounds repositioning himself closer to the melee if he wants to take any shots, at which point he's easy to pick off. Heaven help you if you're fighting a high level caster or anyone capable of erecting barriers to block your ability to move, like wall of stone or wall of ice, which is, incidentally, a lair action for the white dragon, cutting off not only your LoS, but often your ability to reposition to a more favorable position from the rest of your party. This is to say nothing of spells that force disadvantage on ranged attacks like wall of water or the like.

You can't see what is wrong here?

Melee running through difficult terrain at half-speed. If the caster is distant, melee will take forever get there.

Easier for the party mage or cleric to dispel sleet storm automatically, ranged back in business, melee still running.

Once again, ranged in better position.

This is a party dynamic, right? Group game with support from casters. They don't like being in sleet storm either.

If you're using fly or haste over and over again, you would be completely boned against any DM wanting to challenge the party. All he would have to do is hammer you with enough damage to kill your conc, and your fighters are SOL, falling from whatever height or losing a turn from the loss of haste. Or hit you with a sleet storm and box you off from escaping it, or simply casting dispel magic or countering your spells. If you're casting your spells immediately before combat, the monsters hear the verbal component and will prepare themselves accordingly for impending combat and alert guards to chomp at your casters from the rear.

We're not using it over and over again. We're using it where appropriate. It is appropriate a lot of the time. Stop with the usual "DM can challenge" straw man. This is already know. Any DM can create any encounter to challenge a group. If he always throws in casters to counter abilities.

Well, casters aren't always present. I won't design every encounter with the idea that casters will be present. Yes, fights are harder for everyone when casters are supporting the enemy. Been that way every edition.

Ah. Here we go again with the absolutes like "never" and "100% guarantee".

The unfortunate truth is, you can't 100% guarantee , dude. Let me pull my own example:

I had a party of that level take on an adult white dragon in its lair w/ lair actions in Hoard of the Dragon Queen. They didn't rely on heavy ranged firepower, because I used the above tactics to remove that aspect of combat from play. I playtested the encounter 6 times before running it and yeah, they lost, TPK, about 4 out of the 6 times I tested it, in nearly all cases, the ranged DPR wasn't able to play much of a role because the dragon shut them down using the tactics I detailed above. So was it deadly? Yeah, but not a 100% guarantee of a loss by a long shot. Anyway, they were able to emerge victorious. Here's how it went:

The two stealthiest members of the party (bard and ranger) got a surprise round after they used pass without trace, bless, and bardic inspiration to sneak up on the dragon through a side tunnel, yes, they beat its insanely high passive perception, thanks to bless and a bit of luck. They got an opening volley on the dragon then retreated back into the tunnel to avoid its breath weapon while the rest of the party charged in through another entrance, separated so as to prevent them from being wiped out with a single breath.

You want to know where the dragon was hiding in that same encounter? On a ledge the party could not get to without breaking cover deep inside the dragon lair nowhere near the tunnel entrance. But our "moron DM" doesn't know what he's doing.

Unfortunately, the retreat of the ranged artillery into the tunnel made it trivially easy to remove them from the rest of the fight thanks to the lair action for wall of ice blocking where the tunnel connected back into the lair, forcing them to go around the long way, then they got hit by frightful presence and were unable to approach it for most of the combat, they were literally stuck, frightened, in that tunnel for three rounds or so with no Line of Sight and no way to contribute to the rest of the party. When they finally made it close to the other entrance into the lair, the ice wall moved, once again blocking them from entering.

The rest of the party, a barbarian, paladin, and sorcerer fought the dragon for most of the combat. It remained on the ceiling of the lair and used its breath weapon, frightful presence, and legendary actions to reposition and whack people with its tail, occasionally swooping down to melee before returning to the ceiling. The Barbarian was able to land melee hits on the dragon using a greatsword and high jumps because, per the written module and map, the ceiling was 30ft high and the dragon occupied a 15x15' cube, meaning the barbarian could, according to the rules for High Jumping, hit it with a high jump on a running start thanks to his character height (a 7 foot reghed barbarian) and high strength score (18). Granted, it was only one hit per round, but he was able to hit pretty consistently, dealing significant damage with Hazirawn, the weapon awarded by the module earlier in the dungeon. When the dragon was moving around too much, he fell back on throwing his +1 spear or javelins.

Being a ranged threat, the dragon prioritized the sorcerer and bitch-slapped him at every opportunity, knocking him out early and resulting in the sorc contributing fairly middling damage overall due to the dragon's legendary resistance, he got brought back by lay on hands, then was knocked out and killed by the dragon.

Wow. Our "moron" DM decided the 30 foot ceiling wasn't appropriate for a huge creature. So he made it vastly higher. It was more like 70 to 100 feet. So no jumping. I'm glad I'm now learning our "moron DM" changed things. I probably would have as well. Dragon fighting in a room with a 30 foot ceiling is another one those situations we don't like.

The dwarven paladin readied an action to climb onto the white dragon's back when it used its tail attack on him (using the rules for Climb onto a Bigger Creature found on p271 in the DMG), crawled up, attacked the dragon twice with advantage, hit twice, including one critical, converted both hits into smites, burning both 2nd level slots, rolled well, and seriously injured the dragon. He was knocked off by the wing buffet and knocked out, but he probably did far more damage than anyone else in that encounter. Using a melee weapon.

Our paladin with fly did a bunch of damage as well.

The majority of the damage the dragon took was from the melee'ers. The breath weapon was pretty scary, but the party scattered and got lucky on a few saves. One character was killed, the rest survived. They knocked the dragon down to 40hp and then, per the module description, it fled. I feel pretty confident in saying that they could have killed it if it kept fighting.

Same. We used a fly spell to get our meleers into combat. Much easier.

In fact, overall it's not uncommon for this dragon to get killed by the party at this level, from what I've read online of other people's playthroughs of the module.

We did win.

Ah, here we go again. My favorite part is "I could prove wrong 99% of what you're stating". Dude, that doesn't even make sense. Are you saying that he's made 100 points and you could dispute 99 of them? What are you even talking about here?

If the party you had ran in our campaign, they would have died. No jumping. Here is how I would have played the climbing paladin because you know, I'm a moron DM.

I would have let him climb. Flown away from the battle with the paladin, taken him far enough away either into the water or to a place where I kill him alone. Probably take the dragon a round or two. If he wounded me bad enough, I don't care. I kill the paladin taking an asset off the board and waiting until the next day after healing up to finish the rest.

It's gonna be okay, bro. Let's just calm down and hug it out, okay?

We play different. I'm speaking from my experience. Keeping fly up was essential to our victory. The way we set up encounters is very, very different and what we allow as DM is very different. The dragon was moving 80 feet a round taking AoOs and staying completely out of melee range. Our DM made the internal dragon lair much, much bigger. A gigantic ice cave with ledges and icicles the dragon could hang on. It was a different fight from the one you describe.

 

[Celtavian]

Right. PCs don't know that. They just see a wall of ice. Even so, at that level, with hunter's mark and sharpshooter, they're still going to have to waste their round to get through the wall of ice since their average damage output isn't high enough to take it down with a single arrow. The dragon lair was huge and the sorc was on the opposite side of the lair from the ranger and bard, thus the wall was far out of range for him, even with Fire bolt's excellent casting range.

And at higher levels where they can shoot through the wall of ice, casters have access to better tools for countering range. An illusionist just creates the image of an adamantine wall, uses a bonus action for illusory reality to make it real for one minute, then drops conc for something else. Range characters are a lot easier to deal with when you see how many ways there are to break LoS, even without a physical obstruction. There are a zillion spells that provide heavy obscurement which will block LoS and effectively remove the ranged attacker's ability to effectively contribute in combat. And when you don't have spells, there are plenty of physical obstructions on most battlefields, just try to have as many enemies as possible end their turn without providing LoS to the archer and you'll see his effectiveness drop significantly.

Your point is taken, though. It's possible for the archer to simply shoot down many walls, but even so, that's a round they're spending not damaging your monster, and it's far easier to do this to a ranged attacker than a melee'er in most cases, since IMC ranged characters tend to stay away from the thick of things, generally popping out 15 ft from cover, shooting off some arrows or a cantrip before retreating back behind cover. This frequently makes them more easily isolated by these kinds of terrain/battlefield/visibility control effects.

We don't think arrows can shoot down walls of ice unless they are super thin.

Casters can dispel walls. If we set up I a position where the party is sealed off by a wall, we've done it wrong. We're probably going to end up dead if we can't get rid of it.