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

[KarinsDad]

Perhaps, instead of once per round, make it once per Attack action? That way, the Fighter Action Surge isn't (IMO kind of unfairly) denied the effect? It also means that using Action Surge simply means repeating the same attacks in the same way (as it does now), rather than making Action Surge fundamentally different.

One could do that. On the other hand, your suggestion makes the GWM and Sharpshooter feats stronger for Fighters than for other melee PCs.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I was counting on the bard and the cleric to be providing buffs. After all, [MENTION=5834]Celtavian[/MENTION] has been pretty insistent that you can get advantage/buffs/whatever, to such high points by 8th level that the -5 from Sharpshooter/GWF becomes meaningless, so, I'd assume that the effective -5 for disadvantage would be similarly easily overcome.

For it to start its round at 60 feet to breathe, means that the dragon has eaten at least 4 attacks already. It had to. Remember, our fighters do have a range of 120 feet with javelins. Plus a 30 foot movement. Any round the dragon breathes, it's going to eat 4 javelins, possibly 6 with Action Surge. Or, 6 every round with a simple Haste spell. I'm not saying the fighters can do it on their own. I'm saying that they don't need to fly to do it either. At some point, the dragon's going to want to bring down it's big damaging attacks - and that means melee.

It just occurred to me that this statement isn't true. Dragons have an 80' move and a legendary action for 40', so they can start 60' away from the party, use their breath weapon, and be back at 180' by the time the following PC has moved simply by abusing the predictability of non-speed factor initiative. Here's how it works, assuming the dragon has already observed the party's initiative order:

Dragon starts at 180' on round N, out of range of javelins/fireballs/lightning bolts/etc. (A Sharpshooter or archer skeleton platoon would pwn him here but the hypothetical melee-heavy party hasn't got any. Their loss.) Assume initiative order PC #1, #2, #3, #4, Dragon, because the dragon can just mentally designate whoever goes right before him "PC #4". Dragon's action on round N is, "Hold until PC #4 does something, then move to 100' away from nearest PC." It will close the distance to 100' on PC #4's turn, and use its legendary action at the end of that turn to move to 60' away.

The on the dragon's own turn, it breathes on the nearest PC and retreats to 140'. At the end of PC #1's turn it uses its legendary action to move back to 180'.

Result: PC #4 gets to engage the dragon once at 100', and PC #1 gets to engage it at 140'. (Distances here refer to "distance from nearest PC", not necessarily "distance from me".) Each of them can spend movement to reduce that distance by e.g. 30' (standard movement in good terrain), so PC #1 could probably throw a javelin. Everyone else is out of luck unless they can engage at 180' (150' with movement).

If the dragon does this, not only do the javelin attacks have to be made at long range, but only one PC even gets to make them! And if the evoker isn't PC #1 or #4, he doesn't even get to chuck a Fireball unless he happens to be the PC closest to the dragon, in which case he is probably down and dying on the first attack and every attack thereafter (and therefore doesn't get to cast his spell anyway[1] since even if healed he has to spend 15' of movement standing back up).

Yeah, this party is so toast against a dragon if they try to approach it straightforwardly. I would Darwinize them in an instant. They'd be so much better off getting a druid/ranger/shadow monk and approaching the dragon under Pass Without Trace at night--they might get a surprise round then as well as free pass into melee range. Other options include "occupying the treasure hoard with Leomund's Tiny Hut while the dragon is away", which probably results in it doing something or other that brings it into melee range as it tries to take the treasure back/bury you under ice/etc[2].

[1] Unless one of the other party members does something smart like putting the evoker on his back and Dashing for 60'.

[2] BTW, D&D dragon hoards are pathetically small compared to Smaug's horde. 130,000 gp is barely over a ton of gold, which is 0.135 cubic meters. The dragon can't even turn that into a pillow, let alone crawl inside it for a nap.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I think for laughs this Friday night we will do some Dragon fights.

I'll get them to make a Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Rogue party. First round they can try to hand axe an adult red Dragon to death while the Wizard tries Bigbys/telekensis. See if they can even survive. I'll be nice and let the fighter have access to returning hand axes.
Round 2 we'll do things per normal. Fly and Bless on the GMW fighter.

We will see how things turn out for round 1 and Henry Handaxe and his merry band of non-buffers.

If you play the dragon intelligently, Round 2 will turn out just like Round 1: TPK. They need Fly and Haste in order to match the dragon's speed. (One guy with Fly + Haste + Bless is still not enough to beat it but at least it renders the GWM fighter something other than totally ineffectual.)

 

[Hussar]

I find it cute that you actually believe it makes a difference.

Without the party buffing him and getting him in there, Henry is toast, whether he's throwing Javelins or Hand axes or Halflings.

Well, hand axes have a range of 60 feet, while javelins have a range of 120. Considering the dragons have a range of 60 feet, or 90 if you're moving up the food chain, I'd say it makes a pretty significant difference. But, hey, feel free to continue the snark.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

We've only started tweaking. We have about four or five house rules at the moment. 5E for the most part is well balanced and fun. We definitely want to keep it simple as that is part of the game's attraction. There are some goofy things we need to sort out. I think a tweaked game will suit our preferences.

You said that your group doesn't let arrows shoot down ice dragon's ice walls. By RAW, ice walls have AC 5 and 30 HP--they're quite fragile. Does making them immune to arrows count as one of your "four or five house rules" or do you have a bunch of tweaks like that which are too small to count as house rules?

You just threw a bullseye on the dart board. Probably why our DM changed the terrain and room size. He hates (we all do really) stuff like dragons in 20 by 20 caves or 10 orcs in a 10 x 10 room or a huge monster in a 15 by 15 dump with nowhere to move. Such encounters are a waste of our time. A monster stuck in an area where it can't take advantage of its most powerful abilities should be a lower CR.

And that, my friends, is why some of us don't run dragons out of WotC products--they're poorly-written. I don't agree that Rise of Tiamat is in any way "core" (core = PHB + MM + DMG) but it's sure not a good baseline for running dragon fights or designing dragon lairs. They're too easy.

 

[Hussar]

[MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION], I'm not saying you're wrong, I just can't find it. Where is this 40 foot legendary action movement listed? The Wing Attack action has to actually attack a target doesn't it? I can't use that action without actually attacking something. It's for attacking then moving further.

I think that's a pretty wonky reading of the stat block to claim that it's simply a bonus movement. This is not something I would rule as a DM.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

After looking at it some more, I'm inspired by Hussar to make a str-based thrower. It won't be quite as good as archery. With our house rule that drawing thrown weapons isn't an issue, it might work. Sharpshooter eliminates the disadvantage for firing past short range. The big problem is carrying a lot of thrown weapons. Though no ammunition property does make it so the thrown weapons don't get destroyed.

Do most house rule the lack of ability to draw thrown weapons at a rate that allows multiple attacks?

I have a monk who asked me about thrown weapons, and I told him sure, you can draw them as easily as ammunition, i.e. without expending your object interaction. So there's one data point for you.

When it comes to Sharpshooter and handaxes, be aware that you'll have to house rule that in. By PHB rules, Sharpshooter only works on ranged weapons, and a handaxe is a melee weapon with the Thrown property.

 

[Celtavian]

Although you said this in response to dragon tactic #2, all of this is addressing dragon tactic #1 (Dispel Magic), but you didn't actually address #2 (run out the clock). If the dragon had simply held the range open you would have died. Your DM seems to be pretty good at roleplaying dumb creatures appropriately dumb (e.g. your gnoll fight), so I suspect you're wrong when you say he plays dragons as infinitely patient creatures who are just as happy waiting a week as a minute--I suspect he deliberately played the dragon dumb to give you a chance. But I suppose it's possible he just didn't think of it. If he'd done it, you'd be dead, no question.

Your last point is right. It was a matter of first time playing 5E and it wouldn't have been very fun to wipe the whole group because the players chose to play melee martial concepts. One of the concepts was one of the player's favorite characters he was playing in 5E. He has a well developed background including a named sword. There was never an edition of D&D where casters buffed the melee fighters and were so limited after doing so. We have one guy that loves playing melee martials. He loves the image of the warrior with the sword in battle. At the time of character creation, we did not know 5E made it so that melee martials were a severe liability due to the new magic rules, specifically concentration. Everyone learned the lesson quite well. I doubt anyone will make a pure melee martial character in the future.

The mercy was mixed. Even though he didn't wait out our buffs, the fighter died in that fight. The cleric died. The paladin was up, but far away from the group trying to kill the dragon. My mage was standing, but out of spells. The bard drove the dragon off with a critical hit with a chromatic orb. It was low enough where it chose to flee rather than risk a lucky hit and death by us.

If the DM had not shown tactical mercy, we would be dead. An 8 intelligence and five hundred years of life it is very easy to believe a dragon would learn to wait out magic.

 

[Celtavian]

I have a monk who asked me about thrown weapons, and I told him sure, you can draw them as easily as ammunition, i.e. without expending your object interaction. So there's one data point for you.

When it comes to Sharpshooter and handaxes, be aware that you'll have to house rule that in. By PHB rules, Sharpshooter only works on ranged weapons, and a handaxe is a melee weapon with the Thrown property.

Ah. So only works with weapons marked ranged.

 

[Celtavian]

You said that your group doesn't let arrows shoot down ice dragon's ice walls. By RAW, ice walls have AC 5 and 30 HP--they're quite fragile. Does making them immune to arrows count as one of your "four or five house rules" or do you have a bunch of tweaks like that which are too small to count as house rules?

We would have allowed arrows to break the ice in the module because we were running RAW at the time.

Isn't there a rule stating the DM can decide if a weapon can damage a particular substance ? I believe in the DMG it states the DM can decide if a weapon can do damage against a particular structure or substane. We'll probably use that type of ruling. Though AC 5 might be considered like glass. We might allow arrows to shoot through glass. It depends on circumstances. But a full on ice wall, probably not.

And that, my friends, is why some of us don't run dragons out of WotC products--they're poorly-written. I don't agree that Rise of Tiamat is in any way "core" (core = PHB + MM + DMG) but it's sure not a good baseline for running dragon fights or designing dragon lairs. They're too easy.[/COLOR]

Yep. Modules provide a baseline adventure we usually modify. If it gives us a good story skeleton and some decent villain ideas, we're happy. Then we tailor it to challenge our group. I imagine you do this as well or make stuff up.