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

[DaveDash]

I still can't wait to try bigby's hand.That would be fun grabbing a dragon.

My first grapple was a readied action and a miss. I used inspirational and lost the contest again. Rolled a 3 then a 4.
The dragon breathed on us and we took a ton of damage (yay for Tiefling, but I would have had fire shield up on a non Tiefling).
On the Wizards turn - straight after the Dragon - we grappled it. The DM rolled another breath recharge (in fact he rolled breath recharges every round!) so it was touch and go. Healing from the Deva we summoned helped a lot.
On the Dragons last turn before it died it decided to try and escape, and failed, which sealed our victory, because at this point we'd spread out around it and it was it's only viable option.
Bigbys is a great spell.
[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] and as a nod towards you, over the course of this 3.5 hour fight, javelins did do a bit of damage. However we did strain disbelief a bit by allowing the fighter to just keep throwing them without worrying about how many he was carrying.

The Rogue in this fight ended up being pretty weak.

 

[Wojorides]

Bonus action from Crossbow Expert, and 20th level Fighters get 4 attacks per round. 8 (AS) + 1 (Haste) + 1 (Crossbow Expert).

its been a while since this came up but Crossbow expert "W hen you use the Attack action and attack with a one handed weapon, you can use a bonus action to attack
with a loaded hand crossbow you are holding" So you are NOT making the previous eight attacks with you regular crossbow.

 

[DaveDash]

Bonus action from Crossbow Expert, and 20th level Fighters get 4 attacks per round. 8 (AS) + 1 (Haste) + 1 (Crossbow Expert).

its been a while since this came up but Crossbow expert "W hen you use the Attack action and attack with a one handed weapon, you can use a bonus action to attack
with a loaded hand crossbow you are holding" So you are NOT making the previous eight attacks with you regular crossbow.

Maybe you might want to hide the fact your copy and pasting from an illegal PDF a bit better.
And with a free hand you can load each attack.

 

[Hussar]

I did not say fully submerged. He can sleep in it like a comfortable mud bath with his head resting on the edge. Yet your skeletons and owls would not find the environment so friendly. Plenty of ways to counter your strategy using the lair. It's fairly simplistic. I would be very surprised if an adult or larger dragon couldn't counter it with fair ease. I don't think it would have much trouble getting the drop on your skeletons and owls either. I think the probability of your strategy is fairly low and requires a rather specific class combination. Yet you seem to think it has a high probability of working as you march all your owls and skeletons in there, set them up in perfect formation, while the dragon sits about waiting for you to do it like he is watching some decorate his house. Not sure why you think the dragon would do that. It's another white room strategy that usually fails during execution.

But, wouldn't such a lair destroy his treasure? Anything that hot is going to melt gold pretty easily. Never minding the fact that you're in an active volcano - the sulphur and various other bits of crap and corruption will ruin his treasure. I don't want to fight that dragon, it's not worth it. All his treasure is garbage. Never minding that if the volcano erupts, which volcanoes are known to do from time to time, all the dragon's treasure is now gone.

 

[Celtavian]

My first grapple was a readied action and a miss. I used inspirational and lost the contest again. Rolled a 3 then a 4.
The dragon breathed on us and we took a ton of damage (yay for Tiefling, but I would have had fire shield up on a non Tiefling).
On the Wizards turn - straight after the Dragon - we grappled it. The DM rolled another breath recharge (in fact he rolled breath recharges every round!) so it was touch and go. Healing from the Deva we summoned helped a lot.
On the Dragons last turn before it died it decided to try and escape, and failed, which sealed our victory, because at this point we'd spread out around it and it was it's only viable option.
Bigbys is a great spell.

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] and as a nod towards you, over the course of this 3.5 hour fight, javelins did do a bit of damage. However we did strain disbelief a bit by allowing the fighter to just keep throwing them without worrying about how many he was carrying.

The Rogue in this fight ended up being pretty weak.

I can see the rogue being weak. No one in five feet of the dragon, so no sneak attack. He can't stand outside the dragon's darkvision range. Blindsight would prevent invisibility from providing advantage. If he were a high level arcane trickster, maybe with the hand granting him advantage he would have done better. With no melee to stand in range, the rogue is screwed in a lot of fights.

 

[Celtavian]

But, wouldn't such a lair destroy his treasure? Anything that hot is going to melt gold pretty easily. Never minding the fact that you're in an active volcano - the sulphur and various other bits of crap and corruption will ruin his treasure. I don't want to fight that dragon, it's not worth it. All his treasure is garbage. Never minding that if the volcano erupts, which volcanoes are known to do from time to time, all the dragon's treasure is now gone.

If he puts his treasure in the magma. The white dragon we fought froze most of his into the ice of his lair. A red dragon could keep his in some side cave near the lava. You know the game doesn't cover sulfuric air ruining magic items and metals. It isn't that realistic. Metal can survive in areas where the heat can damage humanoids. My main point is a dragon's lair is not an easy place to bring 16 owls and 26 skeleton archers, march them to where the dragon is, and spread out in advantageous position while the dragon watches it all happen. I doubt you would allow such a thing to be done easily either.

 

[DaveDash]

If he puts his treasure in the magma. The white dragon we fought froze most of his into the ice of his lair. A red dragon could keep his in some side cave near the lava. You know the game doesn't cover sulfuric air ruining magic items and metals. It isn't that realistic. Metal can survive in areas where the heat can damage humanoids. My main point is a dragon's lair is not an easy place to bring 16 owls and 26 skeleton archers, march them to where the dragon is, and spread out in advantageous position while the dragon watches it all happen. I doubt you would allow such a thing to be done easily either.

Let's not forget the Dragon sits around making cups of tea while you cast a leomunds tiny hut (if you had a safe place to cast it, you wouldn't need it in the first place!).

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I can see the rogue being weak. No one in five feet of the dragon, so no sneak attack. He can't stand outside the dragon's darkvision range. Blindsight would prevent invisibility from providing advantage. If he were a high level arcane trickster, maybe with the hand granting him advantage he would have done better. With no melee to stand in range, the rogue is screwed in a lot of fights.

Blindsight for most dragons only works out to 60'. (For ancients and adults, 60'. For some young dragons, 30'.) Even a shortbow-wielding rogue can just stand 80' away and pepper the dragon at advantage, which means sneak attack works. A longbow rogue with Greater Invisiblity could be anywhere between 61' and 150' and still make sneak attacks at advantage.

 

[DaveDash]

Blindsight for most dragons only works out to 60'. (For ancients and adults, 60'. For some young dragons, 30'.) Even a shortbow-wielding rogue can just stand 80' away and pepper the dragon at advantage, which means sneak attack works. A longbow rogue with Greater Invisiblity could be anywhere between 61' and 150' and still make sneak attacks at advantage.

In a nice little white room of course.

In a dark cavern not so much.

I had a longbow Rogue who did two parts of sweet F all damage last night. Try again.

 

[Celtavian]

Blindsight for most dragons only works out to 60'. (For ancients and adults, 60'. For some young dragons, 30'.) Even a shortbow-wielding rogue can just stand 80' away and pepper the dragon at advantage, which means sneak attack works. A longbow rogue with Greater Invisiblity could be anywhere between 61' and 150' and still make sneak attacks at advantage.

So the trick once again is providing illumination the dragon can't use that you can use to exceed your darkvision range while using invisibility to stay out of his blindsight range. Another thing to set up in your complex strategy. Another thing the casters need to set up for the rogue unless he is an Arcane Trickster. So owl flying with torch near dragon? Or arrow with light spell stuck into ground near dragon? At least this one is arguably easier to overcome once you have the dragon restrained with bigby's hand, especially considering the rogue won't fear the breath weapon unless it is a Con based breath weapon. He can save pretty easily with a good dex save. If he is an Arcane Trickster, he can pick up the new absorb elements spell to pretty much guarantee the most he will take the few times he misses his save is a 1/4 damage since evasion is not damage resistance and does stack with absorb elements, though he will have to use one of his precious non-enchantment/illusion slots to obtain the spell usually reserved for haste and shield.

Sure, once the rogue solves the visibility issues, he can sneak attack. Hopefully a group with a rogue has taken account of this variable prior to the attack and will set it up to keep the rogue's damage high. I don't think it would be too hard for a rogue to set up outside the range of the dragon and use some means to light it once it has been restrained. Visibility while not restrained would be a great deal trickier. bigby's hand won't work quite as well on an ancient dragon.