D&D 5E barbarian damage reduction and combat healing economy

[Fanaelialae]

Hence why I said "almost immune to melee". You put it on a ranged chassis like a monk or an archer fighter to make sure they can't get trapped in melee. As long as you end every turn 40 feet away from the nearest melee fighter you're probably fine.

Agree that Cunning Action also works--although you only get 30', which isn't quite enough to prevent you from getting attacked next round. So someone needs to Longstrider you to make this work, whereas Mobile has that extra 10' built in.

My thinking is that it won't be quite that effective most of the time. A good portion of creatures with a MV of 30' are humanoids, giving them good odds of having a ranged attack (against which Mobility is largely useless). A large chunk of the creatures that don't have ranged attacks will have a MV higher than 30', effectively negating the speed boost from Mobility.

In the case of the rogue, I was referring to the tactic of darting in on a target that the fighter has already engaged. That way the rogue is guaranteed sneak attack and the fighter's OA is likely to dissuade the monster from pursuing the rogue.

In any case, the point is that a 5% risk of crit is too high for my taste.

Fair enough. Sounds like you might like Adamantine Armor.

As far as I'm concerned, the occasional crit can liven things up and make even the heaviest defenders sweat a bit. I consider that a good thing. At least in 5e where crits are usually equivalent to a little less than two hits. In something like 3e, where crits can be the equivalent of multiple hits (x4 multiplier), I agree that 5% is too much (which is why crit confirmation was important in 3e).

I was actually thinking more of a dragon running Blur + Shield against the PCs, but yeah, an Eldritch Knight fighting against several swarms of mooks would have to choose which fights he spends defense on, and either sit out the others (pew, pew from range) or take some hits. If he blows his 2nd and 3rd level slots on Blur, he can cast 4 Shield spells throughout the day (or Absorb Energy, which is arguably better) and still have his 4th level slot available for Counterspell. This is the scenario where Mobile shines: trying to win multiple tiny fights cheaply. (Any fight that ends in 3 rounds counts as "Tiny" in my book, or at least horrifically lopsided.)

I agree, a monster with defensive buffs will certainly be a force to be reckoned with. I've been considering halving the number of spell slots available to NPC casters, unless they're the only encounter the PCs will face that day. Casters can still be very strong when allowed to nova.

If there are six encounters in a day, odds are that at least some of them will be easy/medium. IME, those don't typically last more than 3 rounds, so I used the low end of my estimation of how many rounds you'd have to sustain defensive buffs in order to have them last the entire combat day. My point simply being, it's not very realistic to assume that you'll always have Blur + Shield in a typical campaign.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Fair enough. Sounds like you might like Adamantine Armor.

As far as I'm concerned, the occasional crit can liven things up and make even the heaviest defenders sweat a bit. I consider that a good thing. At least in 5e where crits are usually equivalent to a little less than two hits. In something like 3e, where crits can be the equivalent of multiple hits (x4 multiplier), I agree that 5% is too much (which is why crit confirmation was important in 3e).

AFAIK, Adamantine Armor just reduces a crit to a normal hit. Not my style.

Even with Adamantine Armor and AC 28, a smallish platoon of 50 hobgoblins will still be doing 31 points of damage to you per round. That's better than the 60 points of damage you'd be taking without Adamantine Armor, but I'd much rather be taking only 3 thanks to Blur/Greater Invisibility, or fight at long range with Sharpshooter on my side and a stone wall to hide behind (AC 22) and therefore take only 5 points of damage with no spell expenditure. By the time the hobgoblins get within short range I'll have thinned them down pretty good.

My point simply being, it's not very realistic to assume that you'll always have Blur + Shield in a typical campaign.

No argument there. My playstyle leans very heavily on deadlier-than-DMG fights, to the extent that I'd almost rather handwave any fight that would be typical in a 3E/4E-style campaign ("You meet a behir. You guys can either play this out, or just deduct 20 HP each and we'll just say you killed it."), and this impacts how I view the utility of things like AC. Mostly I'd rather focus on exploration than combat, but when combat happens I want it to be realistic and interesting, or else brief.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Without the confirmation roll, though, you still have high-AC characters who suffer a disproportionate number of critical hits. If you would get hit on a roll of 17+, then 25% of all hits you take are going to be critical hits. Contrast with the same situation in 3.5, where only 5% of the hits you take would be critical ones.

Agreed. I actually quite liked the 3.x 'confirm' and did something similar, myself, when I ran variant AD&D ('85-95).

I guess 5e's emphasis on simplicity and fast combat led them away from that?

 

[Fanaelialae]

AFAIK, Adamantine Armor just reduces a crit to a normal hit. Not my style.

Even with Adamantine Armor and AC 28, a smallish platoon of 50 hobgoblins will still be doing 31 points of damage to you per round. That's better than the 60 points of damage you'd be taking without Adamantine Armor, but I'd much rather be taking only 3 thanks to Blur/Greater Invisibility, or fight at long range with Sharpshooter on my side and a stone wall to hide behind (AC 22) and therefore take only 5 points of damage with no spell expenditure. By the time the hobgoblins get within short range I'll have thinned them down pretty good.

50 hobgoblins is an incredibly deadly fight for even a 20th level character. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing inherently wrong with doing that, but by PEL it's 288% of a deadly encounter. So I think that's about right. If you wade in, you might win if you're lucky, but it's going to hurt, and victory is dubious. If you use guerrilla tactics to whittle them down, your odds are far better.

Plus, hobgoblins are a bit of an outlier since they have high damage and AC for their CR. Against gnolls or orcs (CR 1/2, just like the hobgoblins) this guy would have better odds.

In any case, 20 hobgoblins would be a more DMG-appropriate (but still deadly) encounter for a 20th level fighter, and in that case you're taking (with Adamantine Armor/without) about 12/24 damage in round one, 7/15 in round 2, 2/5 in round 3, and they're all dead by round 4. Total of 21/44 damage. That assumes both a white room and that the fighter loses initiative, of course. I freely admit that there are many factors that could make this scenario turn out dramatically differently.

No argument there. My playstyle leans very heavily on deadlier-than-DMG fights, to the extent that I'd almost rather handwave any fight that would be typical in a 3E/4E-style campaign ("You meet a behir. You guys can either play this out, or just deduct 20 HP each and we'll just say you killed it."), and this impacts how I view the utility of things like AC. Mostly I'd rather focus on exploration than combat, but when combat happens I want it to be realistic and interesting, or else brief.

That's fair. I like to mix it up. Some adventure days are one high-deadly encounter, while others are a series of mixed encounters. That way I keep the players guessing, and they're discouraged from novaing. FWIW IME, easy (and oftentimes medium) encounters are brief, 5 minute encounters.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Agreed. I actually quite liked the 3.x 'confirm' and did something similar, myself, when I ran variant AD&D ('85-95).

I guess 5e's emphasis on simplicity and fast combat led them away from that?

I think it's partially that.

Also, it's a bit of a let down to roll a nat 20 and then flub the confirmation. So I think fun was also a factor they considered.

Finally, it's simply not needed. 3e had potentially huge crit multipliers, and also builds that could crit on most hits. Confirmation helped keep those mechanics from spiraling out of control. In 5e, only the dice are doubled, meaning that typical crits are not quite as damaging as two regular hits. You have to be a 15th level Champion fighter to have the same crit range as an un-improved 3e rapier wielder. It will be rare to never that this fighter meets a foe that he needs an 18+ to hit. A half orc barbarian crits harder than other classes, but still not as hard as a 3e scythe wielder (x4 multiplier), thanks to only the dice being doubled.

You can easily add the mechanic back in of course, just keep in mind that it makes high AC characters even tougher than they already are.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

This is a bit of a tangent, but just for fun:

I don't think the 20th level fighter will kill all 20 hobgoblins by round 4's end. I just ran a couple of quick test combat with an AC 23 Archery Sharpshooter fighter vs. 20 hobgoblins. Fighter wins initiative on all rounds for simplicity. I also assumed Martial Advantage for hobgoblin attacks although I realized afterwards that it's kind of gonzo to do that and yet not hit the fighter with disadvantage or opportunity attacks for getting out of melee--I guess that means I was assuming that fighter used Expeditious Retreat each round disengage from melee. Anyway, here are the results:

Action surge round 1, +13 to hit, d8+5 damage: 8 hobgoblins dead after round 4 the first time; 10 hobgoblins dead the second time. Fighter took 97 points of damage the first time, so would be 48-ish with Adamantine armor. 168 damage the second time, about half that with Adamantine armor. Lots of hobgoblins took two arrows to kill.

Action surge round 1, +8 to hit, d8+15 damage: 16 hobgoblins dead after round 4 the first time, 11 dead after the second. Fighter took 73 damage the first time, so probably about 36 with Adamantine armor. The second time he took zero damage.

In only one of the combats did he even come close to killing all the hobgoblins by round 4's end, and he took a lot of damage in the process.

 

[Fanaelialae]

This is a bit of a tangent, but just for fun:

I don't think the 20th level fighter will kill all 20 hobgoblins by round 4's end. I just ran a couple of quick test combat with an AC 23 Archery Sharpshooter fighter vs. 20 hobgoblins. Fighter wins initiative on all rounds for simplicity. I also assumed Martial Advantage for hobgoblin attacks although I realized afterwards that it's kind of gonzo to do that and yet not hit the fighter with disadvantage or opportunity attacks for getting out of melee--I guess that means I was assuming that fighter used Expeditious Retreat each round disengage from melee. Anyway, here are the results:

Action surge round 1, +13 to hit, d8+5 damage: 8 hobgoblins dead after round 4 the first time; 10 hobgoblins dead the second time. Fighter took 97 points of damage the first time, so would be 48-ish with Adamantine armor. 168 damage the second time, about half that with Adamantine armor. Lots of hobgoblins took two arrows to kill.

Action surge round 1, +8 to hit, d8+15 damage: 16 hobgoblins dead after round 4 the first time, 11 dead after the second. Fighter took 73 damage the first time, so probably about 36 with Adamantine armor. The second time he took zero damage.

In only one of the combats did he even come close to killing all the hobgoblins by round 4's end, and he took a lot of damage in the process.

If he's a Sharpshooter he should be engaging them from long range. Especially since that means they can't use martial advantage.

If he's engaging them at melee ranges then he'd be better off as a greatsword fighter. I'd assume the Greatweapon Master feat and a +2 greatsword. (+13 to hit, 2d6 + 7 dmg). Also, are you remembering to use action surge twice? Fighters get a second use at 17th level (can't be used twice on the same turn though).