D&D 5E Common rules mistakes

[PnPgamer]

So a fighter/druid could use his action surge to multiattack twice in a round, given that character has assumed a form with multiattack capabilities, such as a bear?

 

[Paraxis]

So a fighter/druid could use his action surge to multiattack twice in a round, given that character has assumed a form with multiattack capabilities, such as a bear?

Sure why not a single class Fighter with multiattack can use action surge to make the attack action twice in a round, gaining double the normal number of attacks. All those attacks happen on the characters turn.

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Another common mistake people seem to bring with them the concept of negative h.p from older editions. One DM I know thought it worked like it use to in 3rd edition where you kept count of negative h.p you don't you just drop to 0.

If from being positive or while at 0 h.p, you take enough damage in one hit to drop you to a negative value equal to or greater than your normal HP maximum you die. Otherwise when you take damage while at 0 h.p you just take a failed death save from a normal hit or two failed death saves from a critical hit. There is no need to keep track of a negative value it is all or nothing.

 

[PnPgamer]

Sure why not a single class Fighter with multiattack can use action surge to make the attack action twice in a round, gaining double the normal number of attacks. All those attacks happen on the characters turn.

Was there rulings anywhere what happened with forms and extra attack?

 

[Nebulous]

Hmm. It depends. I'm not exactly sure what you are describing. Here is how it works.

Initiative Count
Round 1
18 Orcs' turns: Orcs move towards the players but have not yet moved through the door.
16 Elgweth's turn: Elgweth uses his Action to ready an attack "When an orc comes through the door, I fire an arrow."
15- Other characters act.
Round 2
18 Orcs' turns: Orcs continue moving towards the players, passing through the door. As soon as the first one does, Elgweth uses his Reaction to fire an arrow at it. The orcs continue their turns.
16 Elgweth's turn: Elgweth regains the use of his Reaction, and now acts normally. In this case, there are more orcs, so he starts shooting arrows at them.
15- Other characters act.

Here is how it doesn't work:

Initiative Count
Round 1
18 Orcs' turns: Orcs move towards the players and pass through the door. Elgweth takes an action to shoot them. Wrong: He can't do this because his turn hasn't come up yet (assuming this is the start of combat and there wasn't already a previous round), and readying an action is an Action you take on your own turn.
16 Elgweth's turn: Elgweth moves but doesn't act because he already used his Action to shoot the orc. Wrong: Even if this were round 2 so that Elgweth could have had his shot readied, shooting an orc with a readied attack would use a Reaction rather than his Action.

Hope that helps.

You're right, thanks. I'd offered a poorly worded example previously. No, we'd not let elf fire a readied action before his turn came up, and we went over all of this as a group the other night. One thing we DID change which is pretty significant is individual initiative rolls - we just did PCs then Monsters.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Just a reminder sometimes words like "pinned" or "restrained" don't translate to the game effects well.

I think that's one of the bigger flaws of 5E's "status condition" design, one it largely inherited from 4E, I feel (much as I love 4E, there's a lot of potential for "But how can he do that if..."). If you're using a common-sense-based word, the effects attached should be common-sense-based. Otherwise find something weird and archaic to indicate that something odd is going on.

Oh hey! Good call! So there is a version of pin in 5E. Basically you just need to grapple a target, then on your next turn use the shove action to knock them prone. On their turn they can't stand from prone as they have 0 speed from the grapple, and if they attack you they have Disadvantage. As they are prone, all of your attacks will have Advantage against them. Only way for them to get away from you is to successfully make a Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check as an Action.

That is a cool find emdw45.

Yep, definitely neat, though I'd so wildly unsurprised if it was unintended by WotC.

 

[seebs]

This is true, but as a tactical note: you can't stand up from being Prone when your speed is zero, so grapple/prone will tilt the combat decisively in your favor, at the opportunity cost of two attacks (or more) which you sacrifice to make the grapple/push prone.

Is that explicit? Because it uses "half your move". If your move is zero, half of that is zero, so it uses zero movement to stand, right?

 

[Roger]

"You can’t stand up if you don’t have enough movement left or if your speed is 0." -- Basic Rules (Player's) v0.2, pg 71

 

[aramis erak]

We've been doing this completely wrong then. Old mindset i guess. So readying also does not change your initiative at all. You just use a reaction?

It allows the action to be done as a reaction later, without moving initiative.

Note that someone "forcing" a different reaction to trigger leaves the PC with a nasty choice.

As an example... The Party had clearly (based upon the bleeding rule) run monster A near out of HP. The Warlock had prepped to cast a hellish bolt at B the moment the hex jumped.... A attacked the Warlock... He's got a hard choice: finish off A with hellish rebuke, or save the reaction and hope someone else zaps it dead before his turn. He went ahead and used hellish rebuke.

 

[Paraxis]

Was there rulings anywhere what happened with forms and extra attack?

Hadn't thought of that combining before. I don't know about an official ruling but from my reading of multiattack and extra attack it would work like this.

Extra attack doesn't actually say you get an "extra" attack the wording is you get a second attack at level 5, and a third at level 11, and fourth at level 20, for fighter at least everyone else it stops at a second attack at 5th.

Multiattack is already giving you at least 2 attacks, so that wouldn't do anything under most situations.

But lets take a Fighter 5/Druid(moon) 2 in Dire Wolf form, he doesn't have multiattack his fighter ability extra attack should work and give him a second bite, in Brown Bear form he already has multiattack if he chooses to use that he wouldn't get a second attack from Extra Attack, but I would let him not use multiattack and use one of his attacks twice, so in this case he would most likely make 2 claw attacks. Take a Fighter 11/Druid(moon)2 and it works the same Extra Attack gives him a total of 3 attacks when he takes the Attack action and could use any of his beast forms attacks as those 3 attacks.

My take on it.

But that is different than using Action Surge and Multiattack while in beast form.

 

[Aimian_Silverflash]

Ah, you mean in exchange for it being harder to disrupt a caster initially, 5E has made it easier to recover from harmful effects without outside aid? If that's the case, I definitely agree. I have heard some people complain about the ease with which characters and monsters are able to recover from these effects, however. It's a new paradigm that we're all still getting used to. As you said, it used to be that when a spell took hold, you could be reasonably sure you'd just affected a target for a good length of time. Now, many spells are quite a bit more powerful than before, but they only last a fraction of the time (usually only a single round or two). This means we need to re-calibrate our expectations of how magic impacts a fight. Instead of being crippled all fight long, but still capable of action, nowadays many spells make it so you're out of commission for a round or two, unable to do anything, but you recover from it before a fight ends.

It remains to see how the community as a whole will come to feel about the change as we get further into 5E.

Another thing that should be noted is how grappling is no longer a wizard shutdown technique. I really like how they stopped all the rock-paper-scissors crap when it comes to spellcasters.

One more thing is the rebuilt saving throw system. No particular save is a guaranteed success and no save is a guaranteed fail.