D&D General DM Says No Powergaming?

[overgeeked]

I'm guessing half a cow is lethal to a commoner. And that eventually their dodge gets worse when all of their fields are burned and the cows are splatted and they eat through their stores.

But anyway, this one was about arrows.

You brought up the cow.

It takes several rounds because of dragon fear and save recovery, but it still eventually happens.

It depends on how many villagers. The dragon’s fright range is 120ft and short range for the longbow is 150ft. Ready action and fire when in range is everyone getting a shot first, before the dragon can act.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think the complaint is that RAW its even possible to happen.

But RAW, the DM calls for rolls if they decide something is in doubt.

Does anyone ever actually sit through the DM playing a town versus a dragon by himself? Or does the DM just create the scenario of the town in need and then let the players decide how their characters interact with that?

And I agreed that the DM could change it, but he'd have to be consistent and rule the same way with the PCs. It would suck for a group to find they need 20's to hit and the DM just says, "You lose. Hand over your sheets."

Consistent with what? The NPCs don't need stat blocks. The DM can just say "this dragon decimated this town" and be perfectly within the expectations of play.

Comparing that to ignoring the PCs' stats and abilities is bonkers.

 

[tetrasodium]

I think the complaint is that RAW its even possible to happen.

Yes and no, take it a couple more steps....

• The vast majority of low level PCs are dramatically more capable than untrained 10/10/10/10/10/10 4hp ac10 commoners.
• Mid-level PCs are once again much more capable than those low level PCs
• High level PCs are again much more capable than all of the others named.

Unfortunately when a GM has a party of players with mid & high level PCs they as a GM are equipped with mid & high CR monsters tuned to the capabilities of commoners loaded with easily sourced starter gear & low level PCs loaded with feats like actor still equipped with mundane COTS starter gear.

 

[Greg Benage]

Dragon attacks are thankfully very, very rare. They'd have several years or decades to make those, and have been. I'd bet many families have some bows for hunting.

Someone should teach them the concepts of opportunity cost and competitive advantage. The free wood and bow factory are amazing resources. So even if the bows don’t cost them 50gp each in cash, they’re worth that much.

Ordinarily I’d say there may not be a local market for that many longbows, but with all these towns gearing up for dragon attacks, I think there’s a lot of demand in the market. So rather than outfit their own peasants with longbows, our town should sell them for a massive profit — 120,000gp for 2,400 longbows and negligible cash costs!

That should allow them to hire an adventuring party with a hundred grand or so to keep the burgermeister’s offshore accounts topped off.

 

[Umbran]

Dragon attacks are thankfully very, very rare. They'd have several years or decades to make those, and have been. I'd bet many families have some bows for hunting.

But then you come up against the vigilance problem. People are remarkably bad at maintaining preparedness for rare events.

Like, in that decade between attacks, someone will realize that have a ton of bows that aren't being used except for target practice. They'll realize that they can maintain practice with, say, half those bows. And when one of those years is lean, and the king has a war coming on, selling off the bows starts looking like a good option. "We'll still have years to rebuild the stockpile!" they'll say. And "Dragons almost never attack," they'll note. And then the bows aren't there when the dragon does attack.

And, there's the 'over-specialized plan" issue. They do all this preparation for dragons, and have no effective defenses when the bulettes come...

 

[payn]

I've actually ran something similar to this with a discord bot a few days ago, normal goblins vs red dragons.

To kill an young red in 1 turn, it took 100 Goblins. 150 for an Adult, and 550 for an Ancient. Although the goblins statblock at least has bow proficiency and ok dex, so they're a bit ahead of the commoners.

Either way, 5e monsters can't really survive an assault from hundreds of thousands of weak ranged enemies, unless they're outright immune to the damage.

Works for me.

hawkeye fan said"
But RAW, the DM calls for rolls if they decide something is in doubt.

Does anyone ever actually sit through the DM playing a town versus a dragon by himself? Or does the DM just create the scenario of the town in need and then let the players decide how their characters interact with that?

They must. It's a commonly trotted out complaint about why 5E is bad.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Captain of the Guard: "To arms, all commoners! To arms! All of you, up on that hill with your long bows! The ancient red dragon approaches!"
That one commoner, moments later: "What a strange hill to..." [sizzle...]

 

[Greg Benage]

What's funny about the "those days are gone" stuff is that peasants killing an ancient dragon was more likely (in the white room where the battle is being fought) in classic D&D than in 5e. Right? An ancient red in AD&D had 88 hit points. The peasants still need a nat 20 to hit him, but you need a lot fewer peasants.

 

[overgeeked]

What's funny about the "those days are gone" stuff is that peasants killing an ancient dragon was more likely (in the white room where the battle is being fought) than in 5e. Right? An ancient red in AD&D had 88 hit points. The peasants still need a nat 20 to hit him, but you need a lot fewer peasants.

Difference being is that all the dragon needs to do to rout the peasants is fly overhead or charge. They’ll all just run, automatically.

 

[Greg Benage]

Difference being is that all the dragon needs to do to rout the peasants is fly overhead or charge. They’ll all just run, automatically.

Was their fear aura greater than the range of a longbow? I don't remember.