D&D 5E Dnd's Most Deadly Spell - MAGIC MISSILE!

[doctorbadwolf]

Yeah, the system really does break down a bit with things like the classic situation of a house cat being able to kill a wizard. Sometimes you've just got to ignore the rules and say that a house cat is no threat to you and even if two cats are fighting each other, it's probably not instantly lethal.

Yeah for sure. I also like for towns guards to be a threat for a greater chunk of the game, the blacksmith to be able to hurt someone before they go down, etc, so I beef up most low CR NPCs without increasing their CR.

 

[Ath'kethin]

I wrote an article for Kobold Press on a magically-trained unit of soldiers, focused around this same idea. Basically they were commoners with the Magic Initiate feat, and it's interesting to envision how that would change a military's tactics and reputation.

To commoners, all magic is terrifying.

For anyone interested:

Cult Activity: Order of the Jinx - Kobold Press

 

[Fanaelialae]

This is why I just don’t listen to the official stats for commoners. Instead, 1st level PCs aren’t special when it comes to HP. (Well high con Barbarians still are way outside the norm)

Basically they all have d8 hit die starting HP, unless they’re noticeably frail.

The idea of almost anything having 1 HP is just silly to me. The cat can kill another cat with one non even especially precise strike? Really?

IMO, this is more a legacy issue for D&D, in that things that shouldn't be able to realistically cause serious harm have been attributed damage.

The classic example being the poison needle trap (let's ignore the poison for the sake of simplicity). IIRC, in many cases the needle itself would inflict at least 1 point of damage. For a character with only 1 HP remaining, this would be a potentially lethal injury. However, it's rather hard to imagine a needle itself inflicting a lethal injury. What did they do, headbutt the needle and pierce their skull?

IMO, anything that is exceedingly improbable to kill someone (a paper cut, a poke from a needle) shouldn't deal damage. Anything that is unlikely but could technically kill someone (a house cat) should be gated in some way (maybe on a crit a cat can do 1 damage, or maybe cats deal 1d6-5 [min 0] damage, or something along those lines). Perhaps, even if the damage is 0, the attack still prompts a concentration check, to indicate that there was superficial (but painful) injury.

Inflating HP doesn't really help the issue much, aside from making it less likely to occur (but if you have house cats regularly killing commoners under RAW, I daresay something odd is going on in your game). Requiring 8 scratches from house cats to kill commoners still results in a silly outcome. IMO, it's better fixed by reassessing what should and should not result in damage, rather than by adjusting HP.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

IMO, this is more a legacy issue for D&D, in that things that shouldn't be able to realistically cause serious harm have been attributed damage.

The classic example being the poison needle trap (let's ignore the poison for the sake of simplicity). IIRC, in many cases the needle itself would inflict at least 1 point of damage. For a character with only 1 HP remaining, this would be a potentially lethal injury. However, it's rather hard to imagine a needle itself inflicting a lethal injury. What did they do, headbutt the needle and pierce their skull?

IMO, anything that is exceedingly improbable to kill someone (a paper cut, a poke from a needle) shouldn't deal damage. Anything that is unlikely but could technically kill someone (a house cat) should be gated in some way (maybe on a crit a cat can do 1 damage, or maybe cats deal 1d6-5 [min 0] damage, or something along those lines). Perhaps, even if the damage is 0, the attack still prompts a concentration check, to indicate that there was superficial (but painful) injury.

Inflating HP doesn't really help the issue much, aside from making it less likely to occur (but if you have house cats regularly killing commoners under RAW, I daresay something odd is going on in your game). Requiring 8 scratches from house cats to kill commoners still results in a silly outcome. IMO, it's better fixed by reassessing what should and should not result in damage, rather than by adjusting HP.

I disagree, in that I think the better solution is to adjust both HP values and how you think about 0hp, and the rules around what 0hp means. If a character gets swarmed by possessed housecats, they should absolutely be able to be taken down to 0hp, that just shouldn't be a situation where the death and dying rules come into play.

Also, a vicous enough cat can absolutely do real damage. Gating damage behind whether or not the thing hurting you could plausibly kill you is a bad idea, IMO. If it can make you bleed, double over in pain, cry out in pain, etc, it should do damage.

The other, equally important problem, is that by RAW the farmer can easily be killed by the housecat, but almost no PCs have any meaningful chance of suffering the same fate. There is far too great a divide between PCs and normal people.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I disagree, in that I think the better solution is to adjust both HP values and how you think about 0hp, and the rules around what 0hp means. If a character gets swarmed by possessed housecats, they should absolutely be able to be taken down to 0hp, that just shouldn't be a situation where the death and dying rules come into play.

Also, a vicous enough cat can absolutely do real damage. Gating damage behind whether or not the thing hurting you could plausibly kill you is a bad idea, IMO. If it can make you bleed, double over in pain, cry out in pain, etc, it should do damage.

The other, equally important problem, is that by RAW the farmer can easily be killed by the housecat, but almost no PCs have any meaningful chance of suffering the same fate. There is far too great a divide between PCs and normal people.

I can't say that I agree.

I've actually been in a real world analog to the attacked by possessed house cats scenario. I needed to take one of my cats to the vet and she objected. My other cat reacted aggressively to this situation and he attempted to attack her. I was holding her out of his reach while he was swatting at me trying to get at her, all the while she was trying to climb me to get away from him (and also possibly to get away from me). I had to hop on one foot while using my other foot to fend him off, in order to back him into the bathroom so I could shut the door and get her into the carrier so I could get her to stop trying to climb me. Needless to say, I was covered in bloody scratches from my chin, down my torso, as well as my legs and foot (yes, just the one foot, the one I'd been hopping on was whole and unbloodied).

Then I packed her in the car and took her to the vet. I didn't even have time to try to stop the bleeding, as the whole fiasco had us running late. At the vet's I could see them staring at me but they were polite enough not to ask. When I got home and stopped the last of the bleeding (it had mostly scabbed by then) my wife (who was my gf at the time) opined that I might want to go to the hospital, but I declined. And sure enough, while you can still see the lines in the summer when I'm a bit tan, no real harm came of it. It hurt quite a bit, but at no point was I in any real danger of harm.

Am I some 007 badass? As much as I'd love to believe that the case, I'm a 40 year old code monkey who sits behind a desk all day (although at the time this happened I was in my 30s). Realistically, I'm an average joe. I believe that if I can be scratched dozens of times without being significantly worse for wear, any average person could.

I imagine that there's some critical accumulation of cat scratches that could equate to real harm that could cause disability, but I would guess that it would be in the many hundreds or even thousands of scratches.

You could give commoners 500 HP so that they could withstand a "realistic" number of cat scratches. However, then you would need to adjust all other damage to account for this. It doesn't make sense for a longsword to deal 1d8 damage if a peasant has 500 HP after all.

Obviously, it's your game, so do whatever makes you and yours happy. I just don't think that increasing HP addresses the issue, even if you make cats deal non-lethal damage.

 

[GuyBoy]

I think the cat stats regarding damage were more about allowing a familiar to engage in combat should it be attacked, rather than reflecting what an actual cat could do....painful, but not life threatening, as @Fanaelialae demonstrates so well.....

Except for WORTHINGTON!
Worthington was my best mate’s cat when I was around 16-18. We played D&D and rugby together a lot....my mate, Si, not the cat.
Did I say cat? Worthington wasn’t so much a large cat as a small leopard. He was the biggest cat I’ve ever seen and had an attitude somewhere around Laurence Taylor 56......only more vicious.
I recall crashing on my mate’s floor after a beery gaming session, and being woken around 4am by Worthington coming through the cat “flap” (more of a tavern door really) with a struggling chicken that he proceeded to kill, de-feather and devour in the kitchen.
And then there was the time the police came for Worthington; the elderly lady three doors down the road had cooked pork chops for her lunch, but left the kitchen door. Worthington has allegedly entered her kitchen, approached her with menaces and forced her to retreat, upon which he had secured the pork and left the scene, with the victim shaken, but fortunately unhurt. She had rung the police who came round to Si’s. Compensation was arranged and no arrests were made.

And Worthington.....well, one day he just vanished from the house. Some say he became the source of local supposed “big cat” sightings. Personally, I believe he went on to slaughter generations of low level wizards, in a blood-stained orgy of 1d4+1 damage.

 

[J.Quondam]

I can't say that I agree.

I've actually been in a real world analog to the attacked by possessed house cats scenario. I needed to take one of my cats to the vet and she objected. My other cat reacted aggressively to this situation and he attempted to attack her. I was holding her out of his reach while he was swatting at me trying to get at her, all the while she was trying to climb me to get away from him (and also possibly to get away from me). I had to hop on one foot while using my other foot to fend him off, in order to back him into the bathroom so I could shut the door and get her into the carrier so I could get her to stop trying to climb me. Needless to say, I was covered in bloody scratches from my chin, down my torso, as well as my legs and foot (yes, just the one foot, the one I'd been hopping on was whole and unbloodied).

Then I packed her in the car and took her to the vet. I didn't even have time to try to stop the bleeding, as the whole fiasco had us running late. At the vet's I could see them staring at me but they were polite enough not to ask. When I got home and stopped the last of the bleeding (it had mostly scabbed by then) my wife (who was my gf at the time) opined that I might want to go to the hospital, but I declined. And sure enough, while you can still see the lines in the summer when I'm a bit tan, no real harm came of it. It hurt quite a bit, but at no point was I in any real danger of harm.

Am I some 007 badass? As much as I'd love to believe that the case, I'm a 40 year old code monkey who sits behind a desk all day (although at the time this happened I was in my 30s). Realistically, I'm an average joe. I believe that if I can be scratched dozens of times without being significantly worse for wear, any average person could.

I imagine that there's some critical accumulation of cat scratches that could equate to real harm that could cause disability, but I would guess that it would be in the many hundreds or even thousands of scratches.

You could give commoners 500 HP so that they could withstand a "realistic" number of cat scratches. However, then you would need to adjust all other damage to account for this. It doesn't make sense for a longsword to deal 1d8 damage if a peasant has 500 HP after all.

Obviously, it's your game, so do whatever makes you and yours happy. I just don't think that increasing HP addresses the issue, even if you make cats deal non-lethal damage.

Now I kinda hope the next John Wick movie ends when he's finally taken out by a really irate house cat.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I can't say that I agree.

I've actually been in a real world analog to the attacked by possessed house cats scenario. I needed to take one of my cats to the vet and she objected. My other cat reacted aggressively to this situation and he attempted to attack her. I was holding her out of his reach while he was swatting at me trying to get at her, all the while she was trying to climb me to get away from him (and also possibly to get away from me). I had to hop on one foot while using my other foot to fend him off, in order to back him into the bathroom so I could shut the door and get her into the carrier so I could get her to stop trying to climb me. Needless to say, I was covered in bloody scratches from my chin, down my torso, as well as my legs and foot (yes, just the one foot, the one I'd been hopping on was whole and unbloodied).

Then I packed her in the car and took her to the vet. I didn't even have time to try to stop the bleeding, as the whole fiasco had us running late. At the vet's I could see them staring at me but they were polite enough not to ask. When I got home and stopped the last of the bleeding (it had mostly scabbed by then) my wife (who was my gf at the time) opined that I might want to go to the hospital, but I declined. And sure enough, while you can still see the lines in the summer when I'm a bit tan, no real harm came of it. It hurt quite a bit, but at no point was I in any real danger of harm.

Am I some 007 badass? As much as I'd love to believe that the case, I'm a 40 year old code monkey who sits behind a desk all day (although at the time this happened I was in my 30s). Realistically, I'm an average joe. I believe that if I can be scratched dozens of times without being significantly worse for wear, any average person could.

I imagine that there's some critical accumulation of cat scratches that could equate to real harm that could cause disability, but I would guess that it would be in the many hundreds or even thousands of scratches.

You could give commoners 500 HP so that they could withstand a "realistic" number of cat scratches. However, then you would need to adjust all other damage to account for this. It doesn't make sense for a longsword to deal 1d8 damage if a peasant has 500 HP after all.

Obviously, it's your game, so do whatever makes you and yours happy. I just don't think that increasing HP addresses the issue, even if you make cats deal non-lethal damage.

I've seen people bleed profusely, as in absolutely need medical attention right now from a stray cat that did a full back-leg cut on their leg to keep them away from her kittens.

It's important to remember that one experience doesn't give the whole picture of what similar experiences can be.

Regardless, 500hp is hardly needed, and your response completely ignores the solution I have already proposed, instead focusing on a wild scenario where the baseline HP becomes 500 and the whole game has to be adjusted to fit very strange thing that absolutely no one has ever suggested.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Now I kinda hope the next John Wick movie ends when he's finally taken out by a really irate house cat.

Yeah, it turns out the cat was the one that actually killed his dog.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I think the more relevant question is how many wizards casting magic missile would it take to kill a Great Wyrm dragon?

That depends how many times they manage to cast it before they are killed by a very powerful dragon. With 10.5 average damage it would take 92 castings of magic missile at 1st level to kill a Chromatic Greatwyrm and 97 to kill a Metallic Greatwyrm (ignoring the issue of overkill damage being erased when they enter their Mythic form).

On average it requires 274 individual magic missiles to down a Chromatic Greatwyrm and 290 to down a Metallic Greatwyrm. Focusing on the Chomatic this could be achieved by 46 1st level Wizards using both their spell slots, 31 2nd level Wizards using all three of their spell slots, but a mere 14 3rd level Wizards using all six of their spell slots (the boost to full spellcasters at level 3 is substantial). 9 Level 5 Wizards could do it (though 8 comes very close and might manage it). 4 Level 10 Wizards could do it. 2 Level 20 Wizards would not quite be up to it, though one level 18 Wizard with Magic Missile as a Spell Mastery choice could do it solo without ever burning a spell slot provided he could otherwise survive 92 rounds with a Chromatic Greatwyrm. It would take 25 Level 17+ Wizards to down it in one round using level 9 spell slots, but 13 could almost manage it using level 9 and 8 spell slots over 2 rounds, or in one round if we counted all of them wishing for simulacra the night before and each casting their 9 level magic missiles while the simulacra cast 8th level.

But once we throw in the much more complicated to model issue of how fast a Greatwyrm could down various numbers of Wizards the calculations all become much harder. In any case I think a Greatwyrm trying to solo Hogwarts would quickly regret it.