Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Riastlin" data-source="post: 5669570" data-attributes="member: 94022">Paladin is able to grant saves every combat through class feature so that helps some.  Additionally, I don't use stun very much mainly because it just sucks for the players (this is true with or without a leader).  Its one thing when Monster C gets stunned (the DM still has 4 other monsters running around), but the player loses all her actions when she is stunned.  Immobilized?  My players usually just teleport, same with grabbed.  Dazed certainly slows them down some, but not a whole lot.  Even with none of them being Str-based they have pretty good basic melee attacks due to Melee Training and the like.As for long?  Well, two strikers (ranger and avenger) two defenders, and an invoker that often deals striker-light damage tends to make things drop quickly.  Rain of Blood for instance can make short work of a lot a monsters at once while also counteracting the debuffs on the party and can be used every encounter.  Combine it once a day with Wrath of the Gods and it gets really ugly really quick.Distant advantage also means that the ranger is usually attacking with CA as is the Invoker much of the time and three melee characters also keeps them in flanking most of the time.  You are right though that if I really wanted to punish them for not having a leader AND if they didn't want to adapt to the fact that they didn't have a leader and instead made character choices as if somebody else had that covered, then yeah it might be really bad.  Of course, I also think a good DM takes a look at his or her party and tries to tailor adventures around the party.  Sometimes that means hitting their weaknesses.  Sometimes it means playing to their strengths.  Sometimes a player has to sacrifice some aspects of her character for the good of the party (I know the swordmage in our group has said at times that he would spec his character differently if we had a dedicated leader for instance).  At any rate, my players do a good job of working together as a team.  They know each other's characters and understand how they operate.  They also know that occasionally they need to use an AP to second wind, or make a heal check rather than just making a second attack which potentially slows it down a little (but not a lot when you compare it to the alternative of allowing the ongoing damage to continue, or allowing the PC to fall unconscious, or to remain dazed/immobilized/etc.  I will acknowledge however, that as we have only made it through the first 3 levels (a couple of encounters to go before 14) of paragon that this may get worse.  But as I said, I'm not a big fan of stuns and dominates anyway (even if there were a dedicated leader) as I tend to find that those types of effects only serve to prolong the fight while taking a lot of fun away from the players.  Though ironically, the last time I dominated a character (the ranger) she was granted a save, and made it, before her turn came up in the initiative order./shrug</blockquote>

Verification