D&D 5E Helping melee combat to be more competitive to ranged.

[pemerton]

Isn't that what this conclusion is based on... Emphasis mine.

[MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] - all the proposed "solutions" to the alleged "mob ineffectiveness" involve changing the encounter from what it seems to have been (namely, slavering gnolls charge the PCs with their spears).

[MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION] and I don't agree on every aspect of the situation (eg without wanting to put words into his mouth, I think he prefers gnolls who are a bit less berserk/slavering and a bit more ready to use tactical cunning including archery), but it was Hemlock who put it pithily not too far upthread - the mistake the gnolls made was to bring knives to a gunfight!

So Hemlock also seems to agree, at least in general terms, that massed melee attacks by mobs aren't especially viable, and that the solution for mobs lies elsewhere. (A complexity is that in real life one thing a mob will do is overbear - and Hemlock is a big fan of this in the game too - but in D&D turning a series of melee attacks or a group melee attack into a "knock prone, pin and beat up" scenario requires engaging more complex mechanics and so probably is done by GMs less than verisimiltude would suggest it should. But then a flip-side complexity is that, by potentially stringing out the number of rounds of resolution required, this can make the gnolls spend even more time in the aura.)

As I've mentioned several times, the issues for gameplay of aura/zone auto-damage and minions were widely discussed in the 4e era also (and in later products WotC tended to shift from "damage at start of turn" to "damage at end of turn", which helps the minions at least get in their attack if the zone is created on top of them). These issues are an artefact of particular mechanical devices - like the purely mechanical concepts "start/end of turn" - and the solutions to them are mechanical (either formal ones, or informal/ad hoc ones like [MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION] suggested upthread).

I'd also add - from [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION]'s point of view, I don't think changing the mobs from melee attackers to ranged attackers is the sort of "solution" he's looking for, given that he's already concerned that the mechanics of the game create too much of an incentive for ranged rather than melee attacking. I take it that this is why he's instead looking at ways of handling the auto-damage (eg raising mob hp) that will reduce its impact on melee tactics.

 

[hawkeyefan]

No. This is the crux. They act straight away, and attack the cleric. The fact that a round break happens between the resolution of their dash and the making of their attack is completely a mechanical artifice.

Look at it another way: suppose that you run an encounter where the PCs have to fight some baddies in the middle of a stadium, while some sprinters run the 400 meter (approx 1300') dash around the perimeter.

In the real world, that sprint wil take 45 seconds to a minute+, depending on quality of runners etc. In the game, a rogue can run at 90' per 6 seconds (dash+bonus dash) or 15' per second, meaning it will take over a minute to run the race. However exactly we set the time, it's clearly multiple rounds - somewhere between 8 and 10+

Now suppose we're resolving this situation. Each character takes his/her turn - including the sprinters, as we might want to know which of them inadvertently gets caught in AoEs etc - and that is resolved. In the course of this, the sprinters will move their speeds, then "pause" as other turns are taken. But do we really suppose that, in the fiction, each sprinter stops after 6 seconds of running and then starts again? To me, that would be absurd. The illusion of stop/start is just than - an illusion. It is a byproduct of turn-by-turn intitiative/resolution. In the fiction the sprinters don't stop - they just keep running.

As for the sprinters, so for B gnolls. They don't stop after dashing through the aura and before attacking the cleric. In the ficiton, it's continuous action. It is only the mechanical turn structure - which includes the completely artificial notion of starting your turn - that (i) creates an illusion of discontinuity, and (ii) results in the B gnolls taking an extra helping of damage.

I disagree that they act straight away. I understand your point, but I disagree. There is a reason that dash takes away your ability to act. Yes, this is a mechanical aspect, but the mechanic is based on the idea that sprinting full out does not allow one to do anything else.

Hence my assertion that the dashing gnolls are in the aura for a longer period of time than the ones who stopped.

A fighter who takes his 30 feet of movement and then attacks an enemy...I don't know if anyone would say that his movement is "cautiously approaching".

And this is getting more and more granular. As much as I prefer the fiction take priority over rules and mechanics, there are game elements whose removal I don't agree will add anything to the game. At some point, we just have to accept that we are playing a simulation.

 

[pemerton]

Too many people on here come to discuss problems they have created themselves - like this, and the thread on 'what is gold for'.

"I don't know what gold is for - there need to be rules telling me!"

I am reminded of the endless threads about lack of ranged options for mobs, when in fact, anything with an opposable thumb or a tentacle can pick up a rock, a spear or in some cases a projectile weapon and use it with their proficiency & Dex bonus. EVERYTHING has a Dex bonus!

By the same logic, one would assume that no Orc ever wears anything but the armour their MM statblock has in it. They apparently cannot fit into ringmail for instance, even when it's made for them... I have seen comments about useless monsters like the Ogre, when in fact an Ogre with a pile of rocks and scavenged armours laced together with hide to improve their AC can be an interesting challenge.

Too many think there should be explicit spoon-fed options for everything so they don't have to mix things up themselves.

And then, when they do mix things up themselves - eg run melee rather than archery gnolls - they are told they're doing it wrong! Some people just can't take a trick, can they.

Some people refuse to take responsibility for their games.

Playing D&D - or refereeing it - is not really a test of character, I don't think.

The mechanics of the game aren't sacred. Their funciton is to deliver the play experience that someone wants. If the mechanics aren't doing that, you change them.

Because some of the mechanics are reasonably intricate, you might want to talk about it before you change them. That's what threads like this are primarily about.

4th Edition is partially to blame I would guess - that had every angle stitched up like a set of model wargame or MMO rules

Seriously?

 

[pemerton]

this is getting more and more granular. As much as I prefer the fiction take priority over rules and mechanics, there are game elements whose removal I don't agree will add anything to the game. At some point, we just have to accept that we are playing a simulation.

Alternatlively, of course, we could just fiat it - as you would do with the PCs vs 80, or 300, or however many orcs. Along the lines of "Because these gnolls are just dashing in then attacking, they only take one lot of damage."

I disagree that they act straight away. I understand your point, but I disagree. There is a reason that dash takes away your ability to act. Yes, this is a mechanical aspect, but the mechanic is based on the idea that sprinting full out does not allow one to do anything else.

That idea has no foundation in reality, though.

Here's one way to look at it: if the developers had opted for 12-second rounds, so that the movement rate was 60' rather than 30', you would be giving me the exact same response - even though, under those different rules, a character could move 60' then attack in the same turn, as opposed to in the 5e rules where those two actions (unless it's a rogue) must be separated by a round break.

Here's another way to look at it: the gnoll's "dash" is not sprinting full out. 60' per round is 10' per second is 36,000' per hour, or 12,000 yards per hour, or less than 7 miles per hour. That's a jogging pace. Even a rogue who can also dash as a bonus action can't run a 400 metre sprint in a minute.

Here's yet another way to look at it: charging someone at that sort of pace with a spear is something that actually happened in real world fighting. Likewise, bayonet charges were a real thing.

In short: the fact that my B gnolls can't dash through the aura and attack - that they can't charge with their spears and cut down the cleric without taking double the damage of the A gnolls - is purely an artefact of the mechanics. No one would think that was impossible but for the mechanics. In AD&D, 3E and 4e it was possible (all but the first had charge rules; Moldvay had 10 second rounds). 5e doesn't change these rules to bring the ficiton into conformity with supposed reality that you can't run 60' in 6 seconds and attack at the end of it! It changes the rules for purely mechanical reasons (charge rules are notoriously fiddly, and can upset the balance of the action economy), and imposes new fictional limitations as a consequence.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

[MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION] and I don't agree on every aspect of the situation (eg without wanting to put words into his mouth, I think he prefers gnolls who are a bit less berserk/slaving and a bit more ready to use tactical cunning including archery), but it was Hemlock who put it pithily not too far upthread - the mistake the gnolls made was to bring knives to a gunfight!

So Hemlock also seems to agree, at least in general terms, that massed melee attacks by mobs aren't especially viable, and that the solution for mobs lies elsewhere.

I'm not sure what it would mean to claim that a shambling mob of a thousand zombies isn't "viable." I haven't advanced any such generalized claim. They'd be fun in certain situations, and potentially boring in others. Even in the boring situation I wouldn't necessarily refrain from using them--I'd just skip over the rest of the encounter if it ever becomes clear that the PCs have "solved" it with a viable strategy. If you can kill ten zombies in twenty seconds without spending any limited resources (including limited space)--if the situation at the end of twenty seconds is essentially the same as the beginning except that ten zombies are dead--then I'm willing to extrapolate that result over thirty minutes and say that you can take down a thousand zombies. I may or may not ask you to roll dice as part of that resolution, depending upon what your strategy is and whether the zombies get to attack. E.g. if they made 20 attacks on you during that time, but it only ate up your Monk of Long Death's temp HP, I might believe that you just got lucky and that a thousand zombies could still potentially kill you. After doing a bit of math in my head, I might offer, "You can kill all the rest of the zombies without rolling at the cost of losing 1d6 x 15 real HP, or you can play out this combat in detail."

I'm actually fine with berserk melee mobs occasionally. It's awesome when players get to mow down hordes of enemies and feel awesome. I've stated multiple times that I don't see anything wrong with the encounter. I just think it's wrong to draw conclusions about strong, tactical mobs based on the behavior of weak, berserk melee mobs. I object to the gnoll example as a form of experimental proof, not as an encounter. A thousand zombies mindlessly attacking an orphanage from its basement could be a really cool and fun encounter, especially if there are reasons why the kids can't flee the orphanage until daylight. (E.g. vampires outside.)

You're reading my take on gnolls correctly though: gnolls are smart enough that I would be put out if someone expected me to play them like mindlessly attacking zombies.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

I disagree that they act straight away. I understand your point, but I disagree. There is a reason that dash takes away your ability to act. Yes, this is a mechanical aspect, but the mechanic is based on the idea that sprinting full out does not allow one to do anything else.

Hence my assertion that the dashing gnolls are in the aura for a longer period of time than the ones who stopped.

A fighter who takes his 30 feet of movement and then attacks an enemy...I don't know if anyone would say that his movement is "cautiously approaching".

And this is getting more and more granular. As much as I prefer the fiction take priority over rules and mechanics, there are game elements whose removal I don't agree will add anything to the game. At some point, we just have to accept that we are playing a simulation.

The reason that dash takes away your ability to act is a mechanical construct for game balance.

I was going to say that it's a very slow pace, otherwise. But for most characters that's 60 ft. in 6 seconds. The current world record for the 50 meter dash is sub 6 seconds. That's over 164 feet. Now this isn't ideal conditions for a foot race, and those are modern records, set by athletes that train specifically to sprint, and not wearing typical adventuring equipment, including armor and such.

So if we assume a reasonable amount in our character's situation is half that, it's 82 feet. Not all that far off, actually. And a rogue, arguably equipped lighter and better trained, can beat that with 90 feet.

However, I still disagree that it requires a feat to charge with a weapon attack, even one as simple as a spear or a sword held out in front of you. In which case the two-round attack of the gnolls disappears.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

I'm not sure what it would mean to claim that a shambling mob of a thousand zombies isn't "viable." I haven't advanced any such generalized claim. They'd be fun in certain situations, and potentially boring in others. Even in the boring situation I wouldn't necessarily refrain from using them--I'd just skip over the rest of the encounter if it ever becomes clear that the PCs have "solved" it with a viable strategy. If you can kill ten zombies in twenty seconds without spending any limited resources (including limited space)--if the situation at the end of twenty seconds is essentially the same as the beginning except that ten zombies are dead--then I'm willing to extrapolate that result over thirty minutes and say that you can take down a thousand zombies. I may or may not ask you to roll dice as part of that resolution, depending upon what your strategy is and whether the zombies get to attack. E.g. if they made 20 attacks on you during that time, but it only ate up your Monk of Long Death's temp HP, I might believe that you just got lucky and that a thousand zombies could still potentially kill you. After doing a bit of math in my head, I might offer, "You can kill all the rest of the zombies without rolling at the cost of losing 1d6 x 15 real HP, or you can play out this combat in detail."

I'm actually fine with berserk melee mobs occasionally. It's awesome when players get to mow down hordes of enemies and feel awesome. I've stated multiple times that I don't see anything wrong with the encounter. I just think it's wrong to draw conclusions about strong, tactical mobs based on the behavior of weak, berserk melee mobs. I object to the gnoll example as a form of experimental proof, not as an encounter. A thousand zombies mindlessly attacking an orphanage from its basement could be a really cool and fun encounter, especially if there are reasons why the kids can't flee the orphanage until daylight. (E.g. vampires outside.)

You're reading my take on gnolls correctly though: gnolls are smart enough that I would be put out if someone expected me to play them like mindlessly attacking zombies.

A "strong tactical mob" would be a military unit, and a whole different thing as far as I'm concerned.

Although perhaps they might find a way to kill a thousand zombies, I think that's a bit excessive for my types of campaign in a melee situation. I'd be more inclined to use a mob scene much in the way the goblins in the Hobbit were, as an escape, where you will fight your way through and survive long enough to find a way out. I probably wouldn't do it in as slapstick a way, but then again we get pretty goofy from time-to-time.

Which leads me back to the mob, and maybe I would just let them fight their way through the zombies. One of the ways I temper the absurdity of some of the encounters and combat typical in D&D and RPGs it's that it's not quite what really happened, it's just a good bards' tale.

 

[OB1]

This is pure bull crap. Why do you so readily accept these, to me mind, outright apologetic rationalizions? Why should the designers get away with everything?

I don't think there is any danger here. WotC doesn't make design decisions based on individual ENworld threads.

The real value of this thread is in identifying rules changes and rules interpretations that can support different sorts of encounters (and hence different sorts of fiction). [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION] has contributed to that. And I don't think the gnoll encounter is "purposefully designing an encounter to show how a rule is 'broken'". As best I can tell, it was purposefully designing an encounter to find out how one rule (mobs) works, and then discovering that anothe rule (aura/zone damage) makes the encounter that was designed unviable. And the response is (in my view) perfectly reasonable: increase the hp of the monsters so as to somewhat nerf the auto-damage.

(The 4e era was full of similar discussions, because of the interaction in that system between auto-damage and minions.)

I agree with you on the real value of this thread!

My examination of authorial intent was in response to the above quote from [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION] where it appears to me that he was having trouble separating the intent of the designers from his own preferences and wasn't helpful to the conversation. This runs from an earlier thread in the conversation that one solution to the problem of ranged dominance is for players to not choose certain feats that will make combat easier. I can understand if that is not the solution Capn is looking for, but it is a viable solution.

And again, the only reason that the encounter he designed was trivial was because he didn't use the monster stat-block as written. And this is a constant thread with CapnZapp. If his complaint was simply that the fiction and mechanics as written didn't fit into what was in his imagination, and he was looking for ways to implement his desired result, that would be one thing. Instead, he blames the designers. And you're right, WotC isn't going to change the game based on his threads, so focusing on that will not help him design a better game for his table.

At any rate, I think adding some HP to the gnolls in this encounter is an excellent and simple idea to get the desired results. Another might be to send multiple hordes of gnolls, say 6 to 8 in a day. Even a second horde might result in a different result as the spirit guardian spell would be at a lower slot. And how terrifying for the players, desperately trying to find their way out of the labyrinth, as horde after horde comes at them. The first time would be cool as they obliterate the enemy. The second time, still cool, but might get them thinking "how many gnolls are down here?" by the third one, with resources starting to run low the PCs should be starting to think of other tactics if the hordes keep coming.

Leaning into 5e design, instead of fighting against it, can often times lead to interesting solutions.

 

[Imaro]

[MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] - all the proposed "solutions" to the alleged "mob ineffectiveness" involve changing the encounter from what it seems to have been (namely, slavering gnolls charge the PCs with their spears).

Im more concerned that he didnt in fact use the mob rules as laid out in the DMG....

mobs do auto damage based on the number
attacking [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION] stated earlier that he was making attack rolls for groups of them (thus severely diminishing their damage potential). I posted some figures based on how many attacks [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION] commented were made on the cleric and the cleric should have been close to death if not dead...

More importantly that also would've meant concentration checks for the spell he was running...wait for it... incorrectly. So you tell me how this experiment actually proved anything. My fix for the OP was to run the encounter using the rules correctly... and I've yet to hear him acknowledge the faults in his experiment... I also see you (as well as a few other posters) making some pretty big assumptions (around melee mob effectiveness and spell damage to mobs) based on his faulty data. Now maybe melee mobs are ineffective but the example we have in no way supports that.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Alternatlively, of course, we could just fiat it - as you would do with the PCs vs 80, or 300, or however many orcs. Along the lines of "Because these gnolls are just dashing in then attacking, they only take one lot of damage."

Yes, a DM could handle it however he thought was appropriate. I wouldn't have a problem if I was a player in a game where the DM made this ruling.

Personally, my game would never have stopped because I don't see any of this as an issue. But if there was a DM who thought that stopping the game to calculate actual land speed and distance travelled and how many seconds different parties spent in the aura, then sure, that DM could make whatever ruling he wanted.

That idea has no foundation in reality, though.

I think you're way off here. The idea that one can run to the exclusion of all else is most assuredly based on reality.

Here's one way to look at it: if the developers had opted for 12-second rounds, so that the movement rate was 60' rather than 30', you would be giving me the exact same response - even though, under those different rules, a character could move 60' then attack in the same turn, as opposed to in the 5e rules where those two actions (unless it's a rogue) must be separated by a round break.

There are many ways to look at it. Ultimately, we can all play it however we'd like. I disagree with how you viewed the scenario, and I would play it out differently. I see nothing in it that conflicts with my view of events. Nothing to correct. You do.

But in all honesty, however it was handled, I'd have abdicated it with a lot less scrutiny of minutiae. I think once you start examining the distance and the seconds per round and all of that, then it's a question of what is to be gained.