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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6992470" data-attributes="member: 6787650">Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point here. Spirit Guardians is mobile by default. Dodging + Spirit Guardians is a common tactic, so you can move it over gnolls and force them to take 3d8/half (or 4d8/half for a Spirit Guardians IV) as soon as their turn starts. Are you saying that you predicted and CapnZapp confirmed that he was letting the aura do damage as soon as the cleric moved it over the gnolls, as opposed to when they enter the aura or start their turn in it? (That would explain why he says they needed to take damage two times before melee attacking, which makes it twice as strong against the gnolls as it should be by RAW.) If so, good for you, although if so I didn't read that exchange between you.As far as I'm concerned though, if gnolls place themselves into a position where that can easily happen, and they go on doing so round after round instead of changing targets to another PC or pulling out their longbows and shooting, that is still what I referred to as "mindlessly feeding gnolls into a meat grinder" or whatever language I used. In a pure roleplaying scenario I would just shrug and say, "the DM did it differently," but it just seems really strange to me to do that in a scenario where the DM is explicitly trying to test whether CR 1/2 humanoids can still be interesting foes at higher levels when using the mob rules.A test of "what happens when there are dozens of attacks per turn" in which you set up a scenario with creatures that can make dozens of attacks per turn and then have them... not... make dozens of attacks per turn... and then conclude that hordes aren't viable challenges...Sure. And others have pointed out that one of the key advantages of ranged combat is that it allows you to avoid short-ranged effects like Medusa gazes and Basilisk gazes. Spirit Guardians is one of them. One of the suggested mitigations for those who want melee combat to be more important is to remove or radically expand range limitations on these abilities. In the context of this thread, it should be no surprise to anyone that running (apparently) berserk charging melee gnolls against Spirit Guardians is equally poor tactics for gnolls as it would be for PCs. You don't need to run a trial encounter against your actual PCs to find that out--it's obvious prima facie.You could also just run Spirit Guardians by RAW. Gnolls have 22 HP. If there's an 8th level cleric with Wis 20 casting Spirit Guardians IV, that's 4d8 of damage (save for half) with a DC 16, which gnolls (Wis +0) will save against 25% of the time. 4d8 will be at least 22 23% of the time, times 0.75 for successful saves, so 17.25% of all gnolls will be killed by fey spirits/etc. at the start of their turns after the cleric moves his aura onto them. The other 82.75% of gnolls will get to make an attack, and/or grapple the cleric to end her Dodging.If on the other hand they are so berserk that they do mindlessly charge into the aura on one round and then start their turn in it on the other, then 56% of them will fail both saves (99% killed), 6% will succeed on both and will take only 4d8 damage (23% killed), and 37.5% will fail on only one save (83% killed). Overall, 88% of gnolls who Dash directly into a Spirit Guardians will die before they get a chance to make another attack.As you can see, the tactics chosen by gnolls makes a huge difference. You can get away with melee gnolls against RAW Spirit Guardians; you can't get away with melee gnolls against a houseruled Spirit Guardians; and you can't really get away with zombie-like mindlessly Dashing melee gnolls in either case.Then you shouldn't be surprised if the results of your test are different from normal gnolls, and you shouldn't carelessly generalize from those results.Then 58% of the orcs that charge into the Spirit Guardians will die instantly without making an attack, and the DM will roleplay the orcs' reaction to that event. Clearly they prefer melee; do they prefer it enough to mindlessly charge through a horde of gibbering demons or fey or however else Spirit Guardians manifests? (Would these orcs charge through a Wall of Fire too?) Or will they switch to another PC, or switch to javelin chucking? You realize of course that orcs can kite Spirit Guardians very effectively if they want to: use Aggressive to move into spear-chucking range, chuck the spear, and then move 30' back out of range. The Spirit Guardians caster will have to stop Dodging and Dash to defeat that strategy.So the orcs can beat Spirit Guardians or other static or semi-static short-ranged defenses, using their standard ranged attacks (of course--see thread title). But will they? That's a roleplaying question for the DM and cannot be predicted from the stats. Why are these orcs even fighting the PCs in the first place?Seeing a dozen other orcs die before them might be a clue. Or even just seeing 17% of a dozen other orcs die instantly, and the other 83% take grievous wounds but still live for another few seconds.Again, why are these orcs fighting the PCs in the first place? Why do they want them dead so badly that they'd charge through fire to kill them? The stats don't tell that story.</blockquote>

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