D&D 5E High-level no-save spells in practice

[Sezarious]

In short, I don't think I present any tactical ideas that are gamist in nature. And "gamist" isn't an insult

Emdw, I don't think Dave was trying to insult you. He was more just referring to the debate, surprised you weren't on his (gamey) 'side'. For all intents and purposes, he infers that he himself is on the 'gamey' side of the fence in this debate, so he wasn't trying to insult you.

I think what we are not taking into consideration is that we have all had different experiences and with that, a variety of different dungeon masters.

Some dungeon masters are amazing, allowing you freedom of movement in their worlds, or at least as much freedom as your character can mechanically TRY to obtain through the mechanics in the game.

Other DM's are just either plain inexperienced or just... Well for me words can not really describe, but if I had my time over, I wouldn't have wasted my time with them. An example I guess might be that in a game that should start out perfectly vanilla, the DM's like "aliens abduct you at the start and mutate your DNA, at level one, you now have the stats of a balor", or after your party has tracked down the evil fighter, they successfully cast hold person on him, tie him up and gag him, but for some reason, without any magical support, the fighter magically (through plot armor), teleports away.

From what I'm getting, Dave's MAIN concern is about the ethics of RULES as opposed to RULINGS, because there are DM's out there who, quite frankly, are just plain cruddy.

I think from that perspective, most people understand and would agree with what Dave is saying, however, that really is a broader and larger debate than what the OP was asking about.

In regards to forcecage, the power of the spell really is up to interpretation. It's not as clear as it could be, there's just not enough data, so a DM's ruling is definately required. Should it be clearer? Maybe, but then again, maybe it was intended to be a little uncertain in this edition.

My only advice in the long run is to not waste your time with DM's who constantly unbalance the game. There's making good rulings and there's going too far.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Ot you can fall back or true tried and tested conventions that were put in earlier editions of the game for a reason.

You actually can't. If you don't trust the DM, that's it, game over, you are done, this will not be a fun experience, no matter how many manuals and restrictions and rules you throw at them. A DM you can't trust is a DM who you can't trust to obey the rules of any edition no matter how clearly they're spelled out.

I see people running streams on 5e a lot now, which is great, but I also see a lot of DMs mucking rules up, nerfing things they consider "overpowered", and not getting a handle on the ruleset.

Some of them are bought back in line by the chat in twitch, others use this whole rulings not rules matra as a shield to protect their toys (ie - Dragons).

Don't mistake the rules for one of the goals of play. The goal isn't to use the rules. The goal is to have a fun time. The rules are only useful in as much as they enable that. There is no neutral arbiter of what is a fun time for everyone. If a DM wants to nerf a rule that's actually fine because they don't think it's fine, that's working as intended, because that DM is going to have more fun that way. And if the players can't trust the DM not to nuke things that are fun for the players, they should have a different DM.

I know its all the rage to have this freedom again as a DM, but really, I consider it a design flaw.

I will never agree with it, ever. I will agree it's perfectly valid, there's no right or wrong way to play, but for how I like to play the game, how I've seen the game played by others, and how my tastes in gaming have evolved over 20+ years, I consider it a big no no.

DM freedom is a flaw you say? So people making the game the way they want to play is the wrong way to play the game?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Some dungeon masters are amazing, allowing you freedom of movement in their worlds, or at least as much freedom as your character can mechanically TRY to obtain through the mechanics in the game.

Other DM's are just either plain inexperienced or just... Well for me words can not really describe, but if I had my time over, I wouldn't have wasted my time with them. An example I guess might be that in a game that should start out perfectly vanilla, the DM's like "aliens abduct you at the start and mutate your DNA, at level one, you now have the stats of a balor", or after your party has tracked down the evil fighter, they successfully cast hold person on him, tie him up and gag him, but for some reason, without any magical support, the fighter magically (through plot armor), teleports away.

From what I'm getting, Dave's MAIN concern is about the ethics of RULES as opposed to RULINGS, because there are DM's out there who, quite frankly, are just plain cruddy.

And I share that concern, frankly, which is why it's all the more disconcerting when he jumps to conclusions in a thread like this.

Rules are really important to me because they are the source of player agency: the ability of a player to deliberately steer the game world in a desired direction (i.e. act effectively) is predicated on his ability to predict the results of his actions. I almost never make a house rule without running it by my players first; the only ones I make unilaterally are ones that are game-breakers for me to the point where I would quit the game without them. (E.g. RAW vision rules are totally bonkers, I've replaced them with sane ones that allow you to see a man holding a torch even if you're 200' away in darkness. By PHB RAW he'd be able to see you because he's in a lighted area and therefore not "blinded", but you couldn't see him. That's crazy and undoubtedly unintended by the designers.)

So I get this concern over player agency and rules, I really do. But there aren't any rules that say dragons are cubic, and there are rules both in the text of Forcecage and elsewhere indicating that you probably shouldn't expect to be able to cage dragons (see the first few posts of this thread), and so it strikes me as a bit off if someone shrilly jumps to denouncing everybody else as "playing cops and robbers" because they don't share his desire to houserule dragons' actual size as being equal to their controlled space (a viewpoint which the PHB explicitly disavows) in order to derive actual size from the MM stats. Sorry, dude, the MM just doesn't list actual size for non-giants any more than it lists other important stats like monster organization, ecology, spoor, diet, and lifespan. If you capture a ghost and have it try to age orcs to death, guess what? the DM is going to have to make a judgment call. If you're looking for signs of ghouls in the area, guess what? the DM has to decide not only what there is to find but what spoor could possibly be found. It would be nice if the MM had these stats, but it doesn't.

As a gamist, he probably doesn't care about how big a dragon really is so much as he cares about whether Forcecage works on it. As a simulationist, my primary concern is what it's really like to the characters in the gameworld (including how big), and whether Forcecage works on it is only a secondary concern: if it can't work, the wizard will know it and will cast something else instead. Different people get different things out of D&D, and that's okay as long as you respect other people's views instead of hysterically denouncing them.

And if I played with a DM who made bad rulings, or even just rulings that I didn't agree with because they came from a different paradigm than I use, guess what? I would leave that game. It's not hard.

Well, peace to you Sezarious and happy gaming.

-Max

 

[Celtavian]

I'm not sure to what you're referring, but as a simulationist I do expect that professional killers will plan ahead and talk tactics with each other offscreen. As a player I may express it in shorthand as "Pass Without Trace + Dancing Lights = NARC Beacon for missile fire" instead of bothering to translate it into words a PC would use (does he even call it Pass Without Trace? I've no idea), but a PC would absolutely be aware of the fact that shooting orcs in the dark is a smart tactic.

In short, I don't think I present any tactical ideas that are gamist in nature. And "gamist" isn't an insult, BTW, it's just a description of playstyle.

Edit: another example of the simulationist/gamist difference. We had a disagreement about Planar Binding at one point. You think it's weak, I think it's awesome, because you find the idea of a rich and powerful bad guy binding 40-odd Air Elementals or Invisible Stalkers using 10% of his net wealth and sending them after someone who really annoyed him to be ludicrous, presumably since it's so far outside the "normal" D&D threat parameters. To me, that's precisely why the bad guy would do it that way: he isn't sending out his minions to lose in an entertaining fashion, he's sending them to kill the enemy. And the more force you use, the fewer losses you take. That's a gamist/simulationist divide right there: fairness and fun vs. verisimilitude.

I have found some weaknesses in planar binding. Not to say it isn't still excellent in most situations allowing you to maintain consistent additional damage in 90% plus of encounters. Planar binding can be difficult to maintain against casters. Even a dispel magic can get rid of planar binding. If you use a high level slot and a 1000 gold to bind a creature that is eliminated with a 3rd level spell, that can be annoying. It's not necessarily easy, but possible. If you are throwing a ton of casters as enemies in game, planar binding does appear weaker. If you're using the current encounter design standard with less casters, planar binding is very potent.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I have found some weaknesses in planar binding. Not to say it isn't still excellent in most situations allowing you to maintain consistent additional damage in 90% plus of encounters. Planar binding can be difficult to maintain against casters. Even a dispel magic can get rid of planar binding. If you use a high level slot and a 1000 gold to bind a creature that is eliminated with a 3rd level spell, that can be annoying. It's not necessarily easy, but possible. If you are throwing a ton of casters as enemies in game, planar binding does appear weaker. If you're using the current encounter design standard with less casters, planar binding is very potent.

You're using Planar Binding differently than I've proposed to, though. If I'm viewing them as ordnance (expend 40,000 gold to kill a loathed enemy dead) I'd be perfectly happy to have a caster waste his turn casting Dispel Magic on one of my air elementals/invisible stalkers. Even if it works, the other 39 of them will murder him and all of his friends. The fact that I'll have 30-odd air elementals left over at the end to serve me for the next year is a bonus, but I am willing to expend all 40 to get the job done. (Hypothetical "I" = "a powerful, wealthy malevolent creature with reason to personally hate you".)

The whole reason I'd use 40 is to insulate myself against the "offense as defense" strategy, which Dispel Magic plays into. Against 8 elementals, if four PCs each eliminate one elemental in the first turn (via Dispel Magic/Action Surge/Banishment/whatever), you've degraded the enemy threat by 50% and will probably win. Against 40 elementals, you've degraded the threat by 10% and are probably about to die this turn.

Edited to add: in a more standard dungeoneering situation like you're discussing, if I'm a PC encountering an annoying number of enemy spellcasters who are dispelling my 9th level Planar Bindings and annoying me thereby... Hmmmm. If Counterspell isn't an option (is being Counterspelled), I think my next move would be to cast Seeming on all of my bound creatures. I know you like to use Goristros and yugoloths, so I'd probably disguise them as trolls and ogres. Who's going to waste time Dispelling Magic on a troll?

 

[Celtavian]

You're using Planar Binding differently than I've proposed to, though. If I'm viewing them as ordnance (expend 40,000 gold to kill a loathed enemy dead) I'd be perfectly happy to have a caster waste his turn casting Dispel Magic on one of my air elementals/invisible stalkers. Even if it works, the other 39 of them will murder him and all of his friends. The fact that I'll have 30-odd air elementals left over at the end to serve me for the next year is a bonus, but I am willing to expend all 40 to get the job done. (Hypothetical "I" = "a powerful, wealthy malevolent creature with reason to personally hate you".)

The whole reason I'd use 40 is to insulate myself against the "offense as defense" strategy, which Dispel Magic plays into. Against 8 elementals, if four PCs each eliminate one elemental in the first turn (via Dispel Magic/Action Surge/Banishment/whatever), you've degraded the enemy threat by 50% and will probably win. Against 40 elementals, you've degraded the threat by 10% and are probably about to die this turn.

Edited to add: in a more standard dungeoneering situation like you're discussing, if I'm a PC encountering an annoying number of enemy spellcasters who are dispelling my 9th level Planar Bindings and annoying me thereby... Hmmmm. If Counterspell isn't an option (is being Counterspelled), I think my next move would be to cast Seeming on all of my bound creatures. I know you like to use Goristros and yugoloths, so I'd probably disguise them as trolls and ogres. Who's going to waste time Dispelling Magic on a troll?

That could work. Though if they picked up an illusion, they might cast a dispel on the target and it could remove the illusion and every other spell on the target with one casting.

I was thinking it would be amusing to polymorph the goristro into an ape or some other powerful beast, once it reaches zero hit points a goristro would be left to fight. I would have to chuckle at the look on the enemy's face thinking the more powerful enemy was vanquished.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

That could work. Though if they picked up an illusion, they might cast a dispel on the target and it could remove the illusion and every other spell on the target with one casting.

I was thinking it would be amusing to polymorph the goristro into an ape or some other powerful beast, once it reaches zero hit points a goristro would be left to fight. I would have to chuckle at the look on the enemy's face thinking the more powerful enemy was vanquished.

Do enemy casters at your table often Dispel illusions or do they just disbelieve? I guess if I found that Seeming was being targeted for Dispel I'd move to something else like casting Invisibility V on my Goristros between combats. It's more expensive but more likely to get them into melee range intact. If that didn't work I might leave my Goristros at home unless I could think of something else. Oh well.

Polymorphed Goristro: that is so amusing that I think I must steal it for use against my PCs at some point.

 

[Celtavian]

Do enemy casters at your table often Dispel illusions or do they just disbelieve? I guess if I found that Seeming was being targeted for Dispel I'd move to something else like casting Invisibility V on my Goristros between combats. It's more expensive but more likely to get them into melee range intact. If that didn't work I might leave my Goristros at home unless I could think of something else. Oh well.

Polymorphed Goristro: that is so amusing that I think I must steal it for use against my PCs at some point.

Seems like one of those "Surprise, bitches! Now the real fight starts."

The look on your players' faces would be priceless. Since you're the DM, you can use a balor or pit fiend as well.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Actually, I want to spring this on them in non-combat time. When they next feed a live cow into the lifejammer and it dies, I could spend a karma point to say, "In a blatantly unfair and improbable turn of events, that wasn't a cow. It was a chasme True Polymorphed into a cow. Everyone within 30' of the input nodes, you hear a horrible droning noise, roll DC 13 Con saves please."

Unfortunately I've thought of something even more entertaining to do with that karma point instead.

Sent from my LS670 using Tapatalk 2

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

BTW, I just noticed that Nycaloths can cast Invisibility on themselves at will, so I wouldn't even have to burn spell slots keeping them hidden. Plus they can do the Darkness + Devil's Sight combo. Nice work if you can get it...