Brown Jenkin
First Post
Upon looking at blink a PHB 3rd level spell you get basicly the same effect. Is using this spell cheesy? The advantage of the other tactic is Duration, but then you are using 2 spells instead if 1.
How a DM can counter cheesy PC tactics w/o using cheesy DM tactics.
- Thread starter FlimFlam
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Pielorinho
Iron Fist of Pelor
Brown Jenkin said:
First, you can target blinking opponents with spells; you can't target opponents in darkness with spells.
Second, you know which square a blinking opponent is in; you don't know which square an opponent in darkness is in.
Third, a blinking opponent (as Icebear points out) doesn't cause your movement rates and effective Str and Dex to lower; darkness does.
Fourth, a blinking opponent suffers a 20% miss chance against you; an opponent with blindsight in darkness doesn't.
I'm saving this one for last, because you pointed it out, but it bears repeating: blindsight and darkness last six hundred times as long as blink.
Daniel
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Brown Jenkin
First Post
Pielorinho said:
You are right they are not always an option, but then sometimes they are. I was not trying to give the only option, but hopefully showing that cheesy tricks can be countered by good tactics. Your wolf idea is good, but this is not a recurring PC tactic but a 1 time DM tactic.
As for battles having consequences, yes they should for the big ones, but shouldn't there be some lead up and battles with henchmen first, and wouldn't some of the henchen have heard of the party and its tactics or a least have a couple of escapees who can report back?
No not all villians will have spellcasters, but most should. How many villians will not have at least 1 as a henchman, considering how usefull they are especially in a world where there is so much of it. I could also come up with a list of other classes and monsters that get around this enough partially to threaten the party that there should be little chance of repetition in encounters. These can also be used as the big villians henchman.
Now if you are giving the Rogue fly as well, I would start getting iritaded as a player if the wizard is spending all of his spell slots to buff just one player all the time. As a foe to the party just a couple of times with dispell magic on the Rogue and we might teach the spellcaster a lesson in putting all his spells on one person.
Brown Jenkin
First Post
Pielorinho said:
These are not exactly the same spell so you have to look at the other aspects of Blink as well.
You can see and fight Ethereal creature.
You can travel through solid objects.
Does this equal a longer duration? possibly as these other feature make it able to be utilized for more things.
Also as a fun aspect Blink allows the rest of the party to participate in a more meaningful way. If you are against a single opponent Blink allows the rest of your party to attack it as well.
Pielorinho said:
Granted. Your enemies can't target the rogue, just like if he was invisible.
They still have to be 60' away or the spells will cancel each other, thus negating this tactic. And they're everybit as useless against the rogue's opponents as the enemies are useless against the rogue. Sure, they might fire arrows blindly in the dark (like that's going to work) or lob fireballs, which they might also do against an improved invisible rogue.
But with an improved invisible rogue, they can fight by his side.
Depends on what you call "useless", of course.
So now you have a rogue fighting by his lonesome all the module's encounters with only marginal help from the group. Does the fact that the enemies are blind make up for the fact that the rogue is mostly fighting alone ? Might be, I don't know. Depends on the encounters I guess. From a metagaming POV, of course, the rest of the party would probably not enjoy being the rogue's cheering squad encounter after encounter.
This is definitely one of those things that look better on paper than in actuality. Our group has been on the lookout to use this particular tactic for 4 levels now, and we have only found it (marginally) useful a grand total of once. The rest of the time, monsters with blindsight/tremorsense, lots of powerful monsters whom the rogue can't realistically fight alone (esp. element-resistant ones) and especially the narrowness of the battlefield and presence of other PCs nearby just don't make this a good idea. I would definitely have been better off taking a useful 4th level spell instead. Like Freedom of Movement or Greater Magic Weapon.
I'm not saying it's a bad strategy but there are serious downsides.
Dude, I already told you that this was cheesy. I agree. The solution is probably to tone its duration down to something like 10m per level or so. That's not what I was arguing about.
But it's still not as good as 4 improved invisibility spells (except for the duration). For one, it limits everybody's vision to 30 feet. Bad for spellcasters, usually. Also, while an invisible enemy might be anywhere, a blindsight-equipped enemy must remain in a set dark area (albeit a large one). Darkness is also easier to dispel than invisibility.
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Banning the Blindsight spell is a good idea but I think simply having the PCs taste the same medicine something interesting to try. For instance I would have a foe of theirs run for it when the party offs his group with this tactic. That foe will tell the rest of his organization of what happened and they come better prepared to deal with it. Then this organization hires an evil adventuring group or thieves guild (if they can't do it themselves) to deal with this terrible threat. They then cast Improved Invis and Blindsight on their Rogues and they go after the PC in the darkness. If the player objects I would tell him that the NPCs consider him the biggest threat and they need to eliminate that threat just to survive. The NPCs act just like the PCs for the sake of believability in my campaign. That means the NPCs must fight to the best of their abilities if they are intelligent. Then the next time the party faces these guys I would have the NPCs pull the Blindsight/Darkness trick on them. Of course it is important to only have this group do it and run the rest of the monsters like they don't know about it. This tells the players that the PCs are teaching the NPCs new tricks and now the NPCs need to exploit them for the sake of believability. It is a good bet that the players won't pull this kind of thing again or vary their tactics to not let their tricks be known.
Pielorinho
Iron Fist of Pelor
Brown Jenkin said:
Sure, you're right. On balance, though, the massively-increased duration is a massive benefit. Blink basically helps you with one situation, whether it's a combat, a door to pass, or whatever. The blindsight+darkness helps you all day long.
Given the choice between the two, I think B+D is far, far superior to blink, and just far superior to improved invisibility. Sure, blink and II have some advantages, but on balance B+D is the winner for its long duration and for the impediment it presents to the enemy. It's so good that a group that's discovered it is likely to use it in almost every combat; therefore, I nerf it.
Daniel
