D&D 5E How is the Cleric in Actual Play?

[Hussar]

Let's not forget that right in the writeup of gnolls, it says they choose easy targets for their raids and avoid strong points. Doesn't take a whole lot of genius to extrapolate from that that the gnoll horde would avoid the heavily armored cleric that's surrounded by glowy fire, and go after other, much squishier stuff first, avoiding the cleric as much as possible.

So, again, @CapnZapp, you keep bringing up these examples of how the Dev's have failed, but, on examination are simply examples of how a DM has not bothered to learn about the monster he or she is using but instead thinks that somehow "out of the box" means charge of the light brigade straight into the mouths of the cannons.

 

[Blue]

Most DM's don't consider it a solution to draw out fights to extremes, and they're not willing to wrack their brains, just to overcome deficiencies in stat blocks.

I'm reading this as "The monsters don't need to run into the obvious meat grinder, but DM's won't bother for them not to do so.", with the corrolary back to your earlier post of " Because DMs are too lazy to work around this the few (one?) spells like this, the concept that low level foes can still provide a challenge is disproved."

That's a bit of a stretch.

As a DM, I like to vary up encounters. Both in terms of how deadly there are (from RUN AWAY! to Oh Yeah, We're Heroes), but also the composition. Throwing hordes of foes occasionally lets different characters shine then a few tough foes, and also requires different tactics so that not all battles feel the same.

As a DM, if I know we're got a cleric with these I'll make sure some - but not all - of the foes have a reasonable ranged option. Let them be mighty for an encounter with it chopping up the primary-melee ones while the ranged ones are still making it a proper attrition battle.

 

[Oofta]

Classy move, again blaming the DMs.

If the shoe fits and all that.

No DM is excellent at every aspect of the game. Just because you have issues with some design decisions of the game doesn't mean the devs are to blame. Especially when others - myself included - have run fun and engaging games throwing relatively low level monsters at higher level parties.

A while back I threw a dozen gnolls that were around 10th level. I expected it to be a speed bump, and just a quick encounter as a warm-up with the real threat showing up in round 3 or so. Between some lucky rolls, bad strategy on part of the party and some terrain that was advantageous to the ambush it turned out to be a tough fight.

I'd go into setup and how it played out, but you seem to be immune to any feedback or advice.