That's 4 dc10 checks for concentration not one higher dc check. even if it was one attack for 20 damage it's still not even dc11 until 22 damage. You just admitted my point about how something needs to be cable of acting as a credible solo encounter in order to have any meaningful chance of interrupting with a readied action.
I never said that is was higher than a DC 10. Pay attention to what I am saying, not what you want me to say.
4 DC 10 checks is significant, I've seen that cause a caster to drop their spell. With no Warcaster and only a +2 con that is an 35% chance of failure. One in Three, and you made four attacks.
And, even if the caster doesn't get interrupted and lose concentration, they still took 20 damage. Which is significant. No caster is going to feel safe taking that much damage in a single turn.
Without opportunity attacks, the battlefield ether needs to look like the defense line at the superbowl or the party can just walk right past everything careful not to come within 5 feet & go beat down the archers who are not getting an AoO if they try to pop alice on the battlefield with their readied action. If the archers are capable of acting as a credible solo encounter... what the heck kind of crazy slog are you picturing?
The game does include opportunity attacks though. So, our melee guys running past their melee guys means they either took the long way (30 ft of movement remember) or got an attack against them to reach those archers.
Oh, and left the big melee guys of the enemy force to charge Alice. And they will probably be doing even more damage than the archers.
No mages do not have just "low hp". Mages have maxhp-1 plus an absorption shield of maxhp-1 & that absorbtion shield is fully recovered with even a single point of healing.
That reads like nonsense. I assume this has something to do with your continual hatred for long rest healing.
Remember when you talked about how alice would optimize her skills in 3.5 to have a 75% chance f making the defensive casting check? Unlike in 3.5 when there were a ton of casteriffic feats other than combat caster, 5e is pretty lacking in that array of selection. Warcaster or resilient con make that dc fairly trivial.
You know what, I'll give you that one. 5e has fewer feats for casters than 3.5.
But, you have to admit something as well. That you received far more feats in 3.5. By my reading the average wizard (of any race) gained 12 feats during their career (One at first, scribe scroll, six by gaining one every 3rd level, and four bonus feats) They also gained ability scores separate from those feats.
A wizard in 5e has a maximum of 5 feats, with all of them potentially instead being ability score improvements. So, yes, wizards have far fewer feats that improve their casting. They also get less than half the feats they used to get, and cannot improve their baseline scores without forgoing those feats.
Without any meaningful hurdles from moving around the battlefield beyond maybe one AoO if they come within reach of an enemy the archers need to be much tougher or numerous to pose any challenge to the party and the GM is still expeted to not just focus fire on squishiest to crunchiest. I'm not sure what your point here is.
You said that in 3.5 the melee needs to juggle a few different tactics. One of them being to close with the archers so they couldn't target the back line. That is still a thing. And, if you are putting no meaningful hurdles in the battlefield, that isn't the fault of the rules. Quite a few different types of hurdles exist, even beyond the simple Attacks of Opportunity.
You really don't need to be very careful about auras/aoos/etc in 5e because they were practically removed from the game. Every container no matter how mundane was given the super awesome ablity to grab what you want without provoking an AoO of the magical handy haversack. you no longer provoke an AoO by moving from one threatened square into another threatened square so using the football analogy can slingshot right around the linebacker & not be hindered until you step away to tackle the quarterback as you are tackling him.
I'm glad to see that you felt no need to talk about auras at all despite bringing them up. They still exist, by the way. Trog smell aura, since that is the one you bring up usually. Have some damage auras, difficult terrain auras.
And, do you know, you are the only person who I ever see complaining that every backpack now lets you retrieve an item without getting an attack of opportunity? Sure, it was a rule change. If you don't like it, change it back.
But, just because they changed the rules don't mean you still do not have to be careful about Attacks of Opportunity. They still exist, they still change players tactics. I've seen many many players who go to move out of an enemy square, because they don't want to be in melee with it, and when reminded the enemy will get an Attack of opportunity on them, they stop their movement and stay within the danger zone.
You seem to be of the opinion that just because the rules could be harsher, the rules do not exist. They do exist, they do effect the game. They could be harsher, but that does not make them irrelevant.
I'm not sure what this is an example of other than the fact that you felt safe chasing them down alone & splitting the party due to how forgiving 5e is to bad decisions like that. Also I'm not going to castigate you for the things you did wrong, I'm going to point out that you needed to go that far before reaching that "intense moment" & get that dramatic story. In past editions a GM could trigger that sort of intensity across the party with an encounter that does not require one player to do something that will be pretty unanimously agreed upon being a stupid decision if things fall on the wrong side of the razor's edge. Not only could they do that, they didn't need to bring a PC down to one freaking hit point to do it. Congrats on your experience, it's a shame that 5e is structured to require you to go that far before the GM can trigger such an experience.
And you care more about the fact that what I did was "poor tactics" without knowing any other details of the fight.
Let me ask you this question. What if what I did was tactically sound? What if I left out details of that fight which makes my decision to follow that group of enemies a good decision, if risky? Would you still say it was a shame that DnD 5e wasn't deadlier to force us into this position under different circumstances?
You actually have very little information about the enemy, where we were, why we were fighting them, or anything else. You are just going forward with the assumption that I had to play stupidly to get a dramatic moment, where as in another edition I would not have had to be stupid, it would have been dramatic.
And, the point of the example was how even one Attack of Opportunity could be significant. That wasn't even the only attack of opportunity that night. We procced quite a few of them, because we felt the attacks were worth it in the context. While, you seem to be content with declaring that only a single attack could never be significant enough to change a parties tactics.
changing spells to one minute cast time is a gigantic disruption to balance. how do you intend to alter spells to account for a ten round casting time?
Read your PHB again. I didn't change a single rule for Conjure Elemental. It always takes a minute to cast.
My point was, just like she wouldn't stand up to cast a 1 minute spell that leaves her vulnerable to attack, she isn't going to stand up and cast a 1 round spell that leaves her vulnerable to attack. That's why I was quoting your big list of spells that would take a full round to cast.
You can houserule anything you want & it's a whole lot easier to houserule with fewer problems to apply something complex that exists in place of something els that exists. 5e DMs can not do that because the complex does not exist. You only need to compare the AoOs of past editions to 5e & look at the absurd flanking/facing section in the gm.
I'm going to cut this here. Because guess what? All the rules I mentioned in my 5e example are rules that exist already in the game.
You are focused on Attacks of Opportunity, but your own house rule example, by your own admission didn't use them.
You said that the 3.5 DM might houserule that fireball goes from a single action to a round, because of the setting. Allowing everyone in the room to take their turn before the spell goes off.
Fine, if the 3.5 DM can houserule, so can the 5e DM. Everyone rolls initiative, and she is counted as having the Fireball spell readied until her turn. Those rules exist, I have created nothing, all I have done is lengthen the casting time in the exact same manner as the 3.5 DM. With fairly equal results.
So, casting a fireball during the meeting is essentially the same in both games. Especially since you yourself pointed out, you can't make AoO's unarmed unless you are a monk. So, AoO's had nothing to do with your original point.
You only need to look at all the bad faith or bad service half baked variant rules presenting themselves as solutions to a gap in 5e's design to see why "just fix it(and design homebrew 6e)" is an absurd claim to make when even wotc made choices in design that left them not bothering
I've addressed this.
It isn't bad faith, it isn't bad service. Most of the variant rules clearly state what they are accomplishing and accomplish those goals.
You want something that goes beyond that. If you want things that are outside the rules, you have to either find someone who did it already, or make it yourself.
Stop blaming the designers because you don't want to put in a tiny fraction of the work they did.
