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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 7957050" data-attributes="member: 6801228">Okay, now I'm seeing a little more of what you are saying. Honestly? That is just a benefit of sentinel in my mind. You can lock down single creatures the exact same way right now. But, I would probably (after a round or two) have the creatures take the dodge action. The spell does allow them to do so if they can no longer run, and you are preventing them from running. This means you have to land the blow ad disadvantage. Still possible, but hitting all of them with disadvantage would be tough. Plus, fear allows you to save at the end of every turn, so the sentinel could very easily be surrounded by enemies after pulling this, and start getting smacked down. So, overall, powerful and nice use of tactics, but I wouldn't call it broken. After all, Fear can also drive an enemy to take 40d4 damage from spike growth, if you can set up the run perfectly.Frankly, that just seems like a good way to have people waste their time. Sure, "That's why the fighter protected the wizard" but you can't protect them from arrows, "Well, that's why the wizard took cover" which means either A) they have no targets to hit or B) An archer just has to ready an action to shoot the wizard when they pop out of cover, and waste the spell. "Well, that's why they cast protection from arrows" So now we have a spell you need to cast to be able to cast other spells. It just seems like a lot of effort to prevent players from doing things. I'd much rather my players did things.So, you don't want players to actually face save or die effects. You want them to fear save or die effects and when they don't react appropriately, then kill them. Because otherwise, why would you change how poison works after they know poison is in play? Honestly, that is just so much worse to me. Player 1 gets hit, and takes damage, but is fine. Player 2 gets hit next round and dies. The Dm shrugs and says "sorry, player 1 got hit with a lower dose than you did" That would not fly.Notice that in my snake example (becuase everyone knows snakes are venomous) I pointed out that knowing that might not matter. If you are thrown into a pit of snakes, you don't have a lot of other options, whether you know snakes are poisonous or not.But again, this seems to miss the point. Sure, the person who fell and missed all the spikes didn't die. So now they know traps are in the area. But they don't know that a single failed save is going to kill them. And, they likely went into this expecting traps anyways. The Tomb of Horrors, if memory serves, tells the players that the tomb is a death trap full of deadly traps. It doesn't need a trap in front to remind them that there are traps in the dungeon.When you feel the need to make it less likely the players will fail, you need to look at why that is. If you find yourself granting advantage on saves, because a failure will kill them, and you don't want them to die. Then maybe instead of giving advantage, you should make the trap not deadly.I know I've said it before, but seriously man. Run-on sentences. Please stop with them it makes you incredibly hard to read. That entire underlined portion is a single sentence.First, to see if I understand your 3.5 point, I looked up Combat Casting feat and Defensive Casting. Interestingly, they do not slow down your casting time whatsoever. So, Alice can stand up at the table, and cast defensively with Combat Casting. So, she can react the exact same in the negotiating room as she can in the battlefield. In fact, if I understand casting defensively correctly, if she succeeds on that check, they don't even get to throw wine in her face, because casting defensively prevents you from taking attacks of opportunity while casting. Sure, maybe she is doing a round spell instead of a standard action spell, but you posted the rules for Fireball and it is a standard action spell, so it happens by the end of her turn. To happen by the start of her next turn, it needs to be a 1 round spell. So, I don't even feel the need to address your points about 5e, because they apply equally well to 3.5. Concentration was a skill, one that any caster would seem to invest in, and I know skill bonuses in 3.5 could get quite large. In fact, just some quick napkin math... Skill ranks equal level +3 max. 3rd level wizard means +6, Combat Casting is +4, assume Con of 14 for another +2. DC to Defensively Cast Fireball is an 18, you have a +12. That is a 75% chance of not even dealing with the wineglass, and another 70% to 85% chance of succeeding after that. And this is at 3rd level, a 5e wizard can't even attempt this until 5th level, because they don't get Fireball until then. And at 5th level, Alice in 3.5 has higher skill ranks, so her chances of succeeding are even higher. Even if we give 5e Alice Warcaster, not being proficient in Con save and with the same stats, gives her about an 85% chance of succeeding. The exact same. So, any problems you see in 5e with this scenario are equally present in 3.5.</blockquote>

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