For me, it depends very much on what the monster's motivation is for conflicting with the party. Zombies tear you apart and eat you. Gnolls IMC love destruction, and for them the payoff isn't when you fall to zero HP, it's when your corpse disintegrates--unless they are very desperate (about to be TPKed), they will always pause long enough to mutilate a dead body. A ghoul might just want to snag a meal, and as soon as it's got a dead body it tries to drag it away while the other ghouls keep fighting.
Except for organized, militaristic humanoids (who will have zero trouble dealing with a Guardian Aura after they realize what's going on), most monsters shouldn't be trying to "win" the combat or "challenge" the PCs. They have goals of their own, and those goals will dictate how they respond to a downed PC.
Agree with all that. Not what many groups do, but what all groups should. Many or even most DMs just make everyone battle till one side loses. Battle till death should be rare. Most enemies should try to escape or surrender if things look bad or they achieved their objective.
All true. But it won't stop certain monsters from trying--it's not like they know what the PC's Acrobatics score is. They just know they're trying to score an easy meal; or in a dragon's case, it just knows it's trying to pick off the weakest-looking PCs one at a time. It doesn't know that the spindly-looking wizard is actually a high-Dex Bladesinger with Acrobatics +9 who can just Dimension Door away even if he is caught.
That doesn't make Guardian Aura more powerful though. In fact it just indicates why it's still unexciting: it only covers a single threat vector.
It actually does make the ability more powerful. If an obvious strategy to counter it does not works well, it leads to the enemies wasting actions, something that is always good.
The difficult terrain thing is indeed a nice synergy. Spike Growth is pretty nice too for locking down movement.
Note that it's unclear when/whether difficult terrain impedes jumping movement. In some cases, some DMs may allow a monster like that toad-thing from Volo's to hop away with a PC in its gullet, ignoring 15' or so of the difficult terrain.
BTW, I am not arguing here that DMs should metagame against Guardian's Aura. I'm just arguing that Guardian's Aura isn't all that great against various things that a DM is probably already doing anyway. (At least, I am.)
I would probably laugh if the DM tried to bunny his way out of the difficult terrain area. Especially while grappling someone. And it actually does not work all that well. A long jump needs a 10 feet start and can go up to the Strengh score away. So long jumping out of the difficult terrain area leads to using 20 or 40 feet of movement (Depending it grappling makes him waste extra movement or not). That’s already enough to make it hard for most normal enemies to flee from your area without using dash (What is good as they are wasting an action that could be used for damage or worst). Standing jumps can go up to half your Strength Modifier distance, so up to 15 feet, and for most enemies that much lower.
If you’re using a grid, most enemies will only jump up to 10 feet away. I would rule that the square you’re getting out of would still be considered difficult terrain, so 10 or 20 feet to just get out of his spot. And most enemies will only ignore 1 square of difficult terrain with bunny strategy. Also, if they still are on difficult terrain area by the end of the jump, they must make a DC 10 Acrobatics Check to not fall prone. As most enemies do not have high scores in both strength and dexterity, and they will probably need a high strength to grapple as it is quite likely that they won’t have Athletics proficiency, there is a pretty good chance they will fail this check. They will still pass most times, but most of them will fail between 30-50% of the time.
So, jumping through difficult terrain is a good strategy if you’re out of it. If you´re already inside, it will still hinder your movement a lot, especially if you’re trying to grapple someone.
Depends on what happens after that. Remember that the point of grappling isn't just to remove an enemy from healing, it's to remove it from healing and party support. A dragon or a vampire will grapple and kidnap a PC in order to turn a 4:1 fight into a 1:1 fight. The fact that it shuts down Guardian Aura is just one more example of how 1:1 fights are harder.
You will need a lot of rounds or some kind of special movement and/or obstacle to grapple a single player far enough for the party to not be able to help. Otherwise it will just lead to a chase. Some players may fall behind, but others would even be able to attack the enemy while he tries to escape (For example, rogues, revised rangers and monks, who can dash as a bonus action, or anyone with a mobility buff).
Not saying that some kind of obstacle would be hard to come by. Even just a couple of mooks could do the trick.
I'd call "investing 15 levels in Ranger" a pre-requisite, wouldn't you? And you still only get healing up to half health. I agree that it's questionable design from the point of view of Champion invalidation, but with my powergamer hat on, it's hard to think of a campaign where I would want a 15th level ranger in the party even with this ability.
By pre-requisite I was trying to say some kind of action can’t reliably do every round. But I was unclear.
I'm not sure what this last sentence means. IME, the only reason why Aura of Vitality doesn't get cast more is because the party doesn't tend to take thousands of HP of damage. By level 15, a Paladorc (say Paladin 9/Sorcerer 6) with Extended Aura of Vitality would have, what, 8 castings of Aura of Vitality available to him? That's 1120 HP of healing per long rest, and he's not even a full-time healer.
I remembered Aura of Vitality differently. In my mind, it lasted 10 minutes, so I will remake my statement. A normal use of Aura of Vitality will only heal an average of 70 Hit Points, not enough to result in overhealing in many cases. That’s about the same of an up-cast Prayer of Healing on a party of 4 (3d8+4 from Wisdom leads to 17,5 per person x 4 = 70). Aura of Vitality is still better because it is faster and can be focused where it is needed. But Prayer of Healing can be upcasted effectively.
And if you are using 8 slots (On a spell that does not have upcasting. That’s all your highest-level spell slots.) and 8 sorcery points (What would lead to using at least one more slot because you only have 6 points by default) for healing, you’re clearly being more than a occasional healer. That’s a lot of resources. But I see you’re only showing a maximum healing capability, not a real example. Also, you are considering that the sorcerer used one of their 2 metamagic choices on one of the worst options just to double the amount of healing.
Death monks don't have to kill "hostile creatures". They can kill 2cp chickens in grotesque ways and still gain 10-25 temp HP from it. (And indeed, this is very much in character for them.)
While that is RAW, it is clearly not RAI. Many DMs would not allow it clearly appears as a try to game the system. And even if he does allow, chickens are living beings. They won’t just wait in a box till you need to kill them. Where the player is carrying them? How is he keeping them alive? These and many other questions could come up if a player try to do something like that. And how many chickens can he actually carry around?
Reiterating: I agree that the ability should be revised to be more idiomatic for 5E and to not eclipse the Champion. (And actually, in its current state it actually makes some of the 1/long rest Paladin capstones look exactly as lame as they in fact are.) But from a powergaming perspective, it doesn't matter if the ability is nerfed or not, because AFAICT it doesn't push the boundaries of what is already possible. The single most exciting thing it does is make melee parties more attractive/durable/fun; which is entirely a good thing BTW. But that is only a playstyle change, not a balance change. You could have killed the exact same monsters anyway, with a different party composition.
IMO, an ability is not overpowered because it will make the game too easy. It is overpowered if it is much more powerful than other similar abilities. There is only one similar ability (Champion Survivor), and Guardian Aura outclasses it by far.
