Never my intention. Just picked the 1st 2 effects that can ignore this ability and added an etc.
If your DM wants to kill a downed character is indeed pretty easy.
But in most tables I known is kind of an unwritten rule that downed characters would be ignored while active enemies still exist. But that's very unrealistic so let's ignore it.
Even ignoring that, is normal to expect that many enemies would stop attacking the 1st time that the character fall. But as soon as it fall once or twice and comes back up, they would certainly do something more permanent.
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.
It will be pretty hard to grapple someone within 30 feet of the Guardian if you're not flying.
First of all the other melee members of your party are very likely to have High Dex or Str values, and is pretty common for then to also have proficiency in Athletics or Acrobatics, so it will be hard to grapple then. Also, is much rarer for monsters to have skill proficiency than PCs.
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.
That's irrelevant if they are down but even so, the monster will be carrying someone, resulting in half movement, and it is through difficult terrain area, movement is halved again. So, a 30 feet moving enemy would carry ally outstanding 7,5 feet away from you. 15 feet if they dash. Even a tree can follow that.
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.)
Flying or very high move speeds can avoid that. I also think there is a rule somewhere that let you move while grappling someone without spending extra movement if you are at least 2 sizes bigger than the target, but I am not sure. So, Huge or Gargantuan enemies can also move away grappling easily.
Yes. Froghemoths, Giant Constrictor Snakes, etc., are not impaired by grappled Medium creatures.
Another thing that makes harder for the enemies to move away are the ranger spells. Just entangle, spike growth and ensnaring strike already make much more difficult to move away from the Ranger. Probably, there are also other spells that also work for that purpose.
And even if they actually grapple an ally out of your heal zone, the one attack they lost to use grapple is likely to deal much more damage than you can heal in one or two rounds, so that is good.
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.
I am not really much worried about the combat potential of the ability. Other than reviving fallen characters is mostly fine. What I do not like is the infinite out of combat healing... Most of that only works by spending resources or with some pre-requisite.
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.
A bard or a paladin can indeed use Aura of Vitality to heal everyone to full, but the paladin is using his highest spell slot available, and the Bard one of his precious Magical Secrets and one of his 3 3rd level slot that they have by that level. I am not saying is a bad use of a spell slot, it is an outstanding one, but it has a cost. And while in theory it can heal thousands HP, it will probably heal a two or three hundred at most.
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.
Polymorph limits highly the capabilities of the targeted PC. If it was played correctly instead of generating a tactics master 3 intelligence T-rex, it would be a much weaker spell, but that is another discussion. And again, has a spell slot cost.
And what battlerager ability are you referring to? The one that gives you up to 5 HP by giving everyone advantage to hit you? How is that even comparable?
Yes, that one. And death monks generating temp HP by killing things, and fiendlocks doing the same, and Inspiring Leader, and Necromancers sucking the life out of things with Grim Harvest. 5E isn't short on ways to gain temp HP or recover HP.
The monk and the warlock abilities are indeed pretty good, but TempHP still don’t stack and the power of the abilities will vary wildly by the presence or absence of mooks on the battle.
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.)
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.
