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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 7707364" data-attributes="member: 6787650">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.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.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.)Yes. Froghemoths, Giant Constrictor Snakes, etc., are not impaired by grappled Medium creatures. 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'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.  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. 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.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.</blockquote>

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