D&D 5E Low Level Wizards Really Do Suck in 5E

[Celtavian]

Depends on the wall. Wall of Stone becomes permanent after 10 minutes.



Many illusions do not grant saves--Minor Illusion and Major Image, for example, require a specific action to examine them, and it grants an Investigation check and not a save. (White dragons are pretty much guaranteed to fail that check.) Even illusions like Phantasmal Force essentially force the dragon to burn a Legendary Resist to break the spell because its Int saves are so very, very bad.

Also, Blindsight doesn't help against illusions. You may be thinking of Truesight, which dragons don't have. According to the MM page 9, truesight does allow you to automatically detect illusions and automatically succeed on saves against them.

How does Blindsight not help? If it closes its eyes, it can't see the illusion. Phantasm might still work that directly effects mind. Illusion that doesn't could be defeated by Blindsight.

You think a dragon is going to let you stand there for 10 minutes casting wall of stone while you fight it? If you seal it after it flies away and wait in ambush, it may just take off until knows what is going on. If you wait for it leave its lair, you want to engage it immediately and not give it time to reach another entrance back into its lair. The dragons we've been fighting seem to have multiple passages into the lair. No way to seal them all.

 

[Celtavian]

What you need is for the party to collectively try to break Legendary Resistance ASAP, then a Paladin can compel duel ;-)

We've tried this. You'll be dead before you break its Legendary Resistance. It does a truck load of damage between its breath weapon, melee attacks, legendary actions, and lair actions.

Stop assuming that it misses its saves easily. It does not. Even with three casters, we're lucky to make it use one Legendary Resistance a round. Three rounds against a dragon will leave your party dead if you are lucky enough to force it to use its Legendary Resistance once a round. A lot of effect spells are concentration. As I stated, you're using your concentration on different spells.

Until you have to deal with the mechanics of concentration against a powerful creature with Legendary Resistance ripping your party apart faster than you can heal, you're just theorizing. Dragons get three attacks for roughly 30 points or more a turn. A legendary action for another 10 or more. A lair action for about 10 or more. They are doing 50 or more average damage a round to a target, usually after that target has taken a breath weapon hit. Not many save perhaps a raging barbarian can take that attack sequence for three rounds. He's doing this damage while layering damage on everyone else with the lair and legendary actions.

I have to give the designers their credit. Legendary and Lair actions seriously boost the potency of single creatures.

 

[KarinsDad]

A dragon has no incentive whatsoever to fight outside its lair. We tried to draw it outside its lair. We tried to scout it for when it goes hunting. It moves so fast, we had no way to keep up with it to follow it. There is no long-term flight options now unless you're a druid. We don't have a druid. Even if the druid follows it, no one else can keep up. If you were to cast a wall spell to seal it off from re-entering its lair, once again concentration.

With everything so limited, you don't have very good options for accomplishing things like drawing a dragon out of its lair. Spell durations are low now. Movement is slower, especially for groups. You have to be careful casting spells too soon when moving in a dragon's lair. What if you cast fly and then it takes over a minute to find the dragon? There are all kinds of logistical problems that did no exist in previous editions because of the severely limited options with magic now. I imagine that was intentional. It worked.

You get to save against illusions. The dragon has Blindsight. Generally, illusions not so effective against dragons and creatures with Blindsight or Truesight.

If the dragon has a large cavern big enough for it to fly in and still be 80+ feet away a lot of the time, that's a problem. If there are entrances/tunnels to the lair small enough so that the dragon has to come in close in order to leave or to attack the PCs, that might help. A properly placed wall spell (e.g. large wall of stone) near the edge of a cavern might give the PCs total cover unless the dragon flies over the wall where readied ranged attacks might work.

The idea is not to fight the dragon on its terms (wide open spaces within its lair). Adding flight to a fighter seems like fighting on the dragons terms and in its environment. You might have to fight it in its lair, but you don't necessarily have to play by the dragon's rules. Try to find smaller areas where the PCs can control more if possible.

 

[Schmoe]

Oh, optional rule. We're not using those yet.

So no feats then?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

One breath weapon or lair or legendary action kill all the mephitis. What keeps them alive with the Lair Actions and Legendary Actions? White dragon lair action 3d6 damage to up to three targets per round. Breath weapon cone hit them all. I guess it would use actions it normally spent on destroying party. I doubt the mephitis last very long. Mud Mephit burst only works against medium or smaller creatures. Dragon wouldn't even notice.

I've calculated using mephitis. I don't see an advantage. Dragon kill them quick and easy. Do I want to try to maintain concentration for a spell that may last a few rounds and limit me from getting the martials into combat? I doubt it.

Re: mud burst, yes it's useless against dragons. I already said that. The mud breath/burst might be useful against the ice toads though (are they medium?) and you get it for free.

Re: AoE effects, the lair effect barely even hurts mud mephits. Yes it can breathe on them, but remember the context: we're comparing Bigby's Hand RAW to Conjure Elemental which is cheaper, longer duration, and gives more HP. The breath weapon will kill Bigby's Hand just as fast as a mud mephit, but at least mud mephits can disperse over an area to have a chance at survival--and as you say, at least they're soaking breath attacks that would otherwise go on the party.

(Ice mephits are immune to cold but it's not clear you'd want them in this fight, since soaking the breath weapon is what you WANT them to do, AND they have a lower damage output.)

Mud mephits can't grapple dragons, so there's that, but they can Help attacks. And they don't eat up your bonus action.

Aside from the grapple-gargantuan-creatures potential, which is pretty niche, Bigby's Hand RAW is worse than Conjure Minor Elemental in every way that I can see. And here's the point: if your house rule were implemented, so that Bigby's Hand took your bonus action but not concentration, it would no longer be strictly worse, just different.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

We've tried this. You'll be dead before you break its Legendary Resistance. It does a truck load of damage between its breath weapon, melee attacks, legendary actions, and lair actions.

Stop assuming that it misses its saves easily. It does not. Even with three casters, we're lucky to make it use one Legendary Resistance a round. Three rounds against a dragon will leave your party dead if you are lucky enough to force it to use its Legendary Resistance once a round. A lot of effect spells are concentration. As I stated, you're using your concentration on different spells.

Which saves are you targeting? If DX, it will miss about half. If Int, it will miss about 80%. Depends on caster stats of course--you said you have a Staff of Power, which ought to push failures up even higher.

You keep saying that legendary creatures always make their saves, but the math says otherwise. It depends which save you target.

BTW, why is your dragon only getting one legendary action per turn? It should be getting three, for a total DPR around 100 (times hit percentage) counting the lair action.

 

[Celtavian]

So no feats then?

We're using feats. No options rules from the DMG.

 

[Celtavian]

Which saves are you targeting? If DX, it will miss about half. If Int, it will miss about 80%. Depends on caster stats of course--you said you have a Staff of Power, which ought to push failures up even higher.

You keep saying that legendary creatures always make their saves, but the math says otherwise. It depends which save you target.

BTW, why is your dragon only getting one legendary action per turn? It should be getting three, for a total DPR around 100 (times hit percentage) counting the lair action.

How does the Staff of Power push failures higher?

I did not say Legendary Creatures always make their saves. I said they also have good saves. Which means they make a lot of saves and then use Legendary Resistance for those few times they might miss and the spell is substantial enough to require it. For example, if you hit a dragon with a fireball that you roll 27 points of damage on. The dragon misses its save. Depending on its hit points, it may just take the damage and keep the Legendary Resistance for something more dangerous. It only needs to use Legendary Resistance for effects that matter. You cannot trick it into using Legendary Resistance because it is a metagame ability.

You're not understanding the math. It is far more complex than "Attack the low stat." It involves more complex strategic concerns than the saving throw itself.

You either don't understand or don't want to accept that wasting an action casting a spell that isn't going to work for the sole purpose of making a creature use its Legendary Resistance is an advantage to the creature. You gave a creature with a DPR in excess of 50 a free round of actions, while you just wasted your time trying to make it burn something it doesn't need more than three of to kill you and your party. If we had all day and unlimited spell slots, maybe we could blow through its Legendary Resistance. But in actual play we have been unable to make a Legendary Creature use all of its Legendary Resistance during a battle for ten levels before it managed to beat us. So we discarded that strategy because it didn't work. Now we are looking for spells that provide maximum effectiveness without saves, so we don't die.

You seem to think we did not try to blow through its Legendary Resistance. We most certainly did try. The bard, cleric, and wizard coordinated spells to try to make it burn through it. Didn't work. After a couple of rounds of trying, well, our martials were near dead, the cleric was down, and the wizard and bard weren't doing well either. That meant we had to switch to spells that worked.

I'm advising you to not even try. Better to take spells that work like scorching ray or similar spells because you want that dragon dead as soon as possible. If you have archer martials, you should be ok. Archers tear a dragon up. Dragon might as well run if your group is ranged heavy. it has next to no chance. You'll be able to add that much more damage with a ranged attack spell with no save. You'll be wasting time while your ranged archers kill it trying to beat Legendary Resistance.

Fights are fast and furious. Either it's dying or you're dying within three rounds.

 

[Celtavian]

Re: mud burst, yes it's useless against dragons. I already said that. The mud breath/burst might be useful against the ice toads though (are they medium?) and you get it for free.

Re: AoE effects, the lair effect barely even hurts mud mephits. Yes it can breathe on them, but remember the context: we're comparing Bigby's Hand RAW to Conjure Elemental which is cheaper, longer duration, and gives more HP. The breath weapon will kill Bigby's Hand just as fast as a mud mephit, but at least mud mephits can disperse over an area to have a chance at survival--and as you say, at least they're soaking breath attacks that would otherwise go on the party.

(Ice mephits are immune to cold but it's not clear you'd want them in this fight, since soaking the breath weapon is what you WANT them to do, AND they have a lower damage output.)

Mud mephits can't grapple dragons, so there's that, but they can Help attacks. And they don't eat up your bonus action.

Aside from the grapple-gargantuan-creatures potential, which is pretty niche, Bigby's Hand RAW is worse than Conjure Minor Elemental in every way that I can see. And here's the point: if your house rule were implemented, so that Bigby's Hand took your bonus action but not concentration, it would no longer be strictly worse, just different.

I might try Mephits. Not sure they'll survive the breath weapon. I could command the mephitis to stay outside the fight until the breath weapon is used. I'm not sure I want a concentration spell active, when I know I'm going to need to have fly up. I might let the bard cast fly, since he has a magic item that lets him use a bonus action to maintain concentration on two spells. We'll see how it works out next big fight.

 

[KarinsDad]

I could command the mephitis to stay outside the fight until the breath weapon is used.

This seems a little like metagaming. PCs really shouldn't know that a breath weapon has a recharge roll. If they had knowledge about a dragon, it should be that sometimes it breaths twice quickly and sometimes it doesn't. Even this level of detail seems a bit much for what PCs (or even knowledgeable NPCs) should know.

If a player has to go to this degree to get a decent chance of success, then monster design fails.