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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celtavian" data-source="post: 6596008" data-attributes="member: 5834">The DM isn't missing out on anything. He is making decisions based on the creatures fought. Why would your gnolls immediately try to grapple? He would take an action to grapple which leaves him restrained giving advantage to every other attacker hitting him. Why would he do that? You make statements like your viewpoint is somehow smart and interesting. Yet the tactic you state to use is an incredibly poor option that increases his chance to be hit by an enormous amount. On top of that a flaming sphere does 7 points of damage with a missed save. He has to spend time dragging the PC after grappling him to the sphere, while getting hammered with advantage due to being restrained, just to do 7 points of damage....maybe? That's a good tactic? Certainly not for the Fang, who gets multiple attacks. Or the Pack Leaders that hit for more damage.Subduing a player that wants to be subdued is a completely different scenario. Not a smart idea. They'll take more damage than they will do. They take damage while they're grappling. Give no damage. They are meat for the other party members. If this were your immediate tactic, I would be ecstatic even if they successfully grappled one of the frontline fighters. If they fail? They lose attacks. And do no damage. I'd welcome this tactic. If you failed, complete win for us as you lose damage your round. If you succeed, win for us. Advantage against that attacker for all attacks. We still have spells like thunderwave on two characters in reserve to push them back.So you recommend using every action immediately? It was two rounds before the leader was dead. He's going to immediately run up, give up his three attacks, and start a grapple? His two glaive wielding sons are going to drop their glaives and start a grapple?How do I stop this when they're willing to leave to do so? Make every creature out run them? Works a few times. It's not like they've never been ambushed. It's rare. We don't mind retreating to reset the fight or testing the capabilities of the enemy to set up later. It's a matter of how determined your PCs are to dictate the fight. We consider it vitally important.No kidding. The above gnoll fight was a very common fight for us. We have had far more difficult challenges. I don't know why you feel you need to tell any of us how to play. We've been doing a long time. That is why all this stuff is second nature to us.You even list tactics that put everything in our favor, yet consider them smart. I'm not getting that. Here is how the sequence would have worked:1. Gnoll Chieftain runs up: Attempts grapple with multiple attacks. Has no movement left to move target. All attacks against him now have advantage as he is restrained. He's getting focus fired and just made it easier to do. 2. Son two, same as Chieftain.3. Any failure by other one means they do no damage. In the damage race, they give us the edge.You could have tried it. It would have been unfavorable tactically for them, which would have welcomed. Why do you keep ignoring that the chieftain was dead in two rounds? That means his second round of attacks he was done. He grapples, he is still done in the second round. His grapple is over. He's done no damage or less. Our guy is free. They're still getting burned. Is this something you would do just to be interesting? Or do you not understand how the restrained mechanic puts things in our favor? You're attempt to tell us tactics we already calculated is odd. Grappling is nice, but a failure is very, very bad. Even a success isn't much better. Why do you think everyone focused on the leader gnoll? We also had other means at our disposal to drop them. That wasn't even our entire bag of tricks.Armchair DMing is great in theory. Things work out different in practice. I've been doing this for years. As long or longer than yourself. I need absolutely no help devising tactics from NPCs or PCs. If you would have used the above tactics and failed miserably wasting attacks attempting to grapple giving an even large damage advantage to the PCs, what would you have done then? Decided you used good tactics with a worse outcome? Grapple and shove aren't as good as you make them out to be. We've even tried using them ourselves to give them a try. They more often than not cause a damage deficit and give our enemies a tempo in the damage race to use a chess term. You play as you play. I will play as I play. If ever we end up at the same table, we'll see who is better tactically. Until that happens, I'll take my own advice. The advice you've given in this thread would have made the fight even easier given the circumstances.I'm still waiting for you to figure out how to make the low level wizard effective. I've done it. My other wizard player has done it. Seems most on this thread have done it. Hopefully you'll get there given the tactical advice you like to give.Undermountain is a nasty place. I don't envy your party. I don't like being trapped in a dungeon.</blockquote>

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