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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celtavian" data-source="post: 6597614" data-attributes="member: 5834">I worked out using grappled in the conditions of the battle. It would have worked out to an easier encounter for us. What happened when they tried to grapple:1. Movement ended with the gnoll leader and his sons up front. If they attempt to grapple immediately, they cannot move the target that round. The gnoll pack leaders would have had to drop their glaives to attempt to grapple eliminating any damage by them.2. The conga line does not work. As I stated earlier, it is half move to move through a creatures space. That would have reduced their move to 15 feet per round and requiring them to coordinate in an exact fashion to clear a spot. This took more than one round to accomplish and was impossible to accomplish without getting burned by the flaming sphere for the people that ended their 15 foot move near the sphere.3. If they did only half move, where the flaming sphere was set up would have burned three to five of them a round even moving in and out at half move.4. By the time the gnoll leaders did grapple if they did so on the first try, the gnoll fang was still deadd releasing the grapple having done less damage.6. The location of the sphere did not allow gnolls to stand without getting burned even waiting to move.7. Any gnoll attempting to grapple had to shoulder its spear or shield. Each missed grapple attempt by a gnoll did less damage once again.I redid the encounter using grappling tactics. Gnoll fang was still dead on round two. Gnolls did flood in the room at a later time having done less damage because a grapple attempt does nothing. It was real bad when they missed the grapple. Attacks became spread between five characters rather than one allowing wizard and Eldritch Knight to use their area of effect spells easier on the gnolls. thunderwave hammered them. The characters in the halls were still able to withstand attack with only 5 attacking them if they spread along the hallway hitting for less damage the warlock can easily take. The cleric has an AC of 18 as well and a 16 Con. She was able to withstand a few hits and maintain concentration.The grappling tactic sped up the battle, allowed more AoE use, put action economy in our favor, and spread the damage over more targets. We were still able to use the sphere to maintain control and redirect gnolls as we wished and do damage to them. Ran this battle three times with the grappling tactics. All three times we won and it resulted in an easier fight. The focused damage of the Fang and the gnoll packer leaders against the warlock/fighter ran three times resulted in a near win one time for them. Lucky crits on the warlock with a glaive are nasty.If you don't use the rule that they have half move moving through another creature's square, the results are better with grappling and a conga line attempt. That isn't the rule. Half move through another creature's square. Moving back and forth is a bad idea for a large group of creatures.It was interesting to see how the grapple and shove tactics worked. It removed damage while setting up other creatures for better attacks. Given the warlock/fighter has DR, the increased chance to hit for prone had a minimal effect given the creatures still weren't going to all get an attack on him. I think it is unreasonable for anyone to expect 23 gnolls to go after one guy when others attacking are present. I remember trying grapple tactics in 3E against enemies. It never worked out in the enemies favor. Always wasted time and damage trying to do something that if it failed even once, greatly improved the opponents chance of victory. It isn't much different in 5E. The best outcome was when the grapple hit the first time, but it still resulted ultimately in a loss. Oh boy, when the grapple attempt missed or a couple of miss, extremely bad for the gnolls. I also had to decide how many would try to grapple and how committed they were to the attempt while getting burned. It was an interesting look at gnoll psychology.Suffice it to say next time we are going to allow the mob through and ready AoE attacks to use on them. That is a better strategy than standing in the hallway allowing them to focus fire two characters. It was night and day when two thunderwave spells in 15 foot cubes washed over the gnolls at the same time. Much faster way to kill them. I think we'll used staggered spacing to direct them into the room while setting the casters in position to hammer them upon entrance.</blockquote>

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