D&D General Martial/Caster balance and the Grease spell

[Dessert Nomad]

Personally, I can suspend some_level_of disbelief when handling big creatures in D&D-land. Dragons are magical creatures so whatever. Spiders can get large because somehow their exoskeletons are extraordinarily light-weight (magic or something). But no, I'm not just allowing massive creatures/tanks (even if they hypothetically possess the actual omnidirectional locomotion capacity to move in odd ways...in this case, they don't) to make ridiculous leaps/jumps/parkour nonsense. Not happening. If folks want to have their giants and dinosaurs and other creatures of that ilk doing crazy, square -cube law violating, explosive athletics...sure. You do you. I'm not doing that in my game.

You know, I had skipped the whole jumping bit since it's irrelevant, but I want to point out that what is described here is changing the basic rules of the game in a way that makes melee attackers much, much less effective, and anything that walks (instead of flying or teleporting) noticeably less effective. Part of the balance of a spell like grease is that, if you use the standard rules instead of house-ruling it to be better, almost any creature can easily step over it. I think describing a fire giant or dinosaur stepping over an obstacle that is less than it's stride as 'ridiculous leaps/jumps/parkour nonsense' is completely unfounded. A huge giant crossing 10x10 obstacle is roughly equivalent to a human crossing a 3' obstacle, and for a large creature it's like crossing a 5' obstacle. This isn't some kind of super-parkour, this is taking a slightly long step (huge) or making something that's barely a leap (large).

And discussing the balance of a spell vs a type of creature while house-ruling away the fact that RAW the creatures can easily bypass the spell is silly. Of course if you house rule enough in favor of a particular ability it becomes more powerful, but it's the balance of the house rule that's significant there.

Also, since I'm going on this sidetrack, I'll also say that I find modeling a fast blaster armed hit-and-run walker like the AT-ST with the slow, melee oriented stats of a fire giant a bit peculiar, especially when you're making the walker half the size of the movie walkers (which are around 25' instead of 12'). I'd give them good speed (like a 40-60' move rate, movie AT-ST has a top speed of 55 Mph) with a ranged attack as their main attack.

 

[Sithlord]

I’d like to thank the OP for this thread. The grease spell has been destroying my high level campaigns. And thanks to the many good ideas to the wonderful people on this thread i now have ideas on how to handle this situation when it arrives