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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8328179" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Alright, back from being away a bit.The conversation isn't getting anywhere, so hopefully a visual will help.  And I'm going to break out my thoughts more on various subjects in this thread.  The below isn't from the game I GMed 4 years ago (I don't have that map), but this is a reasonable facsimile thereof:[ATTACH=full]139699[/ATTACH]1)  This was basically a dungeon scenario for a Far Realms alien ship.  On your right is the typical dungeon corridor (55 * 10 * 15) connecting one bay (vessel/drone/maintenance) to the next bay (engineering) and on your left is the bay with vessels/drones/gear + equipment + work stations + tech to do the upkeep etc (those are the blackened out sections; blocking terrain).2)  The right green arrow is Grease cast as a Readied action against the lead of 3 ATST-like tank once they've spent their Move + half of their Dash.  They fail the Dex save, they fall prone.  These are large "creatures" basically like 8 * 8 * 12.3)  No, I am not letting the next two tanks leap over the lead tank.  This is going to lead to a pretty big aside, but I have to spell it out there.  Something I lament often is how (a) the square-cube law is so obnoxiously violated for large, nonmagical creatures in D&D yet (b) Fighters are notoriously brutally screwed in mythic noncombat action declarations because of D&D GM rote application of "earth physics" to basically constrain their permissible action declarations/move-space.  In our world, the closest analog we have to 12 ft bipeds is the great therapods (no, they aren't a match for a bipedal mech like an ATST or a Giant...but its the closest we have...and its less about the nature of the hip joint and more about the lack of explosive capacity in the posterior muscle chain).  They_could_not_leap.  These were not athletically explosive creatures.  The great T-Rex did not move explosively or swiftly.  It almost surely plodded behind sauropod herds and ate the sick/infirm/injured/slow/inattentive as carrion or easy to pick off.  The can't produce the massive amount of newtons of force required to move explosively and if they did, their skeletal structures would sustain catastrophic injuries.  Our large therapods had a ~7 ft gait and couldn't move explosively nor jump.  Arthropods don't get bigger than chickens in our world because their exoskeletons would suspend their respiration capacity entirely and crush them.  From a power : weight ratio perspective, your D&D Fighter of 20 Str and 280 lbs of armor and gear is unbelievably more powerful than a 25 Str (or even 30...or much much more) creature that weighs 9,000 - 10,000 lbs!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.And even if I was, I'm not having a 12 ft high walker tank somehow perform the necessary leap/twist move required to manage the tiny ceiling clearance between a wrecked ATST and the ceiling above them.  And no, I'm not doing the whole complete denial of the typical panicked sprawl + try to get up Amygdala Hijack that happens when even a highly trained individual suddenly loses their footing due to whatever reason.  I'm not having them fall flat to the ground like some Fantasia Spec Ops scene and then have the units behind them avoid the Grease.  And again, if we're doing the genre stuff, the ATST in RotJ that dealt with the log trap did exactly what I'm talking about above, it teetered, tried to sprawl, slipped sideways and then become a cluster-eff of on the ground after 2-3 seconds of trying to recover (where it was basically a big box of an impediment afterward).If this was out in the open and a huge or greater creature and no impediment (no blocking terrain, no small ceiling, no obstructions), then sure...you plop a 10 ft patch of terrain down that is supposed to be a problem, I have no problem allowing that creature to avoid it under most circumstances.  But there are so many situations in dungeons where that ain't it.  And there, Grease (particularly Readied Grease on a lead creature w/ low dex is hugely useful).4)  So effectively, you've got a situation where the Readied Grease on the chokepoint has created action denial for those 3 tanks.  Their subsequent round should have been them getting in the room and trying to deploy multiattack in melee.  Now its going to be getting in the room and hopefully trying to deploy a ranged attack against something in range.  So the Wizard has spent their Round + Reaction (their Reaction could have been for Shield) creating action denial for 3 * CR 9 ATSTs; they lose their Dash in their opening round.  Further, this loss of Dash has force-multiplying effects of causing them to lose optimal positioning in the following round as they have to spend that lost Dash action getting into the room.  This has the downstream effect of ensuring they lose at least half of their optimal damage deployment (they aren't multi-attacking) and possibly all of it (in this case, from memory, 0 were able to get in melee and 1 of the 3 lost all potential damage output because it had no targets for range due to blocking terrain interceding between it and line of sight to any target).That is not an insignificant expenditure of action economy.  That is a single 1st level spell and only 1 of 16 spell slots for an 18th level Wizard (not including their 4 * At-Will Cantrips and their At-Will Shield and their At-Will Misty Step).  Its a nothingburger investment for high return.5)  The far left Green Arrow is how you turn a terrain configuration into a huge connecting obstruction for a large creature to pursue.  It basically creates a 7 * 6 area of blocking terrain that Large Creatures have to go around.  So whereby Medium (or Small) creatures can easily navigate that area to snipe and get back to cover and then kite the creature around if the large creature pursues (or a Swashbuckler w/ Expertise Athletics can trivially leap the Grease to run in and out and attack) around the 7 * 6 effective area of blocking terrain to futilely try to get into melee to deploy multiattack (it can't...so it has to rely upon its single ranged attack...thus crippling its damage output).[HR][/HR]So this is my last word in this thread.  This is the best I can do to (a) convey the encounter situation from the level 18 game I GMed 4 years ago and (b) convey how a high level Wizard can deploy Grease for a particular encounter archetype (chokepoint management creating action denial + terrain amplification creating area denial which leads to significant net loss of damage output).  Again, a Wizard's job is to play Rock - Paper - Scissors with the game, ensuring they have (i) answers to various encounter archetypes when the come up (Grease is a great low investment + high return Spell for this particular encounter archetype) + (ii) surveil/recon Spells/Rituatls (iii) so they can optimize their Adventuring Day Spell Loadout and output.Grease is not overpowered at low level.  In fact, it probably should virtually never be loaded out because you need much more bang for your buck because your Spell Slots are not prolific like an endgame Wizard.  But compare...* 7the level Wizard only has 7 Spell Slots + 4 Cantrips + 4 levels worth of Spell Slot Recovery + low tier Rituals.  * 18th level Wizard has 16 spell slots + 4 * Cantrips + 9 levels worth of Spell Slot Recovery + At-Will 1st (often Shield) + At-Will 2nd (often Misty Step) + Expert Divination Slot Recovery + all tier Rituals.  For the exact same proposed Adventuring Day (6-8 encounters), Its a significant gain on 4 major axes:  Spells Known + Spell Slots + Save DC + Ritual power/breadth.  So that latter 18th level Wizard?  Yeah, that latter Wizard can absolutely afford to loadout Grease as a specific answer to a specific encounter archetype (Medium to Large Creature + Low Dex Save + Chokepoint management + Blocking Terrain Amplification leading to action denial and area denial and net damage output loss and maximum kiteability).  Its a nothingburger investment for high return.A Wizard's loadout is not a siloed piece of business where you look at each spell individually for individual prowess for any given encounter.  It should be working in concert, the entire suite amplifying the Wizard's power.  Looking at a Wizard's loadout/spell suite as siloed pieces by themselves is not remotely the correct way to approximate an endgame, well-played, Wizard's prowess.  Its Captain Planet or Voltron; with their powers combined...</blockquote>

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