D&D 5E Observations and opinions after 8 levels and a dragon fight

[Celtavian]

By being very quiet? The skill is called Stealth, after all, not Hide in Shadows.

The rule for blindsight, which you quoted, doesn't say anything about perceiving "as though seeing", or "like sight", or "as well as sight". It just says the creature perceives "without relying on sight". In many cases, blindsight is desribed as being due to enhanced hearing, in which case it could be defeated by being sufficiently quiet, or behind a wall. It depends on how the DM rules it, but it doesn't automatically negate stealth.

Not that the rogue being able to hide would've made a lot of difference in this encounter. Sounds like most of the PCs were basically doomed as soon as they stepped into the dragon's lair.

There is no vague meaning. Perceive means detect. Blindsight does not say "detect location", but perceive surroundings as in everything. Stealth doesn't work against them within the range. It's not a vague rule. Not sure why anyone is trying to make it one. There is no Blindsense and Blindsight now.

You can stealth on someone with truesight. But not Blindsight. Nowhere does it say perceives with hearing. So moving silently is irrelevant.

At this point in time barring any clarification from the developers, if you are within a dragons Blindsight range it knows you're there whether Stealthing, invisible, or what not. It's not even something open for discussion unless you're somehow arguing the meaning of the word perceive.

 

[Celtavian]

Doomed? Why?
A totally unprepared and ill equipped party managed to beat (but not kill) a legendary creature way above their level while half of them were completely ineffective with no casulties.
I wouldn't call that doomed.

And for some reason people see this as indication that dragons are strong in this edition while it actually shows that they are rather weak as they are not able to deal with essentially a half party below their CR.

Three dead is no casualties?

 

[Celtavian]

It can't have been that hard when the party where half the PCs were not doing anything was still able to, more or less, defeat an encounter beyond deadly. How hard would it have been if they had thrown weapon and got a fly spell up to allow sneak attacking?

In my opinion you and others here are drawing the wrong conclusion from the fight. Not that the combats in 5E are challenging, or at least dragon fights, but that they are way too easy.
Think about it, by all logic the party should have at least have some casualties considering how ill prepared they were and how though, according to the guidelines, this fight was.

A more prepared party, even if just by chance (archery fighter, more fly spells,...) would have had a lot less problems with this deadly encounter.

Let me see if I can explain this to make you understand:

1. Three players died. We would have all died but for the lucky crit.

2. The particular DM that ran the encounter is by many considered a Monty Haul DM. He rarely kills anyone. His campaigns are generally considered easy. It's rare he kills players. He killed three members of a five party group without even trying that hard.

3. Concentration was broken by well-timed use of the breath weapon. Hard to make concentration checks with the breath bringing the pain. More fly spells would have helped if your casters are alive after the breath weapon. It's very hard to provide resistance to breath weapon damage for an entire group. Protection from energy is concentration. If you buff with fly or bless, no energy protection. No energy protection means breath weapons hammers casters. Dragon moves to target casters early knowing how to break concentration. How do you protect dragons from a smart dragon while your martial engage? Missile weapons would have done more damage quicker, but they wouldn't have killed him before he unleashed on us.

4. I do agree missile weapons would have made it much easier. Not thrown weapons so much given the dragon's ability to impair visibility and movement. But bows would have torn it up. Archery in this game is the best fighting style.

Dragons are rough. Their mobility makes them quite powerful. I imagine you will have to be there. Our experience made them quite tough. The DM had to play the dragon getting into melee with the paladin to give him a shot. If he had ruthlessly made the dragon make perfect tactical decisions every round, I don't think we live.

 

[Celtavian]

If i got it correctly, it took a lucky crit to make the dragon retreat, and the encounter is deeemed "deadly" but not beyond. Also, part of the deadliness comes from the fact a dragon is supposed to be hard to engage. This report is imo quite satisfying, especially when you compare it to Sacrosanct's whose group trivially defeated the same opponent by being able to gang bang it in melee (not a criticism, but it clearly shows the dragon CR takes into account skirmishing, not arena fighting where its damage output and resilience can't compete with 5 level 8 PCs).
Also, a fly spell was actually cast, but concentration was not sustained. Thrown weapons would certainly have been a boon, but from what I get, the dragon was close to achieve total victory without too much harm, and could have sustained a little more punishment. [MENTION=5834]Celtavian[/MENTION], do you think your DM could tell you how many HP the dragon had when he left ? There could be a bit of DM fiat here (a good call in my book).

I believe he said 19 hit points out of 180 or 200 or something. The paladin unloaded with Divine Smite during the one round or two he hit. All of his spell slots or nearly so. That's the only way the lucky crit managed to drive it off.

 

[Hussar]

I don't understand this thought process - this doesn't make dragons strong or weak. It only shows that CR isn't a hard and fast metric.

If you want strong dragons, have your weakest dragons be of the CR 15+ kind. This is easier than ever with bounded accuracy.

I just... I don't understand how this relates to dragons... if a dragon with a CR of 5 is stronger than another creature of CR 5, that doesn't make dragons "strong", it makes CR busted with regards to dragons.

Or am I missing something?

I'm not meaning to single you out, but I've seen this sentiment many times (in different shapes and forms) and it baffles me every time. I was simply hoping someone could enlightened me.

I believe the missing element you are looking for is personal motive. For some, it wouldn't matter if every PHB came with a 20 dollar bill tucked inside. For some, their first reaction would be to tell all and sundry how that 20 dollar bill was folded entirely incorrectly and a wide eyed exclamation of shock that everyone apparently has missed this incredible faux pas.

 

[Celtavian]

I believe the missing element you are looking for is personal motive. For some, it wouldn't matter if every PHB came with a 20 dollar bill tucked inside. For some, their first reaction would be to tell all and sundry how that 20 dollar bill was folded entirely incorrectly and a wide eyed exclamation of shock that everyone apparently has missed this incredible faux pas.

I would think personal experience affects opinion as well.

I know in previous editions for my group dragons were not that hard to beat because you could provide protection against their breath weapon and magical attacks. Players had nearly equal or better combat mobility to the dragon. Players did more damage than the dragon (by that I mean individual players). That is no longer the case. Dragons do more damage than an individual player, even a fighter using three attacks. Magic is so limited that you can't eliminate the dragon's attacks with magic. It makes them stronger relative to my experience with previous editions.

 

[Hussar]

I would think personal experience affects opinion as well.

I know in previous editions for my group dragons were not that hard to beat because you could provide protection against their breath weapon and magical attacks. Players had nearly equal or better combat mobility to the dragon. Players did more damage than the dragon (by that I mean individual players). That is no longer the case. Dragons do more damage than an individual player, even a fighter using three attacks. Magic is so limited that you can't eliminate the dragon's attacks with magic. It makes them stronger relative to my experience with previous editions.

I'd largely agree with that. In AD&D, dragons, except at the very largest, were mostly weak. You could throw an ancient huge black dragon at a 5th level party and the party would most likely win, possibly taking a loss, but possibly not. 2e drastically upped dragon HP and damage, but, then again, so did the PC's. By 3e, the PC's were easily on par with the dragon in terms of non-magical level, and dragons became mostly really heavily armoured and high HP wizards. And because they tended to understate the CR of dragons, (i.e. the dragons were at the very top of their CR compared to other critters) it made them seem tougher. I never really used dragons in 4e, so, I cannot comment there. 5e seems to have taken dragons considerably up a few notches and that's probably a good thing.

 

[ExploderWizard]

There is no vague meaning. Perceive means detect. Blindsight does not say "detect location", but perceive surroundings as in everything. Stealth doesn't work against them within the range. It's not a vague rule. Not sure why anyone is trying to make it one. There is no Blindsense and Blindsight now.

You can stealth on someone with truesight. But not Blindsight. Nowhere does it say perceives with hearing. So moving silently is irrelevant.

At this point in time barring any clarification from the developers, if you are within a dragons Blindsight range it knows you're there whether Stealthing, invisible, or what not. It's not even something open for discussion unless you're somehow arguing the meaning of the word perceive.

How does the ability to perceive mean that the perception is infallible?

If we apply that logic to everyone then no one would be able to hide EVER. A normal can perceive things visually. If we treated that fact as absolute then there is no reason to make a hide check at all because you have been perceived.

Blind sight is not TRUE sight. Being blind while having blind sight simply means you have normal attempts to detect hidden things even if you cannot see them NOT that you auto detect everything in range.

Sneaking up on a dragon should be very difficult but not impossible.

 

[occam]

There is no vague meaning. Perceive means detect. Blindsight does not say "detect location", but perceive surroundings as in everything. Stealth doesn't work against them within the range. It's not a vague rule. Not sure why anyone is trying to make it one. There is no Blindsense and Blindsight now.

You can stealth on someone with truesight. But not Blindsight. Nowhere does it say perceives with hearing. So moving silently is irrelevant.

At this point in time barring any clarification from the developers, if you are within a dragons Blindsight range it knows you're there whether Stealthing, invisible, or what not. It's not even something open for discussion unless you're somehow arguing the meaning of the word perceive.

In lieu of getting into a point-by-point discussion about it, I'll just say that I don't view the rule as absolutely as you do.

 

[Sacrosanct]

There is no vague meaning. Perceive means detect. Blindsight does not say "detect location", but perceive surroundings as in everything. Stealth doesn't work against them within the range. It's not a vague rule. Not sure why anyone is trying to make it one. There is no Blindsense and Blindsight now.
.

This is not true. Rogues have a blindsense ability, which is different from blindsight. You can still attempt stealth against a truesight or blindsight enabled creature, not only by just how each of those are described, but especially when reading how blindsense is described in how it differs from blindsight.

I'm also not sure why you have repeatedly said this statement of "Not sure why anyone is trying to make it [a debate]." You've made this statement in several topics, and it doesn't make sense. Your opinion on something is hardly objective fact, especially when there has been plenty of counter evidence that seems to point to you being mistaken.