D&D 5E [OOC] A Light Hearted Princes of Elemental Evil Hack and Slash

[CanadienneBacon]

I'll have to do Dent's healing on Saturday, but want to echo the very thouhtful post by Kobold Stew. He spoke in artful broad terms. I like that he emphasizes the positive. We won! That's a big deal, particularly in adventure well-known to be "old school" in its tactic of routinely pitting adventurers against threats beyond their level.

Where KS spoke in broad strokes, I'll speak only for Dent. Shoving worked very well for us (great idea Steve Gorak and Forged Fury). I plan to have Dent do it again. If Tolan can do it with advantage, so much the better. In my opinion, anything that gives us advantage is worth it (like faerie fire).

Dent cannot operate at peak efficiency in magical darkness, but I recognize the utility of darkness, particularly when the field is wide open and we have lots of space to maneuver. Armor of agathys appears to also be very useful, but may hamper everyone else's ability to move about the battlefield. I have been wondering if it is best used on a cluster of foes a little away from us in a wide expanse, rather than in tight quarters.

We lack a magic weapon for Tolan. Perhaps there is a spell than can be cast on his weapon that makes it magical. I'll have a look in the PHB (tomorrow). Or perhaps someone more familiar with 5e knows of such a spell off the top of their head.

I'm interested in Dent helping a party member land a hit. So speak up, please, if you want to work together during combat to achieve that. I'm also interested in spending one to two rounds at the start of combat to conduct a little "battlefield control." We did this with Grimmjaw, when Dent used his Oath of Vengeance to hold Grimmjaw immobile and cast bane. Personally, I thought bane worked better than bless. I'd be interested to know you guys' thoughts on that (but don't want to hog the conversation). Anyone else have a few battlefield control tricks up their sleeve that bear mentioning?

 

[Steve Gorak]

Hey Guys!

Yay for us!!! I'm very glad we succeeded; things looked grim at the beginning. On my part, it's the first time I use the disengage action, and it was well worth sacrificing an action to reposition Thaliss.
A few points: I think the shoving worked well because the creature had disadvantage on strength checks. It seemed stronger than dexterous, so the dex check must have been lower. The tactic likely won't work as well if we are fighting more enemies and the hex isn't on the shoved creature.
Also, Thaliss' range blasts hurt a lot, but the attack will be at a disadvantage against a prone enemy (only adjacent foes will have advantage). This has to be taken into account.
Also, metagamingly-speaking, I thing that the "shover" should always post their actions first, this way the other characters get to have advantage on the target. Otherwise, the target will simply get up using half its movement, so it'll be a waste of an action...
Cheers,

SG

 

[Forged Fury]

Shoving is great, it's one of the reasons we were strongly recommending Shield Master as a feat. Another option would be a shove-grapple combo. If someone can successfully knock a thing down, someone else can attempt to grapple it. The beauty of grapple is that, as long as the enemy is grappled, they can't stand up. So if you have someone scary strong (like Raging Tolan), he could potentially lock an enemy down if it is on the ground giving it disadvantage on all attacks and those of us in melee getting advantage on all attacks. As Steve pointed out though, knocking people down is great for melee, quite bad for ranged attackers.

As far as darkness, it's main use is defensive. Tying up a bunch of enemies in darkness so they can't see or have line of sight on the other side of it is a battlefield control maneuver. But it does have its offensive uses for Damien and Aridha, in some cases. I'm not sure how Armor of Agathys restricts battlefield movement. If you're going to move in combat, you should really avoid provoking unless there's a really good reason for it. Or, as has been pointed out with the shoving suggestions, wait to do so until reactions have already been provoked. It's mostly a timing issue.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

One really good reason for moving during combat is to clear a bottleneck. I think it's worth a higher AC character incurring an opportunity attack to clear room for others to find favorable positions.

What I am hearing is we ought to wait for Thaliss to hex and then blast a foe, then begin an attempt to shove. The other thing I am hearing is that you want to cast darkness and armor of agathys at the top of the Initiative order. You'll let me know if I've misunderstood you? Just playing devil's advocate here (bad pun!), but if we feature Thaliss and Damien like that, I am less sure how Carradoc, Tolan, and Dent remain effective in early rounds of combat? It sounds like you want us to stay put and do very little while you handle things. Aridha, it seems, remains effective by becoming a spider.

Anyone have a proposed sequence of actions for combat? I'm listening, and am very willing to take direction.

 

[Steve Gorak]

One really good reason for moving during combat is to clear a bottleneck. I think it's worth a higher AC character incurring an opportunity attack to clear room for others to find favorable positions.

What I am hearing is we ought to wait for Thaliss to hex and then blast a foe, then begin an attempt to shove. The other thing I am hearing is that you want to cast darkness and armor of agathys at the top of the Initiative order. You'll let me know if I've misunderstood you? Just playing devil's advocate here (bad pun!), but if we feature Thaliss and Damien like that, I am less sure how Carradoc, Tolan, and Dent remain effective in early rounds of combat? It sounds like you want us to stay put and do very little while you handle things. Aridha, it seems, remains effective by becoming a spider.

Anyone have a proposed sequence of actions for combat? I'm listening, and am very willing to take direction.

FYI, there is always the option to use the disengage action to avoid Aoo and move around. Nothing wrong loosing 1 round to re-position strategically.

Also, while raging, Tolan has advantage on str checks, effectively becoming a shoving machine. I see this as a more effective combo: tolan shoves with advantage and the melee fighters go nuts on the prone , and Thaliss hexes another foe and blasts it (remember, the enemy can choose to roll for acrobatics (dex) or athletics (str), so hexing only covers one of the two, and common sense will allow it to be the highest one (skinny guys will get dex, and anything that looks strong, like gargoyles, str)). Thaliss' blasts also hurt more on the hexed ennemy, so if it is prone, he will hit less.
All of this will become more important next level, when his potential damage output effectively doubles.

Cheers,

SG

 

[Forged Fury]

You can always move without provoking OAs, it just takes your action to do so. Or just wait for someone else to provoke it as you only get one reaction per round. Short of 5' corridors, completely impassible bottlenecks are pretty rare in 5e.

I mean, I don't particularly care about who does what, it's really not that important. I think it makes a certain sense that we're going to be stepping on each other's toes in combat as far as our capabilities go. On top of that, many of our characters are selfish and really wouldn't care if we did in any event. We're not some tight fighting machine. If we were playing with normal initiative, I don't think we'd see as much problem, since those of us who do rely on maneuvering as a combat tactic would be going first more often than not. It's an artifact of efficiency.

As far as what reasonably knowledgeable adventurers would do if they lived in a world without individual initiative? It depends on the situation, naturally. If the enemy is at a safe distance, I would think they would want their casters to go first to take advantage of AoE spells rather than have the fighter types charge in first. If surrounded, figure out a way to eliminate the OAs to better spread out in the event of an AoE attack. If in a 5' corridor bottleneck, I'd say the first thing to do would be to re-position through a variety of disengage and regular movements to insure the tanks were at the front. It's all pretty relative.

It really depends on the character and whether they're a team player or not. Sometimes it's going to make more sense to simply wait before taking an action. Personally, I'd just say play how you want. We can always make snide comments about other character's tactics IC, as it is probably what our characters would do.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Respectfully, there should be a more satisfying option than "go wait in a corner for two rounds while the 'optimized' characters deal with this threat." I'll put on my thinking cap.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

[MENTION=552]Creamsteak[/MENTION], I've PMed you a query.

 

[Forged Fury]

Two rounds? I'll take that as hyperbole since no one ever said that. At worst, it's "Wait for this other person to go in the turn before you do." It's really no different than hafrogman suggesting that melee attackers wait for the shover to shove before attacking since it is otherwise a mostly useless trick if no one is there to take advantage (ha, pun) of the situation.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

A round to let you and Thaliss do your thing, and a round to help. Two rounds. Three, if there's disengage. Not sure why you're labeling that hyperbole.

Again, I am willing to tailor Dent's actions to make combat cohesively effective. I want to do that. I see what Dent can do to help Carradoc, Thaliss, Tolan, and Damien shine. Aridha is, I think, a self-contained unit. What can ya'll do to help everyone else shine? That's the piece that's missing.