TwoSix
Dirty, realism-hating munchkin powergamer
So much this. Like, I get (and support) wanting to experiment, but after a couple cracks at this, why not go with the safe option that people really liked?
D&D 5E Psionics in Tasha
Psychometry feels like more about the history of the item, and not about things like the specific enchantments. So, who made it and where and who famous it had killed.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Right, but there is some overlap. If you're seeing and hearing the prior owner utter a word right before the wand that you are now holding spits out a fireball, you've effectively identified it.
And fame should be irrelevant. This isn't Legend Lore. It's just picking up prior owner imprints.
JiffyPopTart
Bree-Yark
In 5e a cranium rat swarm is defined to be size medium. 5e does not define swarm as being a particular amount of individual creatures of the type of what makes it up, that is left up to the GM. Because of this the "size" of a swarm might vary from table to table. For me, a "swarm" is more than "some" or even "a lot". I define a swarm as an overwhelming amount of something such that it presents an actual threat to an adventurer. Thus, in my campaigns a swarm of cranium rats would stand out from the background rat population in a sewer not only because of the exposed brains or glowing heads but because its so many more rats than normal in one 5' square area that it becomes a distinct mechanical thing than just 10 or 20 individual rats taking up the same space.
Cranium rats aside, however, what has been described in your game wasn't even an encounter in the traditional sense of the word. You had an environment in which you introduced an enemy that isn't going to be noticed in play (because of defensive spell abilities of cranium rats AND you not separating them out as being a swarm or glowing). You then used a spell-like-ability to affect the party without giving them a chance to notice the casting OR identifying the source of it. Finally you allowed the cranium rats to exit the area safely, once again without any reasonable chance of being discovered.
This isn't an encounter, its just some narrative actions in your campaign that ended with the party knocking out a comrade and no other apparent damage done. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with using scenes like this in an adventure, nor do I think that monsters can only be used in "encounters". I don't think, however, it is a fair use case for describing the difference in power between a psionic monster and PC balance in an encounter since even if the rats had the VS components attached to their spells the player characters wouldn't have noticed because it would have just been some rats squeaking and jumping around a little bit which you would describe as not different than all the other rats around them acting.
Chaosmancer
Legend
Which is literally my point Max. If both the weapon attack and the spell trigger on a readied action, and the spell's trigger was waiting for the guard to be distracted into leaving an opening where they could not attack, why are you saying that the weapon attack would resolve first? They are equally fast actions. At a minimum, it is an initiative check.
Your analgoy fails on multiple fronts. First off, they aren't called levels. They are called Class Levels and Spell Levels, where as Hit Dice are called Hit Dice and Hit Dice. Also, Class Levels carry with them different mechanical aspects than Spell Levels. A spell level refers almost exclusively to the number of the slot you cast with, Class Levels are far far more complicated bits of mechanics. Meanwhile Hit Dice determine your base HP while Hit Dice... determine your Base Hp. They serve the same mechanical function, so deciding one can be used for healing and the other can't has no basis in the rules whatsoever.
That an Archmage does not have wizard class levels does not change this, since they do have spell slots, spell levels and use the same spells. By your logic all of those rules are different between monsters and PCs, but they are not.
An even deeper nail in this coffin is some information someone sent me. Like for example, in the Errata document for the Player's Handbook is states "Ranger’s Companion (p. 93). The following sentence has been added to the end of the first paragraph: “Like any creature, the beast can spend Hit Dice during a short rest.” "
Like any creature saying that this is not a unique ability to people with class levels.
Additionally, they pointed out that there was literally this question in a Sage Advice. The poster asked "Do monster have hit dice they can use to heal during a short rest ? " and Crawford's response was "A monster's Hit Dice are noted in parentheses in its hit point entry." Since the answer to the question was only to point to the Hit Dice existing, it helps support the idea that Hit Dice are Hit Dice, and they work the same for all individuals. Class Hit Dice are just calculated differently, they do not have unique mechanics.
Monsters and NPCs have Hit Dice. They can spend Hit Dice during a short rest, and recover them on a long rest, just like everyone else.
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Okay, @glass and @Paul Farquhar this should not annoy me as much as it does, but I have repeated and repeated this.
The Rats do not glow unless they want to. They literally have an ability that states this. I'm going to post it. The exposed brains are not mentioned at all. They could be constantly exposed (fitting with a Mind Flayer aesthetic) they could only be exposed when they are glowing, then could never be exposed, that one is up for interpretation. Bu the glowing is not. That is a choice on the part of the rat.
Illumination. As a bonus action, the cranium rat can shed dim light from its brain in a 5-foot radius or extinguish the light.
Illumination. As a bonus action, the swarm can shed dim light from its brains in a 5-foot radius, increase the illumination to bright light in a 5- to 20-foot radius (and dim light for an additional number of feet equal to the chosen radius), or extinguish the light.
Note, both the swarm and the individual can choose to take a bonus action to light up, or extinguish the light. Cranium Rats do not glow unless they want to be glowing. Stop saying that he purposefuly did not mention their "glowing brains" because they do not have glowing brains unless they want to be glowing. Which they would not want to have for a stealth mission.
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Or, the monsters used their abilities in an intellgient manner, befitting an intelligent foe.
The Cranium Rat Swarm is a lot of individuals, but they do not need to be standing out in the open, and individual rats can break off from the swarm with no loss in intelligence for 24 hours. So, there is no reason that a swarm couldn't sit, silent and still, in a wall, looking out from a few rat holes, and use their ability that requires no components and no displays to affect the party.
For another example, let us take a quick look at Night Hags. They can go Etheral at will, and shapechange at will. While Ethereal they can use their Nightmare Haunting ability to touch a humanoid while they sleep. If they maintain contact for an hour, the humanoid suffers from "dreadful visions" and gains no benefits from the long rest and has their max hp reduced by 1d10.
So, I could quite easily have a PC suffer from a horrible nightmare about a drowning halfling woman who was tortured and killed. They wake up, they haven't recovered anything. Players might get suspicious, but they didn't see anything (because you can't see into the ethereal plane without magic) and if they do see into the Etheral plane they will simply see a sad Halfling woman looking wistful and caressing the cheek of the inflicted person. Not looking evil, just mournful.
This could all lead to red herrings and maybe even a PC death, as they struggle to even figure out what is really going on. And catching the hag itself is pretty much impossible with how easily they slip through the planes, escaping via Etherealness or Plane Shift.
Would it be fair to the players to just start hitting them with this monster with no warning? Not really.
Is it perfectly within the capabilties and strategies of a cruel, genius intellect anciet being who doesn't want to be killed by the party and is not nearly arrogant enough to think they can take them head to head? Um... yes, completely. These are the abilities that make them a threat, instead of just a speed bump. Heck, it would be perfectly fine to have a coven of three of them, who not only could target multiple party members with similar visions, but also use spells like Dispel magic to remove the magical protections on the party, scry them, and do a whole lot of other nasty things.
JiffyPopTart
Bree-Yark
I agree, but then we have doubled back to what makes D&D a game.
Yes, there is no reason for an ancient evil hag to ever expose themselves. Yes, they could singlehandedly decimate the entire population of a fantasy town or city. They could do all these and sow even greater chaos, but to do so without giving the players some sort of interaction point then what you are describing is either narrative the players aren't supposed to interact with OR poor game design.
I had a hag as a major opponent introduced in my first 5e campaign. At low levels the player characters took over an abandoned keep and the campaign centered on them opening it up as a settlement on the edge of the wilderness. Very early on in their possession of the keep they realized that a portion of the wall in the basement level has some major powered wards keeping something sealed INSIDE the wall. They wisely choose to not mess with it. The ward was keeping a hag trapped in a small cavern starving for the hundreds of years that the keep sat idle and overrun. Eventually, over the course of the campaign, when the players were a more appropriate level to deal with the threat, some gnomes who had taken up residence in the basement took it upon themselves to do a little remodeling, which accidentally led to cracking the ward and setting the hag free.
The hag immediately set up on the denizens of the keep, feasting on the weak for a few weeks to get back to strength. Over this time the PCs learned there was something preying on sleeping people and killing them in their beds, but not physically. This gave them information leading them towards knowing something was happening on another plane or psychically and they prepared to beat this creature. A scouting mission by one of the players into the Ethereal let them spot the hag feeding off of another victim. The hag, in turn, noticed the PC who fled back to the prime material.
This finally led to the showdown between the party and the hag as an opponent. The hag began "feeding" off of the nightmares of the PC that had spotted her. The hag wanted the PC to know who it was because she was angry at the world and also knew the PC was already frightened of her for real (since they have fled). After a couple days of no sleep the party realized it was do-or-die (literally) to end it. They tore down the wall that the cracked ward was placed upon and found the natural cavern hidden behind it. While exploring the caverns the hag fled (just as they would not wanting to just straight up fight the party). Since the had was no expecting the party to invade her cavern, however, and since she fled quickly she left her hag-bag behind when she went. The party found and claimed her hag-bag and used that as the bait to draw her out into the prime material for a straight up brawl. The had, driven mad by hundreds of years of confinement AND super angry at the PCs for invading her cavern AND touching her hag-bag was lured in and once present was defeated by the party.
Everyone is able to play the game in the way their table thinks is fun. To me, its not fun to present a challenge to the party that they are unable to interact with and solve. This is why my hag didn't show up until the appropriate time in the campaign, didn't immediately just try to kill the party members so they died before they knew what was happening, didn't just run away taking her hag-bag when the heros knocked down the wall, and ultimately came back to fight to retrieve her hag-bag when the players used it as bait.
So, yes, a cranium rat swarm can, by the rules, disband into X number of individual cranium rats and mix in an existing rat population. They could follow the PCs fairly unnoticed this way. They could hide behind walls or nooks and crannies and crevices. But, when they form a swarm they create a medium sized "creature". This is a human sized pile of rats acting in unison. How many completely hidden nooks and crannies in a sewer can accommodate a medium sized creature? Cranium rats cannot "hide" in plain sight. @Paul Farquhar may have set up his rats to be behind walls and looking through spyholes, but my interpretation of the scene that the rats were in was that the PCs were in a fairly standard sewer and the rats were in the sewer with them, visible enough that if the players had asked to inspect individual rats they might have noticed the rats were strange.
When the swarm "forms" to be the size of a normal man the PCs would instantly notice a medium sized swarm of rats as different than lots of individual rats. That is just the basic rules of D&D. There is nothing in the cranium rat swarm that gives them any sort of invisibility or hide-in-plain sight abilities. What is being discussed here is giving the rats extra abilities not called out in their write up by saying that is just how it would work and then adding "Look how broken no components is" when you added a magical "Improved Invisibility" power and "Free Stealth Check" to the creature getting to cast the spell.
All of this said... @Paul Farquhar said that it was still OK for the monsters to be able to do this, just not the PCs. I don't understand the logic. Either something is overpowered or its not. As far as I know the lack of components only interacts with one small segment of opponents in 5e, those that can cast Counterspell. If I went through every monster and NPC write-up in every 5e book, what percentage of those have the ability to counterspell? I will be generous and say 2%. Does the fact that 2% of all the monsters and NPCs in 5e lose out on ONE of their abilities upset your campaigns so much?
There has been much talk about how you can't lock down a psion with hoods and gags and hand binding and swords at throat, etc.. and that's an indication no components is overpowered. Does anyone think its unfair you can't lock down a druid because they can turn into a bird and fly away? How about a sorcerer with Subtle Spell? How about a cleric using divine intervention?
Chaosmancer
Legend
I think I agree with you a lot @Sabathius42, but I also think this gets into playstyle differences.
For example, your hag did exactly what the rats did. It hid and used its abilities to remain undetected for as long as possible. Yes, you eventually had the players track it down, and eventually confronted it, but you also did exactly what I described. The Hag targeted a single PC, in a way that the PCs couldn't not sword to death, until they forced the confrontation.
But, where I was talking about a single segment of an encounter, you seem to be thinking I was talking about an entire arc. I wasn't. I believe that for an arc to be fulfilling though, the enemy has to be truly threatening, and most monsters are more threatening if they fight smart, and the PCs are forced to either get smarter or suffer some serious set-backs.
And, yes, Druids, Sorcerers and Clerics are incredibly powerful. But those abilities are also highly limited. Sorcerers still need their focuses or material components, and can only do this a limited amount. Clerics have a low percentage chance once per day (Even at high levels it is less than 1/5, generally closer to 12%). Druids have other counters (like mesh cages) and are limited to two per short rest.
Out of all of them, the druid is the most difficult to deal with, and even they are not as powerful as the Psion. It can be worked out, I'm not saying it can't, but dismissing it as a non-issue seems odd to me, when it is the first problem I come up with that needs solving.
For example, your hag did exactly what the rats did. It hid and used its abilities to remain undetected for as long as possible. Yes, you eventually had the players track it down, and eventually confronted it, but you also did exactly what I described. The Hag targeted a single PC, in a way that the PCs couldn't not sword to death, until they forced the confrontation.
But, where I was talking about a single segment of an encounter, you seem to be thinking I was talking about an entire arc. I wasn't. I believe that for an arc to be fulfilling though, the enemy has to be truly threatening, and most monsters are more threatening if they fight smart, and the PCs are forced to either get smarter or suffer some serious set-backs.
And, yes, Druids, Sorcerers and Clerics are incredibly powerful. But those abilities are also highly limited. Sorcerers still need their focuses or material components, and can only do this a limited amount. Clerics have a low percentage chance once per day (Even at high levels it is less than 1/5, generally closer to 12%). Druids have other counters (like mesh cages) and are limited to two per short rest.
Out of all of them, the druid is the most difficult to deal with, and even they are not as powerful as the Psion. It can be worked out, I'm not saying it can't, but dismissing it as a non-issue seems odd to me, when it is the first problem I come up with that needs solving.
glass
(he, him)
So @Paul Farquhar says that the text does not mention glowing at all and you cite the full text of mutliple specific abilities related to it. Interesting that you guys seem to have completely different (whichever book cranium rats are in).
Either way, a swarm of rats with enlarged and exposed brains will not easily be mistaken for a swarm of normal rats (unless you are going to tell me next that they have a special ability that allows them to disguise that too - if they don't then they look how they look, which is quite unlike normal rats).
_
glass.
Chaosmancer
Legend
That is probably because Paul is talking about the text describing them and what they do, while I quoted the statblock. The text talking about them has zero mention of light or exposed brains.
And, again, depends how you want the swarm to look and how close together each rat needs to be for the swarm to be a thing
JiffyPopTart
Bree-Yark
In 5e cranium rat swarms are medium creatures so every rat in the swarm is in the same square. They can't be spread out and still be a swarm unless you are changing up the mechanics of the creature from the rules as written.
That said, in 5e cranium rats do not have any mention of strange glowy heads, they just can turn on a head mounted flashlight if they want to. Everything else related to them being strange looking or glowy is also changing up the mechanics of the creature from the rules as written.
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