Mark Chance said:
I'm thinking you maybe misread or misplayed that particular monster's abilities. Between its Concentration and
plane shift ability, escaping from a mere
Evard's black tentacles ought to have been chid's play for a regular mind flayer. How one 9 CRs higher couldn't do the same is mind-boggling.
Actually, I think you are the one misreading here. When a mind flayer uses plane shift, he's not tactically repositioning himself. Rahter, the fight's over and he's running off with his tail between his legs to a randoom spot on some other plane. He doesn't poof back.
If he hangs around, the tentacles grapple the flayer and squeeze the hell out of him. It's a problem.
In general, the "crowd control" spells--entangle, web, plant growth, spike stones, stone spikes, and EBT--are problematice for a couple of reasons.
First, they don't actually remove foes from the battlefield. Rather, they clutter up the battlefield even more while preventing the melee guys from getting to the trapped NPC's.
Second, these spells are basically "scissors-without-rocks", i.e. unlike most ways you can be attacked in D&D, there are scant few actual counter-defenses offered against their effects. The designers seemed to be of a mind that the spells should occupy huge areas, characters should be boned even if they make whatever saving throw is allowed, spell resistance shouldn't apply, the effects should be dismissable at will by the caster so he has a license to cast them with casual abandon, and worst of all that there really shouldn't be a lot of specific defenses against crowd-control. Notice how few monsters have ranks in Escape Artist, and that Freedom of Movement is a 4th-level spell, and it's not even on the Sor/Wiz list.
Oh, and arguably many of those spells just have horrible mechanics. Entangle is an especially bad case. If someone trapped in an entangle actually makes their DC 20 Strength check, they then get to do....nothing. That was a full-round action. They spend their whole action getting loose, and then stand around waiting to have make yet another Reflex save to avoid being trapped all over again. Which means those rolls are just wasting everyone's time. Likewise, even if you manage to avoid getting trapped in a web, it's a full-round action to extricate onself--even if you only need to move five or ten feet to get out.
People don't suggest ways to address the problems presented by these spells because there isn't a lot to do other than ban them or create a whole subset of rules to provide counter-defenses (basically doing what the designers should have done). In my campaign, I have merged Hide & Move Silently into a single skill. If a monster has both skills listed in his stat blocks, one becomes ranks of Escape Artist. That works out for me.
With entangle, you just have to steer the battles away from verdant areas when you don't want the spell scrubbing the tactical element of the game. I love the Silver Marches for just that reason.
With web, 25 foot ceilings are your friends. The one thing about web I do want to point out is that it does discourage fireballers from cutting loose, which you may consider a saving grace. But personally, if a character's hemmed-in and can't actually do anything, I'd just as soon take him off the initiative chart. YMMV.
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