D&D 5E (2014) Sage Advice August 17th

[FormerlyHemlock]

The worst culprit is the Stealth rules which are in several locations. Then again they usually spread the Stealth rules out.

I'm a little unhappy with the stacking rules. Crawford has stated that by RAW multiple Paladin protection auras stack. That's absurd. He seems to think the stacking rule only applies to spells. I recall reading somewhere that similar effects do not stack of any kind. Some of the similar effects are DM call. I'm starting to run into stacking rule problems, especially with AC.

At the moment the paladin can easily get his AC to 24. He's wearing +1 plate, a shield, defensive fighting style, and he casts shield of faith. If the paladin also cast shield that would raise it to 29. If he stacked haste, that would be 31. If at high level they eventually stack foresight on him, he would be nearly unhittable. I can't hand him anymore magic items without further exacerbating the problem with an overly high AC. If I build a creature to hit the paladin, he can straight tear the rest of the party apart. It's becoming an issue in encounter design.

Dispel Foresight and Shield of Faith/Haste, costing him his next turn from Haste lethargy. Then Counterspell Shield. None of this affects the other party members at all.

Or just bypass AC and push him off a cliff. Or just accept the fact that the paladin has invested a lot in defense, bypass him, and go after the other characters. Or just crank up the difficulty and rewards. Or a mix of all four.

A spellcasting ancient red dragon should still terrify this paladin, AC or no AC, aura or no aura. Mindflayers and intellect devourers likewise.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The more I see of Sage Advice, the less I agree with it.

Well, that's the "old edition" feel of 5E for you! I mean, I'm mostly kidding, but 2E's Sage Advice, was, frankly, complete rubbish approximately 75% of the time (sometime to the point of obviously misunderstanding the rules, and always with a very specific and odd vision of how AD&D 2E was played).

5E's Sage Advice is less rubbish, by a long way, but it's still about 10-30% "Really? That's a horrible way of doing things.".

So they didnt include delaying your turn coz it is complicated/slows down play and wreaks havoc with end of your turn effects.... Yet, ready action already complicats/slows play and there is already an optional initiative system that does a lot worse to "end of your turn" effects!!

We use the optional initiative rule, and we use delayed turns, and it all works great. Much better than the vanilla rules. It is a shame this ruling might scare younger groups away from trying these kinds of rules.

Yep. Ready Action is far more rules-complex and counter-intuitive than just allowing someone to choose to push their initiative later. I mean, if we allowed weird cycling around of initiative or the like, sure, that'd be dumb, but just holding to later? Pffft.

 

[Sacrosanct]

At the moment the paladin can easily get his AC to 24. He's wearing +1 plate, a shield, defensive fighting style, and he casts shield of faith. If the paladin also cast shield that would raise it to 29. If he stacked haste, that would be 31. If at high level they eventually stack foresight on him, he would be nearly unhittable. I can't hand him anymore magic items without further exacerbating the problem with an overly high AC. If I build a creature to hit the paladin, he can straight tear the rest of the party apart. It's becoming an issue in encounter design.

Shield isn't a paladin spell. Neither is haste. I would imagine other party members spending their spells on one person would make that one person pretty darn good (in the context of haste and other buffs). What level are these guys? They way you describe it, I'd have to say pretty high. That, or you're playing a Monty Haul campaign.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Dispel Foresight and Shield of Faith/Haste, costing him his next turn from Haste lethargy. Then Counterspell Shield. None of this affects the other party members at all.

That's good for one encounter with smart spellcasting enemies. It's not a reliable, re-usable tactic.

Or just bypass AC and push him off a cliff. Or just accept the fact that the paladin has invested a lot in defense, bypass him, and go after the other characters. Or just crank up the difficulty and rewards. Or a mix of all four.

Bypassing AC is the best solution proposed here - there are a fair few ways to do this and you only need to make his player scared occasionally to keep it real. Bypassing him relies on the party being bad at tactics and/or you basically cheating/cheesing it - I mean, some parties will let you do this repeatedly. Smart ones won't. Cranking up the difficulty kills everyone but him - that's the problem.

A spellcasting ancient red dragon should still terrify this paladin, AC or no AC, aura or no aura. Mindflayers and intellect devourers likewise.

They scare everyone, and the others probably more than him.

 

[SkidAce]

That's the problem. If I have them attack everyone else, everyone else dies very easily because they get hit very easily. The problem becomes creating encounters to challenge the paladin that don't destroy the rest of the party quickly and easily. Paladin has better hit points and a better AC than the rest of the party. He has better saves with Protection Aura. He has self-healing.

I think you might be missing a subtle point.

DON'T build the monsters to defeat the pally, thus ripping apart the others.

Build the monsters to combat the others (normal difficulty). So the monsters cant hit the paladin. No worries.

He engages his multiple opponents, slays them with ease, and has his moment to shine at what he is good at. Then turns around to see the others potentially bleeding out.

 

[SkidAce]

Ninja'd by [MENTION=6799649]Arial Black[/MENTION]

 

[Charles Rampant]

I often direct attacks at my party's tank - Warforged Eldritch Knight, using Shield and the elemental resistance reaction spell from Princes - and watch them bounce off. That is, to my mind, kind of the whole point of his character. He wants to have enemies fail to hit him. He wants to have me say, "You take eighteen points of damage", write the number down on his character sheet, and have another player exclaim in horror, "I would have died if I took that much!" So I let him. Not always; smarter enemies will bypass, such as Helmed Horrors which flanked the party and focus-fired the Clerics down, but often. And, you know, that is good. I also sometimes have enemies bunch up for the Sorceror to blast, and whatnot. I am a miniature wargames player, I can easily play with enough tactics to really trouble the players; but I want them to win, and look cool doing so, thus I pick the right level of tactics for the monsters and for the situation, to let the players win in a tough fight.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

That's good for one encounter with smart spellcasting enemies. It's not a reliable, re-usable tactic.

It's wouldn't be my go-to tactic, no. I suggested a mix of tactics, and my personal favorite would be "bypass the paladin and threaten the party's goals instead of trying to threaten individuals." To that end I would amp up the total encounter difficulty and give the enemy missile weapons. (I run a sandbox, mostly, but that's what I would do if I were building an encounter specifically to mess with the party, as karmic payback for karma the players spent on something else.)

But if you think about it, this actually is a reliable, reusable tactic if you build a certain kind of campaign. Consider the Mezzoloth. It's a low-damage, CR 5 creature whose most outstanding feature is the combination of blindsight and the ability to cast Darkvision. But they can also exhale toxic fumes in a Cloudkill (which bypasses AC), and they each can cast Dispel Magic twice per day.

You could throw two Mezzoloths and ten Hobgoblins at a four-man level 11 party and it wouldn't even break the Deadly threshold.

1.) The Mezzoloths have pre-cast Darkness so the PCs can't see exactly what they're facing;
2.) The paladin ventures into the darkness, confident in his AC, and attacks something once;
3.) The Mezzoloth dispels his magical protections;
4.) A few of the hobgoblins grab him, knock him prone, while the other hobgoblins beat on him with advantage and Martial Advantage;
5.) If he tries to Shield, the other Mezzoloth can Dispel the Shield;
6.) Chunks of paladin come flying out of the Darkness.

Will it happen this way? Not necessarily, but as long as it could happen this way, dramatic tension is maintained and the paladin will be appropriately cautious about jumping into balls of darkness.

It works almost exactly the same way if the hobgoblins are led by a beholder, except that it costs a lot more of your XP budget (33K vs 13.8K).

 

[Celtavian]

I think you might be missing a subtle point.

DON'T build the monsters to defeat the pally, thus ripping apart the others.

Build the monsters to combat the others (normal difficulty). So the monsters cant hit the paladin. No worries.

He engages his multiple opponents, slays them with ease, and has his moment to shine at what he is good at. Then turns around to see the others potentially bleeding out.

And what about solo monsters? Or monsters the paladin engages and smites doing a ton of damage? You don't seem to get it. High level monsters rip the party apart if building them by the rules. AC disparity is large between heavy armor wearers and non-heavy armor wearers. In a game with bounded accuracy and rather tight attack rolls, 3 to 5 point differences in AC are huge.

 

[Celtavian]

Plate armour making it hard for enemies to hurt you is not a bug; it's a feature.

Voluntarily lower his AC? If someone built a castle would you ask them to knock a couple of walls down to make them easier to hit?

The monsters' mistake is to keep attacking him rather than the squishies. Your mistake is trying to make monsters tougher to try to hurt the paladin, increasing chances of killing everyone else.

Keep the monsters the same, but change their behavior. Creatures change their behaviour in response to their environment. It's not like intelligent creatures don't associate plate armour with being harder to hurt.

Monsters will take the path of least resistance. Their purpose is not to kill the paladin specifically, nor to spread their attacks around the party in a 'fair' manner. They are not there to be 'fair'! They are there to...get a meal (so eat the ones that you don't need a tin-opener for), or prevent the party from invading, or reduce/eliminate the threat the party poses (kill the casters!) or..whatever.

They can simply choose not to waste attacks on the invulnerable guy. Will he feel that the fight was easy and no challenge if he survives but his mates all died?

You don't need to reduce his hit points in order to challenge him. His challenge is to do his part to help the party succeed, and if they all die then he has failed even if he is unhurt. He should be frantically trying to keep them alive. You don't need monsters tough enough to kill him, just monsters tough enough to challenge them!

As for his AC: that shield is easy enough to negate. Not by changing the rules or artificially making his choice to play a well-armoured PC meaningless, but by situations. You absolutely can say that heavy armour imposes disadvantage on swim checks! It's the DM's job to adjudicate these things in a fair way, and it's perfectly fair to say that wearing heavy armour makes swimming harder.

If he has to climb a ladder, impose penalties for using only one arm and make it almost impossible to climb a steep ladder with no hands. He then has to choose to put both sword and shield away, or choose only one of them to keep in hand. Weapons can be drawn as a free interaction, but donning/doffing a shield takes your action. Attack him as he climbs. If he only keeps his shield then he cannot attack back. If he only keeps his sword then he is -2 AC and needs an action to get it back. If he doesn't care about being attacked, wait till he gets near the top and have the baddies destroy or knock over the ladder. Armour doesn't help against falling damage and the ground isn't going to miss!

Don't arbitrarily change rules to make his choices meaningless. Instead, let him take the natural consequences of his choice to be well-armoured, both for good and for ill.

Most of this only works every once in a blue moon. The paladin has Athletics and a high strength, so grappling doesn't hit him too often.

I've already explained the problem of attacking other characters. They get ripped apart. I've explained clearly that 5E tends to escalate the damage done by higher level monsters. If they hit the other PCs too easily, they tend to rip them apart.

Even pulling monsters from the MM gives PCs problems other than the paladin. He has a lot of defenses and has far fewer weaknesses than any of the other classes very early on. Yet he can still do a truck ton of damage when he needs to. It's a bit off-putting that once class can do so much that is highly useful in the game compared to other PCs.

It's a bit hard to deal with in encounter design as a DM when designing an encounter to challenge a group.