D&D 5E Sage Advice August 17th

[FormerlyHemlock]

I think Hemlock pointed out that the Giants can pin him, which is what I was goin for. Grapple to remove dodge, then pin to grant advantage.

I had in mind prone rather than pin, actually. By PHB rules, pinning (via Grappler feat) is almost entirely useless. It restrains both you and your target, so your target can attack you normally instead of at disadvantage, whereas proning gives you advantage and him disadvantage. The only good thing about pinning is that any allies with ranged weapons can attack your target with advantage instead of disadvantage.

As for his AoO....doesn't he only get one per round? I would think that a fight with more than one opponent would mean that he couldn't contain them all. Plus a AoO from a paladin shouldn't be all that devastating to a giant.

AoO can trigger smite, so it will do a moderate amount of damage, but yeah, AoOs are generally pretty bad at actually preventing overruns unless you have a high force-to-space ratio, which PCs generally don't. What prevents overruns in real life is roleplaying considerations such as the enemies not being smart enough to overrun, or not wanting to have their retreat cut off.

I have a paladin in my group too, and while he is a defensive beast, he also isn't much of a damage-dealer, unless he smites, which he usually doesn't because it is inefficient. Better to tank while the ranged characters (bardlock and necrolock, plus archer skeletons) deal the damage.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Some of the issues are letting them roll for stats and the extra perk, but even still, all that does is slightly adjust the trouble spot forward a few levels max. I already count them as +1 character for encounter purposes (there's just 3 of them normally) and they have generally just stomped all over everything.

That's normal for 5E. The difficulty is intentionally calibrated so that casual players with unoptimized characters will stomp all over everything. If your players know anything at all about tactics or optimization they will stomp things even harder. Feature, not bug.

You're doing the right thing by adjusting their effective level/party size.

 

[AriochQ]

Paladin's may be overpowered but let's be real here. You are the DM, you can't figure out how to challenge the party in combat?

In my current campaign one of the characters threads is to collect followers (I set the goal, not the player). It was initially meant to be sort of comic relief, this paladin tromping around Greyhawk with an entourage. Turns out it is now a tactical pain in the butt for me when it comes to combat since he insists on including them. I could kill them, but that would defeat the original purpose of the thread. So, I just design around it using a variety of tactics. Larger encounters with minions, exploit his need to keep them safe, have them do stupid stuff that actually hinders the party in combat, etc. In essence, as a DM no problem should be insurmountable.

If the high AC paladin bothers you that much, start by taking away his magic plate. As a DM you are responsible for all the players enjoying the game. If the other players don't mind taking the combat lumps, then play on. If they are beginning to resent the 'broken' character, fix it.

 

[Valador]

Maybe they should just remove all classes except Wizards, Sorcerers and Rogues since a lot of these threads that turn into "______ class is overpowered" are fueled by the same collection of people who seem to hate any class besides the ones mentioned...

 

[Mistwell]

A horde of kobolds (using pack tactics) will challenge him. They hit on a 20, with two shots at it each round (pack tactics - so they will be hitting roughly 1 out of every 10 attacks). They will focus on the big shiny guy who is hard to hit. They will move in, attack, and all but one will move back out again (he only gets his one reaction, so opportunity attacks won't matter) making room for the next ally to move in, attack, and move out again. They will do this round after around. Sure, many will drop to the wizard's fireball. But that Paladin will start to feel the pain - and this tactic doesn't "hurt" the other players really.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Wait. Why does padded armor (gambeson) cause a stealth disadvantage? And why would putting a chain shirt over padded armor stop this disadvantage?

The disadvantage seems like an editing error.

D&D and realism are not on the same page when it comes to...pretty much anything. I often get annoyed by it but I try to just let it go. The armor and weapons systems are almost pure fantasy.

 

[Celtavian]

I think Hemlock pointed out that the Giants can pin him, which is what I was goin for. Grapple to remove dodge, then pin to grant advantage.

As for his AoO....doesn't he only get one per round? I would think that a fight with more than one opponent would mean that he couldn't contain them all. Plus a AoO from a paladin shouldn't be all that devastating to a giant.

My group has a paladin in it and although he is a defensive beast, he's not a great damage dealer. So I'm picturing this scenario for my group, and I don't know if I would have the same concerns. But the paladin in my group doesn't have a huge AC, and the other characters are only a few AC points lower.

So I think as you said, narrowing that AC gap is probably your first step. Then, if you still notice a problem, you can try some of the other tactics folks have mentioned and then see if that helps or of the problem persists.

The AoO damage is mostly irrelevant. It is stopping the target from moving with Sentinel that is goal. With multiple enemies, it matters less. But one powerful enemy, it can be a pain.

 

[Celtavian]

Wait, you're in a campaign with giants and you're worried about how to mitigate dodging? A stone giant has +12 to Athletics! And a Fire Giant has +11. Each of them gets two attacks, so... one stone giant grapples the paladin at +12, stopping dodging, and then pushes him prone, granting advantage. The other two giants beat him unconscious, attacking four times at +9 with advantage for 19 points of damage per hit. Problem solved, PCs thwarted.

I still don't get why you think fighting the party as a unit (bypassing the paladin) constitutes "not taking into account the party." That is precisely what those tactics are doing: attacking the party's weak points. But okay, whatever. At least you know now how to take down the paladin with giants.

They are not fighting that level of giant yet. I'm not worried about how to mitigate dodging. You don't seem to understand the problem. I'm a little tired of explaining it. Your tactics are known and don't apply at the moment. Cloud Giants are quite nasty. When they are fighting groups of cloud giants, I'm thinking they will have problems. We ran into a group of three cloud giants. Nasty buggers.

Yes, but he can't cast Haste and Shield of Faith at the same time. In order to stack both buffs you need a second PC caster involved. Plus, Haste is pretty bad as a self-buff anyway, since you lose a round of attacks casting it and then losing concentration (e.g. to a Stone Giant's club) will then cost you your action for yet another round.

They have a second PC caster. They can pre-buff prior to entering combat and do so quite often given the scouting advantage PCs have.

 

[Celtavian]

Common sense does, ad the DM is allowed to insist on common sense. Nowhere else do identical effects stack like this (or do they?). Why should this be the case?

You are making problems for yourself by holding on to every tweet -- this hasn't even been promoted to an official Sage Advice yet. The source you are citing is just a compilation of tweets -- a medium that is designed to be ephemeral.

I like to follow the rules as much as possible. I like to keep my house rules document as small as possible.

Why did you mention the Vengeance paladin? Your argument keeps dodging and weaving. If the players are choosing to pool their resources so that the paladin is unhittable, that's just bad tactics. Don't make problems for yourself.

The problem is not the paladin is unhittable. I mentioned the vengeance paladin because paladins have archetypes.

 

[Kobold Stew]

I like to follow the rules as much as possible. I like to keep my house rules document as small as possible.

Exactly. Follow the rules, not an inconsistent twitter stream reflecting one person's gut reaction. How many people reading the PHB would assume that auras stack? I imagine, before the tweet, the answer was a total of 1.

The rules don't cover every eventuality, and the legalistic nit-picking ("aha! a precedent!") you are pursuing is only getting you into knots. If my players suggested that the auras of two paladins stacked, I suspect we'd all burst out laughing and continue on our merry way.