D&D 5E Sage Advice August 17th

[Tony Vargas]

This is one of the true problem areas you can get into with any RPG - you have a genuine intra-party imbalance - by trying to challenge the OP PC, you will accidentally end up TPKing the party, killing the "normal" PCs first, then eventually the paladin last. Or, this game will become the "paladin show" and the other players will lose interest. Either way, this campaign will be ending early if you dont address the imbalance.

Some games more than others, D&D, traditionally, more than most, and 5e is nothing if not faithful to tradition. One PC has a crazy AC? You let him shine when that matters, and make sure there are enough situations where other things matter more that each other PC gets his chance, too. An experienced DM like Celtavian should be used to dealing with these kinds of issues. Not sure why he even brought it up. Clearly not because he needed advice.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Tell them to reread Extra Attack.

Of course there is nothing wrong with house ruling Extra Attack to work with Ready, either.

Though this makes me wonder from Jeremy Crawford's twitter.

Grappling/shoving are part of the Attack action (PH, 195). Take the Ready action to grapple/shove outside your turn.

If you can ready an attack action to grapple or shove why not get multiple attacks since that is just part of your attack action at higher levels?

 

[SkidAce]

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.

Sorry if I offended you, I was addressing the "one guy in a group is too hard to hit" concern you were speaking off.

I don't have a dog in the hunt for the other issues.

 

[SkidAce]

If everyone else dies easily when the monsters attack them, I'd suggest lowering the encounter difficulty to where it's an interesting fight when the monsters attack the rest of the party. Don't try to solve the problem of monsters not being able to take down the paladin -- instead solve the problem of the rest of the party dying too easily. Treat the paladin as invulnerable and assume any monsters attacking him won't add to the encounter difficulty; choose the rest of the encounter to challenge the rest of the party.

The paladin can feel good by surviving attacks, but those attacks are really just for show. You're not even trying to challenge his defenses -- he won that fight. But the paladin being invulnerable doesn't make the party succeed. He has to figure out how to keep his allies alive. Or other combat goals, like preventing enemies from escaping or stopping them before they set off the trap, complete the ritual, etc.

I'm not sure whether that play style would be fun for your group or not, but I think you could have lots of combats that are interesting and challenging for the party without the paladin ever being threatened. And, of course, you can occasionally throw in enemies like others have described that are specifically designed to be dangerous to the paladin.

This person said it better than I did.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Hmmmm. If the average is 2000 daily calories, that would be 80,000 calories. You would probably die from trying to stuff many calories in your system.

If routinely eating your entire day's worth of calories in a single berry does not give you diabetes, then there's no reason to assume this. Or any other 'realistic' flow on from goodberry 'nutrition'

Anyway - my point of view is that the goodberry ruling means that one particular not-particularly-thematic combination of classes basically obliterates long term hit point issues for near zero cost, and at low levels does the same for mid term healing. So no. It doesn't work in my game. At all. The spell creates berries, and does not directly heal.

As for delay - I think allowing players to synergize abilities is a good thing. Having a fixed, unchangeable initiative and no mechanism to change initiative count that isn't heavily penalized generates peculiarities (namely that rolling a high initiative actually sucks unless you're a ranged attacker and it's the very beginning of combat), and the corner cases and complexities seem fairly trivial and simple to adjudicate.

On the topic of the plate-wearing invincible paladin - stopping the party from achieving their goals is the monster's path. The player's duty is to achieve their goals. The fact that having one invincible party member doesn't really help that is not YOUR problem. The paladin's challenge isn't in preventing hit point damage to himself, it's in helping the party achieve their goals.

I suggest that if you'd had monsters ignore him in combat before this, then he would have changed how he allocated his resources and you wouldn't be looking at the steadily worsening 'problem' you have now.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Though this makes me wonder from Jeremy Crawford's twitter.

Grappling/shoving are part of the Attack action (PH, 195). Take the Ready action to grapple/shove outside your turn.

If you can ready an attack action to grapple or shove why not get multiple attacks since that is just part of your attack action at higher levels?

Wow, good catch.

In any case, with the initiative variant I use (Speed Factor/AD&D variant), all turns happen simultaneously so there's no asymmetry: you can Ready your full attacks. But you make a good case for inconsistency in the RAW.

 

[Celtavian]

Some games more than others, D&D, traditionally, more than most, and 5e is nothing if not faithful to tradition. One PC has a crazy AC? You let him shine when that matters, and make sure there are enough situations where other things matter more that each other PC gets his chance, too. An experienced DM like Celtavian should be used to dealing with these kinds of issues. Not sure why he even brought it up. Clearly not because he needed advice.

Not in 5E. This wasn't an issue in 3E/Pathfinder unless a guy built for AC. The paladin is not building for AC. So far it has been the case with any heavy armor and shield user. Plate armor, shield, and defensive fighting style, all obtainable very early on, gives an AC of 21. Your average rogue with an 18 dex has an AC of 17. Your average caster with mage armor and a 15 or 16 Dex has an AC of 15 to 16. Casting that one spell takes up 25% of his 1st level spell slots. Use shield once, it takes up 50% of his 1st level spell slots. These types of AC discrepancies weren't quite as large in 3E/Pathfinder largely due to easy access to disposable magic items allowing mage armor to be cast without expending a spell slot and shield lasting an entire combat. You would often see low level wizards in battle with roughly equivalent AC with a shield spell and mage armor with Dex. Rogue-types usually wore a Chain shirt with high Dex. You're starting with an AC of 18 with the fighter with plate armor and shield having an AC of 21. A much tighter AC grouping than 5E. 3E/Pathfinder doesn't have Bounded Accuracy. So the AC ranges often stay relatively tight unless someone really focuses on AC due to magic item inflation.

It's kind of a unique element of the idea behind Bounded Accuracy I'm running into as a DM. That's why I mentioned it. It didn't work this way in 3E/Pathfinder. I'm wondering if many other DMs have run into the situation. I always like to hear from others as far as their experiences with a fairly wide AC variation in a game with tight ACs and attack roles.

 

[Celtavian]

If routinely eating your entire day's worth of calories in a single berry does not give you diabetes, then there's no reason to assume this. Or any other 'realistic' flow on from goodberry 'nutrition'

Anyway - my point of view is that the goodberry ruling means that one particular not-particularly-thematic combination of classes basically obliterates long term hit point issues for near zero cost, and at low levels does the same for mid term healing. So no. It doesn't work in my game. At all. The spell creates berries, and does not directly heal.

As for delay - I think allowing players to synergize abilities is a good thing. Having a fixed, unchangeable initiative and no mechanism to change initiative count that isn't heavily penalized generates peculiarities (namely that rolling a high initiative actually sucks unless you're a ranged attacker and it's the very beginning of combat), and the corner cases and complexities seem fairly trivial and simple to adjudicate.

On the topic of the plate-wearing invincible paladin - stopping the party from achieving their goals is the monster's path. The player's duty is to achieve their goals. The fact that having one invincible party member doesn't really help that is not YOUR problem. The paladin's challenge isn't in preventing hit point damage to himself, it's in helping the party achieve their goals.

I suggest that if you'd had monsters ignore him in combat before this, then he would have changed how he allocated his resources and you wouldn't be looking at the steadily worsening 'problem' you have now.

It works fine in my game. We play to fairly high levels. 40 points spread out between 5th or higher level characters is nothing. A 2nd level cleric spell prayer of healing does better. goodberry with Life Cleric seems powerful at extremely low levels. It loses its potency fairly quickly.

 

[Celtavian]

If routinely eating your entire day's worth of calories in a single berry does not give you diabetes, then there's no reason to assume this. Or any other 'realistic' flow on from goodberry 'nutrition'

Anyway - my point of view is that the goodberry ruling means that one particular not-particularly-thematic combination of classes basically obliterates long term hit point issues for near zero cost, and at low levels does the same for mid term healing. So no. It doesn't work in my game. At all. The spell creates berries, and does not directly heal.

As for delay - I think allowing players to synergize abilities is a good thing. Having a fixed, unchangeable initiative and no mechanism to change initiative count that isn't heavily penalized generates peculiarities (namely that rolling a high initiative actually sucks unless you're a ranged attacker and it's the very beginning of combat), and the corner cases and complexities seem fairly trivial and simple to adjudicate.

On the topic of the plate-wearing invincible paladin - stopping the party from achieving their goals is the monster's path. The player's duty is to achieve their goals. The fact that having one invincible party member doesn't really help that is not YOUR problem. The paladin's challenge isn't in preventing hit point damage to himself, it's in helping the party achieve their goals.

I suggest that if you'd had monsters ignore him in combat before this, then he would have changed how he allocated his resources and you wouldn't be looking at the steadily worsening 'problem' you have now.

Paladins are not invincible. My concerns with their power is the breadth of it. They can deal with a wide variety of situations no other martial can come close matching.

 

[Celtavian]

Wow, good catch.

In any case, with the initiative variant I use (Speed Factor/AD&D variant), all turns happen simultaneously so there's no asymmetry: you can Ready your full attacks. But you make a good case for inconsistency in the RAW.

How is that inconsistent when it states a Grapple or Shove can replace a melee attack? Readying an Attack action is readying a melee attack. Why wouldn't you be able to make it a Grapple or Shove by RAW?