D&D 5E Sage Advice August 17th

[FormerlyHemlock]

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.

You're not yet ready to fight three stone giants, but you'll fight three cloud giants, which are rated higher. Okay?

And yeah, clearly nobody on this thread but you "understands the problem" since all you get every time you explain is shrugs and puzzled looks. To everyone else, "everyone dies, paladin last" looks like a bad outcome that the paladin should want to prevent. To you it's a win/win situation for the paladin. Clearly there is something else going on here that no one but you gets.

 

[kerbarian]

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.

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.

 

[Psikerlord#]

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.

Whereas the bard has a 15 or 16 AC. The cleric has a 19 AC. The rogue has a 16 AC. The ranger has a 17 AC. All have lower hit points and worse saves. If the creature attacks them, they get taken down quite quickly (except the cleric...clerics are pretty tough). I end up in this situation where the rest of the party feels a few CR less than the paladin or heavy armor user because Bounded Accuracy isn't working very well against the heavy armor using guy, it's working too well against the lesser armored guys with damage escalating and them getting hit easier. It's an odd situation I'm not accustomed to. I have to figure out how to handle it because at the moment only avoidance is effective.

Paladins are borderline OP in 5e and your particular paladin sounds OP due to extreme AC. 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.

The best way to deal with this situation, in my experience, is not get into it in the first place. No magic armour for the paladin, for example, once his AC starts to get a bit too high. But now that you have reached this point... I can only see two solutuions.

Number 1, give your other PCs magic items that make them OP too, to rebalance the party again. Then you can throw crazy monsters at the lot of them and it will still work. It will be a high powered game, but you'll be able to continue the campaign.

Or Number 2, the "out of game" solution - talk to the table about how the game is breaking, and what you can do to reset things in the best interests of the campaign going forward.

Best of luck.

 

[Remathilis]

Half elf gets +2 Cha (so he started with a 20) and +1 to any 2, one of which was Str (so 19 starting), HA mastery adds +1 Str or Con (he picked Str, so had 20 at level 4). Compounding matters, they also gave them a feat as a reward for a quest and a year of downtime, which he took as Lucky, so he can force 3 re-rolls a day on the rare chances something gets a crit.

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.

Thank you for reminding me why I don't roll stats (or HP) anymore...

 

[hawkeyefan]

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.

Gotcha. Sentinel is great. I can see how a solitary giant would be dead meat given that. I think throwing a few giants and especially some with varied attacks, would wind up being a better challenge for your group.

But I think you hit the nail on the head in trying to lessen the AC disparity. I think if you do that, then most of the rest of the issue will work itself out.

Thank you for reminding me why I don't roll stats (or HP) anymore...

Ha it took my group a few different editions to finally agree to point buy stats and taking average HP. One of the best decisions our group has ever made.

 

[Celtavian]

You're not yet ready to fight three stone giants, but you'll fight three cloud giants, which are rated higher. Okay?

And yeah, clearly nobody on this thread but you "understands the problem" since all you get every time you explain is shrugs and puzzled looks. To everyone else, "everyone dies, paladin last" looks like a bad outcome that the paladin should want to prevent. To you it's a win/win situation for the paladin. Clearly there is something else going on here that no one but you gets.

No, there are a few that understand the problem. Some support the idea of narrowing the AC gap. I think that will help solve the problem, so I don't have a monster that does the appropriate or slightly lower damage to the paladin and far above expected damage to the other PCs.

Bounded Accuracy is built with the idea of accelerating damage and hit points balancing out the lack of high AC. In mechanical terms that means a higher CR creature will hit more doing more damage and the characters will do the same. The problem I'm having is this mechanic isn't working well because I have high AC variation in the party with a couple of heavy armor PCs (Paladin and warlock) very hard to hit and a bunch of low AC targets (Bard, sorcerer/rogue, archer ranger) very easy to hit. The AC variation is roughly 4 base and up to 8 with spells (in the case of the ranger and sorcerer/rogue) to 6 to 10 in the case of the bard. The cleric is between with a 19 AC with a shield. So when I go after the ranger or sorcerer/rogue, they die real quick because they get hit multiple times. When I go after the paladin or warlock/fighter, they don't get hit much and take very little damage. They can practically kill targets that easily defeat the rogue/sorcerer and ranger alone.

I have to make this fun for all of the PCs. Tactics for killing them isn't much help. I know how to do that and can do it any time like any DM. It's designing encounters that make fights fun for the group that is the challenge. Fights where if I go after the rogue and archer first, they don't die while the paladin and warlock/fighter bat easy cleanup because they barely get hit.

What I'm going to currently attempt is throw in some AC magic items to close the AC gap. 4 to 6 points of base AC in a game with this Bounded Accuracy mechanic might be a little high. I think keeping tighter AC ranges will help making encounter design easier for me.

Grappling is another situation that is pretty hard on casters and non-martials. If you don't have Athletics or Acrobatics, grappling is a near auto-success. If you have one of the skills, it's very competitive if not in favor of the PC with the skill. Casters do have a few means to escape like misty step since grappling does not disrupt casting. I'm glad it doesn't or casters would be in real trouble.

I'll see how closing the AC gap works and go from there. If Grappling becomes equally problematic, I may have to do something about that. I'll keep adapting as I run into problems. I know you never played 3E/Pathfinder, but this didn't happen in that version of D&D because casters had long-lasting, powerful defensive spells that equaled heavy armor and access to magic items that also gave them near equivalent armor class unless you were heavily built for AC. That tighter AC range doesn't exist in 5E. Caster defensive spells are short duration, limited by number of slots, and not as powerful. I might at some point in the future come up with some defensive features for casters other than spells. First I'm going to try to tighten AC variation with magic.

 

[Celtavian]

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.

Crawford is right. There is nothing that specifically states paladin auras don't stack. We know advantage/disad don't stack. We know spells of the same type don't stack. I worked in a house rule where guidance and bardic inspiration don't stack because I feel they do the same thing. I might write some house rules for stacking because I definitely don't want paladin auras stacking with someone like say aura of power or beacon of hope. That would be bad.

 

[Blue]

The biggest problem with the proposed solutions is they don't take into account a party. They focus on how to handle the individual paladin player. If the enemies waste actions on the paladin, that is a win for the party. If the creatures ignore the paladin and go after the other PCs, the paladin attacks them with impunity. He doesn't do weak damage. If the PCs decide to spread out too far enabling solo attacking, they get ripped apart because Bounded Accuracy is built with the idea that doing more hit point damage is the balancing factor over AC. So you get higher CR creatures doing a lot of damage that rip apart the easily hit PCs, while having no incentive to fight hard to hit PCs like the paladin or other heavy armor users.

It's an unusual situation I'm dealing with in a campaign focused on giants. Giants do heavy damage with a high hit roll. The AC disparity really stands out as does the damage differences. If the giants attack the paladin, he survives quite well with shield of faith and dodging to let the other PCs kill the giants. If the giants attack the other PCs, they plow through their hit points like a katana through tissue. They hit them much easier. It sort of ends up in this odd situation where the paladin is standing strong, while the other PCs are in various stages of nearly dead or fallen. They can't take the hits. I wish the AC disparity wasn't so high with this Bounded Accuracy thing because the damage disparity isn't near as great as the AC disparity. Paladins can bring it with damage.

I'll get it figured out. I think I'm going to hand out some magic armor to the other PCs. Close the AC gap some.

You're absolutely right, you need to look at the party. My first thought is you need to vary up sometimes and have weaker (but more plentiful) foes - ones whom can ignore the paladin and do a reasonable amount of damage to everyone else without ripping them apart, and if the paladin goes smite heavy on them will use up a lot of his spell slots.

More encounters some days will also use up buffs since you say that the scout and prep for each battle. Also helps use up those smite slots.

But then I was reading that you are doing giant focus. This sounds like you have crated an environment where the paladin can excel even more than usual. Few attacks with big damage get negated well by his AC, big bags of HP are worthwhile throwing heavier smites without wasting them, few opponents really plays into the "buff one PC" model, and few attack against saves instead of AC.

It looks like the players (plural) have worked out a very effective response to giants. If you want to challenge them, shake it up. More things vs. saves (and not just spells). Hordes of weaker creatures. Mixed creatures with a giant to keep the pally busy and a bunch of henchthings to swarm around him toward everyone else. False contacts so they waste prep-spells and get more frugal with them. The occasional dispel magic or grapple. Interesting terrain. Pincer movements with foes from either side. And letting the paladin show off how dang untouchable they are as well.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Thank you for reminding me why I don't roll stats (or HP) anymore...

Yeah, I figure I'll eventually get a better handle on their prowess, but it's been a rough go for the past level or two. The way we did stats was to let anyone use anyone else's array if they wanted (or the standard array), so at least no one got stiffed in that department. Unsurprisingly, the warlock also used that array. We do use average HP (round up).

 

[Uchawi]

Sage advice by any other name would smell as sweet - Errata