D&D 5E save or boring

[mellored]

Sounds like you need a condition track.

Agreed. Or at least, make them 1/2 useful.

Like...

Hold person:
Target's speed is reduced by 1/2, and they have disadvantage on all their attacks and dexterity saving throws. Attacks against them have advantage.
At the end of their their turn, they roll a wisdom save. If they succeed the spell ends, if they fail, they are paralyzed. They can make and additional save at the end of each of their turns.

 

[dmnqwk]

I definitely think the players you are dealing with don't seem all that interested.

As a former hockey goalkeeper, I actually understand very well the effort required to pay attention when I'm not doing much - for 70 minutes (if the time sounds off to you, you're probably thinking of the wrong kind of hockey) a game I might only see action for 5, or I might get to enjoy it for over 50. But I still have to concentrate and focus on it for the same period of time.

As for the "they're adults" they are also participating in a game you set up, and any other club, society of group would demand a certain level of respect and/or co-operation which might include them to stop using their phones and to pay attention to the rest of the fight.

Ultimately I would ask for player feedback as to why they all seem unwilling/unable to stay focused just because their character is down and then build the game around trying to avoid that scenario. Oh and also consider more Dragons - the new legendary ability of dragons to pass saving throws because they fancy doing it can help stop this save or ruin the encounter.

 

[abirdcall]

The adult thing to do would be to have a conversation about the phones. Discuss the benefits and problems and come to a decision regarding their use so that there are no hard feelings.

There are no phones at the table I play at. One new player did it so we talked to them. Next session they brought a book to read instead so we asked them to not come back.

It is a perfectly reasonable and adult way of ha doing the situation. Make your desires known.

 

[Alzrius]

Do you know what you call a person who succeeds 1/3 of the time? A hall of fame baseball player. It's all about perspective. Some people like to play characters that can turn combats with one spell ... but with great rewards comes concomitant risks. To paraphrase (and continue with the baseball analogy) people might like home runs, but if you swing for the fences, you're going to strike out more.

I think that this is an excellent point. Several years ago I played a character in a Pathfinder game that was a variant-class arcane spellcaster, using variant metamagic rules. The end result was that my character didn't have very many spells, but could use the ones he had almost at will (after spending an action to "gather" them), and could roll to add metamagic (with a failure causing the spell to potentially be cast without any metamagic changes, be lost altogether, or inflict backlash, depending on how bad the failure was).

While this strengthened him in out-of-combat situations, it severely weakened him when we were in combat. The combination of time spent gathering spells, failed metamagic rolls, and the usual combinations of enemies that made their saves or had spell resistance meant that he very rarely got an offensive spell through. I didn't mind that, because it meant that when I wanted to play it safe and make sure my actions counted, I focused on buffs and indirect battlefield-control spells, whereas when I wanted to take a chance, I'd toss out a direct attack spell. Most of the time, my guy didn't shine in combat.

...but what we all still talk about was when, during an encounter with a "boss" character that had gotten the drop on the party, downed three characters, and was retreating, my PC managed to pull off an extended phantasmal killer that dropped the guy. To me, that makes it all worthwhile (which isn't to say that I didn't have fun while playing him, too).

 

[Tony Vargas]

The thread title is a little dramatic, but now that 5.0 is a little older and campaigns are a little more along, how are people feeling about spells that are not save-or-die, but rather save-or-can't-do-anything? (Mid-campaign spells, typically.) I find they tend to create two weird situations that turn gameplay a bit "meh" for us:

First, if the party casts a save-or-win spell, it means that this character either single-handedly destroys the encounter... or, they wasted a turn. ... which means they think combat is boring and they aren't good at it. Or, they trivialize the encounter, which is fine - but also a bit anticlimactic, especially when it's some sort of boss. Or you run into the even worse situation, where suddenly all bosses are curiously immune to charm or whatever... Thus negating this character's One Big Thing.

Or, you have the opposite, where the monsters cast on the players. This means the player has to save, or skip one or more turns - which is awful. It's helpless + frustrating + disengaging all in one.

Remember that saving every round was a 3.5 innovation, and prior to that there were /lots/ of save-or-die or save-or-boring-for-the-whole-combat (or longer) effects flying around, and you just had to make it through to high enough level that you virtually always made those saves. 5e takes that innovation much further than 3.5 did, so just imagine what it'd be like if it hadn't. You wouldn't just sit out a round or two of a three-round combat with your 8th-level character, the character would be instantly killed, or sit out the next 3-18 10-minute 'turns' or something.

Sorry if that's a little grognardly 'kids these days don't know how good they got it.' ;(

Part of this is definitely due to our playstyle, as we tend to have fewer battles against bigger foes. - which means One Big Thing spells have a MUCH bigger impact, and players losing a turn is a larger percentage of all combat rounds being done that night.

That's just going to double-down on the issue, yes.

Anyway, just wondering how others have navigated these spells and whether or not they have been as much of an issue.

One solution is to give everyone better saves. Giving classes more proficient saves, or giving non-proficient saves a +0 to +4 bonus over 20 levels instead of +2 to +6, for instance. You could also give save re-rolls and/or save bonuses if an ally does something to help you 'snap out of it.' And/or you could dial down what various effects do. Instead of paralyzing, just being unable to take a move that turn, for instance. Limit options instead of just doing nothing.

Another sort of goofy indie-style option is to have a dead or out of the fight PC 'fight in spirit,' and give him something to do - like hand out a bonus or advantage or a re-roll or whatever, either mystically or via a flash-back scene or whatever strikes everyone as interesting.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm playing a gnome wild mage who kind of specializes in these spells. Here's my experience.

First, if the party casts a save-or-win spell (we have a bard with hypnotic pattern, for example - and now polymorph), it means that this character either single-handedly destroys the encounter... or, they wasted a turn. Thanks to how human beings work (perception bias and whatnot), even a 50/50 split on this means the player tends to believe they waste turns far more often than they save the day... which means they think combat is boring and they aren't good at it. Or, they trivialize the encounter, which is fine - but also a bit anticlimactic, especially when it's some sort of boss. Or you run into the even worse situation, where suddenly all bosses are curiously immune to charm or whatever... Thus negating this character's One Big Thing. It's a tricky line to walk, in my opinion.

I haven't been disappointed. Hypnotic Pattern affects an area, and it rarely hits everything in an encounter. Polymorph is a solo-only spell and when it fizzles, it's tension-increasing: I suddenly have spent a big resource on something without an effect (and I still have hypnotic patterns and whatnot to follow up with). I've beat encounters with Polymorph before, but there's usually more than one critter hanging around, and I don't have infinite polymorphs.

Or, you have the opposite, where the monsters cast on the players - which in my opinion is the worst of all. This means the player has to save, or skip one or more turns - which is awful. It's helpless + frustrating + disengaging all in one. I've never seen a phone get pulled out faster, and when the phones come out, that player is going to take a long time and a lot of effort on my part to come back. On the other hand, pretty much all monster attacks can be categorized as a) does damage to one or more PCs, b) incapacitates a PC in some manner. And when I'm running a game, just throwing around damage every turn gets to be a chore - not to mention how slow it can get when you have lots of baddies. It also tends to encourage simplistic thinking - "ok, who do I hit this round" - as opposed to interesting play - "I drop the chandelier on his head to capture him!" - because every round is just a series of numbers until the battle is over.

Haven't been on the receiving end very much, but most suck effects have some way to disable them - concentration is the big one. That changes the dynamics of play, making the mage a much more attractive target.

Part of this is definitely due to our playstyle, as we tend to have fewer battles against bigger foes (especially since our particular party can do things like kill a CR 13 purple worm in one round at level 9 - it was their 4th encounter of the day). We just don't have time to play out more than ~4 or 5 battles in one session, and most of them aren't big combat players (it's just not their favorite), so combat is fewer and further between - which means One Big Thing spells have a MUCH bigger impact, and players losing a turn is a larger percentage of all combat rounds being done that night.

You might want to consider an alternate resting model (1 day short, 1 week long) to help mitigate the nova effects that might result from this.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

It can be really difficult matching just the right level of difficulty to the group. It doesn’t help that it sounds like your PCs are acting at a much higher effective level. On the one hand, we want PCs to win, but we also want them to be challenged, so the victory feels earned.

And I've certainly been there where one bad saving throw nerfs the big bad.

I think one way to go about is, rather than just increasing the difficulty level, is to increase the challenge of the encounter. That is to say, rather than putting more/stronger enemies in there (or resorting to equal save or win spells), maybe make the situation more challenging. Put the enemies behind a fort, so they have cover and the like. Maybe the chamber the battle is occurring in is slowly flooding (with acid, if you really want to be mean). This creates complications for the battle, but also opportunities for the PCs to get creative and do exciting things. Maybe they want to climb the ramparts of the fort. Or that fireball they were saving for the enemies gets used to block the ingress for the water. Putting problems to be solved during combat can help engage the group.

 

[evilbob]

I think one way to go about is, rather than just increasing the difficulty level, is to increase the challenge of the encounter. That is to say, rather than putting more/stronger enemies in there (or resorting to equal save or win spells), maybe make the situation more challenging.

This is definitely the best advice on my specific issues, thank you!


I had hoped this thread would be more about people's experiences with mid-level save-or-stuck spells, and how they felt about them, and how that compared to my experience. But it's sort of turned into a "here's some advice for how to fix specific things you described that sound like problems" advice column, which is... I guess how most of these threads turn out, actually. Just to be clear: the players aren't a problem, the phones aren't a problem, and being stuck for long periods of time doesn't come up much because I don't put a lot of those monsters in front of them. But I would like to explore that option more, and I was wondering if other people had experienced something similar and how they dealt with it. What I'm hearing is, "you have problems specific to your table" - which is fine, and maybe that's all there is. But can people who are trying to help fix my problems at least confirm that they think the spells are fine as-is? Just so I understand your perspective. Thanks again, all!

 

[abirdcall]

This is definitely the best advice on my specific issues, thank you!


I had hoped this thread would be more about people's experiences with mid-level save-or-stuck spells, and how they felt about them, and how that compared to my experience. But it's sort of turned into a "here's some advice for how to fix specific things you described that sound like problems" advice column, which is... I guess how most of these threads turn out, actually. Just to be clear: the players aren't a problem, the phones aren't a problem, and being stuck for long periods of time doesn't come up much because I don't put a lot of those monsters in front of them. But I would like to explore that option more, and I was wondering if other people had experienced something similar and how they dealt with it. What I'm hearing is, "you have problems specific to your table" - which is fine, and maybe that's all there is. But can people who are trying to help fix my problems at least confirm that they think the spells are fine as-is? Just so I understand your perspective. Thanks again, all!

I think you may be right about why the thread developed the way it did.

At my table if a player gets hit with a save or suck spell everyone gets more into it because things just got real. The whole party might get wiped.

I think the spells are fine. One thing that has changed a lot from 3.x to 5e is how much damage the damaging spells do now. So yeah, the offensive save or suck might win the day but the huge damage spell might too. Damage is often more reliable both in that it tends to affect more types of creatures and there is usually at least half damage applied.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*