Sleep Spell and Chain Awakening

[Krachek]

Goblins practice chain awakening since kindergarten.

 

[Uller]

Goblin wakes up after being nearly killed by a cleric with a mace. He sees all his companions lying about with varying amounts of blood on them. How would he know to smack some of his companions? Do typical goblins know about sleep spells and how to awaken someone from such enchantments? At a minimum I would think an int check would be in order.

Besides the rp aspects of it (I generally assume that most monsters do not have xp fighting adventuring parties...the goblins in Sunless Citadel are probably most experienced at fighting kobolds and raiding the outlying farms from the nearby town...) as a DM I try to avoid artifacts of the rules that seem contrived. Chain events like that seem to fit that.

If it seems like something that can only be done because of the nature of turns and rounds I generally avoid it unless the PCs do it...then it becomes fair game.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It woke up, and now it was the goblins' turn in initiative.
Here's where an artifact of group monster initiative came into play: The wounded goblin stood up, slapped the face of the sleeping goblin next, disengaged, and fled into the chamber where the goblins were rallying. The slapped goblin did the same thing. So did the next one, and the next one. Essentially, the work of the sleep spell was undone by monsters all acting on the same initiative. ... what I found interesting was how the sleep spell was undone essentially because like monsters all act on the same initiative. This would be much harder for PCs to pull off, I think, if the situation was reversed since they act on different turns, often with monsters in between.

Have you seen a situation like this unfold in your game? What other sleep shenanigans have you seen play out?

Yes, I've seen things 'chain' like that, before. Often in the player's favor, as well as the monsters. It is an artifact of turn-based cyclical initiative that sometimes a thing one creature does can be completely un-wound before it's turn comes back again.

But, yes, monsters all going on the same initiative is a convenience for the DM, and when it does make screwy things happen, it helps to think how they'd have to manage it were it not for that convenience. For instance, in 3e, we'd often have groups of monsters move into flanking positions, then all attack - that's doable, you just move into position and ready to attack as soon as your ally flanks. It works even if the monsters all have theoretically separate, but very close, initiative. The issue I see with the waking chain of goblins is that it doesn't work quite so conveniently if they just had very close initiative - what if the one woken had the lowest of their very close initiatives, for instance. Since the whole point of the convenience of having them go at the same time is not to actually have to keep track of that, you can't really know.

Another system artifact that enabled the effect you saw was the treatment of movements & actions in 5e: getting up is just some of your movement, and you can (in a pretty small room, I guess) use the rest to reach an ally, action to slap them, and continue to move through a door (object interaction to close it) - goblins in 5e get to Disengage as a bonus action, too, otherwise the first one moving away from the cleric to wake it's buddy would have provoked. In 3e or 4e, the newly-woken goblin would have used it's move to stand up, and, maybe, 5' step & it's standard to wake an ally w/in reach (in 4e, give the ally a save) - they couldn't all have woken eachother, /and/ all fled, because the move action was discreet and Opportunity attacks a little harder to avoid.
The 5e method of movement (and only one reaction &c) is intuitive and makes the action seem less 'jerky,' but it's still going on in a turn-based system, and that jerkiness is there for a reason.

 

[MarkB]

Yeah, group monster initiative is intended to be just a convenience short-hand - having it result in unusual displays of coordination is an unintended side-effect. This is just a particularly visible example of that effect.

On the other hand, it's not particularly out of line with players' tactics. If multiple characters are down and dying, the groups I've played with would totally take into account their initiative order when deciding upon the optimal order in which to heal them.

 

[iserith]

Goblin wakes up after being nearly killed by a cleric with a mace. He sees all his companions lying about with varying amounts of blood on them. How would he know to smack some of his companions? Do typical goblins know about sleep spells and how to awaken someone from such enchantments? At a minimum I would think an int check would be in order.

Besides the rp aspects of it (I generally assume that most monsters do not have xp fighting adventuring parties...the goblins in Sunless Citadel are probably most experienced at fighting kobolds and raiding the outlying farms from the nearby town...) as a DM I try to avoid artifacts of the rules that seem contrived. Chain events like that seem to fit that.

If it seems like something that can only be done because of the nature of turns and rounds I generally avoid it unless the PCs do it...then it becomes fair game.

Wartiak the goblin, who was nearly killed by Drongo, is a veteran of the Red Hand, and once a personal valet of Azarr Kul himself. A survivor of the Battle of Brindol, he scattered to the countryside and eventually fell in with the Durbuluk tribe that occupies the Sunless Citadel. He has a great deal of experience fighting adventurers including wizards with sleep spells. As soon as he fell to Farkus' foul elvish magic, he knew what to do if he were awoken.

In other words, the case for Wartiak having this knowledge and wherewithal is about as strong as him not having it in my view.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Wartiak the goblin, who was nearly killed by Drongo, is a veteran of the Red Hand, and once a personal valet of Azarr Kul himself. A survivor of the Battle of Brindol, he scattered to the countryside and eventually fell in with the Durbuluk tribe that occupies the Sunless Citadel. He has a great deal of experience fighting adventurers including wizards with sleep spells. As soon as he fell to Farkus' foul elvish magic, he knew what to do if he were awoken.

I think Wartiak deserves a class level or few.

 

[pukunui]

I can’t say I’ve ever experienced this to such an extent, but that may be because a) my players rarely take the sleep spell and b) when they do, it rarely affects more than one or two enemies.

Personally I would not have had the goblins wake their companions. They’re cowardly creatures with little to no empathy. They’d be all about saving their own skins, to the Nine Hells with their companions!

 

[iserith]

Another system artifact that enabled the effect you saw was the treatment of movements & actions in 5e: getting up is just some of your movement, and you can use the rest to reach an ally, action slap them, and move through a door (object interaction to close it) - goblins in 5e get to Disengage as a bonus action, too, otherwise the first one moving away from the cleric to wake it's buddy would have provoked. In 3e or 4e, the newly-woken goblin would have used it's move to stand up, and, maybe, 5' step & it's standard to wake an ally w/in reach (in 4e, give the ally a save) - they couldn't all have woken eachother, /and/ all fled, because the move action was discreet and Opportunity attacks a little harder to avoid.
The 5e method of movement (and only one reaction &c) is intuitive and makes the action seem less 'jerky,' but it's still going on in a turn-based system, and that jerkiness is there for a reason.

It would have been for sure harder in 4e. Goblin tactics might have squeezed out some extra movement if an OA missed (iirc), but the PCs would likely have had another round of attacks before they got behind that door. Can't recall how it would have gone in 3e. I assume the wizard would have just defeated everything in one go and none of this would have come about.

Yeah, group monster initiative is intended to be just a convenience short-hand - having it result in unusual displays of coordination is an unintended side-effect. This is just a particularly visible example of that effect.

On the other hand, it's not particularly out of line with players' tactics. If multiple characters are down and dying, the groups I've played with would totally take into account their initiative order when deciding upon the optimal order in which to heal them.

Yeah, where are all the "what's good for the goose is good for the gander!" people?

 

[pming]

Hiya!

I think [MENTION=413]Uller[/MENTION] pretty much got it.

This sort of "incident" falls into the category of "newb DM mistakes" (I'm not calling you a newb DM, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], I know you aren't). I say it's a newbie mistake because a beginning DM will usually just default to "Well, the rules say..." rather than make an at the moment ruling because they lack the confidence in their DM'ing capabilities.

A more experienced DM will look at it and say "Well, the rules say X, but that doesn't make sense. Hmmm... Ok, lets do it this way...". An experienced DM will take the rules for what they are and are actually meant to do: be guidelines for making rulings to help the players imagine being adventurers in a fictional world. Alas, there are an infinite amount of things a Player character (and NPC/Monsters) can do in the overall scheme of the game setting. Because of this it is impossible for a rule to "always be THIS way" and make sense in every situation where said rule comes up. Case in point... Sleep spell and group initiative.

Group Initiative is NOT meant to reflect any sort of "reality" of combat in the game; it is meant to be used as a means of speeding up PLAY. The very nature of the rule makes no sense if looked at from a "real world perspective". Combat doesn't work like that. However, as using individual initiative for every single combatant would take a lot longer and require more book keeping on the part of the DM and players, we have "Group Initiative".

It is assumed that a DM will eventually be experienced enough to see this situation and think "Nope. I'm not going to use 'group initiative' for this. Doesn't make any sense. I'll do it this way instead...".

TL;DR - It's not that Group Initiative 'broke' the system so much as it was the DM trying to fit a square rule into a round situation.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Harzel]

Goblin wakes up after being nearly killed by a cleric with a mace. He sees all his companions lying about with varying amounts of blood on them. How would he know to smack some of his companions? Do typical goblins know about sleep spells and how to awaken someone from such enchantments? At a minimum I would think an int check would be in order.

That was my first reaction, too, but...

Besides the rp aspects of it (I generally assume that most monsters do not have xp fighting adventuring parties...the goblins in Sunless Citadel are probably most experienced at fighting kobolds and raiding the outlying farms from the nearby town...) as a DM I try to avoid artifacts of the rules that seem contrived. Chain events like that seem to fit that.

If it seems like something that can only be done because of the nature of turns and rounds I generally avoid it unless the PCs do it...then it becomes fair game.

... the PCs will do it (or something equivalent) eventually and you won't force them to make an INT check, so why disadvantage any opponent that is at least minimally capable of reasoning?

Anyway, the OP's circumstance absolutely is due to the nature of turns, and I like hearing about examples like this since it fortifies my resolve to continue managing rounds on an everything-happens-at-once basis. It definitely comes with its own set of challenges - notably the need to make significantly more judgement calls - but at least you always end up with a result that plausibly could have happened instead of having results that could only happen if each participant literally got to do their 6 seconds of stuff while everybody else was frozen in time (or agreed to wait patiently because, you know, battlefield etiquette or whatever).