D&D 5E The Gloves Are Off?

[Maxperson]

Better to say nothing at all in my view than to describe something for the player about their character doing something.

I have a standing house rule that if you act suicidal, you will probably end up dead. If a PC falls 100 feet by accident, luck/skill/etc. hit points kick in and you take 10d6 falling damage. If the player has his PC voluntarily nosedives 100 feet, he splats at the end and rolls up a new character. Standing around in a fireball = full damage at the very least. You certainly aren't going to be able to successfully save against it.

 

[tetrasodium]

I think that you can illustrate just how badly designed that 5e shield & uncanny dodge are just by asking "what would you say if the gm made monsters that burn a reaction to nullify an attack or halve the damage from an attack almost every round of combat for an entire campaign?" how the gm does it doesn't matter, what matters is the apparent toxic feel such monsters would create if the gm did not avoid them.

 

[Voadam]

I think that you can illustrate just how badly designed that 5e shield & uncanny dodge are just by asking "what would you say if the gm made monsters that burn a reaction to nullify an attack or halve the damage from an attack almost every round of combat for an entire campaign?" how the gm does it doesn't matter, what matters is the apparent toxic feel such monsters would create if the gm did not avoid them.

There are plenty of 5e monsters that use a reaction to parry to add to their AC.

Here is the first one I found in the core Monster Manual.

REACTIONS
Parry. The death knight adds 6 to its AC against one melee attack that would hit it. To do so, the death knight must see the attacker and be wielding a melee weapon.

There is also the Marilith, Erinyes, Drow Elite Warrior, Hobgoblin Warlord, Bandit Captain, Gladiator, Knight, and Noble in the MM.

 

[Maxperson]

There are plenty of 5e monsters that use a reaction to parry to add to their AC.

Here is the first one I found in the core Monster Manual.

REACTIONS
Parry. The death knight adds 6 to its AC against one melee attack that would hit it. To do so, the death knight must see the attacker and be wielding a melee weapon.

There are also several that can cast shield. None with uncanny dodge that I saw.

 

[tetrasodium]

There are plenty of 5e monsters that use a reaction to parry to add to their AC.

Here is the first one I found in the core Monster Manual.

REACTIONS
Parry. The death knight adds 6 to its AC against one melee attack that would hit it. To do so, the death knight must see the attacker and be wielding a melee weapon.

There is also the Marilith, Erinyes, Drow Elite Warrior, Hobgoblin Warlord, Bandit Captain, Gladiator, Knight, and Noble in the MM.

I'm not sure that a CR17 AC20 monster with the ability to parry one attack/round for +6ac proves the point. How often do you use those in standard encounters? What about action economy differences? Quite a few PC's start with that AC or better at level 1 with only starting gear to their name. I'm not talking about a one off bbeg or similar... add them to everything from bbeg down to the vast majority of mooks & filler encounters too.

Even a level 10 PC with 20 in their primary attrib & a +1 weapon is going to have +4 prof for 4+5+1+d20 making that +6 parry take it from needing to roll a ten up to needing to roll a 16 for the one parried attack per round unless bless flanking prone or whatever adds extra dice/advantage.

Monsters & PCs function differently from PCs & the marginal cost of casting shield to retcon an attack that has already landed plus the same for everything else till next round quickly dwindles to zero for a PC while uncanny dodge's half the already rolled damage from an attack of any size that has already hit is likewise a retcon d damage are things that if used every encounter would rightly get questioned.

If a low level ability that is basically no cost at will is a thing that would raise questions about a GM deploying it regularly in a campaign, it's probably in need of a second pass

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I have a standing house rule that if you act suicidal, you will probably end up dead. If a PC falls 100 feet by accident, luck/skill/etc. hit points kick in and you take 10d6 falling damage. If the player has his PC voluntarily nosedives 100 feet, he splats at the end and rolls up a new character. Standing around in a fireball = full damage at the very least. You certainly aren't going to be able to successfully save against it.

So you, as DM, are stepping in to help the player save their character by describing what the character does on successful save?

And if you (or the player) didn't describe the character "dodging behind a pillar", you'd assess full damage on a successful save?

 

[Voadam]

I'm not sure that a CR17 AC20 monster with the ability to parry one attack/round for +6ac proves the point. How often do you use those in standard encounters? What about action economy differences? Quite a few PC's start with that AC or better at level 1 with only starting gear to their name. I'm not talking about a one off bbeg or similar... add them to everything from bbeg down to the vast majority of mooks & filler encounters too.

Death knights are not ubiquitous and not every monster has parry, but NPC gladiators, nobles, and knights are not uncommon one offs or generally BBEGs.

It came to mind as I have used a number of Kobold Press monsters who also have the parry ability and it has come into play in my 5e games particularly my current one where the PCs are 5th level.

 

[Celebrim]

Right, so the rules make it clear that shoes/boots are a thing and how one gets them. But not so with gloves.

This thread has changed my mind from my initial stance. I've decided to never use contact poison, so that instead of having even a moment of discussion like this at the table, we can instead just continue to play the game.

Unfortunately, the root issue is not one you can avoid so easily. This is just a subset of the underlying problem which has to do with ambiguous propositions and how to handle them without revealing hidden information through a metagame channel.

The example I previously used years ago that provoked this sort of thread was a section of wall with two paintings. Behind one was a safe with treasure inside and behind the other was a symbol of death. How do you adjudicate this if the player interacts with it by saying, "I search the wall." Does searching the wall automatically imply looking behind the paintings? Does it matter how well they roll? Which painting do they look behind first? Do they automatically look behind both? If you've previously validated "I search the wall" as a valid proposition in order to speed play, how do you go about rejecting that proposition now? And, further, let's suppose you have a character with like a -5 search check that rolls a 1 searches the wall and finds nothing, is it fair to allow the player to move aside the paintings given the player offers that proposition and conversely is it utterly unfair not to do so.

And so forth.

 

[Lanefan]

You can wake up from sleeping.

You can, but in reality is there any guarantee that you will?

You can't do anything about incapacitated or just wake up at a small noise when knocked unconscious. I get what you're saying, but there is a difference. Is the PC not conscious when sleeping? Technically yes. That's not the type of unconscious the condition is modeling, though.

If I'm asleep I'm both unconscious and incapacitated until-unless I wake up and thus both those conditions should apply.

Now if the game simply assumes sleeping characters always wake up whenever there's a reason to (which isn't realistic in the slightest!) that's one thing, but ideally there should be some sort of rule or guideline as to one's odds of waking up - particularly if the incoming threat is at all stealthy about it.

 

[Lanefan]

Right, so the rules make it clear that shoes/boots are a thing and how one gets them. But not so with gloves.

This thread has changed my mind from my initial stance. I've decided to never use contact poison, so that instead of having even a moment of discussion like this at the table, we can instead just continue to play the game.

Why not just draw up and use a decent equipment list and get your players to write their gear out on their sheets? That way you solve not just the contact-poison issue but pretty much any other issue (and IME they're pretty common) where carried/worn/available gear becomes relevant.