D&D 5E What to do about Hypnotic Pattern?

[Rabulias]

Nothing in the spell's description says the caster's allies are immune to hypnotic pattern... And if any of them are averting their eyes, they may give intelligent enemies the idea that they should look away, too....

 

[FrogReaver]

Nothing in the spell's description says the caster's allies are immune to hypnotic pattern... And if any of them are averting their eyes, they may give intelligent enemies the idea that they should look away, too....

the defined area of affect...

 

[FrogReaver]

Use swarms
Use creatures immune to charm
Use enemy casters
Start enemies further away with ranged attacks. Allows them to wake up allies before melee PCs arrive.
Have enemies come at PCs from multiple directions.
just bulk up enemy numbers. Double the number of enemies should do the trick.

 

[toucanbuzz]

...one particular player has learned how good it is and therefore always takes it. Always. No exceptions....

One way to deal with cheese is to feed a dose back to the player(s). Let an enemy or two use it on them, in the same way it's being used. However, I've found the best way is to talk to the players as a group about whether anyone believes certain features of the game need to be nerfed (e.g. a gimmick spell or combo).

...I really hate that bit at the end when the whole party is whaling on the one poor leftover who was looking at the pretty lights while his buddies got slaughtered.

Here's some points to make to your players about why the spell is unbalanced as written, and some counterpoints:

• Incapacitation is already awesome, and this makes it better by removing all movement. Bam, you can't do crap. Total removal of all enemies who failed the save from the combat. The counter-argument is that it could, in theory, catch allies and is limited to roughly 9 enemies in a cube. See below.
• Deadly to low level or high level foes. A fireball becomes less deadly as you go up in levels, but this spell remains as potent as ever. You could do 28 damage (14 on a save) with a fireball to four giants, or remove 2-3 of them from combat, given most monsters don't have a proficiency saving throw bonus. No brainer.
• A cube with range. You don't need line of sight, just some angle to set the cube. Clever players can use terrain and full cover to avoid counterspell, etc. Match this with no verbal component and foes might not have any idea where the spell came from.
• Doesn't even come close to matching similar debilitation spells. Hold Person at 3rd level allows 2 targets, with concentration up to 1 minute, and like this spell effectively removes them from combat. You can get 2 with Hold Person + a save each round, or up to 9 with no save each round and requiring enemies to waste their actions waking allies up. No brainer.
• No saves per turn. Detailed above.
• With a Devotion Paladin (allies immune charm), you can freely drop this nuke at will.

You could offer to nerf the spell a bit. In 3.5, the spell (2nd level) had a Hit Dice maximum of 2d4 + caster level, max 10. The AD&D 2E version (also 2nd level) maxed at 24 HD based on random # of hit dice per level affected and couldn't affect anything above 6th level.

 

[Flamestrike]

The groups I DM for always have someone with hypnotic pattern, as soon as they're high enough level to take the spell. This is because one particular player has learned how good it is and therefore always takes it. Always. No exceptions. And if that PC runs out of spell slots to cast it, they'll rest instead of fighting without it.

You're the DM. Why are you letting them do that?

Impose story consequences for resting. Doom clocks (save the princess by midnight or else bad thing X happens) are a fantastic method, or simply alter the resting rules in your campaign if you cant be stuffed with doom clocks.

If you dont do that (police resting and the adventuring day) you'll have more than just problems with Hypnotic Pattern.

 

[Rabulias]

the defined area of affect...

I was not clear: nothing in the spell's description says any of the caster's allies in the area of effect are immune. Re-reading the complaints, and looking at the range (120 feet), I see that is not a likely scenario.

 

[Ancalagon]

Just kill the caster.

at least you didn't say kill the player....

 

[ClaytonCross]

Not that many, I admit--partly because I hate running them.

So what get you engaged into a caster or two in a fight? It seems to me Hypnotic Pattern shows up a lot when players are fighting a lot of 5ft ranged melee fighters all the time. If you can make it interesting and engaging for your to ranged, hidden, and caster enemies then you will likely not see as much Hypnotic Pattern. You can't catch many ranged enemy with it. You can't target those you can't see, and casters have defenses against it.

I often find when GMs complain about players combat habits its because the habits are caused by how the GM runs combat. 5ft melee enemies are the worst. The are simple and uninteresting to run so the GM is just board waiting for the fight to end, but to the players there life is on the line so they are engaged and looking to find what works. If your able to make a different style more fun for you will be more likely to change things up and them in turn.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You're the DM. Why are you letting them do that?

Roll on wandering monster table. Oh look, a bunch of undead shamble along to disturb your rest.

 

[Stalker0]

I often find when GMs complain about players combat habits its because the habits are caused by how the GM runs combat. 5ft melee enemies are the worst. The are simple and uninteresting to run so the GM is just board waiting for the fight to end, but to the players there life is on the line so they are engaged and looking to find what works. If your able to make a different style more fun for you will be more likely to change things up and them in turn.

The flip side is many a DM gets tired having to specially tailor their fights all the time just because of one spell. For a special occasion, of course, but having to effectively toss a whole bunch of encounter possibilities out the window just for one spell... yes I can understand why it gets tiring. Maybe I would just like to make my encounters the way I want to, instead of 1 spell dictating how I have to make them.