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

[jayoungr]

affects everyone in the cube (also allies, so you need to cast it before melee is joined),

The player tends to lead off with it or do fancy placement so as not to catch allies. And you don't want to use it on anyone who's engaged in melee combat anyway, because the next damage will negate it, so catching allies basically never happens.

and you can be snapped out of it if an ally uses an action.

Which means that the PCs basically get a surprise round against any allies who are busy snapping their friends out of it. I've tried having them do that and it generally still is a massive boost to the PCs.

Last, but not least you can always modify or ban a spell if you feel that it's too powerful. Let snapping someone out of the spell be a bonus action or give the affected creature a save at the end of every round.

Hmm, maybe I can give the glamour bard's charm-breaking ability to some monsters as an extra option.

Druids also get conjure fey. Fey have spell resistance. The druids could simply clear off and let their fey do the fighting.

These particular druids didn't have conjure fey on their spell lists. But I'll keep that in mind for next time I design my own antagonists.

 

[jayoungr]

Talk to the group and the player, explaining why this is an issue and how it's spoiling the fun for everyone.

You might just tell them they are being boring.

For interpersonal reasons, these options are not on the table. This may be one reason why this spell is getting on my nerves, though.

 

[FrogReaver]

I hadn't considered that idea. Thanks.


I've tried this one, but I've actually found that the player is less likely to use hypnotic pattern if there are fewer enemies, not wanting to "waste" it. Having lots of enemies with some getting charmed also leads to that bit I really hate where the whole party is beating up on the last few helpless enemies one by one.


Glamour bard, actually. This player plays nothing but glamour bards. With hypnotic pattern. In every campaign. Every campaign.

Strongest Level 3 combat spells in no particular order:
Spirit guardians, fireball, hypnotic pattern, conjure animals

im not sure what other spells you would expect out of level 5 casters?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

For interpersonal reasons, these options are not on the table. This may be one reason why this spell is getting on my nerves, though.

You really are just going to put them up against enemies that are immune for a couple of months then. I know it seems a bit unfair, but if you want to break the cycle without confronting the player I think you need to render the tactic completely useless for a while.

Suspicion - this player has mild Asperger's. If you break this cycle they will just fix on another one instead.

 

[FrogReaver]

If I was dealing with a bard using hypnotic pattern the most effective strategy would likely be to have ranged attackers able to attack him. Bards don’t have good ac. They don’t have the greatest con saves either.

 

[Asisreo]

fireball is one of the best non-concentration spells out there. It does as much single target damage as the best single target damage spells up through level 10.

Fireball does an average of 31.5 as a 4th-level spell and 35 as a 5th-level spell as a single-target attack.

Blight, a single target attack, does an average of 36 damage. Cone of cold also does 36 damage, as well as having a wider AoE. Fireball does an expected 4 targets while Cone of Cold does an average of 6 targets.

I'm not saying these spells are amazing, I usually never take blight if I'm playing a caster with access to it, but fireball isn't better than the best damaging spells. In fact, there plainly isn't alot of damaging spells available, period.

 

[jayoungr]

Players will not pick the same solution every time when it doesn't work every time.

My point is that I'm either bored with the options I could think of to deal with the spell (spacing out enemies), or they were things that I felt like it would be cheap to use every time (charm immunity, ganking the bard), or they weren't as effective as I thought they would be (having the enemies wake each other up). I wanted to see if there were other options I hadn't considered, and this thread has given me some ideas.

 

[jayoungr]

The PCs are meant to succeed and to use their abilities. CELEBRATE IT. Don't shame it. Don't try to beat it down

I just want a bigger range of tricks to deal with it when it's appropriate, and I as a DM am frankly uncomfortable with the inevitable part at the end of the combat where the entire party are beating up helpless enthralled enemies. I feel like that is damaging to a heroic-toned campaign, and it's also boring as heck to run. To be honest, that's my biggest complaint with the spell.

I'm also frustrated because every combat in every campaign has to be built around this one spell. There's a limit to how much "celebrating" should be allowed to dominate every session you ever run, or so it seems to me.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

At at least one big competitive AL event, we were told that we could use certain spells, but we would have points deducted from our score for doing so. Hypnotic Pattern was definitely on that list.

AL doesn't actually ban spells, the only ones they've done anything about were simulacrum and wish. Even then they just banned sim chains and limited wish to not lasting more than one session if you go outside the list.

 

[Stalker0]

Like the complaint was that casters at 20th level get 4-5 high level (6th-9th) slots.

Meanwhile fighters at 20th level are spamming near 100 damage per round, at will, with 2 action surges and a bazillion superiority dice to spam every single short rest to easily reach 200+.

it’s because damage is simply one tool in the box, when casters have so many more tools at those levels to deal with things. It’s good that fighters can do so much damage at those levels, gives them a niche to work with they didn’t have before...but make no mistake, casters have often moved beyond damage at that point and are plenty powerful