Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Uller" data-source="post: 6563876" data-attributes="member: 413">Okay...thinking about this more, I have to agree it really doesn't make a lot of sense (I admit...I tend to play devil's advocate when a whole bunch of people are agreeing on something).  What really kills it for me is not the aarakokra (PCs with innate flying abilities are a problem all their own) or the halfling wheelbarrow trick (you cannot dash or disengage while pushing a wheelbarrow...that's an action.  In fact, since you are using both your hands, you will not only provoke OAs, all attacks against you will be with advantage and all dex saves will be at disadvantage...so go for it...)It's the fact that a target that is kiting the caster will take more damage than one that is just standing toe to toe with him.  That's just dumb.So I looked around for some other published material to see if I could find something similar.  I'm thinking these "zone" spells are really just battlefield hazards like a bonfire or a pool of acid or a cloud of poison gas.  How would those things be handled?  Two things I found are Green Slime in the DMG and the fire in area 8 of Cragmaw Cave.  Green slime works identically to these spells.  The first time you contact it you take damage then take more damage at the _start_ of your turn until you break contact.  To me that's dumb.  You take damage twice before you have a chance to do something and if you break contact and re-establish it you take more damage than if you just remained in contact.  The fire in Cragmaw Cave does 1 point of damage if you contact it, 1d6 if you fall prone in it and can only damage you once per round.So here is how I'm going to handle these spells in my games:When you first make contact you take damage.  To me, this is important.  These are concentration spells.  Having a chance that the spell could be forcibly ended before it does anything is too much of a nerf for me to accept.  When my players (or even one of my NPCs/Monsters) uses one of these spells, it's a significant resource and something cool should happen.  You cannot take damage more than once per turn.  You also cannot take damage more than once per round and this resets at the end of your turn.  If you are still in the area, you take damage immediately.   So if on your turn you move into the area, you take damage, but you don't take it again at the end of your turn. (convoluted way of saying I don't want a character taking double damage on his turn)This way the spell is guaranteed to do something interesting on the turn it is cast.  It's not going to leave a pack of weak creatures in place to take OAs until it gets to their turn...but it will only do "double" damage if the target somehow ends its turn in the area.  I know that is a bit more complex than what the designers were going for.  I'm all for simplicity.  But I have some encounters coming up where these kind of spells are going to be used on the party and it could be quite deadly.  If I were a player, I'd feel pretty p***ed if the DM says "The wizard casts Cloud Kill, take 5d8 poision damage.  Now it's your turn...take 5d8 more...and now you're dead."Does that seem reasonable to folks?  Am I missing something?I still don't really have a problem with moving the zones and doing the damage or pushing characters into the zones.  Of all of these spells, moonbeam seems like the biggest offender when it comes to moving it (and I really do think it's overpowered to boot) and fortunately we don't have any characters in our game that can cast it...so it's just not an issue.</blockquote>

Verification