Give and take
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“Wrong, I don’t reward players for being smart so it’s bad!” Dude my group went into town and bought a bunch of fertilizer and other things(because I checked and making explosives actually isn’t that difficult apparently) and that, plus a bomb-crazy dwarf we knew nearby, let us do some crazy damage to a golem.
You like a certain style of play, fine, but acting like that’s the only way to feel rewarded is showing your limitations, not the system’s.
You just gave a perfect example for my “How do I deal even more damage?” point and you don’t even realize it. Do you? If all you have is a hammer…
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I mean, the Monk being immune to poison doesn’t save anyone else in the breath attack.
Part of D&D is building synergy between the classes and operating as a team. At the same time, it’s the group’s biggest vulnerability.
Mind-splort the meat shield, gum up the support, grapple the damage dealer, or backstab the controller. Suddenly, the team is scrambling as their game plan falls apart.
And green dragons have so many tricks up their sleeves! The last thing I’m worried about is the breath weapon. It’s our horny bard falling for her damned come-hither smile that keeps me up at night.
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You just gave a perfect example for my “How do I deal even more damage?” point and you don’t even realize it. Do you? If all you have is a hammer…
I very much did not. He was complaining about D&D having spells that made him feel bad and I offered an example of how there’s more to 5e than spellslots to get the job done.
Do you think we don’t also talk our way out of problems? We do that all the time. I routinely, even with -1 charisma, would do shit all the time to get us out of dangerous fights and solve problems in more ways than “gun”.
And none of you have even given examples as to why other systems are better so please, do go on.
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Let your players do cool shit. Let them be good at what they built their character for. You can challenge them while still giving them opportunities to be awesome.
I’ll say that it’s less of an issue, 9 times out of 10, because what they’re going to be good at is weathering repeated encounters.
There’s so many monsters that do poison damage - especially in the mid levels - that you’d be hard pressed to run a campaign where they just stop showing up. Are you just not going to send anyone through the Underdark because a Monk is in the party? Stop using half the demons, aberrations, and magical beasts in the MM?
But for climatic fights, it can add to the drama when the encounter is on disadvantagous terms. Sometimes the cool shit is overcoming the seeming impossible.
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Some people like to cheese their build to feel clever. But then again, solving riddles has a similar effect.
Tbh, I don’t really get why this is an issue. As a DM I balance the game however feels good for everyone. My main strategy is that being more powerful shouldn’t make the game easier but should give you more freedom and options.
And the game should never be too hard. To most people, losing a character sucks really hard, so character deaths should always be consentual.
I’m that weird exception about character death, partly because I like building new characters, and partly because I like seeing characters get cool ends. Like my low-mid level bard who, while the party was on its last legs in a boss battle, leapt at the dragon’s face from an elevated position to attack at its face, mouth, throat, whatever he could get. IIRC, that bard and the dragon both died from that choice.
Edit: The campaign was at that point based in a small-medium town in a cold region. I remember the town had like 4 notable families, ones whose names meant something to folks in the area, and my bard was of one of the upper couple ones. So his death was definitely storied, crazy Uncle Artanis who died saving his friends and the region from a dragon.
My replacement character was a half-orc cleric who had trouble figuring out how to respect both halves of his heritage, and, in a big BSOD moment, rather than execute the defeated members of an orc tribe who refused to change their ways, he cast off his magic gear (armor, weapons, rings, whatever he had) and just walked off into the snowy forest, never to be played again. Which was just the only action I could imagine for him; he had “life” inside my head, and it was what “he” chose (I do not have DID).
That was 15+ years ago, and I only recently decided that he ended up forming a community of outcasts, people who couldn’t find a place in the world, and sponsored conscientious adventurers. I like to think that tribe of orcs, if they survived, at least respected his community and didn’t try to raid it.
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I’m that weird exception about character death, partly because I like building new characters, and partly because I like seeing characters get cool ends. Like my low-mid level bard who, while the party was on its last legs in a boss battle, leapt at the dragon’s face from an elevated position to attack at its face, mouth, throat, whatever he could get. IIRC, that bard and the dragon both died from that choice.
Edit: The campaign was at that point based in a small-medium town in a cold region. I remember the town had like 4 notable families, ones whose names meant something to folks in the area, and my bard was of one of the upper couple ones. So his death was definitely storied, crazy Uncle Artanis who died saving his friends and the region from a dragon.
My replacement character was a half-orc cleric who had trouble figuring out how to respect both halves of his heritage, and, in a big BSOD moment, rather than execute the defeated members of an orc tribe who refused to change their ways, he cast off his magic gear (armor, weapons, rings, whatever he had) and just walked off into the snowy forest, never to be played again. Which was just the only action I could imagine for him; he had “life” inside my head, and it was what “he” chose (I do not have DID).
That was 15+ years ago, and I only recently decided that he ended up forming a community of outcasts, people who couldn’t find a place in the world, and sponsored conscientious adventurers. I like to think that tribe of orcs, if they survived, at least respected his community and didn’t try to raid it.
That’s totally ok, and that’s also quite consentual.
I’m just against killing characters just because of bad dice rolls or stuff like that.
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But by no longer utilizing poison against the party because of the monk, the monk has effectively made the entire party immune to poison by virtue of it no longer being present in encounters! Hah!
But seriously though, cutting out stuff you know the party will hard-counter is just going to make the party not feel as cool. A balance of both is important. Believe me, as the guy in the party who could cast Silence, I know; hard-countering every boss encounter kind of makes the boss feel lame instead of fun.
I don’t understand how silence “hard-counters”… I mean it blocks most casting for a round but it’s only a 20 foot sphere, that can easily be moved out of. Yes it gives like one turn of disabling a caster, but honestly, lots of spells give that already.
Dilligent casters in a magic heavy setting probably know the dangers of silence and have prepared ways to work around it.
I just don’t understand how it’s possible, like you say, “hard-counter every boss”. In specific situations, sure. But “every”? That would seem to me like just not a very smart/tactical DM you play with.
