How do you handle copious use of Enlarge/Reduce?

[Miz_Liz]

For reference, this is the current party I'm running (all level 5)

- open hand goliath monk
- human storm sorc
- halfling land (plans) druid
- Dragonborn satire bard

They have an interesting playstyle wherein the monk and the druid are the main melee damage dealers, and both the bard and sorcerer play mostly support roles. The sorcerer has Enlarge/Reduce. And he uses it. A lot.

I am not saying this is a bad thing/mocking him. It has gotten them out of a lot of sticky situations. But that's where I am having trouble as a DM. This is a smart party (smarter than me, I'd say, and frustratingly good at working as a team) and it seems like half the puzzles I throw at them they figure out how to work around with enlarge/reduce!

As an example: the monk got trapped by a rug of smothering, and the sorc cast reduce on the rug. I had the monk make another save to not get squished (which he made) and ended up with basically a kilt. He also likes to enlarge the monk (who is already 9 ft tall) during combat, which leads to all kinds of shenanigans.

I don't know if I have a real question here, other than how would you work with a team like this? Or, perhaps a better question, can you throw out some trap/puzzle ideas that would be really, really difficult to get around using this spell?

[ad_hoc]

The characters are 5th level and they used a 2nd level spell to defeat a CR 2 monster.

Sounds fine.

[Man_Over_Game]

For reference, this is the current party I'm running (all level 5)

- open hand goliath monk
- human storm sorc
- halfling land (plans) druid
- Dragonborn satire bard

They have an interesting playstyle wherein the monk and the druid are the main melee damage dealers, and both the bard and sorcerer play mostly support roles. The sorcerer has Enlarge/Reduce. And he uses it. A lot.

I am not saying this is a bad thing/mocking him. It has gotten them out of a lot of sticky situations. But that's where I am having trouble as a DM. This is a smart party (smarter than me, I'd say, and frustratingly good at working as a team) and it seems like half the puzzles I throw at them they figure out how to work around with enlarge/reduce!

As an example: the monk got trapped by a rug of smothering, and the sorc cast reduce on the rug. I had the monk make another save to not get squished (which he made) and ended up with basically a kilt. He also likes to enlarge the monk (who is already 9 ft tall) during combat, which leads to all kinds of shenanigans.

I don't know if I have a real question here, other than how would you work with a team like this? Or, perhaps a better question, can you throw out some trap/puzzle ideas that would be really, really difficult to get around using this spell?

Consistent low damage is perfect for removing Concentration. Acid gas with multiple problems to solve in a room is pretty hard to solve with a single spell when you're making a Concentration save every turn.

Also note this line in Enlarge: "The target’s weapons also grow to match its new size. While these weapons are enlarged, the target’s attacks with them deal 1d4 extra damage." This means that a Monk's unarmed attacks are technically unchanged by the size increase.

Maybe have some sort of disease caused by constant resizing of your body. Maybe the Monk is starting to suffer Dexterity damage due to stress on his bones.

The universal solution is just to add more events. There should be enough stressful scenarios that every problem shouldn't be able to be solved easily with magic. A level 5 caster should only be able to cast a level 2 spell 3 times a day (maybe 4 as a Sorcerer). They should definitely be having more than 3 encounters a day, otherwise the Wizard will naturally be able to solve every problem with magic.

[RogueJK]

Have enemies corner them in a low-ceilinged indoor/underground area, where the 9 foot tall monk is already having to squeeze, and there's not enough room for them to grow even larger.

[Yora]

Enlarge requires concentration. I would expect the sorcerer to get pretty bored with this spell when he gets more interesting spells that also require concentration.

[holywhippet]

Enlarge/reduce is a concentration spell. Include some ranged attackers in battle and have them target the sorcerer.

Use more puzzles that require thought like riddles or logic puzzles.

[ad_hoc]

Enlarge/reduce is a concentration spell. Include some ranged attackers in battle and have them target the sorcerer.

Use more puzzles that require thought like riddles or logic puzzles.

You don't even need ranged creatures.

Creatures should be walking up and attacking the weaker PCs already.

[Vogie]

Fights in caves where there are stalagmites in the ceiling, but it's dark enough that you can't immediately see them from the floor unless they specifically look.
Fights through tiny highways.
The floor underneath the party is rickety, like an old building or bridge. Fine if it's a bunch of normal dudes, but as soon as someone Fireballs' the floor or Enlarges someone (multiplying weight by 8), it shatters. If it's a bridge, they're falling, if it's a building there's now sharp difficult terrain everywhere, using the Spike Growth effect.
Traps and puzzles that require them to use Reduce ahead of time to sneak through, burning up the player's spell slots. Tiny muderholes to crawl through, or shrinking a small character down then maneuvering them with Mage hand, et cetera.
A Kinetic/Absorbing monster or a Callous Giant (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=23094)-style enemy where the size of the hit isn't important (or even detrimental, if it's absorbing high-damage abilities and turning them back towards the party), but rather a bunch of little strikes will take them down.

[MaxWilson]

For reference, this is the current party I'm running (all level 5)

- open hand goliath monk
- human storm sorc
- halfling land (plans) druid
- Dragonborn satire bard

They have an interesting playstyle wherein the monk and the druid are the main melee damage dealers, and both the bard and sorcerer play mostly support roles. The sorcerer has Enlarge/Reduce. And he uses it. A lot.

I am not saying this is a bad thing/mocking him. It has gotten them out of a lot of sticky situations. But that's where I am having trouble as a DM. This is a smart party (smarter than me, I'd say, and frustratingly good at working as a team) and it seems like half the puzzles I throw at them they figure out how to work around with enlarge/reduce!

As an example: the monk got trapped by a rug of smothering, and the sorc cast reduce on the rug. I had the monk make another save to not get squished (which he made) and ended up with basically a kilt. He also likes to enlarge the monk (who is already 9 ft tall) during combat, which leads to all kinds of shenanigans.

I don't know if I have a real question here, other than how would you work with a team like this? Or, perhaps a better question, can you throw out some trap/puzzle ideas that would be really, really difficult to get around using this spell?

The only potential problem I see here is that you didn't mention the rug failing its Con save against Reduce. Did you forget about the saving throw or did you just not mention it in the writeup? Defeating a gimmick monster that fails its save against a relevant spell is par for the course, but don't forget the save.

Other than that, nothing you've mentioned sounds like an issue, though it's possible some of those Enlarged monk shenanigans that you didn't detail may be problematic.

[OverLordOcelot]

RAW, Reduce doesn't actually stop a rug of smothering - that was a house ruling from you. It can still grapple/restrain/smother the person that it's on, nothing in the reduce spell would make its abilities not work. They've just taken a body-sized rug and made it a 'face and torso' sized rug, which is still perfectly capable of blocking the nose and mouth. I would give people advantage on the saving throw to get loose since the creature gets disadvantage on STR checks from being reduced, but it's still capable of killing players if they don't kill it. Without reduce, I'd expect the players to give whoever is caught help getting out (I would rule that help action gives advantage since the save is basically a static grapple check, and enlarge does this RAW), and have readied actions to hit it while it wasn't on the person, or (if the person was near suffocation) to destroy it while on him and heal the 30-something damage the PC took.

In general, a group of PCs will trash a solo monster (especially one without epic actions) and 5th level players really shouldn't break a sweat with a CR2 encounter, especially a solo one. Ruling that it was reduced to a kilt made it a bit easier, but didn't change the final outcome much. And I would personally find a kilt-sized rug doing 7.5 points of damage per round to my 'kilt area' more than a bit scary to deal with. (Edit: average damage is 7.5 since it's 2d6+3 -D4 with reduce on)

Enlarge/reduce is a useful spell, but you don't have to give it grossly enhanced abilities like negating a monster completely. Just run it by what the rules say.

[Miz_Liz]

Oh there are some good ideas here. I hadn't thought about acid to start eating at con saves before, may integrate that. Forcing them to use reduce doesn't work quite as well because with a druid in the party he can just wild shape into a mouse or something similar and get where he needs to go.


The only potential problem I see here is that you didn't mention the rug failing its Con save against Reduce. Did you forget about the saving throw or did you just not mention it in the writeup? Defeating a gimmick monster that fails its save against a relevant spell is par for the course, but don't forget the save.

Other than that, nothing you've mentioned sounds like an issue, though it's possible some of those Enlarged monk shenanigans that you didn't detail may be problematic.

The rug failed its con save. Oh boy did the rug fail its con save. I rolled a nat 1. I do that too much haha.

Most of the monk shenanigans have been rp derailing silliness, as I haven't let his attacks do massively more damage. I do give him advantage when he tries to grapple stuff at that size, though.

[Ventruenox]

It sounds as though some house rules may be backfiring on you.

Are you allowing Enlarge to synergize with the Goliath's Powerful Build trait as far as grappling goes? RAW, he's still only supposed to count as size Large while affected by the spell, not Huge. Thematically though, I think that granting advatage to him on grapples is a worthwhile reward for the expended resources.

Also keep in mind that Sorcerers have limited known spells, and their shtick is figuring out how to best apply and modify those to myriad situations. Use the counters to their tactics just enough to keep them honest, without crushing the strategy entirely.

[Cespenar]

I don't think there's a problem at all. They're just getting good mileage out of a simple spell. There are much more impactful spells around anyway, like Bless and stuff. And the Sorcerer will soon pass onto higher level spells anyway, since Concentration is precious.

Also, I'd condone (for what it's worth) all three "rulings" (rug, monk damage, grappling adv.). They all look pretty reasonable to me.

For ideas, I'd mirror the above posters: cramped hallways, obstacles to navigate around so that size is detrimental, multiple combats per day to exhaust the spell slots, etc. all look fine to me.

Also, in general, you may just throw a bit harder stuff at them. It looks like they can take it.

[Chronos]

Now that you know this is a favored tactic of theirs, you should be able to come up with scenarios where it's not useful. Just like our DMs started being more careful about including bodies of water in encounter locations, after we trivialized a couple with Control Water.

[Orc_Lord]

As a fellow DM I would like to say that doing stuff to block them is fine and can add another layer of complexity or challenge to the players, but also try to give them chances to do it so they can feel awesome as well.

[sophontteks]

He's a 5th level sorcerer. He has 6 spells to his name. Sorcerers, by design, frequently use the same spells to solve multiple problems. Enlarge/reduce is a bread and butter spell designed to solve multiple problems. Its practically made for sorcerers and its made even better if the sorcerer is combining it with metamagics like twinned and subtle.

Wizards are made to have a spell for each problem.
Sorcerers are made to solve multiple problems with few spells.
Circumventing this spell isn't solving a problem, its nerfing sorcerers.
You might as well be trying to solve fighters using weapons every encounter.

[SirGraystone]

Lots of kobolds using small tunnels to ambush the group then run away.

[sophontteks]

You are being a good DM right now. It's not supposed to be you vs. them. They should feel good solving problems with their abilities. If you suddenly present encounters specifically designed to counter their tactics it will pretty rightfully look like you are metagaming.

It sounds like your players had a really good time. Keep it up.

[ImproperJustice]

Wait until the Sorceror can cast Polymorph!

Honestly, there isn’t a big problem here.
Enemy capabilities are gonna scale up soon enough, and there are far more deadly abilities out there for them to use.

[MaxWilson]

Now that you know this is a favored tactic of theirs, you should be able to come up with scenarios where it's not useful. Just like our DMs started being more careful about including bodies of water in encounter locations, after we trivialized a couple with Control Water.

I'd go the other way here: just make encounters the way you normally would (without regard to these particular PCs' past behavior, but ensuring that multiple potential solutions exist to each encounter for a hypothetical "balanced" party) and watch with interest to see which ones they solve with Enlarge/Reduce and which they solve in some other way.

Eventually they will get tired of Enlarge/Reduce, but if they're not tired of it you don't need to rush them.

[Pez5150]

As a fellow DM I would like to say that doing stuff to block them is fine and can add another layer of complexity or challenge to the players, but also try to give them chances to do it so they can feel awesome as well.

I second this notion. They chose the spell and strategy, we shouldn't remove it entirely, change the encounter to challenge them to try and use other strategies.

You could try several encounters before a bigger mid level boss. The idea is to run down their resources so they may choose to use the spell slot for other things besides enlarge.

You could try adding multiple doorways with rooms. Have the monster or group of monsters make a tactical retreat into another room. Make the doorway only big enough for a medium creature to get through. Thats a bit cheesed, but monsters don't fight fair they fight to win.

You could make platforms that can't take a lot of weight. Like fighting over a rickity bridge as a large size creature would put a hole in the thing and get their leg stuck. BE SURE to have a large monster do it first so they have a chance to realize thats a thing to be wary of.

You can have a cave with stalagtites that force rough terrain movement to move under. They could risk running under the "low roof", but may need to make a dex save in the moment to dodge the roof if they are low dex. If they have a passive dex of 15 just ignore low roof checks.

Try the optional rule,

"As an alternative, a suitably large opponent can be treated as terrain for the purpose of jumping onto its back or clinging to a limb. After making any ability checks necessary to get into position and onto the larger creature, the smaller creature uses its action to make a Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check contested by the target's Dexterity (Acrobatics) check. If it wins the contest, the smaller creature successfully moves into the target creature's space and clings to its body. While in the target's space, the smaller creature moves with the target and has advantage on attack rolls against it. Page 271 of the DMG."

Have the some dexterity based scrappers jump on the large PC. It makes for a fun situation to try and counter. They presumably couldn't use an AOE on the enlarged PC without hitting him.

You could use some monsters that have reach weapons riding animals so that they kite the enlarged PCs. I'd suggest that'd be an open field of grass to fight on.

[Contrast]

Also note this line in Enlarge: "The target’s weapons also grow to match its new size. While these weapons are enlarged, the target’s attacks with them deal 1d4 extra damage." This means that a Monk's unarmed attacks are technically unchanged by the size increase.

That ruling would seem a bit of a **** move to me.


To OP: I feel its also worth stressing - sorcerers do not get a lot of spells known. Whatever spells they chose they have to try and see every problem as a nail to their hammer because a hammer is what they've got to work with. Don't start trying to nerf the hammer just because they're using it a lot. It doesn't even seem to sound like they're doing anything crazy - they're just reaping a benefit from expending a resource.

If you really need to spice things up it seems any encounter with a ceiling of normal height would mess up an enlarged Goliath. Thinking about it, it could be amusing to have them fight in an enclosed space that requires the goliath to be reduced to fit inside in the first place :smallbiggrin:

[JoeJ]

Now that you know this is a favored tactic of theirs, you should be able to come up with scenarios where it's not useful. Just like our DMs started being more careful about including bodies of water in encounter locations, after we trivialized a couple with Control Water.

On the contrary, if the players want size changing to be their shtick, go with it. Start thinking about encounters that would be much harder without using Enlarge/Reduce.

[Vogie]

On the contrary, if the players want size changing to be their shtick, go with it. Start thinking about encounters that would be much harder without using Enlarge/Reduce.

That's actually not a terrible idea. Since a Sorcerer is resource-starved already, and it requires concentration, that locks out their other options.

In my Signature, I have a Shrinking Rogue Archetype, Quantum Trickster, that you could use as an Ant-Man Style enemy NPC.