What should I do about an upcoming fight I’ll be useless in and could be a TPK?

[SlickShriktu]

So this weekend we’ll be starting what I feel will be an impossible fight. We ended with arriving at an outpost and squaring up with what I assume is an adult Remorhaz (as it just swallowed something as the session ended), harpies, and a cambion watching in the distance. I got the implication we would be fighting the Remorhaz and the harpies and not the leader cambion. We are a party of 4 level 5’s (Moon Druid, Life Cleric, War Mage Wizard, and Battlemaster). While there may be some NPC involvement, I doubt they’d get in more than one turn. I’m the party wizard and I’ll have what feels like nothing beyond a crossbow to damage the Remorhaz. I have a 1 turn bonus action invisibility and mirror image that are my usual defenses that will be negated by the remorhaz entirely and my fireball, fire bolt, scorching ray, flaming sphere are also of no use. I’m left with magic missile, slow, and haste. The fighter says to focus on the harpies but that leaves him to fight it alone with 5 javelins he couldn’t even utilize haste with:smalleek:. I’m sort of at the edge of anxiousness leaning towards hopelessness and kind of annoyed as it feels greatly unbalanced. How would you go about this?

[darknite]

Slow is your best bet in a fight like that, especially if you can capture both the Remorhaz and the Harpies in the cube at casting time. Then duck and weave out of cover/concealment with some key spells/cantrips. Hopefully you have some favorable terrain options to bottleneck the baddies. Otherwise do the obvious - focus fire on the Remorhaz, preferably from range, as it is doubtlessly the most dangerous opponent. Be ready with a Magic Missile to target any friendlies who are charmed by the Harpies if necessary. Good luck!

[Xeko]

If you're 4 level 5's, with no significant magic items or fire resistence, going against a CR 11 boss creature, there is nothing you really can do. Either a) this is part of the DM's plan, and you'll be saved by some plot mcguffin, b) the DM is actively trying to kill you all, or c) you guys gone done goofed, picking a fight with creatures the DM never intended for you to fight. Just, run away. If you are committed to combat, though, your best bet is to take down a harpy or two, and then try to distract the big guy with the harpy corpses. The giant bug might prefer the easy meal, rather than the meal that fights back. That's a plan for the whole party, though. For your wizard specifically, I would suggest, that you do go ahead and cast Haste on the fighter anyway (he'll need it), and focus on hitting the harpies from range with firebolt or crossbow. Just avoid getting hit and do your best to keep your concentration on haste, to keep the fighter alive. That'll be the best course of action that your character specifically can do. Also note that mirror image is not concentration, so both haste and mirror image could be up at the same time. Not sure it'll do much good, but it's something.

[Xeko]

Slow is your best bet in a fight like that, especially if you can capture both the Remorhaz and the Harpies in the cube at casting time. Then duck and weave out of cover/concealment with some key spells/cantrips. Hopefully you have some favorable terrain options to bottleneck the baddies. Otherwise do the obvious - focus fire on the Remorhaz, preferably from range, as it is doubtlessly the most dangerous opponent. Be ready with a Magic Missile to target any friendlies who are charmed by the Harpies if necessary. Good luck!

I forgot about slow... yeah, if you can get multiple targets in the same casting, then do that instead of haste. Though, I'm not sure focusing fire on the big guy is the solution. Action economy is a major thing in 5e, for each harpy that still exists, that's another attack coming at you each turn. Getting rid of the weak guys first will cut the amount of damage you're taking each turn in half, and I still think is the best idea. ESPECIALLY if the possibility exists of feeding the big guy the corpses of the little guys to distract him and get out of the combat alive.

[darknite]

I would rather tank the Harpies 6hp than take a single Rem 40hp hit. Odds are good for the PCs to make their saves vs the Harpy song, which is their most dangerous attack in this situation. The Rem is the party killer here. If it's slow, you have a chance to stack some damage and dance away. And we haven't even discussed the Cambion. This will be rough. Hope you have some Potions of Healing and Fire Resistance!

[Throne12]

Why are you fighting? It is clearly a fight yall cant win. Also why do you only have one damaging type.


Also
1. Run dont fight just run.
2. Tell use all your spells you got. People here are smart and clever and could give you ideas on how to get out of this. If they have more info.
3. Again more info plz. What magic items does the party have. How many spell slots does everyone have? What battle maneuvers does the fighter have?
4. Cast haste on the fighter. Then have him use his action to trip the big big bad bug then haste Action to dashed. Keep this up untell your safe.

[darknite]

Why are you fighting? It is clearly a fight yall cant win. Also why do you only have one damaging type.


Also
1. Run dont fight just run.
2. Tell use all your spells you got. People here are smart and clever and could give you ideas on how to get out of this. If they have more info.
3. Again more info plz. What magic items does the party have. How many spell slots does everyone have? What battle maneuvers does the fighter have?
4. Cast haste on the fighter. Then have him use his action to trip the big big bad bug then haste Action to dashed. Keep this up untell your safe.

Good ideas, but the OP is making it look like the fight is inevitable or there's no handy way to get away. BTW, the fighter can't trip the Rem as it is a Huge creature and the Trip BM Maneuver only works on Large or smaller and a Shove only works if it's one size larger than the shover or less.

[MaxWilson]

If you're 4 level 5's, with no significant magic items or fire resistence, going against a CR 11 boss creature, there is nothing you really can do. Either a) this is part of the DM's plan, and you'll be saved by some plot mcguffin, b) the DM is actively trying to kill you all, or c) you guys gone done goofed, picking a fight with creatures the DM never intended for you to fight. Just, run away. If you are committed to combat, though, your best bet is to take down a harpy or two, and then try to distract the big guy with the harpy corpses. The giant bug might prefer the easy meal, rather than the meal that fights back. That's a plan for the whole party, though. For your wizard specifically, I would suggest, that you do go ahead and cast Haste on the fighter anyway (he'll need it), and focus on hitting the harpies from range with firebolt or crossbow. Just avoid getting hit and do your best to keep your concentration on haste, to keep the fighter alive. That'll be the best course of action that your character specifically can do. Also note that mirror image is not concentration, so both haste and mirror image could be up at the same time. Not sure it'll do much good, but it's something.

You're kidding, right? It's only got a couple hundred HP and one attack per round. Even if the Moon Druid just conjures up a bunch of animals with Conjure Animal and sets them to Dodge while getting in the way and threatening opportunity attacks, it will take the Remorhaz about eight rounds to kill all of the animals, which buys you eight rounds to fill it full of crossbow bolts, Spiritual Hammer strikes, and melee attacks from a Hasted fighter (make two attacks and then a Hasted disengage behind the wolves). That's enough time for the Fighter alone to do about 80 HP of damage to it, so if everyone else is shooting crossbows at about Dex 12 (+4 to hit for d8+1, x3) that should add another 56 HP of damage or so (~7 HP per round), plus about 32 more from Spiritual Weapon (~4 HP per round, assuming Wisdom 16). That puts the Remorhaz at approximately 195 - 80 - 56 - 32 = 27 HP left at point you run out of wolves. At that point druid can either recast Conjure Animals (mostly to use it to chase down the harpies and cambion) or finish off the Remorhaz with Call Lightning, unless the Fighter has already done so via Action Surge + Battlemaster maneuvers.

Just... I really hope the fighter has a 10' long weapon like a halberd or he is going to take a ton of fire damage from hitting the Remorhaz so much.

[Yunru]

After much lateral thinking, I have come to the conclusion that if your character is not there, it can't be a TPK.

[NaughtyTiger]

mirror image will still help against the harpies and cambion

and next time, diversify your damage types... chromatic orb


a Hasted fighter (make two attacks and then a Hasted disengage behind the wolves).
i am having a brain fart- how is the fighter getting 2 attacks and disengage while hasted? i figure 1 attack + 1 disengage.

[Xeko]

Well, considering the OP specifically said the fighter was going to face the thing with five javelins, I'm going to bank on no reach weapon. And, you're assuming, of course, that the harpies don't attack the wolves in the meantime. And that the druid even has conjure animals. And a whole lot of other assumptions that we can't make. Based on the information provided to us, it seems like a nearly unwinnable fight. IF the druid has conjure animals, and IF the fighter has a reach weapon, and IF the fighter has the optimal battlemaster maneuvers selected, and IF the wizard can maintain concentration on haste, and IF the harpies don't take out half the wolves before the worm can, then sure, they might maybe pull it off. But given the information we have, BM fighter, life cleric, moon druid, war mage, all level 5, wizard has all fire spells... that paints a pretty rough picture.

[Wildarm]

Slow would go a long way to making this fight winnable. Use your 3rd level slots in attempt to land it on the creature(75% chance) hopefully tagging some harpies as well. While it's on the Remorhaz, your team can freely disengage from the creature without an AoA and can easily kite it. Depending on how your DM plays it, the creature just might get frustrated and burrow away to safety once it takes some damage from the rest of the group. Scorching Ray the harpies while you keep your distance from everything. Odds are you'll keep it locked down for at least 6 rounds of the fight with two casts of slow. That is plenty of time for a low Tier 2 party to wipe the floor with it. You're probably used to Tier 1 DPR. 5th level characters definitely bat above their CR level from my experience.

[MaxWilson]

i am having a brain fart- how is the fighter getting 2 attacks and disengage while hasted? i figure 1 attack + 1 disengage.

5th level Battlemaster = 2 attacks, Haste = double movement and free Disengage (or Hide, or Dash, or...).


Well, considering the OP specifically said the fighter was going to face the thing with five javelins, I'm going to bank on no reach weapon. And, you're assuming, of course, that the harpies don't attack the wolves in the meantime.

Yeah, I was going with the "harpies watching from a distance" line. If the harpies attack, then good, that means the wolves can do something besides just Dodge uselessly (because if they attack the Remorhaz they will probably die when they hit). Main point here is that CR 11 vs. level 5 party is not suicide for the party and doesn't necessarily mean the DM wants them dead. Maybe he just wants it tough enough to be interesting.


And that the druid even has conjure animals.

It's part of the nature of these threads that we have to make assumptions about what spells the characters might have prepared, since the OP didn't tell us. If we suggest a spell and it's not available, well, the OP can't use that advice this time.


And a whole lot of other assumptions that we can't make. Based on the information provided to us, it seems like a nearly unwinnable fight.

Now aren't you the one making assumptions, such as the druid not having Conjure Animals and there being no way for the fighter to e.g. borrow daggers from other PCs or improvise a reach weapon? Even if he does take a lot of damage from the Remorhaz by hitting it with a regular 5' weapon, that doesn't make him die, it just makes it hurt. (Fortunately the druid and the cleric should both be pretty good at healing hurts, assuming that they bothered to take any healing spells, and yes, that's an assumption.)


IF the druid has conjure animals, and IF the fighter has a reach weapon, and IF the fighter has the optimal battlemaster maneuvers selected, and IF the wizard can maintain concentration on haste, and IF the harpies don't take out half the wolves before the worm can, then sure, they might maybe pull it off. But given the information we have, BM fighter, life cleric, moon druid, war mage, all level 5, wizard has all fire spells... that paints a pretty rough picture.

The only assumption that really matters here is Conjure Animals. The wizard does need to maintain concentration on Haste, but that's under the wizard's control: he just needs to stay out of the fight. (Lying prone can also help, if the Cambion is taking potshots at him, as can total cover.) If the Fighter has a greatsword and 5 javelins, and absolutely crummy battlemaster maneuvers, and the harpies start fighting the wolves... it's still reasonable to expect the PCs to win.

If the druid doesn't have Conjure Animals, hopefully he's got something else pretty good (Call Lightning could do the job, and potentially so could Plant Growth or even repeated Entangles). If he's got nothing good and neither does anyone else, then yeah, they might die if they don't run away. What else would you expect to happen to a party that doesn't have any appropriate weapons or spells? That's not the DM trying to kill them, that's just a party not being up to this particular challenge.

[Eldariel]

Yeah, if your only real spell is Slow, use Slow. You can Fireball the Harpies after that or whatever.

[darknite]

Yeah, if your only real spell is Slow, use Slow. You can Fireball the Harpies after that or whatever.

Only two 3rd level slots. I'd conserve it to deal with the Rem until it dies. The Harpies have the chance of being more than a nuisance, but they probably won't be.

[MaxWilson]

Slow would go a long way to making this fight winnable. Use your 3rd level slots in attempt to land it on the creature(75% chance) hopefully tagging some harpies as well. While it's on the Remorhaz, your team can freely disengage from the creature without an AoA and can easily kite it. Depending on how your DM plays it, the creature just might get frustrated and burrow away to safety once it takes some damage from the rest of the group. Scorching Ray the harpies while you keep your distance from everything. Odds are you'll keep it locked down for at least 6 rounds of the fight with two casts of slow. That is plenty of time for a low Tier 2 party to wipe the floor with it. You're probably used to Tier 1 DPR. 5th level characters definitely bat above their CR level from my experience.

I've got to recommend against Slow here. We already know that it will be a long, hard slog to kill the Remorhaz, and even with only +0 to Wisdom saves, the Remorhaz is unlikely to fail enough saves vs. Slow to let you kill it before the spell wears off.

[Wildarm]

I've got to recommend against Slow here. We already know that it will be a long, hard slog to kill the Remorhaz, and even with only +0 to Wisdom saves, the Remorhaz is unlikely to fail enough saves vs. Slow to let you kill it before the spell wears off.

Assuming a 15DC for Slow, the Remorhaz only has a 25% chance of making the save each round and the spell pretty much makes it unable to make attacks against a mobile party(No reactions and Halved Move). It spends it's move and action just to get adjacent to an enemy 20'-30' away. Players attack it and then 30' move. Why would you NOT use slow?

Honestly, the true danger of this fight is if the harpies manage to charm a large number of players. You have to save against each harpies charm so even with the low DC your fighter at the very least is likely to fail and walk off into presumably the jaws of the Remorhaz. Have your cleric get Bless up on everyone ASAP.

[MaxWilson]

Assuming a 15DC for Slow, the Remorhaz only has a 25% chance of making the save each round and the spell pretty much makes it unable to make attacks against a mobile party(No reactions and Halved Move). It spends it's move and action just to get adjacent to an enemy 20'-30' away. Players attack it and then 30' move. Why would you NOT use slow?

Because I already crunched the numbers on how long it would take the party to kill it if it makes no attacks at all, and how much damage they would take just from its Heated Body (3d6 fire damage when struck by a melee attack within 5'), and because I already proposed a mechanism (Haste) that gives the Fighter ten rounds of retaliation-free fighting against it, instead of only three or four.

My thinking is that if you're in a situation where Slow is your best bet, you really should just run away from it. Slow is good for that scenario, it's true.


Honestly, the true danger of this fight is if the harpies manage to charm a large number of players. You have to save against each harpies charm so even with the low DC your fighter at the very least is likely to fail and walk off into presumably the jaws of the Remorhaz. Have your cleric get Bless up on everyone ASAP.

Agreed. Kill the harpies ASAP. If anyone gets charmed, slap them (1 HP + STR of damage per slap) until they come to their senses. Too bad you probably don't have any earplugs...

[Zuras]

Have to agree about distracting the remorhaz with Conjure Animals. I’ve seen players summon 8 riding horses or elk in front of large predators, announcing “I cast wall of meat!”

[Bobthewizard]

Ignore haste. It's ok in a fight against one big boss if you have a paladin or rogue who can add a lot of damage to one hit but otherwise it's not a good spell. Concentration and a 3rd level slot to give one attack to one player is not worth it.

Start with slow on the remorhaz and as many harpies as you can. Between hopefully the druid's conjure animals and the cleric's spirit guardians/spiritual weapon/cantrip combo, the rest of the party should be able to do some damage pretty quickly. Everyone should try to take out the harpies first, then the cambion. You can use scorching ray or magic missile to contribute but slow is your big gun os try to make it last s long as possible. Try to avoid the remorhaz until you can focus on it. Sacrifice some of the animals to slow down the remorhaz even more. Recast slow if you need to.

Depending how many harpies there are, you could have a decent chance to survive this.

[SlickShriktu]

Why are you fighting? It is clearly a fight yall cant win. Also why do you only have one damaging type.


Also
1. Run dont fight just run.
2. Tell use all your spells you got. People here are smart and clever and could give you ideas on how to get out of this. If they have more info.
3. Again more info plz. What magic items does the party have. How many spell slots does everyone have? What battle maneuvers does the fighter have?
4. Cast haste on the fighter. Then have him use his action to trip the big big bad bug then haste Action to dashed. Keep this up untell your safe.


I will provide much more when I get home today thank you so much for all the input this community is a school of magic in its own! :smallsmile:

[KorvinStarmast]

What should I do about an upcoming fight I’ll be useless in and could be a TPK?? Go down in a blaze of glory (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfmYCM4CS8o). :smallbiggrin:
Slow is your best bet in a fight like that, especially if you can capture both the Remorhaz and the Harpies in the cube at casting time. Then duck and weave out of cover/concealment with some key spells/cantrips. Hopefully you have some favorable terrain options to bottleneck the baddies. Otherwise do the obvious - focus fire on the Remorhaz, preferably from range, as it is doubtlessly the most dangerous opponent. Be ready with a Magic Missile to target any friendlies who are charmed by the Harpies if necessary. Good luck! And hope the Rh does not make its save.

If you are committed to combat, though, your best bet is to take down a harpy or two, and then try to distract the big guy with the harpy corpses. The giant bug might prefer the easy meal, rather than the meal that fights back. That's a plan for the whole party, though.

For your wizard specifically, I would suggest, that you do go ahead and cast Haste on the fighter anyway (he'll need it), and focus on hitting the harpies from range with firebolt or crossbow. Just avoid getting hit and do your best to keep your concentration on haste, to keep the fighter alive. That'll be the best course of action that your character specifically can do. Also note that mirror image is not concentration, so both haste and mirror image could be up at the same time. Not sure it'll do much good, but it's something. Not a bad plan.

Depending upon the terrain ...

Withdraw, try and get them to chase you.
Pick off Harpies.
Then hit Rhemoraz from range with as much damage as can be done from range until you have close with it.

[MaxWilson]

Oh and BTW, is your DM a Combat As War type or a Combat As Sport type? Be on the lookout for any cliffs or other things you could trick the Remorhaz into burrowing off the edge of, to cause big falling damage and also remove it from the combat for a while.

[sithlordnergal]

Some questions:

1) What are your spells? I know you said you mostly have fire spells, Magic Missile, and Slow, but do you have anything else?

2) Does the fighter have a melee weapon?

3) Does the DM allow the Druid to choose what they summon if they cast Conjure Animals?

4) How many resources does the party have left? I.E. did you just come in fresh from a Long Rest?


EDIT: Now that I'm on my laptop, I can talk strategy:

First, don't waste your time with Slow. Slow cuts a target's speed in half, gives targets a -2 to AC, makes it so they might not be able to cast spells, makes it so they can only take an action or bonus action, they make dex saves with disadvantage, and they can only make one attack per round. And to top it off, the target gets to make a saving throw at the end of each round. Looking at the Remorhaz's stats, they have a 30ft speed, 17 AC, no bonus actions, a single attack, and no magic with a +0 to Wisdom saves. The only thing Slow will do is cut it's speed in half, drop its AC to 15, and give it disadvantage to Dex saves. And even the Dex saves don't really matter since you only have Fireball, which its immune to.

Maybe it'll be useful if you plan on fleeing, maybe...but if you have to fight you're better off casting Haste on the Fighter and focusing on the Harpies. Haste will boost the Fighter's AC by 2, which may or may not be significant depending on their Base AC, give them an additional action, and double their speed. This also means they can escape from the Remorhaz's grapple attack, and still have an extra action to make an attack or dodge. As long as the Moon Druid and Life Cleric support them properly, the Fighter should be able to survive the Remorhaz.

As for you, you'll most likely want to focus fire on the Harpies. Hit as many as you can with a fireball, then use Scorching Ray or Fire Bolt to take down the rest. Once the Harpies are down, you can fire at the Remhoraz with Magic Missile.

[Lunali]

Tremorsense doesn't nullify mirror image or invisibility, it just lets the creature know where enemies are so it can keep track of things while it's underground and unable to use its eyes. The creature will still have disadvantage to hit any creature it can't see and may target an image if it can see.

[SlickShriktu]

Tremorsense doesn't nullify mirror image or invisibility, it just lets the creature know where enemies are so it can keep track of things while it's underground and unable to use its eyes. The creature will still have disadvantage to hit any creature it can't see and may target an image if it can see.

See I had read the Mirror Image entry of "A creature is unaffected by this spell if it can't see, if it relies on senses other than sight, such as blindsight, or if it can perceive illusions as false, as with truesight." as meaning it's tremorsense counts as another sense it could rely on in this instance. I can see if I can swing this interpretation with the DM.

[SlickShriktu]

I typed this out in Word so hopefully the formatting is alright. Please let me know if it's difficult to read. Still getting used to forums.

Ok all:

A little background on the party:

The Druid and myself are the only 2 characters left from starting the campaign. The Cleric and the Fighter are now both the 3rd characters of the other two players. Up until essentially last session I have never added to my spellbook outside of leveling as we have never been able to complete anything to get money because we have been forced to run away constantly. We never even got to a legitimate city until 2 sessions ago. I found 3 scrolls from a bbeg during the 2nd/3rd-ish session and have had to hold onto them until I had more than 40G to my name to copy them. Last session or so where I was trying to haggle with the shopkeep (and without meaning to ended up sort of giving my DM more of a hard time about not being able to afford anything because how could I as we’ve never made any money ever. In the end he agreed that I could barter some and we worked something out but still I don’t like doing that). Also I was just finally was able to get a gem to cast chromatic orb which I have had since Level 1.

It may seem like simply that this is normal of the DM to really challenge us to the point of death every combat but I’ve been playing with him for over 2 years now and I can assure you he’s not been like that and if he wanted to run a campaign like that he would have laid that out during session 0 as he has in past games and I’d feel pretty betrayed as a friend if he just up and decided that without mentioning it beforehand given two players have never played the game before and the Cleric is the Fighter’s little brother who, for lack of better words, struggles with social deficits, cues, and executive functioning-related things and the Druid still has a very light grasp on the game. The Fighter and Cleric are by far the unluckiest people I have ever when it comes to games which doesn’t help. This campaign is essentially the Cleric’s first time playing DnD, same with Druid. We were given the impression (at the end of a very late session and being tired before a day of work the next morning) this would just be us stopping by the outpost to check up on an NPC. So forgetting about swapping out spells, especially something for Chromatic Orb (a spell I hadn't ever used so I think I forgot I had it at all), was pretty easy for my brain to do. However I at least remembered to cast mage armor before we arrived.

Magic Items:
Druid: Chime of Opening, some custom ring that has mysterious properties but you have to use it in wildshape to learn more (from last session)
Me: Hat of wizardry, Necklace of Adaptation, Bracers of Defense (these last two we got maybe a session ago).
Cleric: Boots of Striding Springing (from last session)
Fighter: No magic items. Has a great sword, Maul, 5 Javelins

Ok so Spells:

WM:
C: Firebolt, Infestation, Message, Presdidigitation.
Level 1: Feather Fall, Mage Armor, Magic Missile.
Level 2: Dragon's Breath, Mirror Image, Scorching Ray.
Level 3: Fireball, Haste, Slow.

Cleric (… oh boy):
C: Light, Sacred Flame, Spare the Dying, Toll the Dead.
Level 1: Bless, Create/Destroy Water, Cure Wounds, Guiding Bolt, Healing Word, Prot Good/Evil, Shield of Faith.
Level 2: Enhance Ability, Hold Person, Lesser Restoration, Spiritual Weapon.
Level 3: Beacon of Hope, Revivify (does not have the material components nor did he ever)

Druid:
C: Druidcraft, Infestation, Produce Flame.
Level 1: Animal Friendship, Charm Person, Cure Wounds, Earth Tremor.
Level 2: Healing Spirit.
Level 3: Tidal Wave, Water Breathing

[Vorpalchicken]

Tremorsense doesn't nullify mirror image or invisibility, it just lets the creature know where enemies are so it can keep track of things while it's underground and unable to use its eyes. The creature will still have disadvantage to hit any creature it can't see and may target an image if it can see.

I might accept that ruling from a DM but I would also accept a ruling that tremorsense would indeed negate those spells, so long as the target was in contact with the ground.

Specifically Mirror Image reads "A creature is unaffected by this spell if it can't see, if it relies on Senses other than sight, such as Blindsight, or if it can perceive illusions as false, as with Truesight." Tremorsense should fit here provided that the target is on the ground.

Ninjaed

[nickl_2000]

WM:
C: Firebolt, Infestation, Message, Presdidigitation.
Level 1: Feather Fall, Mage Armor, Magic Missile.
Level 2: Dragon's Breath, Mirror Image, Scorching Ray.
Level 3: Fireball, Haste, Slow.

Cleric (… oh boy):
C: Light, Sacred Flame, Spare the Dying, Toll the Dead.
Level 1: Bless, Create/Destroy Water, Cure Wounds, Guiding Bolt, Healing Word, Prot Good/Evil, Shield of Faith.
Level 2: Enhance Ability, Hold Person, Lesser Restoration, Spiritual Weapon.
Level 3: Beacon of Hope, Revivify (does not have the material components nor did he ever)

Druid:
C: Druidcraft, Infestation, Produce Flame.
Level 1: Animal Friendship, Charm Person, Cure Wounds, Earth Tremor.
Level 2: Healing Spirit.
Level 3: Tidal Wave, Water Breathing

I would say that the first thing that the Druid should do is upcast healing spirit to level 3. If you can get the conga line of healing going , that alone can turn this battle up on it's head to the point of being not all that dangerous. If you want to make it even more silly combine it with beacon of hope.

Also, don't think that you have to go to the battle. If you can draw the enemies to you, you can set favorable positions against them with cover.

[MaxWilson]

Magic Items:
Druid: Chime of Opening, some custom ring that has mysterious properties but you have to use it in wildshape to learn more (from last session)
Me: Hat of wizardry, Necklace of Adaptation, Bracers of Defense (these last two we got maybe a session ago).
Cleric: Boots of Striding Springing (from last session)
Fighter: No magic items. Has a great sword, Maul, 5 Javelins

Ok so Spells:

WM:
C: Firebolt, Infestation, Message, Presdidigitation.
Level 1: Feather Fall, Mage Armor, Magic Missile.
Level 2: Dragon's Breath, Mirror Image, Scorching Ray.
Level 3: Fireball, Haste, Slow.

Cleric (… oh boy):
C: Light, Sacred Flame, Spare the Dying, Toll the Dead.
Level 1: Bless, Create/Destroy Water, Cure Wounds, Guiding Bolt, Healing Word, Prot Good/Evil, Shield of Faith.
Level 2: Enhance Ability, Hold Person, Lesser Restoration, Spiritual Weapon.
Level 3: Beacon of Hope, Revivify (does not have the material components nor did he ever)

Druid:
C: Druidcraft, Infestation, Produce Flame.
Level 1: Animal Friendship, Charm Person, Cure Wounds, Earth Tremor.
Level 2: Healing Spirit.
Level 3: Tidal Wave, Water Breathing

Okay... that's a tough hand to play but you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had.

Under these conditions I'd say your best plan for surviving the night, assuming you can't do something clever like trick the Remorhaz into running off a cliff, is to try to stay out of the Remorhaz's range while picking off the harpies and Cambion. When it comes to killing the Remorhaz, you have a few options:

1.) Fighter can hit it with a sword. Downside: causes damage to the Fighter, risks getting eaten by the Remorhaz.
2.) Fighter can chuck javelins. Downside: limited Javelins, and the Remorhaz will probably chase you.
3.) Druid can wildshape into something and bite it. Will take damage, but wildshape HP are free HP. Downside: might get swallowed by the Remorhaz and subsequently die.
4.) Cleric can hit it with Toll the Dead + Spiritual Weapon until it dies.
5.) Wizard can cast Magic Missile.
6.) Wizard, Druid, or Cleric can shoot it with crossbows. I assume you have crossbows even though not listed above, because IIRC the OP mentioned some.

You can potentially combine most of these, and given what I'm seeing here it looks like your best option for victory might be to Haste the cleric and let him hammer it with Toll the Dead + Spiritual Weapon while staying out of its reach. When Haste is about to run out, have him withdraw well out of range so you can re-cast it. That will buy you about 20 rounds to kill it, and 20 rounds of Spiritual Weapon + Toll the Dead will do approximately 182 HP of damage to the Remorhaz. The combination of Magic Missile and all of everybody else's javelins/crossbow bolts should finish it off. Then the Druid can heal everybody with Healing Spirit.

Also, do you have any caltrops? If so you may be able to slow it down significantly (30' to 20') by strewing caltrops in its path, which make it significantly easier to stay out of its reach.

Edit: oh, I overlooked Infestation. The druid should use that instead of a crossbow. Will help a little bit. Can also speed things up with a few Tidal Waves if they feel like spending all of their spell slots--might be better for harpy-killing than Remorhaz-killing though.

[LudicSavant]

If you're 4 level 5's, with no significant magic items or fire resistence, going against a CR 11 boss creature, there is nothing you really can do.

In one of the games I'm currently playing in where we just reached level 6, pretty much all of our encounters at level 5 were above CR11, and frequently were using tactics like a pre-buffed Erinyes Assassin ambushing us while we slept or having a long range spellcaster snipe us from well over 100 feet away while a phalanx of soldiers guards bridge over a lava pit leading to him.

There's plenty you can do. A Remorhaz has some pretty glaring weaknesses (like having only a 30 foot movement speed and melee attacks). Slow should mess it right up with its +0 Wisdom save.

[MaxWilson]

In one of the games I'm currently playing in where we just reached level 6, pretty much all of our encounters at level 5 were above CR11, and frequently were using tactics like a pre-buffed Erinyes Assassin ambushing us while we slept or having a long range spellcaster snipe us from well over 100 feet away while a phalanx of soldiers guards bridge over a lava pit leading to him.

There's plenty you can do. A Remorhaz has some pretty glaring weaknesses (like having only a 30 foot movement speed and melee attacks). Slow should mess it right up with its +0 Wisdom save.

That is true, but the party also has some glaring weaknesses against a Remorhaz, like being focused on melee attacks. :) I still see ways for the PCs to win but this isn't a party that can just hammer the Remorhaz with Agonizing Repelling Blast over Spike Growth until it cries and gives up, or anything like that.

Long range as "well over 100 feet away", heh. 30 meters is only just barely beyond conversational distance. Ref: my memory, and also https://www.answers.com/Q/How_far_away_can_a_person_hear_someone_talking

[LudicSavant]

I have a 1 turn bonus action invisibility and mirror image that are my usual defenses that will be negated by the remorhaz entirely and my fireball, fire bolt, scorching ray, flaming sphere are also of no use. I’m left with magic missile, slow, and haste.

You may be interested to know that Magic Missile actually deals better damage on average than Scorching Ray against enemies with AC17 (the AC of a remorhaz), fire resistance or not.

Assuming you have an 18 Int, Scorching Ray would do 12.6 average damage against AC17 with a second level slot, and Magic Missile would do 14 with a second level slot (and 10.5 with a first).

[Lunali]

See I had read the Mirror Image entry of "A creature is unaffected by this spell if it can't see, if it relies on senses other than sight, such as blindsight, or if it can perceive illusions as false, as with truesight." as meaning it's tremorsense counts as another sense it could rely on in this instance. I can see if I can swing this interpretation with the DM.

A good argument is the fact that it has both tremorsense and darkvision to 60ft, if tremorsense was strictly superior there would be no reason for it to have both.

[MaxWilson]

You may be interested to know that Magic Missile actually deals better damage on average than Scorching Ray against enemies with AC17 (the AC of a remorhaz), fire resistance or not.

Assuming you have an 18 Int, Scorching Ray would do 12.6 average damage against AC17 with a second level slot, and Magic Missile would do 14 with a second level slot (and 10.5 with a first).

You know who's the most likely to feel useless during this fight? It's not the wizard, it's the fighter. He can hardly even hit the Remorhaz without doing as much damage to himself as to it, and then unless he's got spell support from the wizard it will hit him back waaaaay harder... and the wizard shouldn't give him the spell support because he's too busy Hasting the Cleric so the Cleric can kill it, which leaves nothing for the fighter to do but either (1) attack the harpies and cambion, or (2) go kamikaze against the Remorhaz and rely on the Druid to hopefully heal him afterward.

Hopefully he's smart enough to pick option #1 but I feel bad for him.


A good argument is the fact that it has both tremorsense and darkvision to 60ft, if tremorsense was strictly superior there would be no reason for it to have both.

Flying creatures.

[LudicSavant]

Long range as "well over 100 feet away", heh. 30 meters is only just barely beyond conversational distance. Ref: my memory, and also https://www.answers.com/Q/How_far_away_can_a_person_hear_someone_talking

Yeah, but as I'm sure you know distances are weird in 5e because creatures are weirdly slow in 5e (a 60 foot movement speed is just like 6.8 miles per hour). A real average person can cover 100 feet in a round, while many D&D characters cannot.

[Evaar]

Agreed. Kill the harpies ASAP. If anyone gets charmed, slap them (1 HP + STR of damage per slap) until they come to their senses. Too bad you probably don't have any earplugs...

Another fight where Warding Wind would've been a huge help.

[Galithar]

A good argument is the fact that it has both tremorsense and darkvision to 60ft, if tremorsense was strictly superior there would be no reason for it to have both.

Not quite. Tremorsense doesn't do anything for you if they aren't in contact with the ground, which means they are in no way redundant, they simply help you in different ways.

[Duff]

Slow would go a long way to making this fight winnable. .
I'm unconvinced. But it would make the fight a heap more "run away" from-able

[MaxWilson]

Yeah, but as I'm sure you know distances are weird in 5e because creatures are weirdly slow in 5e (a 60 foot movement speed is just like 6.8 miles per hour). A real average person can cover 100 feet in a round, while many D&D characters cannot.

True. Le sigh. All those deadly dragons cruising leisurely along through the skies at 80' per round x 2 for Dash = 17 mph, like medium-speed elevators or low-speed blimps...

I suppose a simple solution would be to redefine the round as 3 seconds long, changing no other rules. Spell durations would last twice as many rounds but that's not a serious problem.

[HiveStriker]

So this weekend we’ll be starting what I feel will be an impossible fight. We ended with arriving at an outpost and squaring up with what I assume is an adult Remorhaz (as it just swallowed something as the session ended), harpies, and a cambion watching in the distance. I got the implication we would be fighting the Remorhaz and the harpies and not the leader cambion. We are a party of 4 level 5’s (Moon Druid, Life Cleric, War Mage Wizard, and Battlemaster). While there may be some NPC involvement, I doubt they’d get in more than one turn. I’m the party wizard and I’ll have what feels like nothing beyond a crossbow to damage the Remorhaz. I have a 1 turn bonus action invisibility and mirror image that are my usual defenses that will be negated by the remorhaz entirely and my fireball, fire bolt, scorching ray, flaming sphere are also of no use. I’m left with magic missile, slow, and haste. The fighter says to focus on the harpies but that leaves him to fight it alone with 5 javelins he couldn’t even utilize haste with:smalleek:. I’m sort of at the edge of anxiousness leaning towards hopelessness and kind of annoyed as it feels greatly unbalanced. How would you go about this?


I typed this out in Word so hopefully the formatting is alright. Please let me know if it's difficult to read. Still getting used to forums.

Ok all:

A little background on the party:

The Druid and myself are the only 2 characters left from starting the campaign. The Cleric and the Fighter are now both the 3rd characters of the other two players. Up until essentially last session I have never added to my spellbook outside of leveling as we have never been able to complete anything to get money because we have been forced to run away constantly. We never even got to a legitimate city until 2 sessions ago. I found 3 scrolls from a bbeg during the 2nd/3rd-ish session and have had to hold onto them until I had more than 40G to my name to copy them. Last session or so where I was trying to haggle with the shopkeep (and without meaning to ended up sort of giving my DM more of a hard time about not being able to afford anything because how could I as we’ve never made any money ever. In the end he agreed that I could barter some and we worked something out but still I don’t like doing that). Also I was just finally was able to get a gem to cast chromatic orb which I have had since Level 1.

It may seem like simply that this is normal of the DM to really challenge us to the point of death every combat but I’ve been playing with him for over 2 years now and I can assure you he’s not been like that and if he wanted to run a campaign like that he would have laid that out during session 0 as he has in past games and I’d feel pretty betrayed as a friend if he just up and decided that without mentioning it beforehand given two players have never played the game before and the Cleric is the Fighter’s little brother who, for lack of better words, struggles with social deficits, cues, and executive functioning-related things and the Druid still has a very light grasp on the game. The Fighter and Cleric are by far the unluckiest people I have ever when it comes to games which doesn’t help. This campaign is essentially the Cleric’s first time playing DnD, same with Druid. We were given the impression (at the end of a very late session and being tired before a day of work the next morning) this would just be us stopping by the outpost to check up on an NPC. So forgetting about swapping out spells, especially something for Chromatic Orb (a spell I hadn't ever used so I think I forgot I had it at all), was pretty easy for my brain to do. However I at least remembered to cast mage armor before we arrived.

Magic Items:
Druid: Chime of Opening, some custom ring that has mysterious properties but you have to use it in wildshape to learn more (from last session)
Me: Hat of wizardry, Necklace of Adaptation, Bracers of Defense (these last two we got maybe a session ago).
Cleric: Boots of Striding Springing (from last session)
Fighter: No magic items. Has a great sword, Maul, 5 Javelins

Ok so Spells:

WM:
C: Firebolt, Infestation, Message, Presdidigitation.
Level 1: Feather Fall, Mage Armor, Magic Missile.
Level 2: Dragon's Breath, Mirror Image, Scorching Ray.
Level 3: Fireball, Haste, Slow.

Cleric (… oh boy):
C: Light, Sacred Flame, Spare the Dying, Toll the Dead.
Level 1: Bless, Create/Destroy Water, Cure Wounds, Guiding Bolt, Healing Word, Prot Good/Evil, Shield of Faith.
Level 2: Enhance Ability, Hold Person, Lesser Restoration, Spiritual Weapon.
Level 3: Beacon of Hope, Revivify (does not have the material components nor did he ever)

Druid:
C: Druidcraft, Infestation, Produce Flame.
Level 1: Animal Friendship, Charm Person, Cure Wounds, Earth Tremor.
Level 2: Healing Spirit.
Level 3: Tidal Wave, Water Breathing

Hi!

Well, seems to me there are not that many options here.
First of all, you: SLOW! This is one of the keys to winning the fight. Beware though: you want to get as many creatures as possible for your try. This means having the Fighter (and possibly Cleric although he should stay away to limit risk of losing concentration) try and aggro both Remorhaz as well as as many harpies as possible. Or, alternative, all harpies.
This will help immensely. If you succeed on at least 2 enemies, it's worth keeping. Otherwise better retry luck immediately next turn.
Once you have a Slow you want to keep, dash away and keep at distance while using Firebolt.
You are THE one making the fight doable (no pressure XD) so keeping concentration should be your utmost priority as long as there are more than 1 harpy + Remorhaz remaining.

Then, Druid: simply upcast Healing Spirit, keep it upon Fighter at all times unless crisis requiring another move elsewhere, and otherwise use either cantrip on Harpies depending on highest stat (disclaimer: Druid will be near useless against Remorhaz damage-wise, although Slow's -2 AC may help)
Have him use Moon form only for emergency THP or pulling a friend to Healing Spirit. Have him NOT engage.

Then, Cleric: cast Bless immediately into fight as 1st level spell if needed (in which case exclude Fighter, you want him to lure Harpies anyways XD), if possible as 2nd level spell. Idea here is to make sure party loses as little time as possible with Harpies's song.
On that point, a note: you're level 5, not dealing too much damage with cantrips: don't hesitate to use Infestation to "wake up" others (you as a Wizard can also invest a Magic Missile if you think it's mandatory to break *right now* or simply have enough slots).
Once everyone has been immunized against charm, have Cleric help dispatch Harpies with Sacred Flame. Cast Spiritual Weapon only if situation requires all-in.

Finally, Fighter: role at start is to "get lured by harpies" (so not that bad if he gets charmed one turn) to allow as large a Slow as possible. Then orchestrate Harpies dispatch while they are in range.
I'm hoping he has Trip Attack. If so, have him Trip a harpy so it falls on ground (should not require too much luck), immediately Grapple it, then pummel it.
Keep Javelins as much as possible!

Main idea here is to remove harpies from the equation while evading the Remorhaz as much as possible.
Once there is Remorhaz left, surround it and weaken it with only ranged attacks while maintaining distance.It will take much time but you'll get it safely.
Unless it burrows.
Potential (more or less) counters:
Animal Friendship a creature with Tremorsense or otherwise high Perception to get it to indicate you position. Note; high chance this won't work unless creature would have little risk involved, unless DM is very nice.
Enhance Ability (WIS) on Druid who would then Wildshape as a creature with high perception, and "bark" position (require party to decide what sounds to use beforehand).
Enhance Ability (STR/DEX) on Fighter to resist bite grapple and have him use manoeuvers to taunt Remorhaz.
Last tip: Druid could try Earth Tremor to lessen threat should Remorhaz reach him. Or if Harpies come on ground possibly.

Finally, let me say that this feels much more like a one-chance puzzle than a 5e encounter... XD
Good luck ;)

[Drogorn]

Why are you fighting these things? Is this a rail shooter? If so, why not just play a rail shooter?

[Composer99]

It may seem like simply that this is normal of the DM to really challenge us to the point of death every combat but I’ve been playing with him for over 2 years now and I can assure you he’s not been like that and if he wanted to run a campaign like that he would have laid that out during session 0 as he has in past games and I’d feel pretty betrayed as a friend if he just up and decided that without mentioning it beforehand given two players have never played the game before ...

It seems to me that you could stand to have a mid-campaign session 0 to clear some of this up.

[Throne12]

Do you have dragons breath prepared. Because it can be any damage type . Slap that on the fighter and watch him and the cleric to to town with dragons breath , spiritual weapon, roll the dead, the you use infestation and the druid can use infestation and drop down some heals too.

Your in a better spot then you made it sound like.

Also what is the terrain like?

[sithlordnergal]

Magic Items:
Druid: Chime of Opening, some custom ring that has mysterious properties but you have to use it in wildshape to learn more (from last session)
Me: Hat of wizardry, Necklace of Adaptation, Bracers of Defense (these last two we got maybe a session ago).
Cleric: Boots of Striding Springing (from last session)
Fighter: No magic items. Has a great sword, Maul, 5 Javelins

Ok so Spells:

WM:
C: Firebolt, Infestation, Message, Presdidigitation.
Level 1: Feather Fall, Mage Armor, Magic Missile.
Level 2: Dragon's Breath, Mirror Image, Scorching Ray.
Level 3: Fireball, Haste, Slow.

Cleric (… oh boy):
C: Light, Sacred Flame, Spare the Dying, Toll the Dead.
Level 1: Bless, Create/Destroy Water, Cure Wounds, Guiding Bolt, Healing Word, Prot Good/Evil, Shield of Faith.
Level 2: Enhance Ability, Hold Person, Lesser Restoration, Spiritual Weapon.
Level 3: Beacon of Hope, Revivify (does not have the material components nor did he ever)

Druid:
C: Druidcraft, Infestation, Produce Flame.
Level 1: Animal Friendship, Charm Person, Cure Wounds, Earth Tremor.
Level 2: Healing Spirit.
Level 3: Tidal Wave, Water Breathing

Hmmm, having looked at those spells, my advice essentially remains the same, and is very different from everyone else apparently:

Don't bother with Slow, its not going to be as big of a help in this fight. The Remorhaz isn't really going to be effected, and the harpies have low enough HP that a fireball will mostly deal with them. Instead, I suggest casting Haste on the Fighter. The extra action is going to be highly useful, as it will allow the Fighter to have two actions. So even if they are bitten and grappled, they can escape then attack the Remorhaz. Your main focus should be on keeping concentration on Haste and killing the Harpies.

Thankfully basic Harpies have a low dex and only 30 something HP, so if you roll an average amount with fireball, you can get most within the kill range of a single Scorching Ray. The Cleric and Moon Druid are going to have to back up the fighter, with the Druid casting Healing Spirit at 3rd level, then Tidal Wave for a bit of damage on the Remorhaz. Meanwhile the Cleric can focus on healing and using Spiritual Weapon whenever possible.

[Xeko]

Dragon's Breath is a good option as well. It's not as good as Haste. But, if you use Haste on the cleric turn one, and then Fireball on the harpies turn two, that leaves you with no level 3 spell slots. What happens when you lose concentration? Dragon's Breath, with a non-fire and non-cold damage type is your best fall back plan. Cast it on your fighter, and that'll allow him to continue to attack at range, after he's run out of javelins... otherwise, he's going to be taking a lot of damage.

[Terdarius]

My take on this is that there is still hope and with some luck should still be doable.

My personal strategy would be:

You as the mage should focus solely on the harpies. (do what you do best! AoE!)
start with a slow on the harpies, follow it up with a fireball and finish it off with magic missiles (try not to waste darts though).
You should be able to deal with the harpy threat alone if you can get them slowed and to the brink of death with a well placed fireball.
With them slowed you should be able to stay at range for a while at least.

Meanwhile the rest of the party should focus on kiting the Remorhaz as much as possible and separate it from the harpies.
Your fighter could opt to tank it if necessary with taking the dodge action every turn until you have dealt with the harpies.
Make sure your cleric blesses the entire party right away, so you hopefully don't get charmed by the harpies.
The druid could try to knock the Remorhaz down with tidal wave, so it would be easier to kite for a turn at least. (and do some damage)
The fighter could also use the menacing attack manouver to frighten the Remorhaz and then move away from it. That should lock it in place for a round unable to attack anything.

So the main point is to prevent the Remorhaz from being effective for as long as possible, giving you time to nuke the crap out of the harpies.
Once the harpies are dealt with, your party should be able to deal with the Remorhaz by pure action economy. (just try not to get eaten :P)
Your cleric could also cast shield of faith on the fighter at that point, to boost his AC a bit and prevent him from getting eaten. (maybe)

[opaopajr]

You naturally nuke as much as you can from a distance, though I favor Scorching Ray and MM vs. Harpies. That 3rd spell slot has to go to Haste for action economy. :smallcool:

You Haste the Fighter (at lvl 5 should have Extra Attack; that's 2 attacks with a flexible option), grab a reach weapon (who cares about proficiency? :smallwink:) stay directly behind the Fighter, and Dodge every round. When the Harpies try to kite your Fighter, be that extra OA attempt.

Your Mage Armor, Mirror Image (optional, tho wise), and Dodge should make you like Teflon (tm). Your point is to mess with dogpiling & kiting the Fighter by: a) simply taking up space & messing with movement, b) providing that unlikely yet possible OA. If the Fighter's downed, be that quick support to get them back up ASAP (i.e. drag body into healer range, etc.).

:smallsmile: Good luck!

[Sparky McDibben]

Let us know happens, OP. You got me curious...

[HiveStriker]

Hmmm, having looked at those spells, my advice essentially remains the same, and is very different from everyone else apparently:

Don't bother with Slow, its not going to be as big of a help in this fight. The Remorhaz isn't really going to be effected, and the harpies have low enough HP that a fireball will mostly deal with them. Instead, I suggest casting Haste on the Fighter. The extra action is going to be highly useful, as it will allow the Fighter to have two actions. So even if they are bitten and grappled, they can escape then attack the Remorhaz. Your main focus should be on keeping concentration on Haste and killing the Harpies.

Thankfully basic Harpies have a low dex and only 30 something HP, so if you roll an average amount with fireball, you can get most within the kill range of a single Scorching Ray. The Cleric and Moon Druid are going to have to back up the fighter, with the Druid casting Healing Spirit at 3rd level, then Tidal Wave for a bit of damage on the Remorhaz. Meanwhile the Cleric can focus on healing and using Spiritual Weapon whenever possible.

About the bolded part (Slow vs Fireball): I get the reasoning behind "soften them up quickly to kill them faster", but honestly I think it's kinda shallow for the following reasons.
1) Fireball has a better radius than Slow, but it's a point-centered radius AND it sports friendly fire.
So for it to be optimal you'd need Harpies packed together: but why would its stay together when they are intelligent creatures that know magic AOE exists, and have a 40 flying speed?
The only reason for them to cluster up would be to gang up on an enemy, which would be probably Fighter: meaning that Fighter will 100% be inside the radius. And since it's apparently a STR Fighter, DEX save won't be good. Meaning Fighter has high chance of suffering full damage. At level 5, a Fighter should have around 50 HP. Average of Fireball would be 14. Reasonable bet, especially with a Healing Spirit to back it up.
On a great roll, it becomes a double-bladed bet: you may put Harpies very close to dying, but you would also put the Fighter in a state of being finished off by Harpies before friends can either kill them or restore him (lets all recall Harpies have two attacks so extra chance at critical, and even average 7 can quickly push wounded Fighter into death saves).

After all, theorycraft is nice, but in practice we don't know crucial things like how many Harpies, given turn order and the like.

So, while I like the idea in principle, I'd say that deciding if it's a worth bet is something Wizard should decide depending mainly on turn order.

The big advantages of Slow compared to that are the following...
a) No friendly fire: you choose which creatures, so safe for Fighter.
b) You make harpies much easier to hit with attacks and spells alike. -2 AC for a typical attack for PC (+3 prof +4 mod to hit) pushes chance to hit on 85% against Harpies.
c) You make them move at half-speed meaning even if they try to fly away they will still stay in Cleric/Druid range for a longer time.

Of course, you can't expect Slow to be as lucky as hitting all Harpies, nor expecting it to last more than 3 turns at best unless real lucky (30% chance of Harpy to save).
In a way, it's a bigger bet than Fireball (Harpies have just a +1 to DEX save, not enough to really make a difference) because if they save you get nothing. But as long as you got at least 4-5 creatures in range, you can expect to hit 2 of them, and that imo would be enough to make it worth the shot.
Your mileage may vary. :)

2) Slow VS Haste
I disagree on the assertion that Haste is better action-economy wise. While I agree it can be a good choice, those are different things.

For the comparison though, let's agree to take the "minimum working theory" of Slow, aka only 2 creatures got affected whatever number of targets you tried.
If those are only Harpies, confer above: you at least ensured they deal minimum damage while staying in range of hurt: with only 20 feet of fly and 10 feet of ground speed, everyone can safely avoid their melee attacks so they are essentially harmless. So either focus fire on them while weakened, or instead ignore them and kill the others, your choice.
Action economy wise, you force creatures to have less attacks: no multistrike, no reaction, and possibly not enough move to get into attack range (which means 0 attack). As long as there are 2 creatures affected until they die, it was better than Haste.

If one of those is Remorhaz, it's a very big deal: it means even the Fighter can safely strike him in melee then get away. In fact, EVERYONE could potentially hit into melee and get away: because no opportunity attacks (no reaction) and only 15 feet speed.
It also means, on the flip side, that everyone can focus on Harpies without having too much trouble avoiding getting into range.

Compare to Haste: it can be a good thing too, because it means Fighter could grapple a harpy and still get his regular number of attacks, and he could disengage safely so he could kite the Remorhaz. But that's about all: you don't help others hit enemies, you don't reduce overall threat.
To be fair, in that specific situation, since no enemy has ranged attacks Wizard could just focus on avoiding creatures meaning you have high chance of maintaining Haste the full minute (contrarily to many encounters when an unlucky break may end in hell).

It's probably a matter of taste and how lucky ones feel. :)
I'd still suggest Slow because OP said two of his pals had bad luck with rolls. Whether it's true or an illusion, if himself feels lucky, it's best to help them than to help Fighter imo. YMMV.



My take on this is that there is still hope and with some luck should still be doable.

My personal strategy would be:

You as the mage should focus solely on the harpies. (do what you do best! AoE!)
start with a slow on the harpies, follow it up with a fireball and finish it off with magic missiles (try not to waste darts though).
You should be able to deal with the harpy threat alone if you can get them slowed and to the brink of death with a well placed fireball.
With them slowed you should be able to stay at range for a while at least.

I get the idea of "lowering DEX saves with Slow to ensure Fireball works", but I'm really not convinced getting from average 7 to average 14 is worth a 3rd level slot.
I'd rather say: if you want to Slow, Slow first then see what happens.
If you use Fireball, then I'd tend to agree Haste will be better: provided the Fighter is in good enough shape, he can Disengage from the group of harpies and hep finish them off then kite Remorhaz and, with some luck, weaken it enough that party can kill before he gets stunned from Haste end.

[malachi]

At level 5, a Fighter should have around 50 HP. Average of Fireball would be 14. Reasonable bet, especially with a Healing Spirit to back it up.
...{snip}...
I get the idea of "lowering DEX saves with Slow to ensure Fireball works", but I'm really not convinced getting from average 7 to average 14 is worth a 3rd level slot.

I don't have much to contribute here, but the average of fireball is 28 on a failed save, not 14. 8d6 = 8*(average of a d6) = 8*3.5 = 28.

[MaxWilson]

If the Fighter's downed, be that quick support to get them back up ASAP (i.e. drag body into healer range, etc.).

Remember that the Remorhaz can only swallow things it's already grappling, so if the Fighter gets downed somebody MUST Shove the unconscious fighter in a direction that breaks the grapple or he will get swallowed next turn. (Shove works automatically against unconscious targets but you still need to find an appropriate angle.) Unfortunately that probably results in you yourself getting grappled on the Remorhaz's next turn, so if you do get into melee with the Remorhaz it probably turns into a round robin of "one PC breaks the grapple on whoever is unconscious, then the druid heals the unconscious guy back to positive HP with his bonus action and then casts Infestation, then other PCs make whatever attacks they can," every turn, while hoping that the Remorhaz doesn't crit anybody and kill them instantly with massive damage.

IMO it's better just to focus on not getting into melee with the Remorhaz in the first place.



2) Slow VS Haste
I disagree on the assertion that Haste is better action-economy wise. While I agree it can be a good choice, those are different things.

...snip... If one of those is Remorhaz, it's a very big deal: it means even the Fighter can safely strike him in melee then get away. In fact, EVERYONE could potentially hit into melee and get away: because no opportunity attacks (no reaction) and only 15 feet speed.

But it isn't safe--the Fighter will take 3d6 fire damage every time he hits, and so will everyone else when they hit in melee. It's much better to focus on ranged attacks like Toll the Dead/Spiritual Weapon/Infestation/Magic Missile, and THAT plus the saving throw is why Slow is less helpful than Haste. Let the Fighter focus on killing harpies/cambion while the Hasted Cleric kites and kills the Remorhaz via Toll the Dead + Spiritual Weapon, with occasional help from the druid, while the wizard stays well out of range so he doesn't lose concentration on Haste.

[HiveStriker]

I don't have much to contribute here, but the average of fireball is 28 on a failed save, not 14. 8d6 = 8*(average of a d6) = 8*3.5 = 28.
Wow, thanks for that correction!!!
Big mistake on my part, sorry.

4d6 did seem low for Fireball, but I didn't double-question it when I saw this as spell description (have no books at the moment, found something online). And as I said in several threads, long time without playing or reading, so hazy memory. XD

Well, that does change much the appreciation: Fireball now becomes, in my view, probably the best use of a slot if
a) You can get at least 3 harpies inside it and
b) No friend in zone, or friend in zone but healing ready to apply just after that one way or another.

Reason my view changes so much is that while I think "in void", on 4 targets, having 2 harpies slowed and 2 unaffected is still overall good, with Harpies having only 35% chance to save againt Fireball, the balance gears towards having at least 2 failing the save, and with expected ~38 HP that does indeed makes them close to "one-attack" finishers unless you really roll crappy damage (which can still happen XD).

Remember that the Remorhaz can only swallow things it's already grappling, so if the Fighter gets downed somebody MUST Shove the unconscious fighter in a direction that breaks the grapple or he will get swallowed next turn. (Shove works automatically against unconscious targets but you still need to find an appropriate angle.) Unfortunately that probably results in you yourself getting grappled on the Remorhaz's next turn, so if you do get into melee with the Remorhaz it probably turns into a round robin of "one PC breaks the grapple on whoever is unconscious, then the druid heals the unconscious guy back to positive HP with his bonus action and then casts Infestation, then other PCs make whatever attacks they can," every turn, while hoping that the Remorhaz doesn't crit anybody and kill them instantly with massive damage.

IMO it's better just to focus on not getting into melee with the Remorhaz in the first place.



But it isn't safe--the Fighter will take 3d6 fire damage every time he hits, and so will everyone else when they hit in melee. It's much better to focus on ranged attacks like Toll the Dead/Spiritual Weapon/Infestation/Magic Missile, and THAT plus the saving throw is why Slow is less helpful than Haste. Let the Fighter focus on killing harpies/cambion while the Hasted Cleric kites and kills the Remorhaz via Toll the Dead + Spiritual Weapon, with occasional help from the druid, while the wizard stays well out of range so he doesn't lose concentration on Haste.
I never said that other people SHOULD try and attack in melee. I just stressed that they COULD.
Of course everyone that has ranged attacks should stay at range, that's exactly what I said the first time mind you.

However, having the Fighter alone darts in and out and strike in melee is no problem: (upcasted) Healing Spirit is there to immediately him after the fact (of course other players could use it too but as said, better fan out around the creature).
Of course, if he still has Javelins he should use it. But only 5 javelins means high chance he'll use them against Harpies.
Furthermore, really, the only threat is getting grappled because DC 17 is hard and it means you can get swallowed.
10 fire damage is nothing important as long as Healing Spirit is here (when I say "not important" it's because while Fighter still loses HP overall, it's on a scale that's completely predictible and manageable. Worst case use Second Wind or grab a potion).

Also, it's impressive you'd stress that "Slow is less useful than Haste" while you say yourself that it's much better to focus on ranged attacks and cantrips, which will get 10% improvement chance on *everyone* (Fighter included), especially important when fighting a target that has 17 AC base.

By the way, how is Fighter supposed to kill all Harpies with only 5 javelins and one reaction attack per turn?
Considering how OP is worried, I guess Harpies group is much closer to 5 than 2.
Let's say 4.
Fighter has 5 javelins, both hands carrying one when starting combat because he knows he has to focus on Harpies.
Let's say he gets Hasted. He throws both javelins, uses free interaction to get a third, throws it.
(1d8+4)*3, assuming all hit (reasonable assumption), means ~24. You don't have one harpy dead yet, and you only have 2 javelins left. What next?
Harpies have ZERO reason to stay on ground once they landed their attacks so once Fighter is out of javelins, the only way he can deal damage is with reaction attack (because AFAIK you can't replace weapon attack with Grapple during an opportunity attack).
--> Simply won't work.

Let's assume now that Fighter has Trip Attack, that he's lucky enough to have it succeed on first try: he doesn't want to affect more than one harpy with that because prone means disadvantage on ranged attacks (and you *want* to focus fire to reduce enemy count).
So he makes a Hapry fall on ground with a Trip Javelin, proceeds to grapple it so it cannot fly back up, then proceed to whack it. It will take at the minimum 2 turns for him to kill *one* Harpy.
Meaning all others are largely free to mess up with party.
--> Simply bad tactic.

Especially if we recall that *each* Harpy can sing, and charm immunity on save is *individual* to Harpy.
So Harpies could perma-lock whole party several turns before they even had a chance to Bless/Haste/whatever. Worse, Wizard could lose Haste concentration because of harpies attacking while he's charmed, making Fighter even more vulnerable.

So...
No, sorry, your idea simply won't work. Remorhaz is a big sack of meat, but it's overall completely harmless unless it manages to reach melee range and grapple. The Harpies are the real threat here because they can both deprive actions and force movement (possibly towards Remorhaz). Getting rid of Harpies as fast as possible is the one way to win, and letting Fighter tackle it alone is working against that.

[Hobbo Jim]

TLDR: My strat would be kill harpies to gain action econ advantage, spread out & kite (tanking is 2 turn lethal due to swallow & high hit), Druid's Earth Tremor can knock it prone (has bad d to help with kiting. Biggest issue is probably if it Burrows. Hope you have something to climb.

Edit: Looks like my page didn't refresh properly so I didn't see all of the responses before i posted this. Looks like most of it has already been said - so the TLDR is probably enough since a lot of it is just agreeing with the last few comments unless you really want to see my thought process.


The remorhaz is immune to fire damage, but honestly I'm inclined to say opening up with Fireball might not be a bad idea to take out the harpies. It can be done at a 150 ft range, allowing you to single out the remorhaz long before the fight starts. This creature isn't legendary, so any seasoned adventuring party should be able to tell you that the action economy is your biggest friend. It gets one attack, once per round. That's it. it can't even do attacks of opportunity if it's grappling someone.

The issue I see here is that you can probably create a strategy where the party wins, but it's going to be hard to keep everyone alive. Especially if the DM is the finish the kill type.

As someone else mentioned, Slow will only be useful if it guarantees that you can stay out of range. This remoraz is going to average 50 damage a hit if I calculated it correctly, which might one shot some of you. It might not one shot, but since the first attack restrains and the second swallows, you're still looking at two hits = dead. Even if you break the grapple, that takes your action and unless you're a rogue/monk who can disengage w/ a bonus, you'll die to an AOO. Unfortunately, a +11 hit is almost certain to hit any AC that you guys have. Maybe he rolls low and you get lucky, but I wouldn't count on it.

As noted by others, the winning strategy is to kite and action economy it. Once you get it into a central area, the party will have to spread out, and whoever it is targeting will have to run like hell and pray they don't get hit. Looking at your spells the Druid has Tremor. It can't be tripped, but the Remorhaz has a hot garbage Dex Save. Prone reduces movement to 1/2 movement (15 ft).

As a DM, the obvious counter to me would be to have it Burrow to chase you guys. I don't think you have any way to track it, so short of hard bailing (which it sounds like would have been your plan in the first place if you could) not much can be done. If you can climb something and have everyone ready an action for it to appear, that could work, but that's a hard spot to be in.

[Eldariel]

Honestly, Remorhaz is a beast. It'll probably seek to eat someone and burrow away, unless controlled or something. Thus the principal goal of this battle should be forcing it to retreat, not to kill it. It's unlikely to continue fighting if sufficiently damaged given it has an almost 100% safe way of escaping in its burrow ability. Thus you probably don't actually need to hit it for 200+ damage.

[HiveStriker]

TLDR: My strat would be kill harpies to gain action econ advantage, spread out & kite (tanking is 2 turn lethal due to swallow & high hit), Druid's Earth Tremor can knock it prone (has bad d to help with kiting. Biggest issue is probably if it Burrows. Hope you have something to climb.

Edit: Looks like my page didn't refresh properly so I didn't see all of the responses before i posted this. Looks like most of it has already been said - so the TLDR is probably enough since a lot of it is just agreeing with the last few comments unless you really want to see my thought process.


The remorhaz is immune to fire damage, but honestly I'm inclined to say opening up with Fireball might not be a bad idea to take out the harpies. It can be done at a 150 ft range, allowing you to single out the remorhaz long before the fight starts. This creature isn't legendary, so any seasoned adventuring party should be able to tell you that the action economy is your biggest friend. It gets one attack, once per round. That's it. it can't even do attacks of opportunity if it's grappling someone.

As someone else mentioned, Slow will only be useful if it guarantees that you can stay out of range. This remoraz is going to average 50 damage a hit if I calculated it correctly, which might one shot some of you. It might not one shot, but since the first attack restrains and the second swallows, you're still looking at two hits = dead. Even if you break the grapple, that takes your action and unless you're a rogue/monk who can disengage w/ a bonus, you'll die to an AOO. Unfortunately, a +11 hit is almost certain to hit any AC that you guys have. Maybe he rolls low and you get lucky, but I wouldn't count on it.

As a DM, the obvious counter to me would be to have it Burrow to chase you guys. I don't think you have any way to track it, so short of hard bailing (which it sounds like would have been your plan in the first place if you could) not much can be done. If you can climb something and have everyone ready an action for it to appear, that could work, but that's a hard spot to be in.
Agreed on the "Fireball opening" part (thanks to someone correcting me on Fireball damage ;)), as long as you get at least 3 Harpies in the radius it's worth the shot.

About kiting to stay out of range while fanning out, that's precisely while Slow may be so useful (provided Wizard can land it on his remaining 3rd level slot): Remorhaz will only have 15 feet land speed, meaning whatever PC he tries to chase, even those with only 30 feet range attacks/cantrips, *everyone* can maintain a proper "circle" around it. Even if Remorhaz Dashed, since it has no reaction, PC can simply fall back "more" maybe with own Dash if needed.
With that said, once there is only Remorhaz left, Slow would only be a facilitator and largely skippable...

If not for burrowing.
I put out some ideas to try and counter the burrowing, but honestly, if Remorhaz just wants to break from battle, there is nothing party can do to help it.
If defeating it is important for them, combining Slow + Earth Tremor is the only way to keep the creature above ground long enough to kill it before it completely disappears.
Or so I think because the creature is "Huge" so I don't think it could completely burrow itself in a single turn, but maybe I'm wrong on that...

[Hobbo Jim]

Honestly, Remorhaz is a beast. It'll probably seek to eat someone and burrow away, unless controlled or something. Thus the principal goal of this battle should be forcing it to retreat, not to kill it. It's unlikely to continue fighting if sufficiently damaged given it has an almost 100% safe way of escaping in its burrow ability. Thus you probably don't actually need to hit it for 200+ damage.

The Remorhaz has been chillin with harpies and a Cambion, so my bet would be it's tamed/controlled. Even if it's not, this is a very DM dependent strategy, and while there is an argument for it among DMs, the player has no control over it. Plenty of DMs have everything fight to the death, realistic or not. That said, even if it is willing to retreat, I doubt that would change the strategy much Unless that cleric has been preaching a little to much

[Hobbo Jim]

Agreed on the "Fireball opening" part (thanks to someone correcting me on Fireball damage ;)), as long as you get at least 3 Harpies in the radius it's worth the shot.

About kiting to stay out of range while fanning out, that's precisely while Slow may be so useful (provided Wizard can land it on his remaining 3rd level slot): Remorhaz will only have 15 feet land speed, meaning whatever PC he tries to chase, even those with only 30 feet range attacks/cantrips, *everyone* can maintain a proper "circle" around it. Even if Remorhaz Dashed, since it has no reaction, PC can simply fall back "more" maybe with own Dash if needed.
With that said, once there is only Remorhaz left, Slow would only be a facilitator and largely skippable...


Slow is great if it works, but I don't think it's worth it - I think the mage will need both 3rd level slots fireballs for the harpies unless he gets really lucky hitting all of them and can just follow up with a MM. If you can bring it down to just the Rem before anyone takes damage, they have a real shot at no one dying. If anyone gets charmed, or hankered down by a harpy, chance of death skyrockets for that person. As you say it's skippable if it's just the Rem, so why not burn everything to make sure it's the only thing?



If not for burrowing.
I put out some ideas to try and counter the burrowing, but honestly, if Remorhaz just wants to break from battle, there is nothing party can do to help it.
If defeating it is important for them, combining Slow + Earth Tremor is the only way to keep the creature above ground long enough to kill it before it completely disappears.
Or so I think because the creature is "Huge" so I don't think it could completely burrow itself in a single turn, but maybe I'm wrong on that...

My worry is that it will only unburrow in order to attack, like a bobbit worm or antlion bursting out of the ground. Which, like I said only good solution would be to not be on the ground for it to attack. Hopefully they don't feel that it absolutely must die. It retreating is hopefully still a win.
Unfortunately, it has 20 ft burrow, so I believe it would be able to get its entire body underground. I don't think huge is more than 20 ft across.

[HiveStriker]

Slow is great if it works, but I don't think it's worth it - I think the mage will need both 3rd level slots fireballs for the harpies unless he gets really lucky hitting all of them and can just follow up with a MM. If you can bring it down to just the Rem before anyone takes damage, they have a real shot at no one dying. If anyone gets charmed, or hankered down by a harpy, chance of death skyrockets for that person. As you say it's skippable if it's just the Rem, so why not burn everything to make sure it's the only thing?
This is where our opinions differ. :)
I don't think using both slots on Fireball (or Slow for that matter) will be required. As long as party can reduce "harpy party" to 3 or less in a single round, it should be fine.
Other reason why I don't think two Fireball is a good idea is that I don't see any world in which Harpies still alive after one Fireball has been cast would stay packed (which of course also voids opportunity of Slow since radius is more or less the same).



If anyone gets charmed, or hankered down by a harpy, chance of death skyrockets for that person.

Also, many people have put out counters for Harpies' charm. While I 100% agree that several charms running at once would be lethal, just one instance of damage is enough to break and render immune.
Which brings an interesting point: if Harpies try and sing all at once to ensure every PC is charmed, then they will have a high chance of success (in which case PC death is very likely, at least one), BUT, just one succeeding in all saves (aka Cleric) can break another party member definitely for all charms at once. In which case best course would be to break Wizard so he uses Magic Missile. Then everyone is immune, Harpies become regular threat.
If however Harpies prefer to wait and use song in turn, party just as to focus on either the one singing (if many affected) or on the others (otherwise) to reduce impeding threat.
Overall Cleric and Druid have so high chance of saving they should be considered overall "near-immune" (DC 11, Cleric should have +7 stat). Wizard has decent chance, while Fighter is toast.
That's why I recommended a starting Bless to help avoid charm. It makes Cleric and Druid laugh at the charm (5-10% chance to fail would be REAL unlucky) so they are reliable in breaking charms for others. And they can kite harpies all the while so Bless and Healing Spirit should not be too hard to keep concentrating on.



If you can bring it down to just the Rem before anyone takes damage, they have a real shot at no one dying.



My worry is that it will only unburrow in order to attack, like a bobbit worm or antlion bursting out of the ground. Which, like I said only good solution would be to not be on the ground for it to attack. Hopefully they don't feel that it absolutely must die. It retreating is hopefully still a win.
Unfortunately, it has 20 ft burrow, so I believe it would be able to get its entire body underground. I don't think huge is more than 20 ft across.
To be honest I don't get how Remorhaz can be any real threat for a non-charmed, non-grappled PC. Just Dash away as needed to get enough distance and otherwise use ranged damage.

If Remorhaz burrows and party has no reliable way to perceive it until it unburrows, just have everyone Ready "I Dash as soon as Remorhaz is gonna enter melee range" or "as soon as I'm gonna get into Remorhaz's reach".
Depending on how DM interprets trigger and Dash moment, you may even avoid OA. And if everyone respects strict circle formation, Remorhaz should never be able to threaten more than one PC at any single time.

[MaxWilson]

However, having the Fighter alone darts in and out and strike in melee is no problem: (upcasted) Healing Spirit is there to immediately him after the fact (of course other players could use it too but as said, better fan out around the creature).
Of course, if he still has Javelins he should use it. But only 5 javelins means high chance he'll use them against Harpies.
Furthermore, really, the only threat is getting grappled because DC 17 is hard and it means you can get swallowed.
10 fire damage is nothing important as long as Healing Spirit is here (when I say "not important" it's because while Fighter still loses HP overall, it's on a scale that's completely predictible and manageable. Worst case use Second Wind or grab a potion).

Also, it's impressive you'd stress that "Slow is less useful than Haste" while you say yourself that it's much better to focus on ranged attacks and cantrips, which will get 10% improvement chance on *everyone* (Fighter included), especially important when fighting a target that has 17 AC base.

Yes, and this is the third time I'm explaining why: it's going to be a long hard slog to kill that Remorhaz, taking probably between 12-20 rounds, and Slow just doesn't have the necessary duration to make it work. Haste will buy you 10 rounds of fighting. Slow has a ~75% chance of buying you ~4 rounds. If your goal is to actually kill the Remorhaz as opposed to running away, Slow is just too risky. Haste the Cleric instead.

(And BTW, that 10% improvement will only work on about half the party's attacks, since Toll the Dead and Infestation are saving throw-based, so it's really a ~5% improvement in exchange for greatly reduced duration.)


By the way, how is Fighter supposed to kill all Harpies with only 5 javelins and one reaction attack per turn?
Considering how OP is worried, I guess Harpies group is much closer to 5 than 2.

I suspect the OP is worried about the huge fire-immune Remorhaz and would be even if there are only 2 harpies (plus a cambion). We have no idea how many harpies there are.

The Fighter will stick close to the wizard and druid and since harpies have no ranged attacks, he will guard them against any harpies which come near. (DM is unlikely to try swooping attacks and stuff because those tend not to be fun for players but if he does the Fighter can ready Grapples after the runs out of javelins instead of relying on opportunity attacks. Otherwise Fighter can just hit the harpies with his greatsword or whatever.) Fighter can also use his Attack + Extra Attack and a low-damage unarmed punch to break charm on anyone who gets charmed by the harpies, and until the wizard is immune to charm from all harpies it's not time to Haste the cleric yet.

Amusing aside: from the spell text of Tidal Wave, it may be possible to cast the spell in midair, which would knock harpies prone and out of the air. If this works it is competitive with Fireball for this scenario, so the druid should focus on Tidal Waving the harpies ASAP while the wizard saves his spell slots to deal with the Remorhaz.


To be honest I don't get how Remorhaz can be any real threat for a non-charmed, non-grappled PC. Just Dash away as needed to get enough distance and otherwise use ranged damage.

If Remorhaz burrows and party has no reliable way to perceive it until it unburrows, just have everyone Ready "I Dash as soon as Remorhaz is gonna enter melee range" or "as soon as I'm gonna get into Remorhaz's reach".
Depending on how DM interprets trigger and Dash moment, you may even avoid OA. And if everyone respects strict circle formation, Remorhaz should never be able to threaten more than one PC at any single time.

Good point. If you use Slow to set up this situation then yes, that would work.

=====================================


Honestly, Remorhaz is a beast. It'll probably seek to eat someone and burrow away, unless controlled or something. Thus the principal goal of this battle should be forcing it to retreat, not to kill it. It's unlikely to continue fighting if sufficiently damaged given it has an almost 100% safe way of escaping in its burrow ability. Thus you probably don't actually need to hit it for 200+ damage.

Yep. If it decides to retreat there's nothing this party can do to stop that. Maybe that's the point of this encounter--setting up the rest of the adventure. (If so, the druid should swap spells ASAP.)

[HiveStriker]

Yes, and this is the third time I'm explaining why: it's going to be a long hard slog to kill that Remorhaz, taking probably between 12-20 rounds, and Slow just doesn't have the necessary duration to make it work. Haste will buy you 10 rounds of fighting. Slow has a ~75% chance of buying you ~4 rounds. If your goal is to actually kill the Remorhaz as opposed to running away, Slow is just too risky. Haste the Cleric instead.

(And BTW, that 10% improvement will only work on about half the party's attacks, since Toll the Dead and Infestation are saving throw-based, so it's really a ~5% improvement in exchange for greatly reduced duration.)
Cleric has Sacred Flame. Druid has Produce Flame. So, yeah, all party can benefit.
Sacred Flame would be a net improvement on Toll the Dead for Cleric in case of Slow, in spite of tad lesser damage, because of the (slightly) better chance to hit.
Produce Flame would be a net improvement on Infestation for Druid because not only would the former have higher chance to hit chance (+5 Con save against DC 15 -> ~55% chance VS +7 against AC 15 = 70%), the former would also benefit from crits if luck pans out.Stupid me forgetting about fire immunity. Lets forget about that *ahem*

And Haste does not "buy 10 rounds of fighting": it provides 10 more attacks.
Let's agree that Slow lasts at most 4 rounds.
During those 4 rounds, Remorhaz has -2AC so 10% chance boost on every attack or DEX save made.
It has only 15 feets so its only reasonable option is to Dash if it wants to hope closing in on someone. Meaning it simply can't attack its turn whatever happens because every PC has at least 30 feet, and at least 30 feet range on their attacks.

It has no reaction either so if by any chance it manages to close in, PC can safely move away while attacking instead of having to Disengage to keep on the safe side.

Without Slow, Druid would need to Dash every time creature would go towards him, and Fighter would risk an OA *every time* it attacks (unless Haste).
So not only do you improve chance to hit for 1+1+2(or 3 if dual-wield) attacks on every round where everyone has action free, you also simply provides "extra attacks" by reducing the need to spend actions on Disengage/Dash.
It of course depends on how Remorhaz behaves... :)

More importantly, besides all that comparison...
If party has no real threat impending on it (so no time limit) because it managed to kill Harpies with just an initial Fireball, without having anyone grappled/swallowed, then not only could Slow be entirely skippable (fan out in circle and be patient you'll just have several more actions "wasted" on Dashing away to keep distance), Haste would be as equal or bigger of a waste of resources (if time is not a factor, reducing time to kill is logically irrelevant. Slow at least has the very light benefit of giving party a way to try and prevent it to burrow before it's too late, although it wouldn't probably change anything to be honest ^^).

[KorvinStarmast]

Honestly, Remorhaz is a beast. It'll probably seek to eat someone and burrow away, unless controlled or something. Thus the principal goal of this battle should be forcing it to retreat, not to kill it. It's unlikely to continue fighting if sufficiently damaged given it has an almost 100% safe way of escaping in its burrow ability. Thus you probably don't actually need to hit it for 200+ damage.
Bingo, not to mention that if the party Druid
Moon Druid, Life Cleric, War Mage Wizard, and Battlemaster
can summon a constrictor snake summoned to grapple it, Rhemoraz speed is zero and it can't get away until it breaks the grapple. While grappled, it is restrained and attacks against it are at advantage ... it may only last a round or three, but it's something to consider.

Druid, you gonna summon one? It is big enough to grapple a Rehorhaz and can be summoned by a level 5 druid.


Giant Constrictor Snake
Huge beast, unaligned
Armor Class 12
Hit Points 60 (8d12 + 8)
Constrict. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 13 (2d8 + 4) bludgeoning damage, and the target is grappled (escape DC 16). Until this grapple ends, the creature is restrained, and the snake can’t constrict another target.
(CR 2)

[HiveStriker]

Bingo, not to mention that if the party Druid
Moon Druid, Life Cleric, War Mage Wizard, and Battlemaster
can summon a constrictor snake summoned to grapple it, Rhemoraz speed is zero and it can't get away until it breaks the grapple. While grappled, it is restrained and attacks against it are at advantage ... it may only last a round or three, but it's something to consider.

Druid, you gonna summon one? It is big enough to grapple a Rehorhaz and can be summoned by a level 5 druid.
This is an excellent strategy (at least for the one or two turns it last -because I have no doubt Tremorhaz would make quick work of the snake, after all it can still attack), unfortunately OP didn't list Conjure Animals on pal's prepared spells, and from the gist of it it seems they are just moments away of the fight so no option to change...

Otherwise, yeah, Conjure Animals could have opened up many winning tactics. :)

[KorvinStarmast]

This is an excellent strategy (at least for the one or two turns it last -because I have no doubt Tremorhaz would make quick work of the snake, after all it can still attack),
Albeit with disadvantage.

Restrained
• A restrained creature’s speed becomes 0, and it can’t benefit from any bonus to its speed.
• Attack rolls against the creature have advantage, and the creature’s attack rolls have
disadvantage.
• The creature has disadvantage on Dexterity saving throws.

unfortunately OP didn't list Conjure Animals on pal's prepared spells, and from the gist of it it seems they are just moments away of the fight so no option to change...
My mistake, though, one of my go to Druid spells is Conjure Animals. I make the mistake of assuming all others would prepare spells similarly.

Otherwise, yeah, Conjure Animals could have opened up many winning tactics. :) Yeah, there are ways.

[Hobbo Jim]

This is where our opinions differ. :)
I don't think using both slots on Fireball (or Slow for that matter) will be required. As long as party can reduce "harpy party" to 3 or less in a single round, it should be fine.
Other reason why I don't think two Fireball is a good idea is that I don't see any world in which Harpies still alive after one Fireball has been cast would stay packed (which of course also voids opportunity of Slow since radius is more or less the same).


Fair enough. Perhaps an upcast scorching ray? Or maybe a normal scorching ray. Alright I could see slow being useful, just not within the first few rounds until harpies are dead. I think given the low health of harpies, damage output onto them should take priority. Hell, maybe just 3rd level cast a Magic Missile to finish em off if there aren't that many.



Also, many people have put out counters for Harpies' charm. While I 100% agree that several charms running at once would be lethal, just one instance of damage is enough to break and render immune.


It probably wouldn't be that bad, but using your turn to break someone free isn't great. And if that one instance of damage happens to be the remoraz... Well good luck. I think our plan to open fireball and avoid the charms all together are a better option. But OOF, I just looked up the range on it. Anyone that can hear within 300 ft. Better put in some earplugs.



To be honest I don't get how Remorhaz can be any real threat for a non-charmed, non-grappled PC. Just Dash away as needed to get enough distance and otherwise use ranged damage.


With strategy, I agree that the party can almost 100% defeat it. I think the game is trying to make sure EVERYONE survives, not just win. Best of luck to the OP!

[MaxWilson]

Bingo, not to mention that if the party Druid
Moon Druid, Life Cleric, War Mage Wizard, and Battlemaster
can summon a constrictor snake summoned to grapple it, Rhemoraz speed is zero and it can't get away until it breaks the grapple. While grappled, it is restrained and attacks against it are at advantage ... it may only last a round or three, but it's something to consider.

Druid, you gonna summon one? It is big enough to grapple a Rehorhaz and can be summoned by a level 5 druid.

Technically, 8 CR 1/4 constrictor snakes could do the job as well or better. But realistically, one should not expect a DM to let a Large snake grapple a Huge Remorhaz no matter what the rules say--their constriction really should be restricted to Large or maybe even Medium targets.

Anyway, this Moon Druid doesn't have Conjure Animals prepared, or Call Lightning or Plant Growth.

[HolyDraconus]

Eh, hope for dm intervention, have the druid cast a concentration spell and hope the magic item while wildshaped is a mcguffin