Revivify good? Why?

[Waazraath]

I guess the title of the thread is clear enough, but to eleborate: I've never memorized it, seen anybody memorize it, or been in a situation where somebody wanted to be able to cast it. I mean, if a party member goes down, usually this can be fixed before death occurs: either quickly mop up the combat, or (often even better) bonus action heal somebody back into the fight.

Outside RAW-situations (where yoyo-healing is disallowed), and (ime very rare) situations where somebody gets insta-killed: why would anybody prepare this spell? Or do people are in situations often where a DM finishes off a character that goes down?

I ask before I think I've seen the spell being mentioned as 'good' several times in discussions, and don't really understand why. I think all character deaths I've seen were in situations where a character knowing Revivify wouldn't have made any difference (either TPK, or a party in full flight with 1 or 2 going down and the rest not able to help due to fleeing themselves, or an unlucky saving throw against petriffication at a level where this is efffectively character death).

[Hytheter]

I think Revivify is one of those spells like Feather Fall that you don't really need most of the time until suddenly you really need it, especially in the levels before Raise Dead comes online. That said it depends on the table. If your DM tends to have the monsters attack downed characters to finish them off (a fairly sensible tactic in a world where magical healing exists) then it's probably better than if they usually ignore them in favour of the still-standing party members.

[stoutstien]

I think it's table play style dependant. Revivify is an insurance spell that is nice to have as a "break glass in case of.." option. You could realistically play entire campaigns without ever using it in the next campaign gathering diamond is a constant side goal.

[HappyDaze]

By (late) 5th level, my current party has had three character deaths, only one of which was reversed through a (modified) raise dead by an allied celestial. One death each from massive damage (instant death from a high roll of 8d8 dragon breath), an opponent finishing off a fallen foe, and just laying down on the job (failing 3 death saves before someone could get to them). Revivify would have been nice to have, but our cleric felt much as the OP did, so it wasn't there when needed.

[ProsecutorGodot]

I think it's table play style dependant. Revivify is an insurance spell that is nice to have as a "break glass in case of.." option. You could realistically play entire campaigns without ever using it in the next campaign gathering diamond is a constant side goal.

I've had it prepared and held a slot for it since my paladin got 3rd level spells.

I don't consider it a bad thing that I haven't had to use it yet. I would much rather lose out on a prepared spell just in case rather than the cost of not having it prepared when I would need it.

[Yakk]

Any creature with 2 melee attacks can one round kill a downed creature.

So in fights where someone goes down, there is a decent chance the PC dues before a healer goes.

[MrStabby]

I have seen it used on NPCs more than PCs.

If a PC goes down and actually dies one of the following usually applies:

1) the rest of the party follows quickly - knowing a spell like fly or invisibility might have helped but this wouldnt.

2) the party starts to lose people as it's out of resources. Something like a counterspell or more healing would have been better.

3) The part is at a disadvantage and cant cast spells as they are underwater or in an anti magic field.


Generally revivify wouldnt help that much.

That 1 min duration is really tight and stops a lot of stuff that this spell otherwise might help with. Imagine a bridge collapse and the party all takes enough falling damage to reach 0hp. Some time later the cleric is stable and regains consciousness - by then it's too late.

[Pex]

I have seen it used on NPCs more than PCs.

If a PC goes down and actually dies one of the following usually applies:

1) the rest of the party follows quickly - knowing a spell like fly or invisibility might have helped but this wouldnt.

2) the party starts to lose people as it's out of resources. Something like a counterspell or more healing would have been better.

3) The part is at a disadvantage and cant cast spells as they are underwater or in an anti magic field.


Generally revivify wouldnt help that much.

That 1 min duration is really tight and stops a lot of stuff that this spell otherwise might help with. Imagine a bridge collapse and the party all takes enough falling damage to reach 0hp. Some time later the cleric is stable and regains consciousness - by then it's too late.

Clerics don't get counterspell, fly, or invisibility. Maybe or maybe not a Bard shouldn't have it as a spell known, but for a cleric it has its place. Clerics have Healing Word to save off death and Spare The Dying if need be. The healing is there. Clerics are not alone in healing ability. Only the cleric is at risk since he can't cast Revivify on himself. He needs to wait awhile for the Paladin to have his back. If it's a TPK it's not because the cleric has Revivify prepared. If they're underwater they have waterbreathing and can cast spells. If they're in an anti-magic field there's no fly, invisibility, or healing spells either.

[HappyDaze]

Clerics don't get counterspell, fly, or invisibility. Maybe or maybe not a Bard shouldn't have it as a spell known, but for a cleric it has its place. Clerics have Healing Word to save off death and Spare The Dying if need be. The healing is there. Clerics are not alone in healing ability. Only the cleric is at risk since he can't cast Revivify on himself. He needs to wait awhile for the Paladin to have his back. If it's a TPK it's not because the cleric has Revivify prepared. If they're underwater they have waterbreathing and can cast spells. If they're in an anti-magic field there's no fly, invisibility, or healing spells either.

This is 5e. Cast spells underwater all you like.

[Tanarii]

I can't count the number of times the party has run away dragging the body of a dead ally behind them.

I mean, Raise Dead definitely sees more use than Revivify, by a long shot. Because despite what I just wrote, players are prone to not running until it's too late, or not having an exit strategy available to break contact. So yeah, death by TPK or by abandoning the bodies of 3/4 of the party (including the cleric) are more the norm.

But still, if you want to continue at full strength as opposed to push on one man short, or turn back to town for a Raise Dead and end the session, Revivify is where it's at.


I think it's table play style dependant. Revivify is an insurance spell that is nice to have as a "break glass in case of.." option.

Revivify would have been nice to have, but our cleric felt much as the OP did, so it wasn't there when needed.
I can't even imagine the table acrimony if someone died in a one-party table and the cleric didn't have Revivify prepared as a emergency contingency, unless there was a way to otherwise get the character raised.

That seems like one of the things you should make clear to other players before hand, because they'll make assumptions.

[LudicSavant]

Try having Team Monster use yo-yo healing on a regular basis and see the way the players counter it. Then realize that DMs who aren't coddling / afraid to kill the players will do that to you.

Generally when people think that yo-yo healing is a catch-all solution it's because they have a DM who's going easy on them, laying off the gas pedal a bit when the players are on the ropes. There are a lot of ways to finish people off.

[HappyDaze]

I can't even imagine the table acrimony if someone died in a one-party table and the cleric didn't have Revivify prepared as a emergency contingency, unless there was a way to otherwise get the character raised.

That seems like one of the things you should make clear to other players before hand, because they'll make assumptions.

If you haven't experienced it, you haven't truly played. It's beautiful to see the looks on their faces when, like Ray from Ghostbusters, they realize they're chosen the form of their doom!

[Tanarii]

Generally when people think that yo-yo healing is a catch-all solution it's because they have a DM who's going easy on them, laying off the gas pedal a bit when the players are on the ropes. There are a lot of ways to finish people off.
Yup. An intelligent enemy that just saw someone that's gone down pop up again should smash them until they stop moving.

A lot of players think it's #UNFAIR though.


If you haven't experienced it, you haven't truly played. It's beautiful to see the looks on their faces when, like Ray from Ghostbusters, they realize they're chosen the form of their doom!
😂😂😂

[HappyDaze]

Try having Team Monster use yo-yo healing on a regular basis and see the way the players counter it. Then realize that DMs who aren't coddling / afraid to kill the players will do that to you.

Generally when people think that yo-yo healing is a catch-all solution it's because they have a DM who's going easy on them, laying off the gas pedal a bit when the players are on the ropes. There are a lot of ways to finish people off.

Full agreement. Even monsters that are still attacking active opponents can use area effects to tear up downed foes at the same time. The Lizardfolk Render has a nasty ability to make an claw attack against all opponents within 10 feet--whether they're up & fighting or on the ground at 0 hp. Makes them fairly terrifying every time that ability recharges.

[OldTrees1]

Revivify still works up to 1 min after the death so it can be cast after the combat. It is a 3rd level spell that is cheaper than the 5th level spell Raise Dead. All it asks you to do is reserve 1 3rd level slot, 1 prepared spell, and 300gp. That is a rather cheap price to reverse death.

You are already preparing Healing Word to help prevent death. Revivify just adds the next layer to your defenses. Just like Lesser Restoration, Remove Curse, and Greater Restoration are part of your defenses.

[MrStabby]

Clerics don't get counterspell, fly, or invisibility. Maybe or maybe not a Bard shouldn't have it as a spell known, but for a cleric it has its place. Clerics have Healing Word to save off death and Spare The Dying if need be. The healing is there. Clerics are not alone in healing ability. Only the cleric is at risk since he can't cast Revivify on himself. He needs to wait awhile for the Paladin to have his back. If it's a TPK it's not because the cleric has Revivify prepared. If they're underwater they have waterbreathing and can cast spells. If they're in an anti-magic field there's no fly, invisibility, or healing spells either.

There was no requirement in the OP for a class so I was discussing the spell not the class.

It could be a cleric this pertains to but also a bard or a sorcerer or maybe a homebrew class or something like the theurge from UA.

[elyktsorb]

It's super useful if someone has Gentle Repose, because a part of Gentle Repose states that it extends the period of time someone can be brought back from life.

So as long as you have both Gentle Repose and Revivify, Revivify is 200 less gold than Raise Dead, and is 2 spell levels lower than Raise Dead. And there's nothing preventing you from re-casting Gentle Repose before it runs out to further extend the time you can revive the target.

I have seen Revivify used on a party member, in fact it was a situation where 2 party members died and it could only be cast on one of them due to us only having enough gold for 1 rez.

[MrStabby]

It's super useful if someone has Gentle Repose, because a part of Gentle Repose states that it extends the period of time someone can be brought back from life.

So as long as you have both Gentle Repose and Revivify, Revivify is 200 less gold than Raise Dead, and is 2 spell levels lower than Raise Dead. And there's nothing preventing you from re-casting Gentle Repose before it runs out to further extend the time you can revive the target.

I have seen Revivify used on a party member, in fact it was a situation where 2 party members died and it could only be cast on one of them due to us only having enough gold for 1 rez.

Yeah, that's a good point.

[loki_ragnarock]

Full agreement. Even monsters that are still attacking active opponents can use area effects to tear up downed foes at the same time. The Lizardfolk Render has a nasty ability to make an claw attack against all opponents within 10 feet--whether they're up & fighting or on the ground at 0 hp. Makes them fairly terrifying every time that ability recharges.

It took me a minute to realize that the whole point of the gnoll's rampage ability was to use the bonus attack on the character they'd just downed to instantly raise the stakes.

Anyway, it's not *that* hard to kill characters. Revivify isn't great for spells known casters, but for a cleric it's a nice insurance policy.

[HappyDaze]

It took me a minute to realize that the whole point of the gnoll's rampage ability was to use the bonus attack on the character they'd just downed to instantly raise the stakes.

Anyway, it's not *that* hard to kill characters. Revivify isn't great for spells known casters, but for a cleric it's a nice insurance policy.

If the cleric is always going to take it as insurance, then why is worse for a spells known caster to select it?

[stoutstien]

I'd argue that revivify is best taken on the character that usually is not the primary source of recovery. So the artificer or paladin are good candidates because they are both likely to still be alive after SHTF and while the spell slot is a higher opportunity cost on a 1/2 caster than a full caster they can run smoothly even completely out of slots. The bard dropping AoV is an amazing plan until the NPCs decide that focus on the healer is the best strategy and even as tough as PCs can be RNG can spoke damage and 3 failed death ST is practically guaranteed if you have enough mooks running around.

[Tanarii]

It's super useful if someone has Gentle Repose, because a part of Gentle Repose states that it extends the period of time someone can be brought back from life.

So as long as you have both Gentle Repose and Revivify, Revivify is 200 less gold than Raise Dead, and is 2 spell levels lower than Raise Dead. And there's nothing preventing you from re-casting Gentle Repose before it runs out to further extend the time you can revive the target.
You have to prepare Gentle Repose and use a slot though. If you cast as a Ritual, it takes 10 minutes. I found it was far more common for it to be a Wizard or Tome Warlock ritual used to preserve the body for a Raise Dead, when there's no guarantee the PCs can get to a high enough cleric in 10 days.

[Chronos]

For one thing, prepared casters tend to have more preparation slots than spells-known casters have known slots (especially when you consider that clerics, at least, have spells that are automatically prepared).

[Lord Vukodlak]

Okay remember that raise dead has that whole.

“-4 penalty to all Attack rolls, Saving Throws, and Ability Checks. Every time the target finishes a Long Rest, the penalty is reduced by 1 until it disappears.“
This means it takes four days for a PC to be back in top shape.
Revivify has no such drawback, IÂ’ve seen PCÂ’s die get revivified and are ready to fight again after a short rest.

So any cleric capable of casting raise dead is doing the party a disservice by not preparing revivify just in case.

[Hytheter]

If you cast as a Ritual, it takes 10 minutes.

No problem. The most skilled healers can easily foresee their friends' deaths 10 minutes in advance!

[KorvinStarmast]

The Lizardfolk Render has a nasty ability to make an claw attack against all opponents within 10 feet--whether they're up & fighting or on the ground at 0 hp. Makes them fairly terrifying every time that ability recharges.yes.


Revivify still works up to 1 min after the death so it can be cast after the combat. It is a 3rd level spell that is cheaper than the 5th level spell Raise Dead. All it asks you to do is reserve 1 3rd level slot, 1 prepared spell, and 300gp. That is a rather cheap price to reverse death. And, Life Domain Clerics have it always prepared. My only requirement is that each other character carry on their person (I prefer it on a necklace that hides the gem under their shirt/blouse/cloak/robe) a 300 GP diamond. If they have the diamond, I can lay revivify on them right away. Done it three time.

I like the spell so much that I made sure that my Warlock(Celestial) keeps it as one of her spells.

The second dragon breath after your party wizard drops due to failing the save on the first one is an easy way to need Revivify. Well, two of three in my experience. The other was a pair of crits from a giant when the PC was at low health. Giants Hit Hard, and Giants Crit Harder.

[Pex]

Yup. An intelligent enemy that just saw someone that's gone down pop up again should smash them until they stop moving.

A lot of players think it's #UNFAIR though.


😂😂😂

Not unfair. Unfun. Realistically, yes, it makes sense for the bad guys to attack the downed PC. "As Coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her. And she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead." It's not fun for a PC to die every session or someone has to make a new character. It's not DM coddling. It's playing the game.

Obligatory: No, this does not mean no PC should ever die.

[Man_Over_Game]

You have to prepare Gentle Repose and use a slot though. If you cast as a Ritual, it takes 10 minutes. I found it was far more common for it to be a Wizard or Tome Warlock ritual used to preserve the body for a Raise Dead, when there's no guarantee the PCs can get to a high enough cleric in 10 days.

There's actually a lot more benefit to having Gentle Repose than Revivify, as Gentle Repose can work within two effect windows (Revivify or Raise Dead) when Revivify only has one, it has a level 2 spell slot instead of a level 3, and there's always the chance that you'll find something to use it on Gentle Repose on as a Ritual that Revivify couldn't have helped with.

The only time preemptively preparing Revivify would be better is if you were in a situation where you had to continue on if one of your players died (as opposed to retreating for a day and reviving them the following morning).


Boom, that's why it's worth to have Gentle Repose: Because it's a lot less useless than an unused and prepared Revivify, for roughly the same effect.

[Tanarii]

Not unfair. Unfun. Realistically, yes, it makes sense for the bad guys to attack the downed PC. "As Coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her. And she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead." It's not fun for a PC to die every session or someone has to make a new character. It's not DM coddling. It's playing the game.

Obligatory: No, this does not mean no PC should ever die.Granted it can be unfun, and understood on the caveat.

Especially true in a single party campaign where being returned to life or generating a new character is a major in-game chore / adventure path derailer.

That's more unfun than say having an open table and a stable of characters to choose from, and sending in a body-recovery party after a TPK so you can raise them is all part of the fun and games. Or successfully pulling out with a dead body is followed by paying gold for a raise at the local town between sessions, and returning in the next session for round 2.


The only time preemptively preparing Revivify would be better is if you were in a situation where you had to continue on if one of your players died (as opposed to retreating for a day and reviving them the following morning).

Boom, that's why it's worth to have Gentle Repose: Because it's a lot less useless than an unused and prepared Revivify, for roughly the same effect.
Yup. If you can retreat instead of pushing on, and have access to Raise Dead when you retreat, Revivify loses a lot of its value.

[ProsecutorGodot]

There's actually a lot more benefit to having Gentle Repose than Revivify, as Gentle Repose can work within two effect windows (Revivify or Raise Dead) when Revivify only has one, it has a level 2 spell slot instead of a level 3, and there's always the chance that you'll find something to use it on Gentle Repose on as a Ritual that Revivify couldn't have helped with.

The only time preemptively preparing Revivify would be better is if you were in a situation where you had to continue on if one of your players died (as opposed to retreating for a day and reviving them the following morning).


Boom, that's why it's worth to have Gentle Repose: Because it's a lot less useless than an unused and prepared Revivify, for roughly the same effect.

Gentle Repose does make it a bit difficult to move the body though, the copper piece having to stay on each eye is already a hurdle but it becomes more difficult if you consider the pinch of salt to also be something that must remain on the corpse's eye for the duration.

For Raise Dead this isn't much of an issue, move the body then cast the spell, you've got plenty of time. For Revivify, sure you can, but you probably would have been better off having Revivify handy instead since you'd have to have cast the spell pretty immediately, bringing up that "moving the body" issue.

[Nagog]

It honestly depends on the DM. I've seen DMs who go insanely easy on their players (typically out of fear of offending somebody) and spreads damage evenly among the party, even when one party member is far more of a threat to the enemies than the others. Other DMs will have enemies actively attack downed enemies and finish the job, or counterspell heals, etc. because the enemies are actually intelligent and are playing to their best interests rather than the DMs. Personally, I prefer the latter as both a DM and a Player. It increases the threat level and helps the PCs understand they don't have the plot armor they think they do.

[Waazraath]

interesting, thnx for all the replies. Yeah, I guess DM style plays a very big role here. As for me, I would only target downed characters 1) if the foes facing them are intelligent and 2) if they already have seen somebody who was down get up again, are highly intelligent and know this is a possiblity, or are brutal 'dismember the corpses' kind of maniacs. I feel I would need some in-game justification.

As for my current cleric: I'll discuss with my group if anybody expects me to have the spell prepared :)

[Garfunion]

Gentle Repose does make it a bit difficult to move the body though, the copper piece having to stay on each eye is already a hurdle but it becomes more difficult if you consider the pinch of salt to also be something that must remain on the corpse's eye for the duration.

All you need to do is just tie a piece of cloth around the eyes preventing any kind of movement.
This is also done with some forms of mummification.

As for revivify due to the spells time constraint, I honestly think they need to remove the gold piece cost to it. Making it a more enticing spell to prepare/know.

[elyktsorb]

You have to prepare Gentle Repose and use a slot though. If you cast as a Ritual, it takes 10 minutes. I found it was far more common for it to be a Wizard or Tome Warlock ritual used to preserve the body for a Raise Dead, when there's no guarantee the PCs can get to a high enough cleric in 10 days.

tbf Gentile Repose is good enough on it's own to have prepared in a lot of circumstances, not to mention Gentile Repose means you don't have to have Revivify prepared, since it extends it to 10 days, just cast Gentile Repose, take a long rest and then have Revivify prepared for the day. Since all Cleric's can have both Gentile Repose and Revivify, there's literally no reason to just pull this combo out by having Gentle Repose take 1 spell known slot.

Because let's be honest, if your in a situation where you can't rest after a huge fight where a character dies, you were either unprepared, weren't making it out without accepted losses, or ambushed/surprised in someway.

[AvalancheSpring]

Not unfair. Unfun. Realistically, yes, it makes sense for the bad guys to attack the downed PC. "As Coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her. And she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead." It's not fun for a PC to die every session or someone has to make a new character. It's not DM coddling. It's playing the game.

Obligatory: No, this does not mean no PC should ever die.

Fun for you is fun for you. Play the game you enjoy. Better not to decide what is fun for everyone.

Personally I have more fun when my actions matter more. If that teaches me / my group to have better contingencies like Revivify, that will make play all the more fun - for my taste. If that causes me to lose a character, I have more character ideas than I'll ever get to play anyway. Ideally, I would then come by at a level deficit so the death actually counts, maybe with some opportunity to close the gap through excellent play over multiple plot lines. And if I get a character fully up to end-of-campaign power level under these conditions it is really satisfying. If not, I can still make supporting contributions, and a play a full role out of combat.

To be clear, I already do NOT get the experience I would most like. It is a group activity. The others in my group generally prefer lower stakes. At the extreme end from me, some like a "battle of the week" format that we may win or lose but with little extra consequence - the party (and the next enemies) power up slightly faster if we do well and slightly slower if we screw up.

AFAIK most groups - for some good reasons - tend toward the "lower stakes" side of the preferences within their table. My group is no different. People like me, who like higher stakes, get used to compromising more so other people get to compromise less. That's life. Given my social circles and my point in life, I have accepted that I will probably not get to play an exciting, well run, fair-but-high-stakes campaign. It feels like adding insult to injury to imply that are my preference is *objectively* "unfun". To be fair to you, I acknowledge that you probably did not intend that - I am just sharing a perspective.

[Reynaert]

... because the enemies are actually intelligent and are playing to their best interests rather than the DMs. Personally, I prefer the latter as both a DM and a Player. It increases the threat level and helps the PCs understand they don't have the plot armor they think they do.

Do you have the enemies (certainly those of non-deadly encounters) run away a lot? (even before any fight breaks out, if rumours of the PCs exploits spread around)
If not, your enemies have one glaring blind spot in their otherwise very intelligent behaviour.


Hmmm... Lots of groups of enemies doing their best to stay out of the way of the players, until enough of those groups meet each other they decide to gang up on the players and steamroll them. Now that would be realistic.

[follacchioso]

It's one of these spells that may be worth writing into a scroll. Expensive, but less than resurrection.

[Lord Vukodlak]

One potential issue is gentle repose says days don’t count. It doesn’t say anything about minutes. Some DMs might rule the time limit on revivify is about being recently dead and not decay.

[HappyDaze]

interesting, thnx for all the replies. Yeah, I guess DM style plays a very big role here. As for me, I would only target downed characters 1) if the foes facing them are intelligent and 2) if they already have seen somebody who was down get up again, are highly intelligent and know this is a possiblity, or are brutal 'dismember the corpses' kind of maniacs. I feel I would need some in-game justification.

As for my current cleric: I'll discuss with my group if anybody expects me to have the spell prepared :)

The in game justification doesnt have to come from within the encounter. If the world features yo-yo healing and rapid recovery, then double tapping fallen enemies is common sense

[Mikal]

Not unfair. Unfun. Realistically, yes, it makes sense for the bad guys to attack the downed PC. "As Coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her. And she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead." It's not fun for a PC to die every session or someone has to make a new character. It's not DM coddling. It's playing the game.

Obligatory: No, this does not mean no PC should ever die.

You know what’s really unfun? Artificially stupid enemies who don’t target the downed PC when they logically would.

[Mikal]

Do you have the enemies (certainly those of non-deadly encounters) run away a lot? (even before any fight breaks out, if rumours of the PCs exploits spread around)
If not, your enemies have one glaring blind spot in their otherwise very intelligent behaviour.


Hmmm... Lots of groups of enemies doing their best to stay out of the way of the players, until enough of those groups meet each other they decide to gang up on the players and steamroll them. Now that would be realistic.

If the enemies would logically do so? Absolutely.

Villains teaming up to take out the heroes is a very well known trope, and if the npcs of the world feel threatened to such a degree in my world yes, they would. And yes they have.

Just like my PCs can gain allies to have their back.

[Lord Vukodlak]

You know what’s really unfun? Artificially stupid enemies who don’t target the downed PC when they logically would.

Often they do but logically wouldn’t. Finishing off the guy in the ground doesn’t help you if it gives his friend time to down you. I’ve often seen enemies kill a pc out of spite when the smart thing to do was either run, surrender or try and kill the people who are still a threat.

[Tanarii]

Do you have the enemies (certainly those of non-deadly encounters) run away a lot? (even before any fight breaks out, if rumours of the PCs exploits spread around)
If not, your enemies have one glaring blind spot in their otherwise very intelligent behaviour.If appropriate, yes.



Hmmm... Lots of groups of enemies doing their best to stay out of the way of the players, until enough of those groups meet each other they decide to gang up on the players and steamroll them. Now that would be realistic.This too, sometimes.

[HappyDaze]

Often they do but logically wouldn’t. Finishing off the guy in the ground doesn’t help you if it gives his friend time to down you. I’ve often seen enemies kill a pc out of spite when the smart thing to do was either run, surrender or try and kill the people who are still a threat.

The problem is that PCs at 0 hp are still a threat, even if it's contingent on healing word. My current group has 3 of 4 characters with healing word (and the last is a paladin). If enemies don't strike at 0 hp PCs, then the PCs are immensely harder to defeat.

[Mikal]

Often they do but logically wouldn’t. Finishing off the guy in the ground doesn’t help you if it gives his friend time to down you. I’ve often seen enemies kill a pc out of spite when the smart thing to do was either run, surrender or try and kill the people who are still a threat.

Yes it does. You can spend 5 attacks on the guy doing 10 damage a round and then 1 attack on the guy doing 10 damage a round (for a total of 110 damage) at minimum (might be more if the one brought back is healed).

OR, you attack the one who was brought back up with one attack, then attack the other guy for 5 attacks, for a total of 60 damage against you (and maybe less, since they may try and heal you again)

In dnd land, the 1 hp being with equal stats to the 100 hp being (minus current hp totals) are equally dangerous.

If you can take one out in a single attack, you literally more than halve the danger to yourself.

So, logically, someone comes back up? Put them back down, unless they were such a non threat in the first place you don’t care.

[Lord Vukodlak]

I think people are missing my meaning so I’ll give an example.
The BBEG has a choice he can kill one unconscious PC behind him then be killed by the rest of the party.
He can try to escape and hope to fight again another day.
Or he can try and fireball the rest of the party and hope he rolls well enough to knock the rest out.

He picks option one out of spite. He probably won’t escape, he probably won’t knock out the rest of the party. But he can defiantly kill one PC.
That’s what I mean about spite. The DM decides the NPC should pick the suicidal option just to kill one player. Just because it’s possible the PC will get back up during the fight doesn’t mean he will.

Yes often the tactically sound decision is to finish off the PC. But often it’s the stupid decision because not only is the rest of the party still standing. You will now be the singular focus of their attention.

[Azuresun]

Not unfair. Unfun. Realistically, yes, it makes sense for the bad guys to attack the downed PC. "As Coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her. And she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead." It's not fun for a PC to die every session or someone has to make a new character. It's not DM coddling. It's playing the game.

Obligatory: No, this does not mean no PC should ever die.

I think it's good to explicitly make the policy clear on attacking downed characters. Mine is "enemies won't do it unless they specifically want that guy dead, or there are no other targets who are still a threat".

Also, Chill Touch exists.

[Luccan]

If the cleric is always going to take it as insurance, then why is worse for a spells known caster to select it?

The cleric will always have a wider variety of spells at their disposal, which they can switch out every day. Think of it like having exactly one spell known while the rest can be swapped out all the time. Bards who take it cut significantly into their few outside class spells, while Divine Soul Sorcerers still only know 16 spells total, so taking Revivify would significantly impact their ability to do things like buff, blast, and debuff.

[Mikal]

I think people are missing my meaning so I’ll give an example.
The BBEG has a choice he can kill one unconscious PC behind him then be killed by the rest of the party.
He can try to escape and hope to fight again another day.
Or he can try and fireball the rest of the party and hope he rolls well enough to knock the rest out.

He picks option one out of spite. He probably won’t escape, he probably won’t knock out the rest of the party. But he can defiantly kill one PC.
That’s what I mean about spite. The DM decides the NPC should pick the suicidal option just to kill one player. Just because it’s possible the PC will get back up during the fight doesn’t mean he will.

Yes often the tactically sound decision is to finish off the PC. But often it’s the stupid decision because not only is the rest of the party still standing. You will now be the singular focus of their attention.

False dilemma. Why would the enemy attack a single person when he can hit the newly revived character and others with an AoE?

Why would he attack if he’s almost about to die if he can (potentially) safely escape?

The only type of enemy that would realistically choose one would be some sort of berserking fanatic who doesn’t care if they live or die.

Your example... doesn’t make sense.

[Lord Vukodlak]

The cleric will always have a wider variety of spells at their disposal, which they can switch out every day. Think of it like having exactly one spell known while the rest can be swapped out all the time. Bards who take it cut significantly into their few outside class spells, while Divine Soul Sorcerers still only know 16 spells total, so taking Revivify would significantly impact their ability to do things like buff, blast, and debuff.

Yes well they could also twin or even quicken the revivify. Or turn it from a touch spell to a 30ft range.
Also if the cleric dies having someone who can bring him back from the dead is useful.


False dilemma. Why would the enemy attack a single person when he can hit the newly revived character and others with an AoE?The downed PC is behind him the rest of the party is in front of him. He can’t hit both with an AoE without hitting himself. I suppose mutually assured destruction is an option.



Why would he attack if he’s almost about to die if he can (potentially) safely escape? I asked the DM the very same question his answer was out of spite. Him escaping would not have made our job more difficult but having to drag our friends corpse back to town did. What I’m saying is I have seen NPCs move to finish off PCs when it made no tactical sense.

[AvalancheSpring]

Yes well they could also twin or even quicken the revivify. Or turn it from a touch spell to a 30ft range.
Also if the cleric dies having someone who can bring him back from the dead is useful.

They point is not "revivify is useless for a bard or divine soul". It's a good option, but pretty expensive on the scarce resource of spells known (especially for a bard, with even more scare cross-class spells known). So "good, but not a must".

I'd argue it is a "must" for clerics to prepare, at least on planned adventuring days, starting sometime between levels 5 and 8, since the cost is comparitively low. Unless you are playing an "effectively no chance death" campaign, in which case, sure - skip it.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I think Revivify is one of those spells like Feather Fall that you don't really need most of the time until suddenly you really need it, especially in the levels before Raise Dead comes online. That said it depends on the table. If your DM tends to have the monsters attack downed characters to finish them off (a fairly sensible tactic in a world where magical healing exists) then it's probably better than if they usually ignore them in favour of the still-standing party members.

This may be going off topic a bit, but I think this raises an interesting point. We don't allow yoyo healing in our games and players who hit 0 and are stabilized must short rest to take actions. However, it has occurred to me that as a result our games are likely less lethal for the reason you mention. If I was DMing in a world that allowed yoyo healing any reasonably intelligent monster would likely use an extra attack on a downed character to make sure they stayed that way.

[MaxWilson]

I think Revivify is one of those spells like Feather Fall that you don't really need most of the time until suddenly you really need it, especially in the levels before Raise Dead comes online. That said it depends on the table. If your DM tends to have the monsters attack downed characters to finish them off (a fairly sensible tactic in a world where magical healing exists) then it's probably better than if they usually ignore them in favour of the still-standing party members.

It's not just magical healing that can bring a character back to positive HP. It happens naturally about 20% the time as well. They just need to roll a natural 20 on a death save before rolling three failures (crit fails count as two failures).

[HappyDaze]

It's not just magical healing that can bring a character back to positive HP. It happens naturally about 20% the time as well. They just need to roll a natural 20 on a death save before rolling three failures (crit fails count as two failures).

You roll a natural 20 that often? Your dice are better than mine.

[Pex]

It honestly depends on the DM. I've seen DMs who go insanely easy on their players (typically out of fear of offending somebody) and spreads damage evenly among the party, even when one party member is far more of a threat to the enemies than the others. Other DMs will have enemies actively attack downed enemies and finish the job, or counterspell heals, etc. because the enemies are actually intelligent and are playing to their best interests rather than the DMs. Personally, I prefer the latter as both a DM and a Player. It increases the threat level and helps the PCs understand they don't have the plot armor they think they do.

There's a whole lot of middle between no PC ever dies and Die! PC! Die!


Fun for you is fun for you. Play the game you enjoy. Better not to decide what is fun for everyone.

Personally I have more fun when my actions matter more. If that teaches me / my group to have better contingencies like Revivify, that will make play all the more fun - for my taste. If that causes me to lose a character, I have more character ideas than I'll ever get to play anyway. Ideally, I would then come by at a level deficit so the death actually counts, maybe with some opportunity to close the gap through excellent play over multiple plot lines. And if I get a character fully up to end-of-campaign power level under these conditions it is really satisfying. If not, I can still make supporting contributions, and a play a full role out of combat.

To be clear, I already do NOT get the experience I would most like. It is a group activity. The others in my group generally prefer lower stakes. At the extreme end from me, some like a "battle of the week" format that we may win or lose but with little extra consequence - the party (and the next enemies) power up slightly faster if we do well and slightly slower if we screw up.

AFAIK most groups - for some good reasons - tend toward the "lower stakes" side of the preferences within their table. My group is no different. People like me, who like higher stakes, get used to compromising more so other people get to compromise less. That's life. Given my social circles and my point in life, I have accepted that I will probably not get to play an exciting, well run, fair-but-high-stakes campaign. It feels like adding insult to injury to imply that are my preference is *objectively* "unfun". To be fair to you, I acknowledge that you probably did not intend that - I am just sharing a perspective.

Fair enough, but then my preference should not be dismissed as "DM coddling" or "UNFAIR" as it was by others

[Damon_Tor]

You roll a natural 20 that often? Your dice are better than mine.

I think he meant 20% of near death events allowed to roll out will result in a self heal, and that's close enough. By the time you've rolled 3 saves the odds you've rolled either 3 successes or 3 failures is something like 25%, so 75% of the time you'll get 4 or more saves, a 37% chance you'll get 5 or more rolls and a 19% chance you roll all 6. Each time you roll you've got a 5% chance at a 20, so that's something like a 14.25% chance after 3 rolls, an 18.5% chance after 4, a 22.75% chance after 5, and a 27.5% chance if you roll all 6. I don't really feel like taking the math further than that right now, but it seems like it would come out near enough to 20%.

[MaxWilson]

Do you have the enemies (certainly those of non-deadly encounters) run away a lot? (even before any fight breaks out, if rumours of the PCs exploits spread around)
If not, your enemies have one glaring blind spot in their otherwise very intelligent behaviour.

Hmmm... Lots of groups of enemies doing their best to stay out of the way of the players, until enough of those groups meet each other they decide to gang up on the players and steamroll them. Now that would be realistic.

Yeah, finding excuses for bad guys to do stupid things is practically a requirement for 5E DMs, because the alternative isn't usually fun unless you crank the difficulty waaaaay up.

If you did want to run a game with intelligent bad guys though, a good test is to ask yourself before each encounter, "How do the bad guys see this playing out?" If there isn't a good outcome possible (if they are outnumbered and overmatched), then their only rational strategy is to evade and exfiltrate instead of fighting. If they do expect a good outcome ("we eight bandits are going to rob this armored knight and his three unarmored companions because he won't want to risk fighting back, or we'll kill his unarmored companions") then they need to react with surprise and possibly panic when it becomes clear that their expectations are incorrect ("that unarmored companion just caught an arrow with his bare hands, dodged two more arrows, and killed three of us with a blast of fire from his hands!").

In other words, if you're going to play bad guys as intelligent, you have to actually roleplay them as intelligent.


I think people are missing my meaning so I’ll give an example.
The BBEG has a choice he can kill one unconscious PC behind him then be killed by the rest of the party.
He can try to escape and hope to fight again another day.
Or he can try and fireball the rest of the party and hope he rolls well enough to knock the rest out.

He picks option one out of spite. He probably won’t escape, he probably won’t knock out the rest of the party. But he can defiantly kill one PC.
That’s what I mean about spite. The DM decides the NPC should pick the suicidal option just to kill one player. Just because it’s possible the PC will get back up during the fight doesn’t mean he will.

Yes often the tactically sound decision is to finish off the PC. But often it’s the stupid decision because not only is the rest of the party still standing. You will now be the singular focus of their attention.

Perfect example of when a bad guy shouldn't be fighting in the first place. He's got goals which don't include dying at the hands of a mob of wizards and knights--why didn't he just E&E the minute they showed up? Did he really think, in his head, "I'm going to beat these guys when they outnumber me five to one?" If he did he's either ignorant of the PCs or super powerful. If he was just ignorant he should realize the truth about half a round into the fight. Maybe in this case he would just try to kill someone out of spite, but only if the situation is hopeless and escape is impossible ("on death ground, fight!"). Most of the time, an intelligent opponent should not wind up in this position, isolated and vulnerable and outnumbered, except as a reward for players who earn it by learning far more about the BBEG than he knows about them.

[LudicSavant]

There's actually a lot more benefit to having Gentle Repose than Revivify, as Gentle Repose can work within two effect windows (Revivify or Raise Dead) when Revivify only has one, it has a level 2 spell slot instead of a level 3, and there's always the chance that you'll find something to use it on Gentle Repose on as a Ritual that Revivify couldn't have helped with.

The only time preemptively preparing Revivify would be better is if you were in a situation where you had to continue on if one of your players died (as opposed to retreating for a day and reviving them the following morning).


Boom, that's why it's worth to have Gentle Repose: Because it's a lot less useless than an unused and prepared Revivify, for roughly the same effect.

Gentle Repose uses up a spell preparation slot all the same, and doesn’t provide nearly the same benefit that Revivify does (putting a person with the “dead” status effect back in play, *right now*)

Revivify means you can just bring back a dead party member during or immediately after a fight and continue adventuring, without skipping a beat. It’s yo-yo healing that doesn’t even care that the ally got finished off.

It’s also one of the reasons optimized Cleric tanks are so good at their jobs; you can’t just ignore them and kill the rest of the party. Even if you literally finish them off, they pick right back up. Heck in some parties they’ll pick back up to full health, from Dead, mid-fight.

Some builds can even Revivify themselves mid-fight, and remove all status effects and damage from the party, and simultaneously beat your face in. At the same time. That character is basically saying 'death is not a setback, beyond a minor injury to my pocketbook.' She's basically pushing the entire lose condition of the party back, and that's one of the best things an optimizer can do; your goal isn't to win by overkill, it's to win, consistently and regardless of the enemy's ruthless efficiency.

[MaxWilson]

You roll a natural 20 that often? Your dice are better than mine.

That's not my dice, it's math. The probability of rolling a natural 20 before getting three death save failures is slightly under 20%, according to my memory at least. I think it's 18%, but it's been a while since I computed it exactly.

There's about a 40% chance they'll die instead, and 40% they'll stabilize at 0 HP. If you want them out of the fight for real, it's definitely worth finishing someone off with at least one extra strike while they're unconscious, similar to double-tapping a target in real life (plus maybe one shot to the head for good measure).

[Greywander]

I think for NPCs attacking downed PCs, a lot of it comes down to Combat as Sport vs. Combat as War. In Combat as Sport, a downed PC is "out"; attacking them isn't against the rules, but it is considered bad sportsmanship. In Combat as War, it's a struggle of life and death, and no trick is too dirty to be used.

Combat as Sport is more concerned with mastery of the game rules, while Combat as War views not just combat, but the whole game, as less of a game and more of a simulation. Need to take out a bandit camp? In Combat as Sport, the bandits will form neat clusters just big enough to present a reasonable challenge to the party, allowing the party to fight through them sequentially until they face the final boss.* In Combat as War, the "boss" is a cripple who can easily be killed, but a master tactician, and a direct assault would result in getting slaughtered by a hundred bandits, so instead you set the tents on fire, poison their water supply, and cause a landslide that buries half the camp. Combat as War understands that fighting is dangerous, and will go to great efforts to complete their goals without engaging an enemy directly, and never in a fair fight.
*This assumes the players aren't being stupid. In Combat as Sport, the DM is expected to arrange encounters to create a "fair" fight, so the DM would present an opportunity to the players to take on small groups of bandits in reasonable numbers. The players can always screw up and aggro the whole camp.

Combat as Sport vs. Combat as War is definitely something that should be brought up on session 0. I like Combat as War myself (partly, maybe mostly, because I'm a strong Simulationist), but not everyone does. Getting on the same page as everyone can make things a lot smoother, even if the table decides to go with your less preferred option; at least then you're aware of what's going on, instead of getting frustrated with clashing playstyles. In fact, this goes for a lot of things, which is why session 0 is so important for setting peoples expectations for the campaign. Even if something isn't what you wanted, it's a lot easier to deal with if you know ahead of time that it's going to be that way, instead of getting it sprung on you by surprise later on.

As for Revivify, I think others have already pointed out where it's most useful: When (a) you don't have Raise Dead yet, (b) the PC with Raise Dead is the one needing to be revived, or (c) you don't have time to sleep off the penalty from Raise Dead. It's questionable if you'd really want to prepare both Raise Dead and Revivify, but it's a good fallback if you can't think of another spell you'd rather have prepared. I would say that any class with one or both of these on their list should have one of them prepared, just in case the cleric goes down.

I also agree that removing the gold cost for Revivify would make it a lot more useful (and create more contrast with Raise Dead), but it is what it is. Bringing back the dead as actually pretty powerful magic, no matter how you look at it, and death already feels cheap in D&D. Plus, most combats last only a few rounds (IIRC, 3 to 5 rounds is the average), giving you plenty of time to cast Revivify afterwards. (That said, the longer fights are the ones that are more likely to kill you while still winning; a fight that ends in less than 3 rounds and results in a PC death is probably not a fight you won.)

[Tanarii]

Fair enough, but then my preference should not be dismissed as "DM coddling" or "UNFAIR" as it was by others
You forgot the hashtag :smallamused:

But yes, it's totally fair that your preference shouldn't be dismissed and I apologize.

[Hytheter]

Yeah, finding excuses for bad guys to do stupid things is practically a requirement for 5E DMs, because the alternative isn't usually fun unless you crank the difficulty waaaaay up.

If you did want to run a game with intelligent bad guys though, a good test is to ask yourself before each encounter, "How do the bad guys see this playing out?" If there isn't a good outcome possible (if they are outnumbered and overmatched), then their only rational strategy is to evade and exfiltrate instead of fighting. If they do expect a good outcome ("we eight bandits are going to rob this armored knight and his three unarmored companions because he won't want to risk fighting back, or we'll kill his unarmored companions") then they need to react with surprise and possibly panic when it becomes clear that their expectations are incorrect ("that unarmored companion just caught an arrow with his bare hands, dodged two more arrows, and killed three of us with a blast of fire from his hands!").

In other words, if you're going to play bad guys as intelligent, you have to actually roleplay them as intelligent.

I don't see the problem. Combat can be slow enough already; making monsters fight to the bitter end when it's clear they've lost is just wasting table time. Of course there are times when it may be appropriate (these cultists are fanatical, this dragon is defending its hoard, that orc just loves fighting more than he likes living) but for the most part having enemies flee or surrender is not only sensible but also good for moving the game along.

[Xervous]

You forgot the hashtag :smallamused:

But yes, it's totally fair that your preference shouldn't be dismissed and I apologize.

No, the GM was the one wielding all the pounding!

In absence of fate points or similar that other systems have by default for averting bad events like death you may need to play a system a little differently to give players the experience they’re looking for. Without a “this scene is important to me I don’t want to go down/die/etc” button available by default it’s up to the DM to govern the stakes of every moment, reading into player intent and desire without there being as many mechanics for players to express such.

I will say I love the thematics of revivify far more than raise dead mainly because of the more easily managed setting consequences of such an ability existing. Also as a DM there is nothing I dread more than benching a character for the rest of the night. Revivify brings them back in immediately (though letting the players use henchmen whenever their main character is offscreen has been amazing lately).

[HappyDaze]

Having alternate characters/NPCs to run when your PC dies is an almost lost art. It really needs to be revived so there are less player-side issues when a character dies.

[MaxWilson]

I don't see the problem. Combat can be slow enough already; making monsters fight to the bitter end when it's clear they've lost is just wasting table time. Of course there are times when it may be appropriate (these cultists are fanatical, this dragon is defending its hoard, that orc just loves fighting more than he likes living) but for the most part having enemies flee or surrender is not only sensible but also good for moving the game along.

The problem is that combats that last only half a round aren't fun. If eight bandits ambush four 5th level PCs (say Paladin, Wizard, two Elemonks) and then as soon as the first PC acts (Elemonk kills three bandits with a blast of flame) the bandits panic and scatter, having discovered that these guys are not at ALL what they looked like, are the players really going to be satisfied? And yet at that point, there's no other reasonable outcome possible for eight five bandits vs. one armored knight and three unarmored civilians mystical wizards immune to arrows.

You can make these scenarios fun anyway but it involves cranking the difficulty waaaaay up: instead of eight bandits, a platoon of deserters turned to banditry (34 Guards with light crossbows). They might still break after 14/34 of them die, but they might also hold together, especially if they've inflicted casualties on the PCs. They'll almost certainly break after 24/34 of them die, especially since they're deserters already. Die rolling will be involved for their morale checks, but the point is, 34 bandits is a lot more than 8. It's (34^2/8^2) = 18 times the combat power, which is appropriate because the PCs turn out to have 4^2 = 16 times the combat power the bandits originally anticipated, so that what the bandits were expecting to be an easy score turns into a fight to the death, but they still have a chance.

[Mikal]

The problem is that combats that last only half a round aren't fun. If eight bandits ambush four 5th level PCs (say Paladin, Wizard, two Elemonks) and then as soon as the first PC acts (Elemonk kills three bandits with a blast of flame) the bandits panic and scatter, having discovered that these guys are not at ALL what they looked like, are the players really going to be satisfied?

Why shouldn't they be? Are they so psychotically blood thirsty that they're pissed they didn't get to slaughter some puny weakling with a snap of their fingers too? I mean... heck man. The fact that one of us is able to cause them to rout shows how powerful we are, especially if it's a fricken monk of the 4 elements doing it!


And yet at that point, there's no other reasonable outcome possible for eight five bandits vs. one armored knight and three unarmored civilians mystical wizards immune to arrows.

Which is why they'd scatter or surrender, likely the former.

It's crap like this that makes me miss morale checks for NPCs...

[HappyDaze]

Satisfying to players is different from satisfying to characters. Characters might appreciate scattering puny foes and sending them running, but if players had to set up for a fight--especially with minis--and roll initiative with intent to enter the combat six-game of D&D, they are likely going to be unhappy if it gets cut short by one roll. The DM is a player too, and they can likewise get disappointed if such things happen, especially if they also took the time to build the encounter and draw out a battle map. Fear spell can do such things rather easily, but I've learned to have many of the opponents just move on to reinforce later encounters so fear is often a "get out of this situation right now, but likely make the next encounter unbalanced against us" solution, so it gets used with more care.

[Snails]

This may be going off topic a bit, but I think this raises an interesting point. We don't allow yoyo healing in our games and players who hit 0 and are stabilized must short rest to take actions. However, it has occurred to me that as a result our games are likely less lethal for the reason you mention. If I was DMing in a world that allowed yoyo healing any reasonably intelligent monster would likely use an extra attack on a downed character to make sure they stayed that way.

I somewhat disagree. At typical gaming tables, it is fair to guess even most pretty seasoned monsters have never seen anyone pop up from zero. To survive is the stuff of Heroes and Villains with a whiff of greatness.


Monsters and Death

Most GMs have a monster die the instant it drops to 0 Hit Points, rather than having it fall Unconscious and make Death Saving Throws.

Mighty villains and Special Nonplayer Characters are Common exceptions; the GM might have them fall Unconscious and follow the same rules as player characters.

[Mikal]

Satisfying to players is different from satisfying to characters. Characters might appreciate scattering puny foes and sending them running, but if players had to set up for a fight--especially with minis--and roll initiative with intent to enter the combat six-game of D&D, they are likely going to be unhappy if it gets cut short by one roll. The DM is a player too, and they can likewise get disappointed if such things happen, especially if they also took the time to build the encounter and draw out a battle map. Fear spell can do such things rather easily, but I've learned to have many of the opponents just move on to reinforce later encounters so fear is often a "get out of this situation right now, but likely make the next encounter unbalanced against us" solution, so it gets used with more care.

To which my point stands- are your players so bloodthirsty that if they don't kill at least something they're not going to be happy? It's no less disturbing, and in fact, potentially moreso, then having characters who are that psychotic.

And if the DM spent a bunch of time on a random encounter of bandits who can get wiped out by a four elements monk using a single attack, well... that DM needs better time and resource management.

[MaxWilson]

Why shouldn't they be?

Because a game that goes

Encounter 1. <8 bandits run away, and 3 escape>
Encounter 2. <8 bandits run away, and 4 escape>
Encounter 3. <an Oni runs away and escapes>
Encounter 4. <8 wolves run away, and 4 escape>
Encounter 5. <40 bandits, 4 wolves, and an Oni curbstomp the PCs>

seems unlikely to be a fun way to spend an evening. Even Combat As War players who would enjoy the challenge of encounter #5 still won't like having their time wasted by encounters 1-4, especially if you're using vanilla PHB initiative where players spend most of their time barred from even talking to the DM because its "not your turn".

If you're using an older-style initiative system (everybody declares, then everybody acts, rolling initiative when or if the DM asks for it) then it can feel like less of a time waste, especially if the DM is good at building dramatic tension by making encounters #2-#4 feel like potential #5s. I consider that part of "cranking the difficulty waaaaay up" though because there's still a huge, latent threat the players are having to deal with, maybe by capturing and interrogating bandits from encounters #1-2 so they can do something clever with infiltration or illusions in encounter #5--or maybe just so they can stop short before they get to encounter #5 and be happy with having killed a dozen bad guys without dying themselves.

Either way, the actual core of the adventure winds up being the encounter that WASN'T over in half a round, and everything else is just fluff and filler for it.

[HappyDaze]

Because a game that goes

Encounter 1. <8 bandits run away, and 3 escape>
Encounter 2. <8 bandits run away, and 4 escape>
Encounter 3. <an Oni runs away and escapes>
Encounter 4. <8 wolves run away, and 4 escape>
Encounter 5. <40 bandits, 4 wolves, and an Oni curbstomp the PCs>

seems unlikely to be a fun way to spend an evening. Even Combat As War players who would enjoy the challenge of encounter #5 still won't like having their time wasted by encounters 1-4, especially if you're using vanilla PHB initiative where players spend most of their time barred from even talking to the DM because its "not your turn".

My group had a dose of something similar, but it was with lizardfolk (of various types) and some giant lizards. It's surprisingly easy to escape PCs if you can throw spike growth in their only path of pursuit while they are busy trying to deal with conjured pteranodons (my players hate lizardfolk shamans with a passion now).

[Mikal]

Because a game that goes

Encounter 1. <8 bandits run away, and 3 escape>
Encounter 2. <8 bandits run away, and 4 escape>
Encounter 3. <an Oni runs away and escapes>
Encounter 4. <8 wolves run away, and 4 escape>
Encounter 5. <40 bandits, 4 wolves, and an Oni curbstomp the PCs>

Then the PCs should do a better job at making them surrender or hunting them down. I mean... if the PCs wanted to go after them hard enough, they, you know, can.


seems unlikely to be a fun way to spend an evening. Even Combat As War players who would enjoy the challenge of encounter #5 still won't like having their time wasted by encounters 1-4, especially if you're using vanilla PHB initiative where players spend most of their time barred from even talking to the DM because its "not your turn".

Anyone who lets their enemies escape so easily instead of capturing them kinda deserves to get stomped if the bandits, wolves, and Oni are all part of the same group.

In your example above, the PCs are likely going AFTER this group, or encountered the large group while infiltrating somewhere else. If the players and PCs ignore the fact they’re letting the enemies retreat and regroup... well, ain’t my problem. I don’t run my npcs stupid just because you can’t be bothered to do more than half ass it and let them run off when you know they’re part of the same group.

Now if they’re totally in no way related, and in the same session they magically come back! That’s bad DMing. See again: better use of time and resource management needed.


Either way, the actual core of the adventure winds up being the encounter that WASN'T over in half a round, and everything else is just fluff and filler for it.

If that happens the DM needs to get better at their job.

[HappyDaze]

Then the PCs should do a better job at making them surrender or hunting them down. I mean... if the PCs wanted to go after them hard enough, they, you know, can.



Anyone who lets their enemies escape so easily instead of capturing them kinda deserves to get stomped if the bandits, wolves, and Oni are all part of the same group.

In your example above, the PCs are likely going AFTER this group, or encountered the large group while infiltrating somewhere else. If the players and PCs ignore the fact they’re letting the enemies retreat and regroup... well, ain’t my problem. I don’t run my npcs stupid just because you can’t be bothered to do more than half ass it and let them run off when you know they’re part of the same group.

Now if they’re totally in no way related, and in the same session they magically come back! That’s bad DMing. See again: better use of time and resource management needed.



If that happens the DM needs to get better at their job.

Nope. That DM is doing fine.

[MaxWilson]

Then the PCs should do a better job at making them surrender or hunting them down. I mean... if the PCs wanted to go after them hard enough, they, you know, can.

Anyone who lets their enemies escape so easily instead of capturing them kinda deserves to get stomped if the bandits, wolves, and Oni are all part of the same group.

Huh. I thought I was being generous is assuming that PCs capture a majority of the fleeing bad guys, but you seem to think it would be easy to do even better. Out of curiousity: you've got 8 bandits (or wolves) scattering in all directions, and 4 PCs. Do you split the party to chase bandits to north/south/east/west? That seems risky.

[Mikal]

Nope. That DM is doing fine.

Such a fact filled response. It sure changed my mind. Wait. No, it didn’t. The theoretical dm who can’t work their way through a decent encounter matrix to make sure that doesn’t happen (barring the players just being lazy), sucks.

[Mikal]

Huh. I thought I was being generous is assuming that PCs capture a majority of the fleeing bad guys, but you seem to think it would be easy to do even better. Out of curiousity: you've got 8 bandits (or wolves) scattering in all directions, and 4 PCs. Do you split the party to chase bandits to north/south/east/west? That seems risky.

Hold spells, slow spells, grappling, sentinel, and so on. If they’re breaking and running there are lots of ways to slow them down and stop them. Plus if this is a wilderness encounter (hence scattering in all directions- which is much harder in a dungeon setting), you have superior mobility options available if you spent any time on it. Expeditious retreat, and so on.

And is it REALLY risky? The original example had a freakin four ways elements monk one shotting MULTIPLE bandits. Any such encounter isn’t going to be that risky, unless it’s a trap. And if it is...? You regroup.

That’s also where items such as survival, hunters mark, etc come in handy to hunt them down.

Unless these bandits are somehow so inept they get wrecked by the weakest of monk subclasses yet so skilled they can Easily successfully evade and hide and then regroup.

And even if they did... well, a few fireballs will likely cut that 40 bandits down to less than 10.

[ProsecutorGodot]

Huh. I thought I was being generous is assuming that PCs capture a majority of the fleeing bad guys, but you seem to think it would be easy to do even better. Out of curiousity: you've got 8 bandits (or wolves) scattering in all directions, and 4 PCs. Do you split the party to chase bandits to north/south/east/west? That seems risky.

I remember an episode of Critical Role where they were going to chase some Gnolls that had just burned down a village and were leaving with the spoils. The member who ran up front was nearly downed as they simply turned on him, now alone in front, with a longbow attack. They gave up the chase quickly after that and opted to follow their trail to their lair later instead of risking immediate danger for a small chance at catching/killing a handful of them.

My home game matches, I don't ask our Monk to chase down an enemy who flees unless I'm confident that we can regroup quickly. If they try to run as a group, we usually have to let at least 1 enemy go.


Hold spells, slow spells, grappling, sentinel, and so on. If they’re breaking and running there are lots of ways to slow them down and stop them. Plus if this is a wilderness encounter (hence scattering in all directions- which is much harder in a dungeon setting), you have superior mobility options available if you spent any time on it. Expeditious retreat, and so on.
Of course we could stop them, we have an 18th level Sorcerer with Wish, I can cast Hypnotic Pattern or Wall of Force but just because we could doesn't always mean it's worth it.

[HappyDaze]

Such a fact filled response. It sure changed my mind. Wait. No, it didn’t. The theoretical dm who can’t work their way through a decent encounter matrix to make sure that doesn’t happen (barring the players just being lazy), sucks.

It's not the DMs job to protect players from failure.

[Mikal]

It's not the DMs job to protect players from failure.

I never said it was. But if a dm is so unimaginative that all the fights are the way you described, the dm needs to get better.

[HappyDaze]

I never said it was. But if a dm is so unimaginative that all the fights are the way you described, the dm needs to get better.

The way I described? I don't even know what you're going on about now.

[Nagog]

Do you have the enemies (certainly those of non-deadly encounters) run away a lot? (even before any fight breaks out, if rumours of the PCs exploits spread around)
If not, your enemies have one glaring blind spot in their otherwise very intelligent behaviour.


Hmmm... Lots of groups of enemies doing their best to stay out of the way of the players, until enough of those groups meet each other they decide to gang up on the players and steamroll them. Now that would be realistic.

Depends on the party and the enemies. A group of local bandits? Definitely going to flee, either when they hear about the PCs or when their friends start getting offed in one shot. City Guards? Probably not. Even if they know they're likely going to die, they're fighting for their homes and families.

[MaxWilson]

Depends on the party and the enemies. A group of local bandits? Definitely going to flee, either when they hear about the PCs or when their friends start getting offed in one shot. City Guards? Probably not. Even if they know they're likely going to die, they're fighting for their homes and families.

What kind of a murderpsycho game do you play in or run, such that the PCs engage in terrorizing cities by killing city guardsmen, destroying homes and murdering the guardsmen's families?

:-)

[Nagog]

Then the PCs should do a better job at making them surrender or hunting them down. I mean... if the PCs wanted to go after them hard enough, they, you know, can.

Anyone who lets their enemies escape so easily instead of capturing them kinda deserves to get stomped if the bandits, wolves, and Oni are all part of the same group.

In your example above, the PCs are likely going AFTER this group, or encountered the large group while infiltrating somewhere else. If the players and PCs ignore the fact they’re letting the enemies retreat and regroup... well, ain’t my problem. I don’t run my npcs stupid just because you can’t be bothered to do more than half ass it and let them run off when you know they’re part of the same group.

Now if they’re totally in no way related, and in the same session they magically come back! That’s bad DMing. See again: better use of time and resource management needed.

If that happens the DM needs to get better at their job.

I gotta agree with HappyDaze here, this DM doesn't seem all that impractical to me. If the party has made enemies like this, all within a few hours/days, those who are intelligent (or in the Wolves case, desperate) enough to still want their destruction will follow the party, searching for the opportunity to destroy them. That opportunity may come when they are already engaged with another combatant. The only thing I could think of that's unlikely with this scenario is the Wolves. The wolves aren't likely to knowingly forge an alliance with the Oni and Bandits, but they may join in for some fresh meat once people start dying.

[HappyDaze]

What kind of a murderpsycho game do you play in or run, such that the PCs engage in terrorizing cities by killing city guardsmen, destroying homes and murdering the guardsmen's families?

:-)

"What is D&D?"

[MaxWilson]

"What is D&D?"

[laughs, then cries]

[Mellack]

Huh. I thought I was being generous is assuming that PCs capture a majority of the fleeing bad guys, but you seem to think it would be easy to do even better. Out of curiousity: you've got 8 bandits (or wolves) scattering in all directions, and 4 PCs. Do you split the party to chase bandits to north/south/east/west? That seems risky.

If all those who escaped were able to gather together, there must have been some sort of meeting location planned. Otherwise, creatures escaping in all directions wouldn't have gathered back together. Seems that would be fairly easy to find out from some of the bandits who failed to escape.

[Pex]

NPCs never do anything without the DM's permission. It is just as arbitrary for escaping bad guys to gather together to team up and kill the PCs or a kill a downed PC making death saving throws as it is not to do such things. It is not the DM's job to kill PCs because bad guys hate them just as much as not to protect them from their failures.

[Connington]

Because a game that goes

Encounter 1. <8 bandits run away, and 3 escape>
Encounter 2. <8 bandits run away, and 4 escape>
Encounter 3. <an Oni runs away and escapes>
Encounter 4. <8 wolves run away, and 4 escape>
Encounter 5. <40 bandits, 4 wolves, and an Oni curbstomp the PCs>

seems unlikely to be a fun way to spend an evening.

Why would that be a fun adventuring day even if every opponent fought to the death? The CR system isn't great, but simple encounter math shows that 8 bandits aren't even close to meeting the minimum for an Easy encounter for a level 5 party, and the wolves only just skirt the minimum. At that point, throwing in the need to worry about enemies escaping or managing a trail of pitiful captives isn't "fun" exactly, but it creates tension and some kind of fail state.

Or you could have exactly one comedic encounter where the bandits flee in horror after realizing how badly they've messed up, the survivors spread the word not to bother the adventurers passing through, and the party fast-forwards to that Oni or something else that can present a challenge without rushing into death like an armed lemming.

[MaxWilson]

Why would that be a fun adventuring day even if every opponent fought to the death? The CR system isn't great, but simple encounter math shows that 8 bandits aren't even close to meeting the minimum for an Easy encounter for a level 5 party, and the wolves only just skirt the minimum. At that point, throwing in the need to worry about enemies escaping or managing a trail of pitiful captives isn't "fun" exactly, but it creates tension and some kind of fail state.

Frankly it was just a simple example for the sake of illustration. (I don't think we even specified that it was a level 5 party.) The example in my head was "PCs are going to root out a nest of bandits and stumble repeatedly across pickets," and in that context it's more "fun" if the bandits either (1) fight to the death even in small groups, or (2) mostly retreat and regroup to encounter #5, so that in-between encounter are mostly roleplaying encounters ("can you capture the picket before he can sound the alarm? what kind of information can you pump out of him afterwards?") so that #5 can be the "real" combat encounter of the adventure.

I happen to think that bandits punch above their weight, so for a hack-and-slash Combat As Sport type game I think an encounter with fanatic bandits who believe in fighting to the death (in groups of 8 for some reason) could still be interesting and difficult for a level 5 party, given their access to ranged weaponry and potentially partial/total cover. (In my head there are about three bandits on each side of the road, in the brush, and two or three bandits on the road doing the talking, demanding a "road tax.") Of course you'd want to make each group of bandits adopt different approaches too--perhaps the next group of bandits is slightly drunk and a bit lazy and lecherous, and they just surround their victims at close range and threaten them with blades, instead of bothering with good tactics.

By nature I'm more Combat As War, but if you want Combat As Sport, my point is that Bandits punch above their weight: throwing multiple "Medium" encounters of 25 bandits at a typical 5th level party risks TPKing the PCs or at least driving them off until they gain some levels.

My original point wasn't about bandits in particular, just that enemies with realistic expectations for combat outcomes become boring and mostly skippable except when in overwhelming force. To that end, feel free to change the bandits to whatever monsters suit you.


Or you could have exactly one comedic encounter where the bandits flee in horror after realizing how badly they've messed up, the survivors spread the word not to bother the adventurers passing through, and the party fast-forwards to that Oni or something else that can present a challenge without rushing into death like an armed lemming.

I'm not clear on what point you're disagreeing with here, but I submit that what you've described is a pretty good way to structure an adventure, and happens to match my personal tastes: find ways to skip over unimportant intermediate material to save table time.

[sithlordnergal]

To which my point stands- are your players so bloodthirsty that if they don't kill at least something they're not going to be happy? It's no less disturbing, and in fact, potentially moreso, then having characters who are that psychotic.


Yes, at least two of my players are that bloodthirsty. In the games I play there is always at least one player that bloodthirsty. They would eventually get annoyed that enemies were fleeing from them after one or two rounds of combat.

Heck, its not even being bloodthirsty. Its a matter of boredom for other players. If you're playing a Wizard and you send the bandits scattering with a single spell because you killed a third of their group, you feel awesome and cool. But anyone that goes after you doesn't get to do anything. Those players end up being disappointed because they can't use their equally fun and cool abilities.

And sure, those players can chase down the fleeing bandits, but that is a far less satisfying fight. It relegates them to basically kicking a guy when they're down. Its not fun, its not impressive, these bandits already aren't fighting back so what's the point.

[Connington]

Frankly it was just a simple example for the sake of illustration. (I don't think we even specified that it was a level 5 party.) The example in my head was "PCs are going to root out a nest of bandits and stumble repeatedly across pickets," and in that context it's more "fun" if the bandits either (1) fight to the death even in small groups, or (2) mostly retreat and regroup to encounter #5, so that in-between encounter are mostly roleplaying encounters ("can you capture the picket before he can sound the alarm? what kind of information can you pump out of him afterwards?") so that #5 can be the "real" combat encounter of the adventure.

I assumed this was the same party of a level 5 knight, a wizard, and two elemonks you earlier mentioned being bored if the bandits surrender at the end of the first turn instead of politely continuing to fight for 1.5 more rounds so every player can get a kill in.


My original point wasn't about bandits in particular, just that enemies with realistic expectations for combat outcomes become boring and mostly skippable except when in overwhelming force. To that end, feel free to change the bandits to whatever monsters suit you.

I'm not clear on what point you're disagreeing with here, but I submit that what you've described is a pretty good way to structure an adventure, and happens to match my personal tastes: find ways to skip over unimportant intermediate material to save table time.

I'm on the Combat as War side here as well, but to me that means that because most people and beasts don't want to die, they'll frequently surrender or flee if it's obvious they've lost the fight. It makes sense for them, and it makes sense for the DM to skip over the boring mop-up. What confuses me is that it sounds like the majority of the encounters you're describing would be boring mop up.

Also, what's with the dozens and dozens of bandits and guards and wolves in your hypotheticals? That seems to call out for a smaller number of more powerful and varied NPCs using some kind of combined arms, so that the combat itself is more interesting than just "Everyone kill 1d4-1 of the enemy fodder each round before they can kill you".

[MaxWilson]

(A) I assumed this was the same party of a level 5 knight, a wizard, and two elemonks you earlier mentioned being bored if the bandits surrender at the end of the first turn instead of politely continuing to fight for 1.5 more rounds so every player can get a kill in.

(B) I'm on the Combat as War side here as well, but to me that means that because most people and beasts don't want to die, they'll frequently surrender or flee if it's obvious they've lost the fight. It makes sense for them, and it makes sense for the DM to skip over the boring mop-up. What confuses me is that it sounds like the majority of the encounters you're describing would be boring mop up.

(C) Also, what's with the dozens and dozens of bandits and guards and wolves in your hypotheticals? That seems to call out for a smaller number of more powerful and varied NPCs using some kind of combined arms, so that the combat itself is more interesting than just "Everyone kill 1d4-1 of the enemy fodder each round before they can kill you".

(A) I assumed it was the same party too, I just don't remember specifying a level. I assume you're talking about this post:



Yeah, finding excuses for bad guys to do stupid things is practically a requirement for 5E DMs, because the alternative isn't usually fun unless you crank the difficulty waaaaay up.

If you did want to run a game with intelligent bad guys though, a good test is to ask yourself before each encounter, "How do the bad guys see this playing out?" If there isn't a good outcome possible (if they are outnumbered and overmatched), then their only rational strategy is to evade and exfiltrate instead of fighting. If they do expect a good outcome ("we eight bandits are going to rob this armored knight and his three unarmored companions because he won't want to risk fighting back, or we'll kill his unarmored companions") then they need to react with surprise and possibly panic when it becomes clear that their expectations are incorrect ("that unarmored companion just caught an arrow with his bare hands, dodged two more arrows, and killed three of us with a blast of fire from his hands!").

In other words, if you're going to play bad guys as intelligent, you have to actually roleplay them as intelligent.

The monk is clearly at least level 3. Level 5 is totally plausible, but I don't remember us deciding for sure.

Edit: oh, it looks like I did in post #67. Yes, 5th level apparently:


The problem is that combats that last only half a round aren't fun. If eight bandits ambush four 5th level PCs (say Paladin, Wizard, two Elemonks) and then as soon as the first PC acts (Elemonk kills three bandits with a blast of flame) the bandits panic and scatter, having discovered that these guys are not at ALL what they looked like, are the players really going to be satisfied? And yet at that point, there's no other reasonable outcome possible for eight five bandits vs. one armored knight and three unarmored civilians mystical wizards immune to arrows.

You can make these scenarios fun anyway but it involves cranking the difficulty waaaaay up: instead of eight bandits, a platoon of deserters turned to banditry (34 Guards with light crossbows). They might still break after 14/34 of them die, but they might also hold together, especially if they've inflicted casualties on the PCs. They'll almost certainly break after 24/34 of them die, especially since they're deserters already. Die rolling will be involved for their morale checks, but the point is, 34 bandits is a lot more than 8. It's (34^2/8^2) = 18 times the combat power, which is appropriate because the PCs turn out to have 4^2 = 16 times the combat power the bandits originally anticipated, so that what the bandits were expecting to be an easy score turns into a fight to the death, but they still have a chance.
(B) Note that in "everybody runs away repeatedly" I'm not describing my own game--I'm describing my anti-game, the game I deliberately DON'T run. Differences:


(1) I don't use PHB initiative in the first place, so even in a combat that ends in half a round, all the players still get to declare an action and participate, and it's easy to shift back to roleplaying once the combat is decided. (Once players declare their actions like "I chase down and kill the fleeing bandits", instead of asking for round-by-round die rolls I can just say, "Yep, it works" and move on, etc.)

(2) I dislike combats with low dramatic stakes, so I'm biased towards designing conflicts which could kill the one or all PCs if they make poor decisions and get somewhat unlucky. These conflicts are not necessarily single "encounters" the way most people count encounters, although I personally mentally tend to consider any potentially-interacting NPCs/monsters as all being part of the same encounter even if they are not all initially present/visible to the players.

(3) I'm morally biased against murder, so if there are intelligent, non-monstrous opponents, I have even more bias towards making combat per se not be the sole focus of the conflict, and making the opponents act rationally. I love it when players get enjoyment out of interrogating, sympathizing with, and eventually bonding with captured enemies, even if the enemies were not originally a significant combat challenge. In terms of the Eight Kinds of Fun in RPGs (https://theangrygm.com/gaming-for-fun-part-1-eight-kinds-of-fun/), my game tends to be about Fellowship, Exploration/Discovery, Challenge, and Fantasy, with relatively little attention paid to Narrative (although I'm working on getting better at Narrative), and even less to Submission, Sensory Pleasure, and Expression. (I don't mind Submission in theory but I hate DMing it--if you make me DM hack-and-slash dungeon crawls for you it just makes me want to design DM-less rules for hack and slash, or write a computer program that will DM them for me, so that I can play instead of DM.)


(C) Again, it was a simple example just to illustrate the concept. The idea there is "all the guys who ran away act rationally, regroup and seek reinforcements, and hit you all at once." The alternative rational behavior would be "there aren't enough of them to be a threat to you even if they concentrate all their forces, so they run away and you never see them again (they hope)."

Dividing themselves for you to conveniently defeat in detail in multiple Medium-/Hard-rated encounters is not rational.

[KorvinStarmast]

I am reading a few posts in this thread that treat DMing as war.

Unless you have a serial set of encounters from the same group of monsters, there is NO carry over memory from one group of monsters to another. Now, if you didn't defeat all of the monsters in a group, and a few ran off and told their buddies about the party, then there is a sense of continuity.

Basic general assumption is: monsters don't know what other monsters have run into.
The basic exception is: serial encounters that are a set of related NPC/Monsters who are all part of the same local group.

Put another way: the orcs don't know what the bandits ran into unless they are already allied for another well constructed in-universe reason.

[Benny89]

Try having Team Monster use yo-yo healing on a regular basis and see the way the players counter it. Then realize that DMs who aren't coddling / afraid to kill the players will do that to you.

Generally when people think that yo-yo healing is a catch-all solution it's because they have a DM who's going easy on them, laying off the gas pedal a bit when the players are on the ropes. There are a lot of ways to finish people off.

Um, Team Monsters don't have access to yo-yo healing by default as they do not roll Death Saves.

The PHB suggests that ordinary enemies do not get death saves, while "important" enemies do. However, it's just a suggestion, not a concrete rule.

So by default only players have 0 HP, still alive but roll Death Saves, while enemies when drop to 0 - die, unless DM think enemy is so important that he can also roll Death Saves.

But no way whole "Team Monsters" are suddenly important.

Of course- each table to his own but I wanted to clarify it that if DM allows yo-yo on players and not on enemies- that's totally in line with RAW.





I'm on the Combat as War side here as well, but to me that means that because most people and beasts don't want to die, they'll frequently surrender or flee if it's obvious they've lost the fight. It makes sense for them, and it makes sense for the DM to skip over the boring mop-up.

This is something very imporant many DMs forget. If you have a group of enemies with their "Super Big Bad Boss that keeps them short" and suddenly in first turn your party Paladin crit x2 and smite him to oblivion then It makes sense for them to either run away to give up since their super boss was just deleted like nothing.

Many times it gets funny where party kills like 20 enemies and last 4 are like "ok, that's our chance, attack!" :D.

It's off-top anyway, but I just wanted add my 3 cents here because that stuff always bugs me when I play with some DMs.

[Luccan]

Morale rules are probably helpful for this "do they run/surrender or keep fighting" situation. Losing even 10% of your group in the opening seconds of a fight probably indicates you've signed up for more than you can handle, but not everyone makes the right call in those situations.

[MaxWilson]

Basic general assumption is: monsters don't know what other monsters have run into.
The basic exception is: serial encounters that are a set of related NPC/Monsters who are all part of the same local group.

Put another way: the orcs don't know what the bandits ran into unless they are already allied for another well constructed in-universe reason.

Yes... but a corollary is that the orcs have no reason to be in the vicinity of the bandits unless they are already in some way at least loosely affiliated. There's only so many disparate factions that it makes sense to have operating in walking distance of each other during a single 24-hour adventuring day (unless you're in a dense urban environment where everything is in walking distance).

I can buy 2-3 disparate factions sometimes, at moments of convergence, but more than that strains my disbelief. Even The Hobbit's "a battle of five armies?!?" ultimately had only three sides.

[LudicSavant]

Um, Team Monsters don't have access to yo-yo healing by default as they do not roll Death Saves.

The PHB suggests that ordinary enemies do not get death saves, while "important" enemies do. However, it's just a suggestion, not a concrete rule.

So by default only players have 0 HP, still alive but roll Death Saves, while enemies when drop to 0 - die, unless DM think enemy is so important that he can also roll Death Saves.

But no way whole "Team Monsters" are suddenly important.

Of course- each table to his own but I wanted to clarify it that if DM allows yo-yo on players and not on enemies- that's totally in line with RAW.

I think this is kind of missing the point I was making, which in no way requires all monsters to have access to yo-yo healing "by default." It only requires you to try some 'important' enemies using such strategies and watch the way the PCs adapt to them, and then realize that those exact adaptations work in reverse, if your DM is just a little less merciful.

[ProsecutorGodot]

I think this is kind of missing the point I was making, which in no way requires all monsters to have access to yo-yo healing "by default." It only requires you to try some 'important' enemies using such strategies and watch the way the PCs adapt to them, and then realize that those exact adaptations work in reverse, if your DM is just a little less merciful.

It's only natural too, your PC's aren't usually "the first really durable guy next to a cleric" that has ever been seen. There are also other "adventurers"(exceptional people) in most settings. It's not impossible that you find people employing similar strategies to yourself, and they might not be on your side.

There's that old saying "There are no new ideas". If you're not entirely sure that you're the first person to discover the tools needed to pull these plans off, chances are someone might have already done it (or something incredibly similar) before you.

[Tanarii]

It also kind of misses the point that if you're yo yo healed, you're incredibly vulnerable to going right back down again. At which point enemies that just saw you get yo yo healed will probably make sure you stay down permanently.

[Benny89]

I think this is kind of missing the point I was making, which in no way requires all monsters to have access to yo-yo healing "by default." It only requires you to try some 'important' enemies using such strategies and watch the way the PCs adapt to them, and then realize that those exact adaptations work in reverse, if your DM is just a little less merciful.

Ah, correct, but I think here we go into "each table" territory. For example when I DM i don't "Finish off" downed players, even though it's easy to do so, especially in Tier 1 and Tier 2. If someone asks me why I say that enemy at first just thinks "well, he is down, better take care of rest of them first". But I also think that if combat drags and enemies experience "yo-yo" healing too much and see that "hey, we drop this guy and he just gets up" they might:

1. Run away, thinking that this is some unholy stuff and abnormal that guys is immortal
2. Try to rush the guy who does the healing stuff "he is responsible for this sorceries!"
3. Try to finish up downed player for good "just cut him to pieces, he won't get up again".

But I always allow players first to make yo-yo as I press them when they abuse it in sense that their tactical approch in combat is stupid and then down themselfs over and over again- then I have to press them. But at first I think it's ok in encounter because sometimes a bad roll can result (or good DM rolls) that one PC just immidietly drops down.

I think yo-yo is as bad as party is bad. For example my group has very tactical and smart approach in combat and we rarely get someone downed, and almost never two times in row. Only once we had Paladin who had bad luck and was downed 3 times during combat but then cleric said "I won't make him suffer no more, we will get him up after we win this fight!", which was nice roleplaying to prevent yo-yo at this point and wasting slots.

Back to Revivify - I agree with what some people say here- it's a spell that you will be glad you never needed (means you party plays well), but you will cry river in that one moment when you need it (because dice are swingy). So I always prepare one if I have access to it and If I never use it- good for us.

[stoutstien]

One thing that I do often is give certain NPCs the relentless trait. It has similar effect of yoyo healing.

[Waazraath]

Back to Revivify - I agree with what some people say here- it's a spell that you will be glad you never needed (means you party plays well), but you will cry river in that one moment when you need it (because dice are swingy). So I always prepare one if I have access to it and If I never use it- good for us.

But what about the odds that you need it because you have it prepared and saved a slot to cast it? I mean, my cleric can use its last level 3 slot also to give 3 characters 10 extra hp, maybe preventing them going down in the first place. Saving it as an emergency button has an opportunity cost (just like preparing it instead of another spell, though that isn't that high).

[Benny89]

But what about the odds that you need it because you have it prepared and saved a slot to cast it? I mean, my cleric can use its last level 3 slot also to give 3 characters 10 extra hp, maybe preventing them going down in the first place. Saving it as an emergency button has an opportunity cost (just like preparing it instead of another spell, though that isn't that high).

There is never one answer to all scenarios one can run into, but form my experience playing 1 Life Cleric/12 Divine Soul Sorc (my closest Cleric gameplay ever) - the 3rd level slot is actually very gentle for Clerics because in 99% cases I was using it for Spirit Guardians, which in most cases lasted whole encounter.

And obviously since SGs is such amazing spell- when I got higher slots I was using them to upcast SGs which left again my 3rd level slots mostly intact. Of course we had moments when I was down in last 2nd level slots in campaign, but those were rare and after hardcore adventuring days.

But compare to Wizard- I don't think having that Revivify available on Cleric is that hard to have.

But again - each table may have way different experience than other.

[DeTess]

I've used it to decent effect on my Sorcadin in a 1-20 campaign. especially in the later levels the material component cost was very easily affordable, so that single spell could take the place of a lot of other spells, like remove curse and dispel magic. Over the course of the final sessions I've used the spell to get a nasty cursed item off of one of our minions, deal with our big dragon ally getting mind-controlled, and exorcising a nasty possessing force out off my own character.

Of course, I can imagine that in some campaigns 'kill them and then revivify them' isn't quite as much of a cure-all XD

[Xervous]

I've sued it to decent effect on my Sorcadin in a 1-20 campaign. especially in the later levels the material component cost was very easily affordable, so that single spell could take the place of a lot of other spells, like remove curse and dispel magic. Over the course of the final sessions I've used the spell to get a nasty cursed item off of one of our minions, deal with our big dragon ally getting mind-controlled, and exorcising a nasty possessing force out off my own character.

Of course, I can imagine that in some campaigns 'kill them and then revivify them' isn't quite as much of a cure-all XD

“My fighter isn’t working right, I think he’s cursed!”

“Have you tried turning him off and on again?”

I love it

[da newt]

A bit off topic: What an interesting conversation. I've got to add it seems very telling to me how differently each of us approaches the game / combat. Personally I like to add realism whenever I can, and I prefer combat as war. It makes sense to me that PCs and bad guys should act as intelligently / logically as they are.

A handful of bandits will attack only if they are confident the risk is worth the reward and that they should win with few casualties - otherwise they become like video game creature objects. Some creatures are zombies - always advance, always attack, never surrender or use tactics. Some creatures are predators - they will attack the weakest of the bunch and take them away and eat them. Some creatures are fanatical and will fight to the death over nothing or a cause or because they identify someone as "enemy." But most creatures with any knowledge will fight if they think they can win and want something. Most will run once they decide it's not going well for them. Similar to the premise of 'the monsters know what they are doing.'

I prefer games where the bandits attack, but then realize they are out gunned and run. I think they should run back to their gang and either decide to stay out of the party's way or gather everyone and take them out.

Too often I've played games that are dumbed down to resemble a level of Mario Bros or something. A quest for a thing or to kill the Boss, encounter a few minions, avoid a trap, solve a riddle, find the Boss and a few minions, advance like the Red Coats and fight until one side has zero hp, have a long rest, repeat. And for some players, this is all they know, but the game can be so much more (IMO).

When I DM, I ensure every thinking enemy has an objective / reason to fight and a reasonable will to live that makes sense. The clever adversaries try to be clever and win.

Nothing wrong with combat as sport, but I prefer a bit more realism in my fantasy.

But I have been mostly playing AL so ...

[Dankus Memakus]

revivify is awesome because at the level you get it, there's still a decent chance stuff will outright kill you. I've had a few characters die because we collectively decided that revivify wasn't necessary and then I trigger a trap or get crit and really wish we had brought it along.

[Tanarii]

To me it's a not totally simple question: Have you ever had a character die in the level range 5-8, in a non-TPK situation, and Raise Dead was not available?

Not totally simple because it's basically three cadets on top of a simple question. But they're common situation ones.
- The most commonly played level range
- death without it being a TPK
- if you want to raise your dead you have to do it yourself

If the answer is yes, you should see the potential value in Revivify. If the answer is no of course you wouldn't.

[MaxWilson]

To me it's a not totally simple question: Have you ever had a character die in the level range 5-8, in a non-TPK situation, and Raise Dead was not available?

Not totally simple because it's basically three cadets on top of a simple question. But they're common situation ones.
- The most commonly played level range
- death without it being a TPK
- if you want to raise your dead you have to do it yourself

If the answer is yes, you should see the potential value in Revivify. If the answer is no of course you wouldn't.

Point of order! What if Raise Dead is available but pricey? Just the base spell components alone are three times more expensive than Revivify, then there's paying for the caster's time, and the hassle of carting the body back, and the penalties after death and the time it takes to pay them down, and all the playtime the player is therefore in danger of missing...

...the only "of course" prereq to getting value from the spell is a non-TPK involuntary PC death. If you've seen that happen or feared it might, Revivify might potentially interest you.

[Kurt Kurageous]

It's super useful if someone has Gentle Repose, because a part of Gentle Repose states that it extends the period of time someone can be brought back from life.

So as long as you have both Gentle Repose and Revivify, Revivify is 200 less gold than Raise Dead, and is 2 spell levels lower than Raise Dead. And there's nothing preventing you from re-casting Gentle Repose before it runs out to further extend the time you can revive the target.


I add to this by saying casting GR gives the cleric the time necessary to prepare revivify, so all they need to save the day is a second level spell and another day.

[Willie the Duck]

To me it's a not totally simple question: Have you ever had a character die in the level range 5-8, in a non-TPK situation, and Raise Dead was not available?

Not totally simple because it's basically three cadets on top of a simple question. But they're common situation ones.
- The most commonly played level range
- death without it being a TPK
- if you want to raise your dead you have to do it yourself

If the answer is yes, you should see the potential value in Revivify. If the answer is no of course you wouldn't.

As Max points out, it really isn't "If the answer is no of course you wouldn't," but instead, "If the answer is no then this may or may not be worth the memorization slot."

Regardless, you are right. The value of this spell is predicated on wanting to have raise capacity on-hand (with Raise Dead, you can wait until the situation presents itself before preparing it.

I think it comes down to how often people see non-TPK character death, particularly in the levels mentioned. While default mode 5e is easy (at least if you take the CR assignment terminology at face value), in practice I find that groups ramp up the difficulty to match the challenge they prefer. If that means more encounters per rest period, I tend to see more individual deaths. If, instead, it is a more 'nova party against 1-2 daily encounters that roughly rise to meet that challenge,' it tends to be closer to 'either TPK or party runs away when they realize they've bitten off more than they can chew.' The later situation means less singular deaths, and thus I can see why people might not see the need for Revivify.

[Chaosmancer]

One point on the combat as war side, there are things you can do that "make sense" that are also very likely to end up with hurt feelings.

Example:

Goblins. I love using goblins because people think they are weak, but they are ambushers. Let us say you have a fairly standard party, that includes heavily armored knight, rogue, heavily armored cleric, and wizard. First off, the Goblins are cowards intelligent fighters, they aren't going to attack unless they have more than double your number. So, 10 of them.

They also have very good stealth, so it is likely they are hidden at the start of combat.

Out of the targets available, the rogue and wizard are the best choices. Goblins know magic is a thing, and they know they can out run men in heavy armor.

So, 10 attacks with advantage go to the Rogue. Who has a 16 AC. That means, by rough math, 2/3rds hit. Let's say that is seven arrows. That is 7d6+14 damage or approximately 38 damage. Which is a 5th level rogues average hp. (and surprise round means he can't react)

Then all the goblins scatter back into hiding with their bonus actions.

So, round 1 is "drop a player character" and then the enemies can just stay hidden, running and hiding until the party drops their guard. And do it again.

And again

and again.

Wizard readies an action to cast Fireball? Great. You wasted a spell slot. Because the Goblins don't reappear the next round. They wait three rounds. After all, if they still have visual on you, they can see you casting, and the fighter with their bow pulled taut waiting to fire, so they wait.


And sure, some people might find this fun, it could be an interesting scenario. But a lot of other people would find this terrible. Just like if you encountered a group of wizards, and they unleashed 5 fireballs on your location. Even if you succeed the saves, half of 40d6 damage is 70 damage, that is devastating for most of the party.

And then they do the same thing next round.

[da newt]

Chaosmancer:

Exactly. In your example the Goblins act as if they are real living creatures who want to live and make decent decisions and use decent tactics. My feelings don't get hurt if my enemy fights better than my party.

Or, the Goblins are as dumb as zombies. When the DM decides they attack the party (regardless of how many or how powerful they appear) the goblins slowly plod forward (in fireball formation) attacking the closest enemy indiscriminately. Even though they are proficient at hiding, they don't use their BA to take cover or hide, because they are unthinking pools of Hp. This way the PC's feelings don't get hurt because they feel superior to the mindless, tactic-less enemy.

(Yes, I exaggerate to make my point)

Every party / table has a preference. There is no 'right' answer. Personally, beating Goblins that act like zombies is unfulfilling and unrealistic for me - I prefer an enemy who tries to win and live - I like the challenge.

To each their own. If you and your party prefer unthinking enemies, you do you, enjoy your game - that's all that matters. There is no one right way to have fun.

[LudicSavant]

Ultimately, the measure of optimization is not about how overwhelmingly you win when you win, or even how often an ability comes up in a campaign, it's about how hard it is to make you lose -- or to put it another way, the hardest, most unforgiving campaign your party is likely to survive.

And Revivify is an excellent spell for pushing this boundary, since it directly pushes back the lose condition from 'one person in the party dies' to 'everyone in the party with the ability to revive dies, or goes broke and then someone dies,' which is a considerably more difficult condition for Team Monster to meet.

As far as resurrections go, it is an unusually resource-efficient method. Low level spell slot, no after-effects, cheap component, can even happen right in the middle of the fight (some builds can even do Revivify and then have people back up at full health on the same turn).

If you don't end up needing it, great. Lots of people never need a seat belt. But wearing one generally makes you a better driver anyways.

[Snails]

revivify is awesome because at the level you get it, there's still a decent chance stuff will outright kill you. I've had a few characters die because we collectively decided that revivify wasn't necessary and then I trigger a trap or get crit and really wish we had brought it along.

Interesting. When you are 5th level, even the less robust PCs have 30 or more HP. Are PCs really getting hit for more than 30 HP very often? A Crit from a greatsword is not likely to do more than 25.

[MaxWilson]

One point on the combat as war side, there are things you can do that "make sense" that are also very likely to end up with hurt feelings.

*snip*

Wizard readies an action to cast Fireball? Great. You wasted a spell slot. Because the Goblins don't reappear the next round. They wait three rounds. After all, if they still have visual on you, they can see you casting, and the fighter with their bow pulled taut waiting to fire, so they wait.

*snip*

And sure, some people might find this fun, it could be an interesting scenario. But a lot of other people would find this terrible. Just like if you encountered a group of wizards, and they unleashed 5 fireballs on your location. Even if you succeed the saves, half of 40d6 damage is 70 damage, that is devastating for most of the party.

And then they do the same thing next round.

Combat As War is a playstyle, and not everyone enjoys it. But those who do would probably not find this scenario un-fun per se, although they'd likely view it as a sign of personal failure somewhere along the line, and asking themselves what they should have done differently. (At minimum the Rogue is probably kicking himself for not hiding and not scouting out the goblins ahead of time.)

[stoutstien]

Interesting. When you are 5th level, even the less robust PCs have 30 or more HP. Are PCs really getting hit for more than 30 HP very often? A Crit from a greatsword is not likely to do more than 25.

Depends. Some NPC types just do a ton of damage and some are also very accurate at the same time. Giants are a good example of hard hitting for their CR.

[LudicSavant]

Interesting. When you are 5th level, even the less robust PCs have 30 or more HP. Are PCs really getting hit for more than 30 HP very often? A Crit from a greatsword is not likely to do more than 25.

In my Sunday session just last week, the party Barbarian got hit for 84 damage at 5th level. Wasn't even a crit, just a corpse flower doing its thing (it has potentially 18d6+6 damage on its attacks, plus the attacks of its zombies).

This kind of thing isn't even unusual, this is literally just me posting the very last encounter in a game I was in. I've definitely had considerably meaner encounters than that at 5.

[ProsecutorGodot]

In my Sunday session just last week, the party Barbarian got hit for 84 damage. At 5th level. While raging.

I remember when my Bloodhunter took a crit from a Remorhaz at level 7. These instances are pretty exceptional.


This kind of thing isn't even unusual, this is literally just me posting the very last encounter in a game I was in. I've definitely had considerably meaner encounters than that at 5.

Well in my game it's exceptional anyway, though I've been begging the DM to be a little meaner to us so I can shine a bit more as a tank.

[MaxWilson]

Ultimately, the measure of optimization is not about how overwhelmingly you win when you win, or even how often an ability comes up in a campaign, it's about how hard it is to make you lose -- or to put it another way, the hardest, most unforgiving campaign your party is likely to survive.

Well, maybe not "ultimately". That's one way of optimizing, but different people optimize different things. Some people like to optimize the numbers on their character sheet ("proficient in every skill!"), some like to optimize isolated aspects of the play experience ("I once did 80 damage in one hit!"), some like to optimize for speed as if it were a race ("killed Tiamat in only 1 round with nova damage", or "finished the whole dungeon without a single rest"), or robustness to handicaps ("beat the adventure with a non-spellcasting Fighter with no ability score over 10").

Eldariel started a thread a while back about party optimization and one of my takeaways from that discussion was that we don't all think about challenge in the same way.

That said, if someone were to volunteer to run a Combat Gauntlet of some sort where we all build parties and run them through the gauntlet in a test to destruction, I'd totally be up for that. "Hardest, most unforgiving campaign your party is likely to survive" sounds like a fun challenge, with or without specific houserules.

[Snails]

Well in my game it's exceptional anyway, though I've been begging the DM to be a little meaner to us so I can shine a bit more as a tank.

Not much in my experience either, but perhaps that is a peculiarity of my table. A Hill Giant is CR 5 (3d8+5 damage), so a critical could do 40 on a big roll. But no one is actually surprised about it being unhealthy to stand next to a giant with single digit HPs.

PCs seem very very robust in 5e compared to previous editions. I see TPKs or near TPKs more often than individual PC deaths, because what goes wrong is not one PC down but back luck with multiple PC failing their saves and the whole party is sent reeling. One PC down can usually be popped back up with Healing Word or similar.

[HappyDaze]

One point on the combat as war side, there are things you can do that "make sense" that are also very likely to end up with hurt feelings.

Example:

Goblins. I love using goblins because people think they are weak, but they are ambushers. Let us say you have a fairly standard party, that includes heavily armored knight, rogue, heavily armored cleric, and wizard. First off, the Goblins are cowards intelligent fighters, they aren't going to attack unless they have more than double your number. So, 10 of them.

They also have very good stealth, so it is likely they are hidden at the start of combat.

Out of the targets available, the rogue and wizard are the best choices. Goblins know magic is a thing, and they know they can out run men in heavy armor.

So, 10 attacks with advantage go to the Rogue. Who has a 16 AC. That means, by rough math, 2/3rds hit. Let's say that is seven arrows. That is 7d6+14 damage or approximately 38 damage. Which is a 5th level rogues average hp. (and surprise round means he can't react)

Then all the goblins scatter back into hiding with their bonus actions.

So, round 1 is "drop a player character" and then the enemies can just stay hidden, running and hiding until the party drops their guard. And do it again.

And again

and again.

Wizard readies an action to cast Fireball? Great. You wasted a spell slot. Because the Goblins don't reappear the next round. They wait three rounds. After all, if they still have visual on you, they can see you casting, and the fighter with their bow pulled taut waiting to fire, so they wait.


And sure, some people might find this fun, it could be an interesting scenario. But a lot of other people would find this terrible. Just like if you encountered a group of wizards, and they unleashed 5 fireballs on your location. Even if you succeed the saves, half of 40d6 damage is 70 damage, that is devastating for most of the party.

And then they do the same thing next round.

Hidden helps against AoE?

[MaxWilson]

Hidden helps against AoE?

Sometimes. Depends how good the Wizard is at guessing goblin positions blindly. In this case, it's more about denying the Wizard the trigger they apparently declared for their action.

[Chaosmancer]

Chaosmancer:

Exactly. In your example the Goblins act as if they are real living creatures who want to live and make decent decisions and use decent tactics. My feelings don't get hurt if my enemy fights better than my party.

Or, the Goblins are as dumb as zombies. When the DM decides they attack the party (regardless of how many or how powerful they appear) the goblins slowly plod forward (in fireball formation) attacking the closest enemy indiscriminately. Even though they are proficient at hiding, they don't use their BA to take cover or hide, because they are unthinking pools of Hp. This way the PC's feelings don't get hurt because they feel superior to the mindless, tactic-less enemy.

(Yes, I exaggerate to make my point)

Every party / table has a preference. There is no 'right' answer. Personally, beating Goblins that act like zombies is unfulfilling and unrealistic for me - I prefer an enemy who tries to win and live - I like the challenge.

To each their own. If you and your party prefer unthinking enemies, you do you, enjoy your game - that's all that matters. There is no one right way to have fun.


I agree, and I don't want to imply that people shouldn't have fun at their own tables.

But, I've run into more than one situation where I've realized that if I play it "real" I kill the party. It is so easy to do so. And it isn't fun for the people I play with to constantly have their teeth kicked in with no recourse.

So, I make decisions to mitigate the deadliness. I find a reason why the party might survive an encounter with a Mind Flayer city, despite the fact that it is a death sentence

And yet, I see people get upset with us DMs who do that. Who don't attack downed players and kill them off. Who don't focus fire and slaughter a PC. Who refer to our designs as fighting a "mindless tactic-less pool of hp"

And as much as I don't want to judge people for their fun, I feel awfully judged at times for protecting the fun of my players.



Combat As War is a playstyle, and not everyone enjoys it. But those who do would probably not find this scenario un-fun per se, although they'd likely view it as a sign of personal failure somewhere along the line, and asking themselves what they should have done differently. (At minimum the Rogue is probably kicking himself for not hiding and not scouting out the goblins ahead of time.)

Probably true.

But, can we at least acknowledge that some people would find it unfun? And they aren't wrong for feeling that way?



Hidden helps against AoE?


Sometimes. Depends how good the Wizard is at guessing goblin positions blindly. In this case, it's more about denying the Wizard the trigger they apparently declared for their action.


Yep, it was more the wizard declaring "I fireball the goblins when they reappear".

You certainly can fireball blindly, but I'd give even odds of hitting between 0 and 2 goblins out of 10.


Watching critical role season 2 again is just reminding me that readying a spell is incredibly risky, and since I often see it brought up as a solution for hiding goblins, I thought I would bring it up here.

[MaxWilson]

But, can we at least acknowledge that some people would find it unfun? And they aren't wrong for feeling that way?

Haven't I spent basically this whole thread acknowledging exactly that, and advocating for finding reasons _not_ to make combat a contest between the DM's tactical acumen and the players' tactical acumen? Haven't I explicitly advocated for making intelligent opponents relatively rare? I could have sworn I did, but maybe I'm getting my threads mixed up.

I love Combat As War as a playstyle, but there are lots of ways to run CAW, and unless I knew the players loved CAW for its own sake as well (some do not) I would not normally run the goblin ambush without some form of telegraphing first, such as a hexcrawl conveniently increasing in monster difficulty the further you got from civilization and the closer you got to a ley line. Giving players as much information as I can is core to my DMing agenda--when bad things happen, I want the players kicking themselves for decisions that they could have made differently, not feeling like they were at the mercy of the DM. That is how I measure player empowerment/agency.

[Chaosmancer]

Haven't I spent basically this whole thread acknowledging exactly that, and advocating for finding reasons _not_ to make combat a contest between the DM's tactical acumen and the players' tactical acumen? Haven't I explicitly advocated for making intelligent opponents relatively rare? I could have sworn I did, but maybe I'm getting my threads mixed up.

I love Combat As War as a playstyle, but there are lots of ways to run CAW, and unless I knew the players loved CAW for its own sake as well (some do not) I would not normally run the goblin ambush without some form of telegraphing first, such as a hexcrawl conveniently increasing in monster difficulty the further you got from civilization and the closer you got to a ley line. Giving players as much information as I can is core to my DMing agenda--when bad things happen, I want the players kicking themselves for decisions that they could have made differently, not feeling like they were at the mercy of the DM. That is how I measure player empowerment/agency.


Then I feel like we are in agreement.

(I get my threads mixed up too, so I honestly don't know)

[HappyDaze]

You certainly can fireball blindly, but I'd give even odds of hitting between 0 and 2 goblins out of 10.



I guess the problem I've seen (pun unintended) is that, if the hidden goblins are on the battle map, then fireball is still placed for maximum effect and being hidden means nothing. Likewise with throwing fireball fog/smoke/darkness. Representing hidden foes is a definite problem with playing on a battle map (which I hate, but my players won't even try the least bit of TotM combat).

[Pex]

I guess the problem I've seen (pun unintended) is that, if the hidden goblins are on the battle map, then fireball is still placed for maximum effect and being hidden means nothing. Likewise with throwing fireball fog/smoke/darkness. Representing hidden foes is a definite problem with playing on a battle map (which I hate, but my players won't even try the least bit of TotM combat).

Then the DM should take them off the battlemap. The DM keeps it in mind which space they're in. Keep the goblins on the map and do the same thing. They're not necessarily in the square the miniature is in. In any case being hidden would usually mean having cover, and the cover bonus applies to Dex saving throws if the spellcaster got lucky and they're in the area.

[LudicSavant]

I guess the problem I've seen (pun unintended) is that, if the hidden goblins are on the battle map, then fireball is still placed for maximum effect and being hidden means nothing. Likewise with throwing fireball fog/smoke/darkness. Representing hidden foes is a definite problem with playing on a battle map (which I hate, but my players won't even try the least bit of TotM combat).

I just use a big touch tablet with a digital map and a GM layer. Nobody gets to see the goblins but me.