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  1. - Top - End - #31
    Colossus in the Playground
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    Dec 2007
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    Default Re: [5e] Level 1 character vs. a big bruiser

    Yeah, it's overall a fairly poorly written module. It's got cool themes and a lot of nice ideas but the execution is pretty poor across the board, this too being one of those (the idea is good, great even - but boy, the execution...). But as ever, this just means we need to optimise enough to beat poor design as players As a DM, you can actually make it pretty good - give the PCs chances to rest, have the enemy do some "Honorable villain"-stuff like leave the PC alive for a good fight (and not use breath or action surge unless the enemy pushes you enough to do it), etc. but this is of course not in the module and we're working with the module as written here.
    Last edited by Eldariel; 2020-10-16 at 10:53 AM.
    Campaign Journal: Uncovering the Lost World - A Player's Diary in Low-Magic D&D (Latest Update: 8.3.2014)
    Being Bane: A Guide to Barbarians Cracking Small Men - Ever Been Angry?! Then this is for you!
    SRD Averages - An aggregation of all the key stats of all the monster entries on SRD arranged by CR.

  2. - Top - End - #32
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    GnomeWizardGuy

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    Default Re: [5e] Level 1 character vs. a big bruiser

    Quote Originally Posted by Kurt Kurageous View Post
    This whole scenario came from the dawn of 5e, and has been critically reviewed many times. And it wasnt even the worst part. The dragon? We got lucky and critted it on the second pass.
    Quote Originally Posted by Valmark View Post
    And yeah, the dragon is the worst. Feels like it's there just to drain your resources and waste time.
    Not to belabor this sideline, but the dragon was by far the worst at our table as well.

    We had two players and the DM, all with zero D&D experience, plus two somewhat experienced players. (The DM thought that being a PC to get experience first sounded like no fun.) DM figured the module had to be "right" and didn't realize that the breath weapon was guaranteed to straight-up kill a PC with no death saves... Which happened, except we eventually (after a big rules argument and explanation) retconned it to be only enough damage to knock unconscious. After that, we had no clue how to progress, given that we had no real ranged attackers.

    It was stressful and everybody was angry.

    By comparison, the thread headline encounter was unfair, but at least it was clear that pop-up healing would be an option afterward, and it happened after the dragon train wreck, so we were already prepared for things to be unfair.

    (Thankfully, we stuck with it and enjoyed much of the later stuff, and eventually finished the whole module and decided not to continue to the second half.)
    Last edited by x3n0n; 2020-10-16 at 11:13 AM.

  3. - Top - End - #33
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    MonkGuy

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    Default Re: [5e] Level 1 character vs. a big bruiser

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldariel View Post

    Relevant enemy statistics:
    Spoiler
    Show
    HP: 57
    AC: 17
    Speed: 30'
    Saves: +6 Str, +1 Dex, +5 Con, +0 Int, +2 Wis, +1 Cha
    Skills: +6 Athletics
    Senses: Blindsight 10', darkvision 60', PP 14

    Actions:
    - 4d10 damage lightning breath at 30' line (5-6 recharge)

    2 attacks with either:
    - Greatsword (+6 for 2d6+4 at 19-20/x2)
    - Spear (+6 for 1d6+4 at 19-20/x2 and 20'/60' range if thrown) [only a single spear apparently so if thrown, he can only attack once]

    AND

    Action Surge
    So, how silly can you get with party buffs at level 1?

    Warforged fighter, defense fighting style, chain+shield.

    Two forge clerics both used their class feature on your armor and shield. One casts shield of faith on you, the other used bless. A third cleric or Druid uses resistance. They also marry you and dedicate you (two castings of ceremony).

    So now your AC is 26, and you get +3d4 on your first save, 2d4 thereafter.

    Multiple changeling warlocks give you magic stones, for 1d6+4 attacks with +6 to hit.

    A changeling bard casts heroism on you, for +4 THP

    And let's say you've got 15STR, 16 Dex, 16 Con. So 17 HP and +5+2or3d4 Dex saves.

    I don't know this guy's DC on the breath attack, but I think this may be good enough to win head-on.

    Your DPR is (7.5)/2 + 11/20 = 4.3DPR, so you kill him in ~ 13 rounds on average.

    His DPA against you is 11/20 = 0.55, killing you in ~ 30 attacks on average, which is basically 14 rounds.

    So, on average, you win. Though it's really really swingy.

  4. - Top - End - #34
    Colossus in the Playground
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    Default Re: [5e] Level 1 character vs. a big bruiser

    Quote Originally Posted by MinotaurWarrior View Post
    So, how silly can you get with party buffs at level 1?

    Warforged fighter, defense fighting style, chain+shield.

    Two forge clerics both used their class feature on your armor and shield. One casts shield of faith on you, the other used bless. A third cleric or Druid uses resistance. They also marry you and dedicate you (two castings of ceremony).

    So now your AC is 26, and you get +3d4 on your first save, 2d4 thereafter.

    Multiple changeling warlocks give you magic stones, for 1d6+4 attacks with +6 to hit.

    A changeling bard casts heroism on you, for +4 THP

    And let's say you've got 15STR, 16 Dex, 16 Con. So 17 HP and +5+2or3d4 Dex saves.

    I don't know this guy's DC on the breath attack, but I think this may be good enough to win head-on.

    Your DPR is (7.5)/2 + 11/20 = 4.3DPR, so you kill him in ~ 13 rounds on average.

    His DPA against you is 11/20 = 0.55, killing you in ~ 30 attacks on average, which is basically 14 rounds.

    So, on average, you win. Though it's really really swingy.
    The breath DC is 13. Here the only problem is that it recovers breath on 5-6, and since you take half damage on a successful save you'll probably die even through Heroism and making the saves. It's about 3 turns to recover the breath so you'd need to recover the 7 HP you lose (you've got 13 + 4 temp and you get hit on average for 11 on a successful save so you take 7 actual damage and first one can be Second Winded). Third breath seems like it'd finally do you in so you've got not quite 13 rounds here; on average 7 rounds assuming breath on 1st round and every recovery thereafter. You'd need it to get a bit unlucky with the recovery. But this seems by far the closest you can get to physically beating it up. One problem is also that Heroism only lasts 1 minute so you only have 10 rounds of HP recovery.

    I think this is defensively fine but we'd need to find a faster way to kill it. Perhaps take Dueling Fighting Style instead? +2 to damage should help a fair bit: it would raise your DPR to 5,4 allowing for a kill in 10-11 rounds (10,555... to be exact). Now it would increase the likelihood that he gets you hard; doubling them in fact. But since your primary problem is the breath, not his physical attacks, I'm not sure if it might actually be worth it...? Actually, Magic Stone doesn't feel that amazing; if you have a third Forge Cleric, your own Rapier will be +1 meaning you'll be attacking at +6 for 1d8+4 or 1d8+6, which is actually better than the Magic Stones (4,9 DPR without Dueling, 6 with). So we can just forget about those. This actually drops enemy durability to 12 rounds without or 9-10 rounds with Dueling. Oh, and you actually forgot to account for Bless here: +6+1d4 hits 67,5% of the time of which 5% is still crits so 0,625 * 8,5 + 0,05 * 13 = 5,9625 so it's actually on average under 10 rounds to take the enemy down with this setup (which is necessary here since with Bless and Heroism, they both run out in 1 min's time - even if you start the fight immediately after getting buffed you'll be cutting it close). Dueling would come out at 7,3125 for an 8 round kill. A tough choice: Dueling gives you leeway in fight duration and lets you avoid excess breaths but OTOH Defense does mitigate vast majority of enemy attacks.

    Actually, just making the character a Vuman instead and going the Shield Master route is plain better. It can keep the Defense Fighting Style (since you lose another point of AC) but Shield Master is crucial since it gives bonus to the Dex saves and allows negating the breath which means there's no timer on this fight (making the defensive . The fact that you take hits at slightly higher likelihood is more than offset by the fact that it is physically possible to survive the third breath due to being able to ignore the half damage. If you want the last point of AC, just marry a third fellow.


    Okay, that's actually pretty good. Now I think we should consider how small a party we can achieve sufficient buffing with. This is of course the extreme case where you have infinite at-will first level buffing resources available but the normal party is going to be a party of 4; even if you do have some resources available on all the casters, you'll only have 3 of them. The most important ones seem to be the two Forge Clerics and the one Bard (though I'm not sure if the 4 HP Heroism is big enough that you'd need to invest a character on it - 3 HP Heroism seems plenty and the third Forge Cleric would be a pretty big boon), which is conveniently a good 1st level party anyways. Hmm... That third Forge Cleric does make the whole deal much better though. How about not enhancing the armor? Enhanced shield is great for Shield Master too giving you much better Dex saves but you could potentially just enhance the weapon and the armor.

    Alternatively, the PC could just be a Cleric themselves and just enhance their own item. But then they lack two HP and the Defense Fighting Style so I'm not sure if it's worth it. At least a third Ceremony caster; I guess he could marry his whole party to make up for the lost AC. But OTOH Dueling Fighting Style would be big. Getting to kill the enemy in 8 rounds is really massive here since it reduces the probabilities of getting ganked so I think sticking to a Fighter and then just skipping on either the armor enhancement or the Heroism is the way to go. I guess nothing is stopping the third Ceremony from being cast anyways since it has such an immense duration.
    Last edited by Eldariel; 2020-10-17 at 12:54 AM.
    Campaign Journal: Uncovering the Lost World - A Player's Diary in Low-Magic D&D (Latest Update: 8.3.2014)
    Being Bane: A Guide to Barbarians Cracking Small Men - Ever Been Angry?! Then this is for you!
    SRD Averages - An aggregation of all the key stats of all the monster entries on SRD arranged by CR.

  5. - Top - End - #35
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    RogueGuy

    Join Date
    Oct 2019

    Default Re: [5e] Level 1 character vs. a big bruiser

    V Human for shield master, max dex and con, blessed, shield of faith, heroism, forge cleric magic items, temp hp, poisoned weapon ...

    Is a fighting style and 2nd wind more beneficial than RAGE and resistance?

  6. - Top - End - #36
    Colossus in the Playground
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    Default Re: [5e] Level 1 character vs. a big bruiser

    War Cleric is actually an interesting alternative to Fighter and Barbarian. Divine Favor gives +2,5 damage per hit and if they can maintain it for one turn, they can get a bonus attack about twice with a reasonable chance of success. I think it ultimately leads to a faster victory though of course, there are way more variables with the Concentration suddenly becoming a thing. But if we have a +6 to attack 1d8+4 weapon and cast Divine Favor and successfully get two attacks off and have Bless active, that's 7,775 per attack for 15,55 average damage. It's a bit over 7 attacks to drop the Enemy this way but the key difference is that the bonus action attack means that can be done in 4-5 turns. I think we're on to something here; this way it's really quite likely for our hero to win. Of course, alternatively it's possible to also just hit with Inflict Wounds or Guiding Bolt but of course, that costs you a spell. With two per day, Divine Favor x2 or Divine Favor and Healing Word seem like the way to go (you never wanna skip your attack since you need to finish this ASAP) and since your stats will be 16 Dex / 16 Con, your spell attack will be mediocre anyways (+4 vs. +6 on your weapon attacks). Though I guess going 16/14/16 is reasonable if we're just planning on not being hit very much.

    As for Barb, it's good but Rage isn't that useful since the primary issue is the breath weapon; though neither of course does much there. With Ceremony we can reach AC high enough to mostly not be bothered by Enemy's melee. Potentially still the best option just due to having d12 HD for those couple of extra HP.
    Campaign Journal: Uncovering the Lost World - A Player's Diary in Low-Magic D&D (Latest Update: 8.3.2014)
    Being Bane: A Guide to Barbarians Cracking Small Men - Ever Been Angry?! Then this is for you!
    SRD Averages - An aggregation of all the key stats of all the monster entries on SRD arranged by CR.

  7. - Top - End - #37
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Imp

    Join Date
    Feb 2017

    Default Re: [5e] Level 1 character vs. a big bruiser

    If not going for the "no breath attack" plan, being a Blue Dragonborn would help. Or a Blue Dragon Sorcerer.

  8. - Top - End - #38
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    EvilClericGuy

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    Default Re: [5e] Level 1 character vs. a big bruiser

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldariel View Post
    I guess nothing is stopping the third Ceremony from being cast anyways since it has such an immense duration.
    Well, except the same thing that stops the 2nd Ceremony: "The effects of different spells add together while the durations of those spells overlap. The effects of the same spell cast multiple times don’t combine, however. Instead, the most potent effect—such as the highest bonus—from those castings applies while their durations overlap."
    It's Eberron, not ebberon.
    It's not high magic, it's wide magic.
    And it's definitely not steampunk. The only time steam gets involved is when the fire and water elementals break loose.

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