Shepherd Druid: able to solo DiA?

[Unoriginal]

Yes, that was the idea. You've used 1 of your 2 Wildshapes/ and no other abilities (yours or Lulu's) to avoid all the 'extra encounters.' Given that you're on something that moves double the other threats you will face, and the vast majority of them don't have a good ranged attack, I don't think it's handwaving to suggest this is likely the case. So you've potentially got 3 of Lulu's AOEs, 2 sets of minions, and a full host of 1st and 2nd level spells to get through the dungeon.

Which dungeon are you referring to?

Also, are you saying that traveling all through Elturel up until finding the survivors only takes the 2 hours of one Wildshape?

[Valmark]

I'd like to point out that players could only ride Lulu if she had appropriate anatomy and mount training.

Does she?

All in all though, I expected the Nine Hells to be more dangerous (this is in reply to Eldariel)- likely not perform the whole module optimally but I can see a character alone surviving after all (from what I was told, I don't know much about any non-mentioned fight).

[5eNeedsDarksun]

Which dungeon are you referring to?

Also, are you saying that traveling all through Elturel up until finding the survivors only takes the 2 hours of one Wildshape?

I was responding to a post that referred to the cemetery. I don't have the mod or the map with scale in front of my right now, but I believe you know the location at that point and you are moving at 120' on the back of Lulu, so you can cover a lot of distance. I'm quite sure 2 hours is adequate to get anywhere in the city flying at that speed.

[Unoriginal]

I'd like to point out that players could only ride Lulu if she had appropriate anatomy and mount training.

Does she?

She explicitly does, yeah. She used to be Zariel's war mount.

All in all though, I expected the Nine Hells to be more dangerous (this is in reply to Eldariel)- likely not perform the whole module optimally but I can see a character alone surviving after all (from what I was told, I don't know much about any non-mentioned fight).

Elturiel is relatively manageable at the moment the PCs show up because the Demons & Devils are fighting for who gets to ruin it more and so they're mostly stopping the other side from getting there.

Avernus itself is only not dangerous if you work to avoid the many dangers and get a ton of rests while having high saves.

If the PCs try to actually get involved in a Blood War battle it's going to turn very bad for them.

I was responding to a post that referred to the cemetery.

Fair, and thanks.

So, just to be sure we're talking about the same thing, you think that a lvl 5 Shepherd Druid + Lulu can take on the Grand Cemetery with 1 Wildshape, 2 lvl 3 spell slots, 3 lvl 2 slots, 4 lvl 1 slots, and 3 of Lulu's AoEs ?

[Dork_Forge]

Yes, that was the idea. You've used 1 of your 2 Wildshapes/ and no other abilities (yours or Lulu's) to avoid all the 'extra encounters.' Given that you're on something that moves double the other threats you will face, and the vast majority of them don't have a good ranged attack, I don't think it's handwaving to suggest this is likely the case. So you've potentially got 3 of Lulu's AOEs, 2 sets of minions, and a full host of 1st and 2nd level spells to get through the dungeon.

So this presumeably good character, with no foreknowledge of the module, is going to just fly over the city ignoring the plight of those down below? And the good aligned celestial in question, that dives into the first encounter to save people, is going to just say okay lets just breeze past this place?

When is this meant to be the case? The first encounter is unavoidable and pretty much requires the minions to overcome without serious risk to life. If you use minions and any happen to survive, you're meant to just leave them behind or drop concentration?

Before they even get to the Cemetary, here's another encounter that seems outright problematic for a solo Druid:

Spoiler: DiA

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The Cathedral doors are guarded by two Hell Hounds, each capable of using Fire Breath, by the time they've both used it most of the minions would be gone or so low on health they'll get one hit.

Even trying to 'speed run' areas (which is what trying to fly on Lulu is), leaves enough encounters to be problematic.

And for what it's worth, I do think Wildshaping to ride an intelligent NPC across a map at speed to avoid encounters is a bit handwave-y.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

So this presumeably good character, with no foreknowledge of the module, is going to just fly over the city ignoring the plight of those down below? And the good aligned celestial in question, that dives into the first encounter to save people, is going to just say okay lets just breeze past this place?

When is this meant to be the case? The first encounter is unavoidable and pretty much requires the minions to overcome without serious risk to life. If you use minions and any happen to survive, you're meant to just leave them behind or drop concentration?

Before they even get to the Cemetary, here's another encounter that seems outright problematic for a solo Druid:

Spoiler: DiA

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The Cathedral doors are guarded by two Hell Hounds, each capable of using Fire Breath, by the time they've both used it most of the minions would be gone or so low on health they'll get one hit.

Even trying to 'speed run' areas (which is what trying to fly on Lulu is), leaves enough encounters to be problematic.

And for what it's worth, I do think Wildshaping to ride an intelligent NPC across a map at speed to avoid encounters is a bit handwave-y.

I mean all groups are going to be presented with the choice of how much to fight and how much to run/ avoid in the Mod. Part of the point of it is to make the path of Good harder than not, but regardless there are things you just aren't supposed to fight. I gave the Narzugon a couple of Horned Demon buddies just to make sure my level 6 group didn't decide to try and take him on the first meeting. A lone character riding a Wolf (if halfling), Owl, or Lulu is going to have to avoid more than they fight, particularly while travelling; the lone Shepherd is just more equipped to do it than a group, particularly when you can shift into something tiny.

[Eldariel]

Spoiler: Dork_Forge

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Seriously? I have no idea what his con score is, let's be generous and assume a +3 and treat a 1 as success to be conservative. That's a 15% chance of failing the floor save.

"Lucky-feat", which allows you to reroll a fail 3/day. I've been running my computations for the Vuman with 16 Con/16 Wis and Lucky + Res:Con.

I've seen players and monsters fail saves with that kind of rate plenty of times. Will it happen more often than not? Not unless they have very bad luck, can it happen? Of course it can, especially when fighting creatures with multiple attacks.

That's just bad luck. It's always possible but it's not probable. Everyone can lose of course until you get off the dice (which is something only Wizard is really able to do) but if the probability is south of 1% that doesn't really matter; you aren't playing 100 games to get to that one game you lose, you're playing 1 game and it's almost certainly going to be one of those 99 you win instead. Yes, a level 1 Wizard can theoretically kill Tarrasque in a straight-up duel with the Tarrasque simply nat 1:ing all its attacks and slowly dying to Acid Splash but the probability of that happening is low enough that we don't really need to talk about it.

A non Moon Druid Wildshaping is fall back tactic at best in combat, treating Wildshape on a Shepherd as anything more than scouting or emergencies is optimistic at best.

It works on these levels. That's all there is to it.

The Spirit is once per short rest and is apparently a pivotal piece of the Druid's toolbox.

It's important and useful, as is Wildshape. Scouting is one thing but avoiding encounters is the name of the game. As a solo, you obviously aren't going to fight unnecessary encounters.

You say judicious use of Pass Without a Trace... so what exactly is this Druid spening slots on? 3rd level are dedicated to Conjure Animals, 1st level will presumably see Cure Wounds use, 2nd level PwT... Are they just spamming cantrips?

You use Conjure Animals when you fight, Pass without Trace when you avoid and yeah, you''ll probably be fine with cantrips in combat. I don't really see anything else on the menu; you already drop Concentration as the first spell. First level spells are obviously used for Goodberry since it's just better than Cure Wounds (10 HP vs. 7,5). Obviously it depends: there are cases where simple Entangle and normal ranged attacks might suffice for an encounter but largely you'll want to fight by summoning a horde. Druid is a class that has a Concentration-heavy list so it's quite slot-conservative especially with how long many of those spells last.

The bear spirit is not a lot of hp by any stretch of the imagination, it's 10 at the level we're talking about (and talking beyond that is favourable, this is a module, the Druid has to survive.

10 HP is a lot.

I get this in a normal party, but really? A solo Druid (non land) is going to have enough slots left at the end of the day to spam Goodberry?

Star Druid or Wildfire etc. sure, I could see that with their Circle abiltiies stepping in, but really Shepherd?

Probably. You don't need 1st level spells in combat all that often if you're Concentrating on a summon.

Spoiler: reply to spoiler

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...So the Wolves are all focusing fire on a single Bearded Devil, and the expectation are the other two will just stand there and slog it out with the Wolves instead of going for the Druid? They're Int 9 and Wis 11, there's no reason for them to be that suicidally stupid.

Spoiler: reply to spoiler

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If they go after the Druid, they aren't any faster than you so they can't catch you unless you literally let them get next to you and you'll have way more Wolves left so lead them on a merry chase-round. Seems like a win-win to me. If they're smart they'll try to kill the Wolves and at least do some damage but if they're stupid enough to try to chase you in spite of you having 60' distance and terrain, well, that's on them.

If 8 wolves (or whatever happens to be summoned) are focusing fire, then there's no way for them to impede the other two devils. They won't all get OAs and if they do it'll likely be spread out between the two devils and resisted, leaving hte devils free to close on the Druid. A Druid which can't be too far away unless they want to give the temp hp to the wolves but not themselves, and the Bearded Devils have a 10ft reach.

It's fine to give temp HP to the Wolves. If you don't get attacked, you don't really care, eh? Obviously you'll only maintain sufficient range that they can't catch you; 75' should be fine. Close enough to slog Magic Stones at them if they don't chase you, far enough that they can't reach you.

I have no idea what you're referring to with Medicine checks?

If they slog it out with the Wolves, you could potentially try and treat the Infernal Wounds. Probably not necessary.

The slaughter part is just misleading and shows numbers with no regard for actual play. The Druid will have what, a +2 initiative modifier? Same for the Wolves? Oh yeah, and the same for the devils. There's nothing to say that the Druid will go first, that the wolves will go before the devils (or not miss their first turn, by rolling higher than the current initiative).

The Devils can go first but they're pretty explicitly all about capturing those commoners so if they win Initiative, they'll simply go after them.

The kicker here? The Druid can totally survive this encounter, but as a solo PC, every single hit point lost is a liability. Every slot burned is a huge risk. And should they happen to lose concentration? It may as well be game over since they're dependent on summon spam to actually achieve anything.

And what are the probabilities of those happening? Based on the encounter description, pretty close to 0: the Devils have no way of reaching the PC unless the PC literally lets them. They move at 30' and are landbound. They are focused on someone else: you literally walk up to them and start killing them when they're in the business of trying to take down Harkina Hunt who is currently in the process of shooting them with a Longbow. They aren't gonna break away unless you do something so whether you win or lose Initiative is immaterial. Even assuming minimal terrain (you're blocking off a 15' path with the wolves - obviously the more terrain-based obstacles the better for you), they can't move fast enough to get to the Druid.

I'm not sure why but it seems to me like you assume it's easy for melee types to get to a summoner with 8 meatwalls.

Two Bulezaus are not easy, even if summons are used their Rotting Presence will eat through them and they hit hard enough to take down some wolves. The potential to become diseased is a massive threat. If the Druid contracts the disease they can impart then their risk of dying skyrockets. With restricted list of spells (at 4th the Druid forwent bumping Wis for Res:Con), it isn't particularly likely they're just preparing Lesser Restoration. They can prep it the next day (if the make it to the next day), then face an entire day ahead with a spell they likely won't use again and down a 2nd level slot.

The Bulezau are notable in that they're not resistant to non-magical damage. They go down in one turn.

The Imp encounter isn't really a combat encounter, if the Imp does fight, then the Druid can easily end up losing a chunk of hit points they can't afford to since: The Imp can fly and turns invisible (so summons are literally useless), will attack the Druid at advantage, and is tough enough that a cantrip won't gurantee a one hit kill. Any hit points lost are a nail in the Druid's coffin. If they happen to also fail the save against the poison, they're now meaningfully injured likely beyond a single casting of Goodberry.

Imp is stated to flee so it won't fight.

The Narzugon encounter is really easy? Do you mean if it's avoided? Because if that turns to combat the Narzugon will murder the Druid in short order. To think that this would be an encounter that a single PC could win is... confusing and I don't understand the logic behind it.

It's easy in that it's simply a matter of avoiding it (again, as a solo character stealth is way easier for you than for a group though this might force you to dismiss your minions). You're explicitly told to not fight it so why the hell would you fight it?

The spouts of Hellfire is a major treasure opportunity, getting hit with 4d6 damage (save for half) is a major set back before the next ecounter.

Aye, but I'm pretty sure this character would just not go look since again we're looking to avoid these encounters.

[QUOTE=Dork_Forge;25005455]The Undead encounters are going to be very difficult, I don't know why you say you can just walk away from the zombies? If you mean before the door is open... the PC doens't know they're zombies at that point and once it's open, the PC is knocked prone, so just outpacing the Zombies isn't really an option.

Because you'd have to be really stupid to go open a stuck door without any knowledge of there being anything to gain if you're trying to avoid danger. Like there's nobody even asking for help (and the Zombies aren't exactly the smartest cookies in a jar) - what possible reason would you have to ever go near that door?

You have two 3rd level slots, Conjure Animals lasting an hour doesn't amount to much seeing as it's concentration and each encounter will certainly cull a significant number of the wolves or whatever were summoned.

Any PC relying on summon spam like this, at this level is too dependent on things going just right for them:

-Keeping concentration
-Having enough 3rd level slots to get through the tough encounters
-not losing initiative
-Not rolling low on a Con save, everyone rolls low at some point, regardlesss the probability of it
-Being able to keep distance (the PC being spoken about by OP is a Halfling with 25ft speed making this harder, but even a standard 30ft speed is playing a dicey game)

All of those are basically the same thing. You'll keep concentration if you keep your distance. You won't roll low on Con-saves if you don't take damage. You won't roll Con-saves if you don't take damage. If you do take damage, chances are you won't roll low on Con-saves. You'd have to take a lot of damage, probably enough to kill you, before failing Con-save becomes probable so we don't really need to care about that. Losing Initiative won't really matter for most of these encounters since the enemies are in the middle of ****ing with someone else so it won't be damage taken by you.

What it comes down to? Don't let enemies attack you. That's pretty obvious but also pretty basic when you are a summoner: that's literally your whole gameplan. Let your minions tank and fight while you hang around in the background supporting them as necessary. I don't see what makes it so hard really.

A PC would have to be very, very lucky to get through a sizeable chunk of this module alone without a DM pulling punches.

Nah, this module is made pretty easy. You couldn't save everyone but you can clear it.

Summons can potentially cover a maximum of two hours, there's 16 hours between long rests. I don't buy the logic that the PC will usually have such a limited resource up and active when needed, especially since the idea of traveling with an entire pack of wolves kind of ruins any image of stealthy avoidance.

You're only doing that for two hours tho; there are two different modes, one where you have an army and thus can fight and one where you don't and thus avoid everything.

This kind of thing greatly favours short rest classes, or Paladins (for multiple reasons).

Okay, what SR class could take on even one real encounter alone? SR classes just aren't up to snuff in combat unless they can Hide well enough to snipe enemies dead without taking any return fire, and while that's occasionally doable, it's probably not sustainable. Rogue could try to sneak past encounters but it's just a really bad Druid at that point since it lacks Pass without Trace and

Lulu's small, so the only thing you can be referring to is a power she regains in Chapter 5. That doesn't seem helpful.

The point was using Wildshape to turn into something Tiny or smaller to ride the Small Lulu.

The power of a Shepherd Druid in a party =/= the power of one solo. The concentration is I imagine challenging, as you stated that at 8th they also took Warcaster and are a Halfling. They have to survive to 8th level first solo.

Human with Lucky + Res: Con on level 4 has basically the same shot of maintaining Concentration as a War Caster + Res: Con level 8 Druid, albeit without the Halfling reroll 1s bonus. The chances of failing key saves are pretty low and since the chances of rolling low enough to even need Lucky-uses are pretty low, 3/day will probably have you covered.

I think you're being overly influended by the character as part of a party and at higher level, starting at 5th level so this is even an option for them is also not 'soloing the module' since it is meant to be ran from first and has some very dicey things happen during those levels

Spoiler: Spoiler form my own experience

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Getting Fireballed at low level is tough for a party to make it through, nevermind a solo Druid.

IDK, imo nothing has actually been presented that shows that this is really a viable tactic from start onwards and just seems swamped with favourable outcomes and handwaving of major threats.

The BG-part of the adventure is, frankly, a cluster**** that has next to nothing to do with the module itself. It's basically a separate adventure just to level the characters to level 5 so the actual adventure can begin. But yes, we all agree that it's something a solo Druid couldn't really handle. Far as the actual adventure goes though, there's a decent chance of it as long as you don't try to save everyone but just the ones you can save.

I mean all groups are going to be presented with the choice of how much to fight and how much to run/ avoid in the Mod. Part of the point of it is to make the path of Good harder than not, but regardless there are things you just aren't supposed to fight. I gave the Narzugon a couple of Horned Demon buddies just to make sure my level 6 group didn't decide to try and take him on the first meeting. A lone character riding a Wolf (if halfling), Owl, or Lulu is going to have to avoid more than they fight, particularly while travelling; the lone Shepherd is just more equipped to do it than a group, particularly when you can shift into something tiny.

Also, Pass without Trace is one hell of a drug. Elturel features a lot of places where DC15 is the Stealth-check DC. With proficiency, +1-+2 Dex and PwT your minimum roll is sufficient even without Lucky (and if you want you can always Wildshape into something with higher Dex). You basically don't need to even roll for Stealth since you have PwT.

And yeah, I concur, you can't save everyone and get perfect score so to speak but you'll have a reasonable shot of getting through it and you'll do more good than bad so it's still a win-win. And like said earlier, you'll have way lower risk of going Evil than basically any other PC party (short of level 9+ Cleric). Resting is the one point I'm undecided on: if you need to rest in the wilds and some devils do happen upon you while you're sleeping, you're in deep, deep trouble.

One thought that occurred to me WRT SR-classes capable of doing the adventure, there's always Mark of Handling Warlock, which could be pretty good. It doesn't have good ways to buff the summons but having two Conjure Animals per short rest is pretty nice on its own right.

I'd still lean towards Shepherd simply for Mighty Summons.

Spoiler: VS Narzugon digression

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Actually, with Mighty Summons on the table, even the Narzugon is possibly beatable on level 6 provided you have full LR resources for it. At least it's close; it has 20 AC but its HP is low and magical beasts would chop through its HP like butter. Though Terrifying Command does slow it down a lot; cutting off advantage makes that 20 AC much more of a thing. With three castings of Conjure Animals, depending on how Initiative goes for the minions, you might be able to take it out. It can kill 3 Wolves a turn and terrify most of the rest, but terrified wolves can still attack, albeit at normal attack instead of advantage (8 wolves would do 28,4 DPR on advantage, 16 without). The 100 point healing is the real issue: while it costs it a turn, well, 112 HP is something you can cut through in 4ish rounds but 212 is more like 7 rounds which you won't have enough castings for. An interesting encounter.

Of course, the Nightmare in this case probably makes it unwinnable since it can just bring the Narzugon to Ethereal and back at will, which lets the Narzugon avoid any kinds of surrounds and attack the targets it wants. You'd need to kill the Nightmare first in one round for which you'd need some extremely high DPR summon like Velociraptors and need for them to beat it in Initiative. Velociraptors might actually suffice: they do about 71 DPR to Nightmare (with extreme average tendency; 32 d20 rolls) so they will very probably kill the Nightmare in round 1 followed by 3 dying to Narzugon and rest getting terrified. Then you get 5 Raptors attacking without advantage for like 14 damage + Magic Stone for 2 damage or whatever. 3 more get killed (since it moves at 30' it's not optimal for it to chase you), you summon a new batch for 40 damage, it kills 3 and terrifies them, you hit it for 16 damage. Now Narzugon is at about 40 HP and it knows you can summon a bunch of things that can hit it for 40 so at this point it has to take a turn to full heal. This is inconvenient since it means you don't get full 40 free damage to it, only 16, but you hit it for 16, Narzugon down to 98 HP. It kills 3, you summon 3rd batch for 40 damage, Narzugon kills 3 and terrifies the rest. 16 damage, Narzugon down to 42 HP. Kills 3, 2 left. They nibble it for 5,6 damage, it takes them out and moves to you.

EDIT: There's a variation here where the Narzugon instead moves towards you after killing 3 and terrifying the rest. This is largely the same except the Narzugon takes the 16 damage as an OA...except Velociraptors don't deal their full damage on OA. The big thing is, the fear effect prevents the Velociraptors from closing in on the Narzugon so it can move away from them at relative impunity. Hm. That actually probably leads to Narzugon win since it cuts down on the auxiliary damage significantly. Yeah, damage down from 16 to 7,75 so it's ~30 more HP to the Narzugon which means it'll suffice. One more Conjure Animals needed.

It's down to 37 HP. Spike Growth is probably your best bet but it would simply not close in and this would count as escaping. Though you could center Spike Growth on it and it would have to move, hmm... Does Narzugon actually have any good options left if in Spike Growth without a steed? It can't standing jump far enough to cover the distance (and running jump just sees it take Spike Growth damage) - its standing jump range is 10' and it has to make Acrobatics or fall prone in difficult terrain. Moving 10' to get full distance means it's stuck at 10' movement left so assuming dash, it uses 20' movement to get long jump and takes 4d4 damage and then clears 20' with another 20' left for a total of 50' approach. It can't just stand there while you slowly piddle it dead with Magic Stones (only 2 more minutes!). It might actually be the winning play. Dash-jumping 50' would cost the Narzugon 4d4 or 10 damage. To Magic Stone you must remain within 75' so it could get within 25' of you. You could just repeat this and move away (you'd have to Wildshape to move but horse would let you cover 60' so you could re-establish distance). Repeat this twice and it takes 30 damage. It's down to 7 HP but you're out of Wildshapes and still need to finish it off. You're also out of 2nd level slots and it's within 25' of you. 1st level spells seem obvious: you simply move 30' away to force it to dash and ready an action to cast Thunderwave for 2d8 when it gets next to you. Narzugon saves with its +9 Con taking 4,5 damage. Then Narzugon finally gets next to you and you cast a second Thunderwave knocking it down to -2 HP, down to two last 1st level slots. So...on average it seems possible but there's so much that can go wrong and so much space you need for kiting back that it's definitely not a fight you'd want to take.

But it's interesting nevertheless; few solo level 6 PCs could claim to have much of a chance there (well, Diviner, Eloquence Bard and such obviously but aside from that - actually in spite of Magic Resistance, boy does Narzugon suck vs. getting Polymorphed into a toad - that +2 Wis is doing it no favours).

EDIT: In retrospect, optimal tactics utilising the effects of the frightened condition do lead to Narzugon victory vs. the Raptor Summoner. Level 7 Shepherd has enough gas to win the fight though - it needs that one more Conjure Animals. Though it does occur to me that Mighty Summons + Spirit Bear totem would let a group of Velociraptors have a reasonable shot at tanking hits from the Narzugon (27 HP vs. 27 average damage - 40% chance of rolling less than that so 40% of them would actually live which would affect the math significantly, but this only goes for a single pack of Raptors). But the problem is, the fear and Raptors' small size does let the Narzugon avoid getting pinned down and few more OAs won't suffice. Larger summons with better OAs might be better here: Constrictor Snakes would very probably be able to lock it down so it'd have to kill them to move and they would have 28 HP with Spirit Bear Totem, which is 50/50 for if it can oneshot them or not and having up to 8 things restraining it would also give it some trouble. I'll have to run the math for few different summon options to see how it goes; it would definitely do less overall damage but it might work vs. Narzugon specifically because of its particular set of skills.

EDIT#2: Constrictor Snakes are PiTA to count due to conditional probability: they get advantage if one succeeds in attack so their attack rolls are contingent on previous successes making for 8 different cases depending on if each hits or misses. So the total probability is a sum of all the P(A1)-P(A8) and each P(An) is a factor of all the conditional probabilities. Since the magic number is two+ hits which makes the Narzugon likely to remain Restrained even after its attack action and thus sees to significant damage on the next round, a royal pain. It seems to me like they do Raptors' damage in two turns and then begin to pull ahead so definitely worth it. I'm counting about 60 damage over 6 turns from the Constrictors with additional 4/turn from Druid's advantageous Magic Stones for 20 more. This is actually enough to do the Heal out of the Narzugon alone (assuming the Narzugon is aware that you can hit it for 40+ damage out of the blue with Velociraptors - if not, you can get an easy win with it not using its heal at all).

So revised order of battle: Engage at 60', summon Velociraptors to rip apart Nightmare (the whole scenario is contingent on this, otherwise it's unwinnable, and since they have the same initiative this is about a 50/50 gamble unless you can get surprise, which could be possible given the scenario where you're expected to be able to hide; assuming you don't here though) and move 15' back, Narzugon fears them and kills some and moves taking 8 damage, you summon a bunch of Constrictor Snakes throwing down Bear Totem and get them to constrict the Narzugon for about 21 damage (down to 83), Narzugon fears them and kills one and potentially wounds another, they attack and do another 13 damage with you doing 4 with Magic Stone, Narzugon (down to 66) kills 2 more, they do 10 and you 4, Narzugon (down to 42) is within lethal range to "summon Velociraptors" and uses Heal on self, Narzugon takes 14 (down to 98), kills 1 more, they do 8 and you 4, Narzugon (down to 86) kills 2 more, they do 4 and you 4, Narzugon (down to 78) kills 1 more, they do 2 and you do 4 more, Narzugon (down to 72) kills last one and is finally free to move, moves 30' towards you (45' distance but their action already spent so can't Terrifying Command you), you summon Velociraptors and move 30' away, Raptors hit for 40 damage, Narzugon (down to 32) uses Terrifying Command to quell the pack and kills 3 moving through them (OAs provoked deal 8ish damage down to 24), drop Concentration and summon Spike Growth, move 30' away (distance still 75'), Narzugon takes running leap (10 damage from Spike Growth) and closes 50' of distance, cast Spike Growth, Wildshape into Riding Horse and re-establish 75', repeat, Narzugon (down to 4) within 25' of you, Moonbeam/Thunderwave/3rd Spike Growth to finish off (3rd Spike Growth is obviously the safest since it leaves the Narzugon with no choice but to stand still while you stone it to death).

There's a 90% probability of there being 2+ Constrictor Snakes constricting the Narzugon after the first round and there's 90%ish probability of the Narzugon not being able to break free and every additional turn the probability of there being multiple snakes constricting is even higher so it's quite high reliability to lock the Narzugon in place and get advantage on those attacks. The Narzugon could try to escape after the first Spike Growth but due to Wildshape and Longstrider, there's no way for it to lose you in the long run and it'll take same 10 damage so it doesn't make much difference other than perhaps buying a turn. Overall:
- If your DM lets you decide exactly what you summon
- If the Velociraptors succeed in killing the Nightmare (DPR-wise not a problem but the issue is them acting fast enough)

You can kill the Narzugon on level 6.

EDIT: Spell list for Druid just to be clear that those 8 spells you can prepare suffice:
Conjure Animals
Spike Growth
Pass without Trace
Enhance Ability
Goodberry
Longstrider
Thunderwave
Absorb Elements

Not set in stone but that's what I'd personally use off the top of my head. No other level 3 spells in spite of how good Dispel Magic is because you can't really afford to use those 3rd level slots for anything but Conjure Animals at this point. Could replace like Spike Growth with Lesser Restoration though; since you mostly fight with a Concentration-spell, chances of getting to use Spike Growth are pretty low even though it is a good spell. Fog Cloud is a fine spell too but I don't really see it being necessary: I skipped the level 1 concentration spells since your concentration will be spoken for so often (Entangle, Faerie Fire, etc.). Though if going solo, perhaps Detect Magic is more important than Thunderwave (Longstrider actually seems pretty darn good for maximising the distance you can cover while travelling and kiting potential while fighting, but it might be too slot intensive and it might be better to prepare Lesser Restoration instead).

[Dork_Forge]

[spoiler=Reply]

"Lucky-feat", which allows you to reroll a fail 3/day. I've been running my computations for the Vuman with 16 Con/16 Wis and Lucky + Res:Con.

Didn't click that you were using Lucky, I was going off of the OPs player, anyone with Lucky has a better chance, but 3 dice across an entire day may not always cut it.

That's just bad luck. It's always possible but it's not probable. Everyone can lose of course until you get off the dice (which is something only Wizard is really able to do) but if the probability is south of 1% that doesn't really matter; you aren't playing 100 games to get to that one game you lose, you're playing 1 game and it's almost certainly going to be one of those 99 you win instead. Yes, a level 1 Wizard can theoretically kill Tarrasque in a straight-up duel with the Tarrasque simply nat 1:ing all its attacks and slowly dying to Acid Splash but the probability of that happening is low enough that we don't really need to talk about it.

That's playing the game, the odds we're talking about aren't 1 in 100. It's improbable is all well and good until your entire game plan falls apart because 'impobable' happened.

It works on these levels. That's all there is to it.

...Are you saying that non moon combat Wildshape works, or using Wildshape to run away and hide works?

It's important and useful, as is Wildshape. Scouting is one thing but avoiding encounters is the name of the game. As a solo, you obviously aren't going to fight unnecessary encounters.

Knowing what's unnecessary and what isn't is a difficult thing for a player with no meta gaming or actually roleplaying their character.

You use Conjure Animals when you fight, Pass without Trace when you avoid and yeah, you''ll probably be fine with cantrips in combat. I don't really see anything else on the menu; you already drop Concentration as the first spell. First level spells are obviously used for Goodberry since it's just better than Cure Wounds (10 HP vs. 7,5). Obviously it depends: there are cases where simple Entangle and normal ranged attacks might suffice for an encounter but largely you'll want to fight by summoning a horde. Druid is a class that has a Concentration-heavy list so it's quite slot-conservative especially with how long many of those spells last.

Those spells lasting long is a little redundant when they need to get you through all day and they conflict. You use summons on an encounter but have a few left, then decide that you need to sneak so lose out on the remainder of the spell. You start to Sneak but it becomes non viable, you lose the rest of the duration to spam.

'Obviously used for Goodberry' assumes that the PC is always going to be in a position to spend a minute and a half doing nothing but shoving berries in their face to heal themselves or the NPC they're leaning on at times.

10 HP is a lot.

10temp Hp per short rest, to creatures that are likely going to die or be desummoned anyway, is not a lot. As soon as a second encounter comes round, it's done. Bear spirit is good for a big fight once a short rest, other sources of temp hp are better off here.

Probably. You don't need 1st level spells in combat all that often if you're Concentrating on a summon.

The Druid will not have enough slots to get through with just summons. There's too much nonskippable combat that will chew through the summons.

If they go after the Druid, they aren't any faster than you so they can't catch you unless you literally let them get next to you and you'll have way more Wolves left so lead them on a merry chase-round. Seems like a win-win to me. If they're smart they'll try to kill the Wolves and at least do some damage but if they're stupid enough to try to chase you in spite of you having 60' distance and terrain, well, that's on them.

Standing there killing summons is not smart, it's suicide. Your default assumption seems to be that there's enough open terrain that the PC can just run endlessly, that does not seem realistic at all. The original example of a Halfling will get ran down, the V. Human needs to hope that enough wolves survive the first Bearded Devil to eventually catch up before they run out of map to run through.

It's fine to give temp HP to the Wolves. If you don't get attacked, you don't really care, eh? Obviously you'll only maintain sufficient range that they can't catch you; 75' should be fine. Close enough to slog Magic Stones at them if they don't chase you, far enough that they can't reach you.

Forgoing giving yourself once per SR temp hp, to solely give it to Wolves that will die or be desummoned exclusively is a waste of resources and planning for success. The module is built for an entire party, as soon as damage flows to the Druid, it will get messy very quickly. You can't reasonably assume every encounter can be kited, this encounter specifically starts off at 60' and requires you to go first to maintain that distance.

If they slog it out with the Wolves, you could potentially try and treat the Infernal Wounds. Probably not necessary.

Ah infernal wounds.

The Devils can go first but they're pretty explicitly all about capturing those commoners so if they win Initiative, they'll simply go after them.

....No that's explicitly what they're doing before the PCs and Lulu arrive. The combat starts 30' from the party, the Druid would have to go first to have any chance of kiting and the wolves can't both focus fire and act as a meat wall. Nothing in the module says that capturing the NPCs is a priority, nor does it make sense the Devils wouldn't prioritise the new threat (and potential new goods to sell).

And what are the probabilities of those happening? Based on the encounter description, pretty close to 0: the Devils have no way of reaching the PC unless the PC literally lets them. They move at 30' and are landbound. They are focused on someone else: you literally walk up to them and start killing them when they're in the business of trying to take down Harkina Hunt who is currently in the process of shooting them with a Longbow. They aren't gonna break away unless you do something so whether you win or lose Initiative is immaterial. Even assuming minimal terrain (you're blocking off a 15' path with the wolves - obviously the more terrain-based obstacles the better for you), they can't move fast enough to get to the Druid.

I'm not sure why but it seems to me like you assume it's easy for melee types to get to a summoner with 8 meatwalls. I checked but I'm not seeing where the 15ft wide street is coming from either.

Lulu will charge them and get the party involved, I don't see why this encounter would play out like you think it would given what is actually described in the module.

The Bulezau are notable in that they're not resistant to non-magical damage. They go down in one turn.

...How are they guaranteed to go down in one round?

Imp is stated to flee so it won't fight.

No where does it say that the Imp won't fight, it's first course of action is to flee. Plans never really survive contact with players.

It's easy in that it's simply a matter of avoiding it (again, as a solo character stealth is way easier for you than for a group though this might force you to dismiss your minions). You're explicitly told to not fight it so why the hell would you fight it?

Stealth check of 22 to sneak past it, end up fighting it because... you're in hell fighting devils? Because things end up going that way? Heck you could be a mouse trying to avoid other things and end up running across it. It isn't guaranteed combat, but I've ran enough games to know that it very quickly could be.

Aye, but I'm pretty sure this character would just not go look since again we're looking to avoid these encounters.

That's meta, this isn't an encounter to the PC, it's a silvered sword in hell. That's a huge boon that would be hard to justifiably pass up, there's no obvious threat to not go get it.

Because you'd have to be really stupid to go open a stuck door without any knowledge of there being anything to gain if you're trying to avoid danger. Like there's nobody even asking for help (and the Zombies aren't exactly the smartest cookies in a jar) - what possible reason would you have to ever go near that door?

Curiosity is always a strong driving force but the obvious one is that there's clearly innocents struggling both with the fiends and the result of the city falling. There's a stuck door, with people trapped inside pounding to try and get out. Just straight up ignoring that is a questionable moral decision without better information.

All of those are basically the same thing. You'll keep concentration if you keep your distance. You won't roll low on Con-saves if you don't take damage. You won't roll Con-saves if you don't take damage. If you do take damage, chances are you won't roll low on Con-saves. You'd have to take a lot of damage, probably enough to kill you, before failing Con-save becomes probable so we don't really need to care about that. Losing Initiative won't really matter for most of these encounters since the enemies are in the middle of ****ing with someone else so it won't be damage taken by you.

This calculation stuff does irritate me at times, working solely on 'probable' means that you should never bother talking about a character rolling a 1 or a 20. Bad rolls happen, bad rolls back to back happen, the probability of it doesn't really matter, if you don't experience bad rolls during a campaign you should probably be spending your time buying lottery tickets instead.

Keeping distance at all times is just impractical as an expectation.

Assuming that the enemies will continue messing with someone else or will always bother with summons despite having no real reason to not attack the summoner and take care of the summons by proxy is willful thinking at best.

What it comes down to? Don't let enemies attack you. That's pretty obvious but also pretty basic when you are a summoner: that's literally your whole gameplan. Let your minions tank and fight while you hang around in the background supporting them as necessary. I don't see what makes it so hard really.

...By that logic you could do this and steamroll any given campaign. In reality it's not that easy.

Here's an example from both of my current games: One has a Bard and the other has a Star Druid, both hang back at distance chucking spells and abiltiies. This sometimes works. They often get closed on. Why? Because why would anything with two braincells to rub together let that fly?

Nah, this module is made pretty easy. You couldn't save everyone but you can clear it.

I'd love to hear how the Druid is clearing the chapel and dealing with the boss.

You're only doing that for two hours tho; there are two different modes, one where you have an army and thus can fight and one where you don't and thus avoid everything.

8 low power summons when you're a solo character isn't an army, it's a bad party stand in.

Okay, what SR class could take on even one real encounter alone? SR classes just aren't up to snuff in combat unless they can Hide well enough to snipe enemies dead without taking any return fire, and while that's occasionally doable, it's probably not sustainable. Rogue could try to sneak past encounters but it's just a really bad Druid at that point since it lacks Pass without Trace and

Depending on build specifics, any of them? The whole point is that they can afford to go hard and heavy whereas the Druid (or most LR classes) are playing do I or don't I with slots.

The implication that a stealthing Rogue is just a bad Druid is ludicrous, you place far too much value on PwT.

The point was using Wildshape to turn into something Tiny or smaller to ride the Small Lulu.

And I'd challenge what they'd turn into, because suitable anatomy is a restriction and a quadruped riding a quadruped wouldn't fly.

Human with Lucky + Res: Con on level 4 has basically the same shot of maintaining Concentration as a War Caster + Res: Con level 8 Druid, albeit without the Halfling reroll 1s bonus. The chances of failing key saves are pretty low and since the chances of rolling low enough to even need Lucky-uses are pretty low, 3/day will probably have you covered.

So you're saving luck points for nothing but the worst case scenario for Con saves and hoping that you don't roll poorly back to back or more than 3 times a LR?

The BG-part of the adventure is, frankly, a cluster**** that has next to nothing to do with the module itself. It's basically a separate adventure just to level the characters to level 5 so the actual adventure can begin. But yes, we all agree that it's something a solo Druid couldn't really handle. Far as the actual adventure goes though, there's a decent chance of it as long as you don't try to save everyone but just the ones you can save.

You don't get to write off a chunk of the module and then claim the character in question can solo the 'real' module, this isn't Strahd where Death House is an optional extra. Starting in Baldur's Gate is the adventure, the quality and tone of it is irrlevant, skipping a huge chunk of an adventure isn't completing it.

Also, Pass without Trace is one hell of a drug. Elturel features a lot of places where DC15 is the Stealth-check DC. With proficiency, +1-+2 Dex and PwT your minimum roll is sufficient even without Lucky (and if you want you can always Wildshape into something with higher Dex). You basically don't need to even roll for Stealth since you have PwT.

So the moment PwT isn't up, or isn't precast at a convenient point... then what?

'when everything goes your way you don't have any problems.'

Resting is the one point I'm undecided on: if you need to rest in the wilds and some devils do happen upon you while you're sleeping, you're in deep, deep trouble.

So a fundamental part of gameplay, that you will have to deal with time and time again, you have a high chance of just dying if you are found.

One thought that occurred to me WRT SR-classes capable of doing the adventure, there's always Mark of Handling Warlock, which could be pretty good. It doesn't have good ways to buff the summons but having two Conjure Animals per short rest is pretty nice on its own right.

Based on your previous strategy, a Warlock with Repelling Blast and Lance of Lethargy should have a whale of a time.

I'd still lean towards Shepherd simply for Mighty Summons.

Spoiler: VS Narzugon digression

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Actually, with Mighty Summons on the table, even the Narzugon is possibly beatable on level 6. At least it's close; it has 20 AC but its HP is low and magical beasts would chop through its HP like butter. Though Terrifying Command does slow it down a lot; cutting off advantage makes that 20 AC much more of a thing. With three castings of Conjure Animals, depending on how Initiative goes for the minions, you might be able to take it out. It can kill 3 Wolves a turn and terrify most of the rest, but terrified wolves can still attack, albeit at normal attack instead of advantage (8 wolves would do 28,4 DPR on advantage, 16 without). The 100 point healing is the real issue: while it costs it a turn, well, 112 HP is something you can cut through in 4ish rounds but 212 is more like 7 rounds which you won't have enough castings for. An interesting encounter.

Of course, the Nightmare in this case probably makes it unwinnable since it can just bring the Narzugon to Ethereal and back at will, which lets the Narzugon avoid any kinds of surrounds and attack the targets it wants. You'd need to kill the Nightmare first in one round for which you'd need some extremely high DPR summon like Velociraptors and need for them to beat it in Initiative. Velociraptors might actually suffice: they do about 71 DPR to Nightmare (with extreme average tendency; 32 d20 rolls) so they will very probably kill the Nightmare in round 1 followed by 3 dying to Narzugon and rest getting terrified. Then you get 5 Raptors attacking without advantage for like 14 damage + Magic Stone for 2 damage or whatever. 3 more get killed (since it moves at 30' it's not optimal for it to chase you), you summon a new batch for 40 damage, it kills 3 and terrifies them, you hit it for 16 damage. Now Narzugon is at about 40 HP and it knows you can summon a bunch of things that can hit it for 40 so at this point it has to take a turn to full heal. This is inconvenient since it means you don't get full 40 free damage to it, only 16, but you hit it for 16, Narzugon down to 98 HP. It kills 3, you summon 3rd batch for 40 damage, Narzugon kills 3 and terrifies the rest. 16 damage, Narzugon down to 42 HP. Kills 3, 2 left. They nibble it for 5,6 damage, it takes them out and moves to you.

EDIT: There's a variation here where the Narzugon instead moves towards you after killing 3 and terrifying the rest. This is largely the same except the Narzugon takes the 16 damage as an OA...except Velociraptors don't deal their full damage on OA. The big thing is, the fear effect prevents the Velociraptors from closing in on the Narzugon so it can move away from them at relative impunity. Hm. That actually probably leads to Narzugon win since it cuts down on the auxiliary damage significantly. Yeah, damage down from 16 to 7,75 so it's ~30 more HP to the Narzugon which means it'll suffice. One more Conjure Animals needed.

It's down to 37 HP. Spike Growth is probably your best bet but it would simply not close in and this would count as escaping. Though you could center Spike Growth on it and it would have to move, hmm... Does Narzugon actually have any good options left if in Spike Growth without a steed? It can't standing jump far enough to cover the distance (and running jump just sees it take Spike Growth damage) - its standing jump range is 10' and it has to make Acrobatics or fall prone in difficult terrain. Moving 10' to get full distance means it's stuck at 10' movement left so assuming dash, it uses 20' movement to get long jump and takes 4d4 damage and then clears 20' with another 20' left for a total of 50' approach. It can't just stand there while you slowly piddle it dead with Magic Stones (only 2 more minutes!). It might actually be the winning play. Dash-jumping 50' would cost the Narzugon 4d4 or 10 damage. To Magic Stone you must remain within 75' so it could get within 25' of you. You could just repeat this and move away (you'd have to Wildshape to move but horse would let you cover 60' so you could re-establish distance). Repeat this twice and it takes 30 damage. It's down to 7 HP but you're out of Wildshapes and still need to finish it off. You're also out of 2nd level slots and it's within 25' of you. 1st level spells seem obvious: you simply move 30' away to force it to dash and ready an action to cast Thunderwave for 2d8 when it gets next to you. Narzugon saves with its +9 Con taking 4,5 damage. Then Narzugon finally gets next to you and you cast a second Thunderwave knocking it down to -2 HP, down to two last 1st level slots. So...on average it seems possible but there's so much that can go wrong and so much space you need for kiting back that it's definitely not a fight you'd want to take.

But it's interesting nevertheless; few solo level 6 PCs could claim to have much of a chance there (well, Diviner, Eloquence Bard and such obviously but aside from that - actually in spite of Magic Resistance, boy does Narzugon suck vs. getting Polymorphed into a toad - that +2 Wis is doing it no favours).

EDIT: In retrospect, optimal tactics utilising the effects of the frightened condition do lead to Narzugon victory. Level 7 Shepherd has enough gas to win the fight though - it needs that one more Conjure Animals. Though it does occur to me that Mighty Summons + Spirit Bear totem would let a group of Velociraptors have a reasonable shot at tanking hits from the Narzugon (27 HP vs. 27 average damage - 40% chance of rolling less than that so 40% of them would actually live which would affect the math significantly, but this only goes for a single pack of Raptors). But the problem is, the fear and Raptors' small size does let the Narzugon avoid getting pinned down and few more OAs won't suffice. Larger summons with better OAs might be better here: Constrictor Snakes would very probably be able to lock it down so it'd have to kill them to move and they would have 28 HP with Spirit Bear Totem, which is 50/50 for if it can oneshot them or not and having up to 8 things restraining it would also give it some trouble. I'll have to run the math for few different summon options to see how it goes; it would definitely do less overall damage but it might work vs. Narzugon specifically because of its particular set of skills.

That's a lot of speculation of level 6 and 7 for a fight that presents itself (at first at least) at level 5.

I'm pretty interested in how you think the Cemetary would go especially since:

Spoiler: DiA spoilers

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Two unavoidable Hell Hounds can Fire Breath summons very effectively, leaving maybe one 3rd level slot left to clear the rest of the Dungeon.

I'd also be interested in what the actual proposed spell list is, it's always a bit nebulous when casters are the focus of this. The Druid can prep 8 spells and it looks like Goodberry, PwT and Conjure Animals are mandatory, not a lot of wiggle room for fall back or creative spells.

[Eldariel]

Spoiler: So many spoilers in this thread I dunno if it's even worth spoilering anymore

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That's playing the game, the odds we're talking about aren't 1 in 100. It's improbable is all well and good until your entire game plan falls apart because 'impobable' happened.

Sure. Party can die due to being unlucky too. That doesn't mean anything. Point is you have good odds.

...Are you saying that non moon combat Wildshape works, or using Wildshape to run away and hide works?

Run away/hide.

Knowing what's unnecessary and what isn't is a difficult thing for a player with no meta gaming or actually roleplaying their character.

Everything is unnecessary unless you're sure you can do it when you're solo. You might be obscenely powerful for one PC but you're still one PC - you have to be careful (and this isn't even meta: obviously any lone person trying to free a city from hell is gonna be careful since you're literally putting a single person against Avernus).

'Obviously used for Goodberry' assumes that the PC is always going to be in a position to spend a minute and a half doing nothing but shoving berries in their face to heal themselves or the NPC they're leaning on at times.

If you aren't, get yourself in such a position. You don't have the luxury to prepare for corner cases. 1 HP is same as 7 most of the time; they're conscious and they're going down in 1 turn again if they get hit so whatever. Cure Wounds is a ****ty spell that you should never prepare. If you end up in one of those corner cases where it might matter, chalk that up to probabilities not going your way and make do with what you've got. But that should happen rarely enough. Just because it can happen doesn't mean it will.

The Druid will not have enough slots to get through with just summons. There's too much nonskippable combat that will chew through the summons.

*shrug* It seems to me like most of the combat is indeed skippable.

Standing there killing summons is not smart, it's suicide. Your default assumption seems to be that there's enough open terrain that the PC can just run endlessly, that does not seem realistic at all. The original example of a Halfling will get ran down, the V. Human needs to hope that enough wolves survive the first Bearded Devil to eventually catch up before they run out of map to run through.

Depends on the terrain, there are no maps so it's hard to say but generally the way you run as a summoner is in such a way that you can get back to your summons. But again, no maps makes this a pointless discussion. Let's just say that if you get the devils to chase you, you're one lucky SoB and at worst burn a single wildshape to turn'n'burn with a full assortment of Wolves for the next encounter too. The more the enemies try to focus on you, the character able to move at and act at 60'+ if desired and fighting at range the better.

Forgoing giving yourself once per SR temp hp, to solely give it to Wolves that will die or be desummoned exclusively is a waste of resources and planning for success. The module is built for an entire party, as soon as damage flows to the Druid, it will get messy very quickly. You can't reasonably assume every encounter can be kited, this encounter specifically starts off at 60' and requires you to go first to maintain that distance.

....No that's explicitly what they're doing before the PCs and Lulu arrive. The combat starts 30' from the party, the Druid would have to go first to have any chance of kiting and the wolves can't both focus fire and act as a meat wall. Nothing in the module says that capturing the NPCs is a priority, nor does it make sense the Devils wouldn't prioritise the new threat (and potential new goods to sell).

The encounter is written to start at 30' from the location of the characters' arrival, but the characters have had two minutes to acclimate themselves (including move) and unless the characters intervene, the devils will keep on chasing. And if you see the devils coming from further away, I don't see why you'd wait until they're within 30' of you: they don't just magically appear there. But even if they did, Reya (if you brought her) and Lulu will be the ones engaging first anyways so they're the ones the devils would go after if they do switch targets. I see no way to ever get yourself targeted before Initiative unless you put yourself in harm's way. I don't see any proviso in the encounter for the devils attacking someone who has not taken an action to prevent them from hunting down the Hunts.

Lulu will charge them and get the party involved, I don't see why this encounter would play out like you think it would given what is actually described in the module.

Lulu will tank them if it charges them.

...How are they guaranteed to go down in one round?

Not guaranteed but there's heavy average tendency in a large number of attacks with advantage so it's extremely likely to the point that any other outcome is unlikely if you do have wolves.

No where does it say that the Imp won't fight, it's first course of action is to flee. Plans never really survive contact with players.

So let it leave, problem averted.

Stealth check of 22 to sneak past it, end up fighting it because... you're in hell fighting devils? Because things end up going that way? Heck you could be a mouse trying to avoid other things and end up running across it. It isn't guaranteed combat, but I've ran enough games to know that it very quickly could be.

Easier than for a full party. This is one case where being alone is a huge advantage, you don't have poor stealthers with you.

That's meta, this isn't an encounter to the PC, it's a silvered sword in hell. That's a huge boon that would be hard to justifiably pass up, there's no obvious threat to not go get it.

You're a bloody Druid, what do you care for a pointy stick? You literally have zero interest in it.

Curiosity is always a strong driving force but the obvious one is that there's clearly innocents struggling both with the fiends and the result of the city falling. There's a stuck door, with people trapped inside pounding to try and get out. Just straight up ignoring that is a questionable moral decision without better information.

You can first like ask who's there first. Random pounding is more likely to be a trapped devil or monster or whatever, humans usually use their voice to communicate. I don't see how anyone could get this sprung on them.

This calculation stuff does irritate me at times, working solely on 'probable' means that you should never bother talking about a character rolling a 1 or a 20. Bad rolls happen, bad rolls back to back happen, the probability of it doesn't really matter, if you don't experience bad rolls during a campaign you should probably be spending your time buying lottery tickets instead.

Because it's mathematics. This is what the game is. If it irritates you, that's unfortunate, but when you sit down in the table you accept that you will have a certain probability of succeeding in a given thing and that's determined by dice. When we plot how anything is likely to go, the only way of doing so that corresponds to reality is math. Yes, reality only has a certain probability of conforming to that math but that probability is higher than the probability of any other outcome.

When we build for an adventure path, we can basically never reach a point where there's no chance of failure but we can reach a point where failure is extremely unlikely and that's where we are here: this is why you build and play to minimise failure. When you only play through a campaign once, chances are you won't roll an improbable amount of 1s or 20s over the day. Yes, sometimes you'll get luckier and sometimes less lucky but it's likely even out over a sufficient number of rolls returning back to the average probabilities.

Again, nobody is argue there's a 100% chance of success, just that you're likely enough to succeed that you'll probably be able to pull off a single playthrough if you don't get extraordinarily unlucky. Summoner is great in that your main trick involves no die rolls on your part and a huge number of die rolls which tend towards averages on the part of your minions so it's very predictable and very consistent (unlike, say, Fighters).

Keeping distance at all times is just impractical as an expectation.

I disagree. Or at any rate, it's what you strive to do. Obviously it won't always work but any actions you waste from the enemy lead to less resources burned from you and if enemies do indeed ignore your summons and try to go for you, you can get by with very little resource expenditure since your summons will be up for all fights. I'd be more worried about attrition if enemy engages the summons but if they go for you, well, good luck to them.

Assuming that the enemies will continue messing with someone else or will always bother with summons despite having no real reason to not attack the summoner and take care of the summons by proxy is willful thinking at best.

It's not about what they want, it's about what they're able to do.

...By that logic you could do this and steamroll any given campaign. In reality it's not that easy.

This campaign makes it pretty easy all things considered.

Here's an example from both of my current games: One has a Bard and the other has a Star Druid, both hang back at distance chucking spells and abiltiies. This sometimes works. They often get closed on. Why? Because why would anything with two braincells to rub together let that fly?

Yeah, but this particular adventure doesn't feature encounters where those are likely.

8 low power summons when you're a solo character isn't an army, it's a bad party stand in.

Having 9 actions instead of 4 is pretty huge even if those actions individually aren't immensely powerful. The fact that you get magic weapons for all your minions also makes them closer to PC-level contributions: this is an adventure where getting weapons that penetrate resistances for your allies is non-trivial.

Depending on build specifics, any of them? The whole point is that they can afford to go hard and heavy whereas the Druid (or most LR classes) are playing do I or don't I with slots.

The implication that a stealthing Rogue is just a bad Druid is ludicrous, you place far too much value on PwT.

I place too much value on having +10 to stealth in addition to normal bonuses and the ability to traverse various terrains and move through holes too small for normal characters and get climb speed and be inconspicuous? What else would you want on a stealthing character? +3 stealth from Expertise instead? Rogue far as non-combat stealth goes is pretty ****ty all things considered. Nevermind Pass without Trace, they don't even get Enhance Ability. Try those DC15 stealth checks in this adventure, Rogue can actually fail them unlike a Druid using PwT.

And I'd challenge what they'd turn into, because suitable anatomy is a restriction and a quadruped riding a quadruped wouldn't fly.

Really? You wouldn't let a cat or a rat or anything of the sort ride on what amounts to a small elephant? 'cause in reality such animals are easily capable of staying on top of such a creature.

So you're saving luck points for nothing but the worst case scenario for Con saves and hoping that you don't roll poorly back to back or more than 3 times a LR?

Yeah, I'd say you probably wanna save your Luck-points for when it matters (failed key rolls). I wouldn't say only Con-saves though; also failed Wis-saves and failed key Cha-checks seems fair. As always, it's situational and you'll obviously assess it on a case-by-case basis but you'll generally want to ensure you don't fail those important checks (Initiative is another check that can be worth rerolling).

Based on your previous strategy, a Warlock with Repelling Blast and Lance of Lethargy should have a whale of a time.

If they had Conjure Animals, yes (so Mark of Handling works). The whole point of kiting is lost if you don't have anyone in the frontline chewing apart the things that are being retards and chasing after you giving free OAs and using rounds doing nothing. But you can't count on enemies ignoring the summons in favour of trying to reach a caster they can't reach forever.

That's a lot of speculation of level 6 and 7 for a fight that presents itself (at first at least) at level 5.

Mostly idle curiosity.

I'm pretty interested in how you think the Cemetary would go especially since:

Spoiler: DiA spoilers

Show

Two unavoidable Hell Hounds can Fire Breath summons very effectively, leaving maybe one 3rd level slot left to clear the rest of the Dungeon.

You get surprise on the Hell Hounds (DC15 Stealth, you can automake the check with PwT) and your summons can kill one of them before Initiative is even rolled. Then the second one gets surrounded and can breathe on 3 at most even if it wins initiative. Leaves you with 5 summons left.

I'd also be interested in what the actual proposed spell list is, it's always a bit nebulous when casters are the focus of this. The Druid can prep 8 spells and it looks like Goodberry, PwT and Conjure Animals are mandatory, not a lot of wiggle room for fall back or creative spells.

I edited one into the last last post.

[Unoriginal]

Surprise does not mean "act before Initiative gets rolled".


Also while Lulu is great she doesn't have anything that let her tank (unless you mean the three devils will always focus fire on her, which is unlikely).

[Eldariel]

Surprise does not mean "act before Initiative gets rolled".

Yes, so? [10 signs]

[Unoriginal]

Yes, so? [10 signs]

So you writing "your summons can kill one of them before Initiative is even rolled" is not accurate.

[Eldariel]

So you writing "your summons can kill one of them before Initiative is even rolled" is not accurate.

Fair, but also pedantic. You know full well what I mean as does everyone else. While Initiative is rolled, creatures have the "surprised"-condition and therefore do not act on their first turn so regardless of their Initiative, they will take one turn of wallop which suffices to kill a Hell Hound with summons (Wolves as a simple example do enough damage to that end).

Also while Lulu is great she doesn't have anything that let her tank (unless you mean the three devils will always focus fire on her, which is unlikely).

Point being, if we have this scenario


-D-D-D------------
-------------------
-------------------
------------------(Reya)
------------------Lulu
-H----------------PC

Lulu charges at them (which triggers the encounter as per the book - they won't attack unless someone intervenes so the intervention must already be on the way for the encounter to start). Who do think they'll attack? The celestial attacking them in front of them or literally anyone else?

PS. They'll attack the celestial. Whether it can tank them or not, if you lose Initiative she's the highest priority target by far, especially since they're devils and she's a celestial.

[Unoriginal]

Fair, but also pedantic. You know full well what I mean as does everyone else. While Initiative is rolled, creatures have the "surprised"-condition and therefore do not act on their first turn so regardless of their Initiative, they will take one turn of wallop which suffices to kill a Hell Hound with summons (Wolves as a simple example do enough damage to that end).



Point being, if we have this scenario


-D-D-D------------
-------------------
-------------------
------------------(Reya)
------------------Lulu
-H----------------PC

Lulu charges at them (which triggers the encounter as per the book - they won't attack unless someone intervenes so the intervention must already be on the way for the encounter to start). Who do think they'll attack? The celestial attacking them in front of them or literally anyone else?

PS. They'll attack the celestial. Whether it can tank them or not, if you lose Initiative she's the highest priority target by far, especially since they're devils and she's a celestial.

Let's say they do indeed focus fire on Lulu. Even if only one attack per Devil lands (which is reasonable given her AC vs the number of their attacks and their to-hit mod), Lulu would be either dead or very close to it at the start of her turn.

[Eldariel]

Let's say they do indeed focus fire on Lulu. Even if only one attack per Devil lands (which is reasonable given her AC vs the number of their attacks and their to-hit mod), Lulu would be either dead or very close to it at the start of her turn.

Almost dead? Huh? Lulu has 36 HP and 18 AC. Bearded Devil attacks at +5 for 1d8+2 and 1d10+2 with DC12 Con (Lulu makes that on 11) for 5 damage/turn, and Lulu even has resistance to Bearded Devil weapons. Even all 3 devils full attacking is likely to do little more than 9 damage to her plus potential Infernal Wounds (which a single Goodberry heals). Given Lulu's 18 AC, Bearded Devils have 40% chance of landing Infernal Glaive and given Lulu's +1 Con, she has 50% chance of making the save so the chance of any given Devil landing Infernal Wounds on her is 20%. Therefore, the expected value is 0 Infernal Wounds (51,2% for 0, 38,4% for 1, 9,6% for 2, 0,8% for 3). Lulu is also immune to the poisoned condition so a single Goodberry will indeed always be available to treat the wounds if they do occur. Overall, I have a hard time seeing the Bearded Devils do meaningful damage to her...unless I'm overlooking something? She could probably facetank them for 4-5 rounds before going down.

Either way, even if Lulu somehow magically took a walloping, it seems beyond obvious given the scenario that she'll be the one to take the hits in the case that the PC does lose Initiative long enough for the monsters to be summoned. Thus it seems extremely unlikely for the PC to take a random hit from the Bearded Devils before getting attacked with the layout of "Lulu (and Reya) charge at them while the PC loses Initiative and thus hasn't had the chance to do anything."

[Unoriginal]

and Lulu even has resistance to Bearded Devil weapons.

My bad, for some reason I forgot Lulu had resistance and was sure the Bearded Devil's glaive counted as magical. I apologize.

[JNAProductions]

Almost dead? Huh? Lulu has 36 HP and 18 AC. Bearded Devil attacks at +5 for 1d8+2 and 1d10+2 with DC12 Con (Lulu makes that on 11) for 5 damage/turn, and Lulu even has resistance to Bearded Devil weapons. Even all 3 devils full attacking is likely to do little more than 9 damage to her plus potential Infernal Wounds (which a single Goodberry heals). Given Lulu's 18 AC, Bearded Devils have 40% chance of landing Infernal Glaive and given Lulu's +1 Con, she has 50% chance of making the save so the chance of any given Devil landing Infernal Wounds on her is 20%. Therefore, the expected value is 0 Infernal Wounds (51,2% for 0, 38,4% for 1, 9,6% for 2, 0,8% for 3). Lulu is also immune to the poisoned condition so a single Goodberry will indeed always be available to treat the wounds if they do occur. Overall, I have a hard time seeing the Bearded Devils do meaningful damage to her...unless I'm overlooking something? She could probably facetank them for 4-5 rounds before going down.

Either way, even if Lulu somehow magically took a walloping, it seems beyond obvious given the scenario that she'll be the one to take the hits in the case that the PC does lose Initiative long enough for the monsters to be summoned. Thus it seems extremely unlikely for the PC to take a random hit from the Bearded Devils before getting attacked with the layout of "Lulu (and Reya) charge at them while the PC loses Initiative and thus hasn't had the chance to do anything."

So they have a 40% chance of hitting, with 6 attacks total.

At an average of 7.5 damage per attack (not the average of either, averaged across both) I'm getting an average of 18 damage (which, if she does have resistance, gets halved to 9). Didn't account for crits (slightly over one in four chance of at least one) or Infernal Wounds.

[stoutstien]

So they have a 40% chance of hitting, with 6 attacks total.

At an average of 7.5 damage per attack (not the average of either, averaged across both) I'm getting an average of 18 damage (which, if she does have resistance, gets halved to 9). Didn't account for crits (slightly over one in four chance of at least one) or Infernal Wounds.

AFB but isn't Lulu ridiculously easy to grapple/shove?

[Eldariel]

My bad, for some reason I forgot Lulu had resistance and was sure the Bearded Devil's glaive counted as magical. I apologize.

All good, I was just a tad confused by the statement. Funnily enough, most devils (aside from Abishai and Erinyes) lack magic weapons so they have a serious issue damaging each other, devils or celestials (outsiders in general). Even the Narzugon and Horned Devil lack magical weapons. You have to go up to ****ing Pit Fiends for standard devils to get there. In general, I can totally see why devils have trouble in the Blood War: Demons are just plain better at killing Devils than Devils are killing Demons. Way more other damage types that penetrate the immunities (lots of Necrotic in particular), magic weapons much earlier (Armanites have them as early as CR7), they have spells (in spite of magic resistance on devils, they tend to amount to an advantage). Well, I guess Tiamat's babies are good for some demonslaying but other than that, the Hells are kinda poorly equipped.

So they have a 40% chance of hitting, with 6 attacks total.

At an average of 7.5 damage per attack (not the average of either, averaged across both) I'm getting an average of 18 damage (which, if she does have resistance, gets halved to 9). Didn't account for crits (slightly over one in four chance of at least one) or Infernal Wounds.

If you do the full math, you get the same 18 damage (18,3 if you want decimals) halved to 9 (9,15). The crits don't add a very significant amount of damage; the dice aren't very big and they're all at 5% chance. Infernal Wounds, if you wanna count it mathematically, it adds 0,512 * 0 + 0,384 * 5 + 0,096 * 10 + 0,008 * 15 = 3 damage so 12 DPR from the three Devils.

AFB but isn't Lulu ridiculously easy to grapple/shove?

Yes, but that's of questionable value in this case (since it costs two attacks per shove/grapple as Bearded Devil Multiattack isn't grapple/shove friendly and they don't have that good an Athletics modifier themselves).

[Unoriginal]

Funnily enough, most devils (aside from Abishai and Erinyes) lack magic weapons so they have a serious issue damaging each other, devils or celestials (outsiders in general). Even the Narzugon and Horned Devil lack magical weapons. You have to go up to ****ing Pit Fiends for standard devils to get there. In general, I can totally see why devils have trouble in the Blood War: Demons are just plain better at killing Devils than Devils are killing Demons. Way more other damage types that penetrate the immunities (lots of Necrotic in particular), magic weapons much earlier (Armanites have them as early as CR7), they have spells (in spite of magic resistance on devils, they tend to amount to an advantage).

Which makes sense, thematically speaking: the only reason both sides are a stalemate rather than having the Hells outright losing is because the Demons are just too chaotic to focus the power and numbers they have into a proper campaign.

Well, I guess Tiamat's babies are good for some demonslaying but other than that, the Hells are kinda poorly equipped.

Ironically, that means that Tiamat getting the Avernus's throne back is the safest option for the Nine Hells.

[Eldariel]

Which makes sense, thematically speaking: the only reason both sides are a stalemate rather than having the Hells outright losing is because the Demons are just too chaotic to focus the power and numbers they have into a proper campaign.

Ironically, that means that Tiamat getting the Avernus's throne back is the safest option for the Nine Hells.

Made worse by the fact that demons can use non-magical weapons (silver) to damage devils while there's no such option for demons so devils are reliant on magic weapons (especially since they're really **** about any variety in their offensive options too).

As for Grapple/Shove, I just checked and it comes out to 73,6% win for Bearded Devil so theoretically two Devils could grapple + shove at 54% success rate, giving the third one the hits at advantage. This one Devil would do about 10 DPR (9,975 to be precise) halved to 5 and have 32% chance of landing Infernal Wounds for a total of 1,6 more or a total of 6,6 DPR. But Lulu would be grappled and prone which would make for 19,8 DPR turn for the three devils on the next round (vs. 24 for just attacking thrice on both turns). This way they would win a bit faster but it's a 50/50 plan and if the grapple specifically fails, the shove doesn't accomplish much since Lulu can just get up. If the third grapples too, there's an 82,8% chance of establishing a grapple/prone but obviously that's 0 damage dealt over the whole first round.

[Thunderous Mojo]

And yeah, DM chooses technically but it's literally a subclass built around the spell so we can assume that a DM who lets their player play Shepherd won't **** them over by giving them a bunch of dead fish even though that's technically a valid option too.

It might be a bit of hubris to assume that a Druid's Conjurations will work with the same reliability in Hell, as the same spells would operate on the Prime Material plane.

A Druid is summoning Fey, to take the form of beasts. If the Fey spirits possess the forms of local fauna to produce the spell effects, (a viable explanation for the "how" the 5e spell functions in game), there might not be any animals in Avernus..beyond hellish insects.

If the Fey, instead create their animal bodies..then it is also reasonable to assume that only the most feeble, or lowest ranking, or craziest Fey spirits are answering the call of the summons.

What Fey wants to go to hell?

If I have the choice between a work assignment in San Diego, California durning the summertime or Eastern Libya....I'm electing to summer at the beach in San Diego.🃏

DiA is a poorly balanced, (either way too easy, or hard), very vague, and really not completed blueprint of a campaign.

I would posit in real play, this module, (like OotA), is unlikely to be ran exactly as written, precisely because as written neither module entirely works.

So I agree, a Shepherd Druid could solo the module by RAW...but who runs it RAW?🃏

[Unoriginal]

I still think the Shepherd Druid gets destroyed by the Grand Cemetery.

Especially if they run from the first encounter, which would pursue them until they're stopped by the second.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

It might be a bit of hubris to assume that a Druid's Conjurations will work with the same reliability in Hell, as the same spells would operate on the Prime Material plane.

A Druid is summoning Fey, to take the form of beasts. If the Fey spirits possess the forms of local fauna to produce the spell effects, (a viable explanation for the "how" the 5e spell functions in game), there might not be any animals in Avernus..beyond hellish insects.

If the Fey, instead create their animal bodies..then it is also reasonable to assume that only the most feeble, or lowest ranking, or craziest Fey spirits are answering the call of the summons.

What Fey wants to go to hell?

If I have the choice between a work assignment in San Diego, California durning the summertime or Eastern Libya....I'm electing to summer at the beach in San Diego.🃏

DiA is a poorly balanced, (either way too easy, or hard), very vague, and really not completed blueprint of a campaign.

I would posit in real play, this module, (like OotA), is unlikely to be ran exactly as written, precisely because as written neither module entirely works.

So I agree, a Shepherd Druid could solo the module by RAW...but who runs it RAW?🃏

So the balance is basically the reason I made the OP. Whether or not a single character could get through this or not is in debate, but the fact that it's even plausible I think is an issue. As you say, much of what happens after level 7 is extremely unfinished, so the more concrete assessment in the thread has been for levels 5-6.

Now, I don't think the entire issue rests with the mod. By 6th level the Shepherd is casting a spell that many posters think is already overtuned, but doing it with roughly twice the efficiency of other casters (in the context of the mod where b/s/p resistance is common). It effectively allows the minions not just to tank, but to actually do significant damage, meaning the Druid can fall back and support with cantrips, and save leveled spells for things like Goodberry and Pass without Trace. The spell also lasts and hour and allows the character to trivialize some exploration and potentially escape (if needed) on mount(s) that have roughly double HP. So a good amount of the 'blame' if that's the right word, lies with the class/ subclass and spell. The other 4 characters I'm DMing (Oathbreaker, Battlemaster, Death Cleric, Arcane Trickster) likely wouldn't survive long alone if they actually attempted to complete the mod.

That said, the mod is often set on 'easy', though you are correct in that at times it can be very difficult if players aren't a bit smart or lucky (mostly thinking of the Baldur's Gate part here). Also the presence of Lulu buffs the group further. I'm thinking my group of 5 is really more like 7 party members if I count Lulu as 1 and my Shepherd as 2; so it's not surprising I need to roughly double the challenge to keep it interesting. And of course there's that magic item that I don't think has been discussed here, which while somewhat situational in the context of the mod, is a real boon if used at the right time.

The one question I would ask you is why do you think OotA doesn't work as written? Now it was the first thing I DMed in 5e, and maybe more crucially the first thing my players played, so they weren't good at optimizing. Unlike chapter 3 in Avernus, the travel portion of OotA was well supported with maps and a good selection of random encounters, etc.

[Unoriginal]

So the balance is basically the reason I made the OP. Whether or not a single character could get through this or not is in debate, but the fact that it's even plausible I think is an issue.

I disagree that it's even plausible.

Only way for it to be plausible is if the DM is much more generous with long rests than what both the game and the module expect, for starter.

The spell also lasts and hour and allows the character to trivialize some exploration

Do you recall which exploration parts were trivialized in that fashion?

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I disagree that it's even plausible.

Only way for it to be plausible is if the DM is much more generous with long rests than what both the game and the module expect, for starter.



Do you recall which exploration parts were trivialized in that fashion?

You can disagree, but several other posters who are very experienced at 5e think that is is possible. The elements of exploration I am referring to are the ability to simply fly over/ avoid large sections (bridges, environmental hazards, monsters), whether using minions or (more effectively) wild shaping into something small enough to ride Lulu. I think this also goes to your point about rests, in that yes, there may be some sections where rests for a single Shepherd are more frequent than a group where combat is heavy, but this is countered by fewer rests and faster travel in other sections. For example, I believe I did allow a short rest in a burned out building for my group after 3 encounters while travelling between the High Hall and the Graveyard. I single Shepherd using wildshape riding Lulu could have avoided all of it and cut travel time down to 20%.

[Eldariel]

I still think the Shepherd Druid gets destroyed by the Grand Cemetery.

Especially if they run from the first encounter, which would pursue them until they're stopped by the second.

Spoiler

Show

Hmm. You're level 6 by then so you have 3 Conjure Animals and Mighty Summons. I think it's quite possible to muscle through it (the Skeletons aren't really a challenge; the incorporeals are annoying but you do have magical attacks). You might have to kill the skeletons but I don't see it being that tough of a fight; it seems like something most sets of Conjure Animals can handle pretty easily. They hit hard but especially if you get a bludgeoning form they'll go down in one turn and your own Magic Stone is surprisingly effective here as well (2d6+6). Wolves for example would do 52 damage a turn killing a Skeleton in two turns and the Skeletons would be about 70% to kill a Wolf per hit, while they're hitting about 70% of the time assuming Greataxe attacks. So overall you'll lose 1,5 Wolves per turn, kill a skeleton in two, kill second skeleton in 3, kill third skeleton in 5. Something like Constrictor Snakes would obviously do short work of these with their bludgeoning attacks as would Velociraptors with their raw DPR but even Wolves or whatever will do just fine.

Now, if you fight in G2 and tried to sneak past G1, that might be bad: fighting those two fights simultaneously is dangerous to you and would deplete your resources seriously. But if you fight in order it's just a matter of using your spells. It's probably also possible to e.g. bypass G1 and G2 entirely by sneaking around and entering through a rat hole or something while PwTd. Then you're pretty golden; G4 is a trivial "encounter" and you should be able to succeed the Persuasion check to get to Gideon's good side a reasonable amount of the time, at least with the Lucky-build. After that there isn't really much here that's dangerous. There may be a chance to cast Enhance Ability too, and there certainly is on the way back.

[Eldariel]

So the balance is basically the reason I made the OP. Whether or not a single character could get through this or not is in debate, but the fact that it's even plausible I think is an issue. As you say, much of what happens after level 7 is extremely unfinished, so the more concrete assessment in the thread has been for levels 5-6.

Now, I don't think the entire issue rests with the mod. By 6th level the Shepherd is casting a spell that many posters think is already overtuned, but doing it with roughly twice the efficiency of other casters (in the context of the mod where b/s/p resistance is common). It effectively allows the minions not just to tank, but to actually do significant damage, meaning the Druid can fall back and support with cantrips, and save leveled spells for things like Goodberry and Pass without Trace. The spell also lasts and hour and allows the character to trivialize some exploration and potentially escape (if needed) on mount(s) that have roughly double HP. So a good amount of the 'blame' if that's the right word, lies with the class/ subclass and spell. The other 4 characters I'm DMing (Oathbreaker, Battlemaster, Death Cleric, Arcane Trickster) likely wouldn't survive long alone if they actually attempted to complete the mod.

That said, the mod is often set on 'easy', though you are correct in that at times it can be very difficult if players aren't a bit smart or lucky (mostly thinking of the Baldur's Gate part here). Also the presence of Lulu buffs the group further. I'm thinking my group of 5 is really more like 7 party members if I count Lulu as 1 and my Shepherd as 2; so it's not surprising I need to roughly double the challenge to keep it interesting. And of course there's that magic item that I don't think has been discussed here, which while somewhat situational in the context of the mod, is a real boon if used at the right time.

The one question I would ask you is why do you think OotA doesn't work as written? Now it was the first thing I DMed in 5e, and maybe more crucially the first thing my players played, so they weren't good at optimizing. Unlike chapter 3 in Avernus, the travel portion of OotA was well supported with maps and a good selection of random encounters, etc.

I think there's maybe 10 players on the entire planet who think that the following spells are anything but absurdly overpowered:
- Conjure Animals
- Conjure Woodland Beings
- Animate Dead

Incidentally, any character who intends to solo anything at all will have one of those three (and obviously Conjure Woodland Beings is less problematic by virtue of being higher level). This of course extends to Animate Objects and Danse Macabre and such but the above list breaks the game at the very start of Tier 2, while those come towards the end of Tier 2 and it's long before you have enough level 5+ slots to spam them.

It's not really even up for discussion: they are blatantly and obviously overpowered to a ridiculous degree since 5e favours hordes of creatures and these are most efficient when summoning hordes. As the above Narzugon example shows: even against creatures that have the purported counter to minionmancers (AOE) they still can perform very admirably and obviously they'll totally clown anything that doesn't have AOE. AOE makes them only broken enough so that a level 6 character has a shot at soloing a CR13 challenge. Without AOE they could easily take down a CR20-level numeric threat (like Leviathan that used its Tidal Wave). The only class as egregiously broken as the Shepherd Druid is thus Necromancer Wizard, but any Wizard or Cleric capable of casting Animate Dead is largely more problematic than Shepherd Druid because:
- Animate Dead lasts for 24 hours
- It doesn't take Concentration
- You get ranged attacks from it

This is probably the only adventure path where I'd rather have a Shepherd and that's because of two unique features: The mentioned magical weapon resistance and lack of replenishments for your horde. If you could secure silver weapons for your undead, that would solve one half of the equation but this path is also unusually short on humanoid bodies to animate (in most adventure paths you'll be genociding Goblins or Kobolds or Orcs or Drow or whatever so you will have ample supply), making replenishing your ranks more difficult. Which is the only reason I don't think a Necromancer could solo DiA very easily: you'll simply run out of things unless you get to pitch in on Gideon's graveyard exhuming and even there, you have the logistical issues of hauling around a bunch of bodies (I guess you could outsource this to your Zombies) and your army will obviously slow you down since Zombies aren't exactly fast and you probably want some Zombies for Unholy Toughness + lots of HP + armor - this forces you to fight a lot which means minion attrition. Getting enough silvered weapons for your minions is far from trivial unless you see to it before entering Avernus, which is just another extremely limited resource you'll have to work with. And since you fight demons too, those don't even solve the whole problem. Magic Stone from MI does for 3 but 3 isn't enough for these purposes, even though it does help. Not to mention, Conjured Animals largely have an easier access to advantage, which really helps their DPR.

I've done it the other way around too: my level 5 party of 4 engaged a lone level 8 Wizard (Conjurer) with 12 undead (all level 3 slots burnt). It was actually very, very close to a TPK. Had the Wizard had one more 3rd level slot for a Fireball and had the Ranger not made a DC 13 Int-save (vs. Barlgura's Phantasmal Force) at -1 bonus, it would've been a TPK but instead he was barely dropped with most of the party in single digits and a couple having gone down already. And this was a fairly well-optimised party (Vuman Lore Bard, Vuman Battlemaster S&B, Mountain Dwarf Abjurer Gish, Stout Halfling Gloomstalker SS Archer). Try throwing a random level 8 Battlemaster at a party of 4 level 5 characters instead and he'll get laughed out of the room (after failing a single save against literally anything or just getting DPS'd down). No, minions simply increase power many times over simply because minions grant more actions and this game is all about actions. They also grant more beef and the kind of beef where you don't really even need to bother with recovery.

[Dork_Forge]

Spoiler: So many spoilers in this thread I dunno if it's even worth spoilering anymore

Show

Sure. Party can die due to being unlucky too. That doesn't mean anything. Point is you have good odds.

An entire party being unlucky at the same time, is not only far less likely, but they're better able to deal with it since they're multiple pools of hp, resources and diverse abilities. Rolling low can cripple a solo character, even with Lucky and shouldn't be waved off when the whole point is about the viability of all of this.

Run away/hide.

Gotcha

Everything is unnecessary unless you're sure you can do it when you're solo. You might be obscenely powerful for one PC but you're still one PC - you have to be careful (and this isn't even meta: obviously any lone person trying to free a city from hell is gonna be careful since you're literally putting a single person against Avernus).

That's a meta player way of thinking, the PC is looking at life and death and doesn't know what will lead to the deaths of innocents or missing vital loot that could make a difference (or if the monsters left behind will become a threat to them resting or fighting later).

And... it is meta, you're a hero willingly going into hell, there's some seriously alignment questions flying over people dying that you could help.

If you aren't, get yourself in such a position. You don't have the luxury to prepare for corner cases. 1 HP is same as 7 most of the time; they're conscious and they're going down in 1 turn again if they get hit so whatever. Cure Wounds is a ****ty spell that you should never prepare. If you end up in one of those corner cases where it might matter, chalk that up to probabilities not going your way and make do with what you've got. But that should happen rarely enough. Just because it can happen doesn't mean it will.

Preparing for corner cases should be at the forefront of a solo characters mind, since they are the least prepared to weather those corner cases unprepared.

1hp is just like above that yes, and Goodberry takes an action to cast and an action to eat a berry with no RAW support for feeding others. You don't even need to prep Cure Wounds, leaving Healing Word on the table when it could top you up mid combat whilst you continue to cantrip away is reckless.

Also, no CW is not a bad spell. IDK what your expectations of it are, but I'd wager they're too high.

*shrug* It seems to me like most of the combat is indeed skippable.

And the points where you'd rest safely without neutralising threats in the area/without the support of saved locals?

And saying that most of it seems skippable to you is not addressing anything. I didn't say 'most of it is unskippable' I said too much was.

Depends on the terrain, there are no maps so it's hard to say but generally the way you run as a summoner is in such a way that you can get back to your summons. But again, no maps makes this a pointless discussion. Let's just say that if you get the devils to chase you, you're one lucky SoB and at worst burn a single wildshape to turn'n'burn with a full assortment of Wolves for the next encounter too. The more the enemies try to focus on you, the character able to move at and act at 60'+ if desired and fighting at range the better.

You can't handwave a discussion as pointless when it's the crux of the proposed playstyle. Blindly running from one gang of enemies in a city like Elutriel will very plausibly have you run into another (I know I sure as hell wouldn't let a PC just endlessly run around in that city to kite, this isn't a nice peaceful open field.)

Forgoing giving yourself once per SR temp hp, to solely give it to Wolves that will die or be desummoned exclusively is a waste of resources and planning for success. The module is built for an entire party, as soon as damage flows to the Druid, it will get messy very quickly. You can't reasonably assume every encounter can be kited, this encounter specifically starts off at 60' and requires you to go first to maintain that distance.

I said this, but working with spoiler and quote tags can be a pain so I get it.

The encounter is written to start at 30' from the location of the characters' arrival, but the characters have had two minutes to acclimate themselves (including move) and unless the characters intervene, the devils will keep on chasing. And if you see the devils coming from further away, I don't see why you'd wait until they're within 30' of you: they don't just magically appear there. But even if they did, Reya (if you brought her) and Lulu will be the ones engaging first anyways so they're the ones the devils would go after if they do switch targets. I see no way to ever get yourself targeted before Initiative unless you put yourself in harm's way. I don't see any proviso in the encounter for the devils attacking someone who has not taken an action to prevent them from hunting down the Hunts.

So, just hoping that in the few minutes of acclimating the Druid will happen to move in the opposite direction?

The reading I've done of that section (a few times now because of this thread) seems like they're basically emerging from a side street in from of the party, they're not magically appearing, but they're clearly not visible at a distance. You're basically inserting leeway to support kiting and distance that the module doesn't seem to intend.

There's nothing to indicate they won't attack everyone in initiative, and Lulu quite frankly, is not much of a threat.

Lulu will tank them if it charges them.

NPCs getting injured to any degree is the PCs burden, if the Druid doesn't burn resources healing them then the likelihood they'll die in encounters they shouldn't goes up dramatically.

Oh and if you did bring Reya, she'll probably be interested in that silvered sword you wrote off.

Not guaranteed but there's heavy average tendency in a large number of attacks with advantage so it's extremely likely to the point that any other outcome is unlikely if you do have wolves.

So if you do have wolves... say what does any of this even look like if you don't manage to get Wolves or Velociraptors in hell?

So let it leave, problem averted.

If only the PC and NPCs had that meta knowledge and no motivations for killing a fiend that's actively trying to steal the souls of innocents they're around.

Easier than for a full party. This is one case where being alone is a huge advantage, you don't have poor stealthers with you.

You also have a high check that you're relying on another 2nd level slot to get around.

You're a bloody Druid, what do you care for a pointy stick? You literally have zero interest in it.

Silvered weapon in hell is nice for everyone, as mentioned previously, including Reya.

You can first like ask who's there first. Random pounding is more likely to be a trapped devil or monster or whatever, humans usually use their voice to communicate. I don't see how anyone could get this sprung on them.

So it's more logical that a dangerous denizen of hell or the abyss is trapped behind a simple wooden door rather than some commoners that may be too dehydrated, panicked or injured to clearly hear and reply to you?

Because it's mathematics. This is what the game is. If it irritates you, that's unfortunate, but when you sit down in the table you accept that you will have a certain probability of succeeding in a given thing and that's determined by dice. When we plot how anything is likely to go, the only way of doing so that corresponds to reality is math. Yes, reality only has a certain probability of conforming to that math but that probability is higher than the probability of any other outcome.

My whole issue is that you are using probability to mean success by and large, with little to no account of rolling poorly or things not going the Druid's way.

Calculation detached from reality of play are misleading and not particularly helpful.

When we build for an adventure path, we can basically never reach a point where there's no chance of failure but we can reach a point where failure is extremely unlikely and that's where we are here: this is why you build and play to minimise failure. When you only play through a campaign once, chances are you won't roll an improbable amount of 1s or 20s over the day. Yes, sometimes you'll get luckier and sometimes less lucky but it's likely even out over a sufficient number of rolls returning back to the average probabilities.

I mean, in the example of Con checks it was 1s, 2s, 3s, and 4s, and despite what probability says, if you can't roll with bad rolls, you're basically dead.

Case in point: I ran a game Sunday night, during that 6 20s were rolled and two 1s were rolled at once on an advantage roll. I don't really care what the probability of those things are, they happened, the party (and my encounter design) could tolerate that happening.

This isn't about never failing, it's about being able to tolerate failure and low points, which this build just doesn't.

Again, nobody is argue there's a 100% chance of success, just that you're likely enough to succeed that you'll probably be able to pull off a single playthrough if you don't get extraordinarily unlucky. Summoner is great in that your main trick involves no die rolls on your part and a huge number of die rolls which tend towards averages on the part of your minions so it's very predictable and very consistent (unlike, say, Fighters).

I don't think you'd even have to get extradinarily unlucky, I think this Druid would fail more often than it worked, especially since your calculations are backed up by conveniently being at distance and avoiding a large number of encounters.

Oh and enver running afoul of the environmental hazards.

I disagree. Or at any rate, it's what you strive to do. Obviously it won't always work but any actions you waste from the enemy lead to less resources burned from you and if enemies do indeed ignore your summons and try to go for you, you can get by with very little resource expenditure since your summons will be up for all fights. I'd be more worried about attrition if enemy engages the summons but if they go for you, well, good luck to them.

I'm not really sure what this idea of attrition through loss of summons being so strong to you is. If they do nothing but chew through your summons they get plinked by the Druid, and by the end of it the Druid is still at full hp with a bevy of lower slots to apply to the future situations.

Focusing on summons will never not be meaningless suicide for intelligent creatures. Who cares that you're killing weak summons when the clearly more powerful caster is left untouched?

It's not about what they want, it's about what they're able to do.

And they're able to move past the summons and go for the Druid.

Focusing fire on a single enemy (which ALL of your DPR calcs seem to assume) does not work with also blocking them from going for the root of the problem.

This campaign makes it pretty easy all things considered.

The campaign that this is only viable in if you skip the first 4 levels?

The campaign that multiple posters are disagreeing this would actually work in?

Yeah, but this particular adventure doesn't feature encounters where those are likely.

No, they do, your perspective assumes that you start at and can maintain distance regardless of what is happening.

Having 9 actions instead of 4 is pretty huge even if those actions individually aren't immensely powerful. The fact that you get magic weapons for all your minions also makes them closer to PC-level contributions: this is an adventure where getting weapons that penetrate resistances for your allies is non-trivial.

A mightysummoner backed wolf is not, in anyway, close to a full 6th level+ character.

The assumption that it's 9 actions, is faulty. One of those actions will often be summoing the summons, then those summons will die off pretty quickly. It's 9 actions for a single turn assuming that the summons are already up.

And the magical weapons thing, eh? First part of the module you can snag a silver dagger and there's a silver longsword in a random encounter. There's numberous class/subclass abilities that makes damage magical, just like the one the Druid is relying on...

I place too much value on having +10 to stealth in addition to normal bonuses and the ability to traverse various terrains and move through holes too small for normal characters and get climb speed and be inconspicuous? What else would you want on a stealthing character? +3 stealth from Expertise instead? Rogue far as non-combat stealth goes is pretty ****ty all things considered. Nevermind Pass without Trace, they don't even get Enhance Ability. Try those DC15 stealth checks in this adventure, Rogue can actually fail them unlike a Druid using PwT.

Holes that you're inserting into the game? Maybe I missed it but I don't remember mentions of small openings and rat holes everywhere.

...How are they bad at noncombat stealth? The Druid is expending a 2nd level slot and concentration to achieve the same thing, and mixing in Wildshapes. That's heavy resource expenditure in comparison to passive Rogue abilities. Even then, high Dex+Expertise+something like Psi powered knack is extrenely good, and unlike PwT will get better as time passes. The Druid took Lucky to mitigate Concentration saves, so why wouldn't the Rogue take it (or something else) to mitigate low stealth rolls?

Really? You wouldn't let a cat or a rat or anything of the sort ride on what amounts to a small elephant? 'cause in reality such animals are easily capable of staying on top of such a creature.

Really I wouldn't.

Please show me your example in reality that shows such a creature riding an equivalent sized creature as Lulu ( you don't even need to find a small elephant!)... whilst it flies through the air at over 13mph during lightning strikes.

Lulu doesn't exactly come with cat/rat compatible tack to make this more plausible either.

The assumption that this just works is as ridiculous to me as the thought it doesn't just work is to you.

Yeah, I'd say you probably wanna save your Luck-points for when it matters (failed key rolls). I wouldn't say only Con-saves though; also failed Wis-saves and failed key Cha-checks seems fair. As always, it's situational and you'll obviously assess it on a case-by-case basis but you'll generally want to ensure you don't fail those important checks (Initiative is another check that can be worth rerolling).

That's a lot of potential candidates for 3 luck points.

If they had Conjure Animals, yes (so Mark of Handling works). The whole point of kiting is lost if you don't have anyone in the frontline chewing apart the things that are being retards and chasing after you giving free OAs and using rounds doing nothing. But you can't count on enemies ignoring the summons in favour of trying to reach a caster they can't reach forever.

The point of kiting is to run away from something whilst attacking it, I've never seen kiting used with the assumption you need summons (or PCs or whatever) up front to punish the things giving chase.

This assumption is also based on the things chasing having an equal or lower speed to the caster. Whilst V.Human is your suggestion, the premise of the thread is a Halfling, and they're one of three PHB races with lower speed.

Mostly idle curiosity.

That's fair, when presented without a disclaimer is makes it look like it's relevant to the module directly though.

You get surprise on the Hell Hounds (DC15 Stealth, you can automake the check with PwT) and your summons can kill one of them before Initiative is even rolled. Then the second one gets surrounded and can breathe on 3 at most even if it wins initiative. Leaves you with 5 summons left.

Already pointed out that initiative is rolled, and that does matter.

Here's an example of where that neat plan goes horribly wrong:

Initiative is rolled and results in this:

Hound

Druid

The hounds miss their turn and the Druid gets to summon their creatures. The creatures roll above the Druid and miss the first round. They however roll below the hounds (or at least a single hound) and proceed to be fire breathed before they can even move.

The Druid and, if you happen to get them, Wolves have pretty meh initiative modifiers, the Hell Hounds are only one worse off so it's down to the D20. The above doesn't even account for them having separate initiatives which, I'd probably give them since they're two creatures, rolling together doesn't really save any effort and only really serves to do them disservice.

Or let's say that the Wolves don't kill a Hell hound on the first turn and then get blasted through, maybe they miss, maybe they roll low, whatever, point is:

This can go wrong very easily,

I edited one into the last last post.

Noted, not what I'd have chosen at all and pretty much dedicated to a singular playstyle with no room for error.

You wouldn't even have Summon Beast to cover if the Druid ran out of 3rd slots?

Fair, but also pedantic. You know full well what I mean as does everyone else. While Initiative is rolled, creatures have the "surprised"-condition and therefore do not act on their first turn so regardless of their Initiative, they will take one turn of wallop which suffices to kill a Hell Hound with summons (Wolves as a simple example do enough damage to that end).

Not pedantic, how initiative turns out can mean that the summons don't get to take advantage of initiative at all, as covered above.

You can disagree, but several other posters who are very experienced at 5e think that is is possible.

And multiple posters very experienced in 5e disagree. The key being that one side is reliant on things going very favourably for their point of view to come out as correct, the other is just looking at the module are written (and in some instances, as experienced).

The elements of exploration I am referring to are the ability to simply fly over/ avoid large sections (bridges, environmental hazards, monsters), whether using minions or (more effectively) wild shaping into something small enough to ride Lulu. I think this also goes to your point about rests, in that yes, there may be some sections where rests for a single Shepherd are more frequent than a group where combat is heavy, but this is countered by fewer rests and faster travel in other sections. For example, I believe I did allow a short rest in a burned out building for my group after 3 encounters while travelling between the High Hall and the Graveyard. I single Shepherd using wildshape riding Lulu could have avoided all of it and cut travel time down to 20%.

It doesn't really balance out though, the point at which they become dependent on more rests can get them killed because they have absolutely zero way of dealing with rests safely. They're also missing vast amounts of loot and if played experience points style, potentially xp.

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Hmm. You're level 6 by then so you have 3 Conjure Animals and Mighty Summons. I think it's quite possible to muscle through it (the Skeletons aren't really a challenge; the incorporeals are annoying but you do have magical attacks).

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You pretty much have to fight the skeletons, they're presented as accosting the players, no chance for sneaking past, they're introduced as attacking them. At which point your previous strategy of kiting falls a bit flat, since the Minotaur Skeletons have a superior movement speed and an incentive to charge the Druid since they'd do more damage by charging anyway.

You might have to kill the skeletons but I don't see it being that tough of a fight; it seems like something most sets of Conjure Animals can handle pretty easily. They hit hard but especially if you get a bludgeoning form they'll go down in one turn and your own Magic Stone is surprisingly effective here as well (2d6+6). Wolves for example would do 52 damage a turn killing a Skeleton in two turns and the Skeletons would be about 70% to kill a Wolf per hit, while they're hitting about 70% of the time assuming Greataxe attacks. So overall you'll lose 1,5 Wolves per turn, kill a skeleton in two, kill second skeleton in 3, kill third skeleton in 5. Something like Constrictor Snakes would obviously do short work of these with their bludgeoning attacks as would Velociraptors with their raw DPR but even Wolves or whatever will do just fine.

And if the summons aren't optimum? Even your strategy seems to assume near total loss of summons to overpowering them.

The Incorporeals however are far more than just annoying:

They're concealed in pillars with no possible way for the Druid to know they're there.

They have superior movement speed, incorporeal movement and can leave the Druid with debuffs that will last and hinder them until a long rest, which they are (as already established) terrible at securing for themselves.

4 Shadows alone could kill the Druid in a single turn through Strength Drain. Let that sink in.

This isn't an annoyance, it's death waiting to happen without a convincing argument otherwise, because there's zero reason for them to not just ambush the Druid and/or ignore any summons. heck there's enough of them to do both attack the Druid and their summons (actively weaking their DPR if the shadows are going for the summons btw).

Now, if you fight in G2 and tried to sneak past G1, that might be bad: fighting those two fights simultaneously is dangerous to you and would deplete your resources seriously. But if you fight in order it's just a matter of using your spells. It's probably also possible to e.g. bypass G1 and G2 entirely by sneaking around and entering through a rat hole or something while PwTd.

You should not assume convenient holes for the Druid to Wildshape through where they aren't denoted in the module. I mean come on, that's nothing but taking liberties.

Then you're pretty golden; G4 is a trivial "encounter" and you should be able to succeed the Persuasion check to get to Gideon's good side a reasonable amount of the time, at least with the Lucky-build. After that there isn't really much here that's dangerous. There may be a chance to cast Enhance Ability too, and there certainly is on the way back.

Is it trivial? How is the PC knowing whether to fight or not? They're literally watching Yuggoloths fight Demons, how are they meant to know that if they don't try and KO the winner they won't fight them?

And if they do try and stay out of it, they then have disadvantage on a parley that they have no reason to know would happen, or the conditions for the disadvantage.

I think there's maybe 10 players on the entire planet who think that the following spells are anything but absurdly overpowered:
- Conjure Animals
- Conjure Woodland Beings
- Animate Dead

The only way these things are overpowered is if players are allowed to dictate everything in whiteroom fashion.

It's not really even up for discussion: they are blatantly and obviously overpowered to a ridiculous degree since 5e favours hordes of creatures and these are most efficient when summoning hordes. As the above Narzugon example shows: even against creatures that have the purported counter to minionmancers (AOE) they still can perform very admirably and obviously they'll totally clown anything that doesn't have AOE. AOE makes them only broken enough so that a level 6 character has a shot at soloing a CR13 challenge. Without AOE they could easily take down a CR20-level numeric threat (like Leviathan that used its Tidal Wave). The only class as egregiously broken as the Shepherd Druid is thus Necromancer Wizard, but any Wizard or Cleric capable of casting Animate Dead is largely more problematic than Shepherd Druid because:
- Animate Dead lasts for 24 hours
- It doesn't take Concentration
- You get ranged attacks from it

The casting time and need for a supplie of remains don't even register as a problem to you?

Running around with a horder of evil undead creatures doesn't seem like it would be a problem? Not even for finding a place to rest?

I've done it the other way around too: my level 5 party of 4 engaged a lone level 8 Wizard (Conjurer) with 12 undead (all level 3 slots burnt). It was actually very, very close to a TPK.

This has absolutely nothing to do with a spell, NPCs can have whatever they like for minions without needing to adhere to the same ruels and realities as PCs.

That same encounter could have been a near TPK is you had decided that the Wizard had hired a group of 12 mercenaries (insert whatever creature here).


You know what, yeah a Druid could probably 'solo this module' if the DM was being favourable and ruling to accomodate the Druid's abilties.

Oh wait, the same can be said of literally any class.

[Eldariel]

You know what, yeah a Druid could probably 'solo this module' if the DM was being favourable and ruling to accomodate the Druid's abilties.

Oh wait, the same can be said of literally any class.

No it really can't. Y'know, this is what drives me mad. People refuse to talk about issues or acknowledge them trying to veil the mechanics behind some bull**** "But anything can be Rule 0'd"-crap (ergo "Oberoni Fallacy). That just doesn't work. I don't care how favourably you interpret a Fighter's attack actions or whatever, your random Fighter isn't soloing this module. Neither is a Rogue, a Barbarian, a Ranger, a Monk, etc. In this case, even most Wizards, Clerics, Sorcerers, Warlocks or Bards can't. This is a singular exception due to an overpowered [unless interpretted to uselessness] spell (Conjure Animals) combined with a feature that enhances it [Mighty Summons].

And no amount of "but you can interpret crap the way you want" is going to change that. Yes, you can nerf the ability (and should) but to do that, first you have to acknowledge that as written it's too strong compared to other abilities of the same level (or hell, of two levels higher). And it has other issues: its power level is inconsistent and that its balancing mechanisms are terrible (either DM has to conjure up stat sheets for random monsters at random place and time to run it as written, making resolving the turns superslow, or it's run as a "summon a type of animal that makes sense"-spell which is obviously more powerful but there's nothing stopping DM from giving you what you're asking for too - that's all within the RAW of the spell) and its balance is all over the place even with the balancing mechanisms but the "8 creatures of whatever persuasion"-option is still generally going to outperform any other level 3 spell or any other level 5 character in average encounters.

Please, don't try to hide issues in the system behind pointless denial. Numerically the brokenness of the spell should be self-evident by just going through a single encounter with it and with literally any other level 3 spell or equivalent level SR PC.