The D&D thread

Seananigans said:

Nah that sounds exactly like how I would have played it, other than possibly having defined a stop condition for the trap.

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honestly that'd be my ONLY criticism, that there wasn't a stop condition. but that also depends entirely on the deadliness of the campaign, you know? i mean if you're playing something like tomb of annihilation on meat grinder mode, then yeah i have no problem in the world with this. especially at higher levels where players start feeling invincible because of their skills and spells. wind walk is EXACTLY the kind of spell that instantly (well, not instantly, there's a cast time) takes the anxiety out of a bunch of encounters so reminding players that they are ALWAYS in peril from a bad dice roll is totally fine.

but if you're playing a much more toned down, sunday drive of a campaign then having a stop condition on this kind of trap is almost required.

there was an episode of critical role about a year ago or so where matt (the dm) just actively started murdering the group. a lot of people gave him flak for it because it was an overtuned encounter for the party, but the party continually made choices that made things worse for them. if matt decided to go easy on them it would have felt disingenuous. they were making poor decision after poor decision. it wasn't even that the dice were working against them, though it wasn't doing them any favors, either. sometimes you just gotta make sure the players know their place

Hoss said:

Damn, how big was the trap area? Seems like at least some of them could have flown right past it before it triggered.

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The diameter was 20' (40' across). Oddly enough, when I stopped the players and was trying to decide if they had set the trap off I actually did consider how fast they were moving. However, when I started trying to calculate the minutiae of it (converting movement speed to MPH), it was going to really slow the game down. So I simply asked myself this question - Can the group safely cross the 40' space before the trap goes off in ~1.5 seconds?

I, obviously, decided no, but the math could show that they may have been able to cross that distance before the trap triggered. I don't know and D&D really doesn't drill down that deep. That's where the DM adjudication comes in and I really do try to be as fair as humanly possible.

Seananigans said:

Nah that sounds exactly like how I would have played it, other than possibly having defined a stop condition for the trap.

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It did have one. The trap was set to run 90 seconds (15 rounds). I didn't mention it because it didn't seem important. It definitely wasn't a case where I let it go until the players died. It was finite. In fact, the Barbarian and Paladin had to wait for the trap to expire to drag the Druid's corpse out of the area.


*Edit*
Hoss I just did the math and a movement speed of 300 is equivalent to 35mph (or 50' a second). So, technically, they could have crossed the space safely, but when we start splitting hairs the spacing between players becomes a legitimate point of contention. If the point man triggers the trap, do the last two people (15'-20' further behind) make it, too? Also, is everybody flying at full speed, all the time? I complain that 5e is too simple (and it is), but I don't want to play D&D: CSI edition.

I got the Barovian accent down.

Hoss said:

I'm not sure why you converted to mph when everything is already in feet. 1 round is 6 seconds, so the trap triggers in 1/4th of a round. They should have been able to move 75 ft between triggering the trap and it going off. If they were going full speed. I know that's what you said, but i lol'd at you going through MPH. The trigger itself was probably in the middle of that 40 ft circle, so the lead person would only have to move another 20 ft. Were they in initiative at this time?


Not trying to re-litigate it, just curious about the nuts and bolts. Being a magical trap, I assume there was no audible warning. So when it triggered did you put them into initiative and give them a quarter turn to prepare? Just stop them and ask where everyone was located. If there had been a warning of some sort, they could have had a chance to run away.

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there's a certain point where the "reality" of dnd has to take a backseat to "you triggered a trap, take x damage"

i mean, i appreciate being curious about things after the fact and wondering if there's different ways to execute things in a smoother manner, but like grabbit said, he's not trying to play csi here and get bogged down in the minutiae of it all.

i'm sure he knew the marching order, that's pretty standard fair in dungeons/dungeon-adjacent terrain and if they trigger a trap, you don't want to give them time to avoid it, that's what the saving throw is for. the time for them to avoid traps is BEFORE they go off, and if they are flying around at 300' per round, then you can assume they were NOT doing their due diligence in checking for traps and whatnot.

it just serves as a lesson that players are strong, and in plenty situations are pretty hard to kill, but the wrong combination of spell and encounter can ROYALLY screw players no matter what level. wind walk gives damage reduction (i think like, to everything but psychic? it's been a while since i looked at that spell) but because the nature of it turning you to basically clear gas means that people think of it as an "i win" button but there's all kinds of issues when you use that spell as anything other than a type of fast travel.

i wouldn't OVERLY punish the players for using it the way they did, it feels like a smart move, but there's no one spell in dnd that should autowin an entire dungeon all by itself. good planning and execution can make the intelligent use of a single spell go incredibly far, but the spell in and of itself shouldn't just win the day.

edit: and i mean... i think initially when we all read what happened we were like "wait, what?" but the more i think about it, the more i side with grabbit. he said it had a magical trigger to it, at least on some level, so yeah, sure, i guess whatever. but no. no think about that. they were moving at 300' per 6 seconds. as wind. that's gonna set off all kinds of physical things. maybe not a weighted pressure plate, it is absolutely going to cause a bunch of physical distortions enough to trigger traps.

Hoss said:

I looked up windwalk. It said incpacitated during transformation. Incapacitated means can't take any actions or reactions. Does that include bonus actions? I didn't see that specifically mentioned. Wind walk sounds like a dangerous spell. Can monsters not see you or something? Or is the idea to simply run away from danger if anyone tries to hit you?

And what about speaking? I saw mention in one discussion that he players couldn't even speak in wind walk form. Is that an action too?

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it has a minute long casting time so it's generally not going to be used DURING an encounter. it's a spell that allows for traveling long distances at increased speeds as well as allowing scouting. but there are plenty of things that "counter" it. detect magic would make it visible, i'd argue truesight would too. i'm not sure about see invisibility since you aren't "invisible" per se, but i think it might be similar to like an air elemental where it's obscured, but still visible to the naked eye. so yeah, not being able to talk, unless some form of telepathy is being used, not being able to attack or really do anything while you're transformed make it a bad idea to use in a lot of instances. it really works best when you need to get somewhere quickly, but don't have access to teleportation magic

and yeah, being incapacitated means you can't take ANY action of any kind, even legendary actions.

Cutlery said:

Not trying to split hairs, but a 20' diameter is 20' across.

A 20' radius is 40' across. I'm sure you meant this, but the distinction is quite important for this type of thing!

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Correct. It was 20' radius. I'm not too proud to admit that I often mix up the two.

Hoss said:

My theory is to get bogged down in the minutiae before it happens and you'll have better answers when it happens. Sort of like the old saying to learn from the mistakes of others, because you'll never live long enough to make them all yourself. Sure you can't think of everything, but the more you think about beforehand, the more likely you are to be prepared for what comes next.


you say that, but I'm curious if it says somewhere in the rules that a cyclone has to trap you in windwalk form. it didn't say it in the windwalk spell, but I realize there are DM guides and lots of stuff I haven't seen yet. I'm guessing the trap itself is what reduced them to 0 movement speed, but where did the disadvantage on the save come from? Is that in the books, or real world physics creeping in?

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Yes, the the movement speed reduction was part of the trap and it represented being stuck in the vortex. The disadvantage was my choice because escaping the trap was strength-based and the characters didn't have a physical form to leverage. The logic was that smoke/clouds have no control over where they're blown by high winds. Obviously, smoke/clouds aren't sentient creatures with the capability to move themselves, but it doesn't change the fact that it would have been incredibly difficult for players under the Wind Walk spell to move away from the 100+mph winds of the vortex.


Also, the saving throw mechanic is specifically designed for these types of situations. A saving throw represents the million different factors that can mitigate a negative outcome. A dragon's breath - You save? You managed to get your shield up in time to block the brunt of it or you were able to tumble behind a small rock outcropping and avoid the worst of it.

In the trap we're dissecting, the players did get an initial save to avoid the trap. They ALL failed. Had any of them saved the trap wouldn't have done anything to them.

Hoss said:

I looked up windwalk. It said incpacitated during transformation. Incapacitated means can't take any actions or reactions. Does that include bonus actions? I didn't see that specifically mentioned. Wind walk sounds like a dangerous spell. Can monsters not see you or something? Or is the idea to simply run away from danger if anyone tries to hit you?

And what about speaking? I saw mention in one discussion that he players couldn't even speak in wind walk form. Is that an action too?

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Speaking isn't an action, but you no longer have the 'parts' to speak. So, no, you cannot speak in the form.

Literally, the ONLY actions (includes bonus or reactions) you can do while in that form is Dash or revert back to your normal form which takes a full minute.

Incapacitation also prevents Bonus Actions. It seems counter-intuitive, but Incapacitated creatures can still move, but cannot Dash.

Monsters can see the cloud/smoke moving around, but their intelligence/experience is going to impact how they react. Stupid creatures are likely to completely ignore you, but intelligent beings are going to know something is off even if they don't quite understand the details. Extremely intelligent or high-level casters are going to have a solid understanding of what's happening.

Hoss said:

lol i didn't even catch that. yup that's counter intuitive. I guess I need to think of incapacitated as like being in shock.

Now you got me thinking. How many rounds did it take to kill them off? Did they have enough HPs to exit wind walk and survive the 10 rounds of full damage so they weren't rolling at disadvantage? Since you could still walk while incapacitated, I assume they would have still been able to roll every round to try to get out.

I'm surprised there's not a standard way to break an incapacitation early. Like rolling a con check for instance.

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I allowed them to re-roll the save to escape the trap every round. In 5e, that's fairly standard practice for an on-going effect. As an example - players get a save every turn to escape stuff like the Web or Hold Person spells.

Anyway, after two rounds, the rogue realized that he was highly unlikely to make it out while in the Wind Walk form so he started reverting back, but he died the turn he materialized. The Wizard followed the rogues lead, but she died a few rounds before she materialized. Since they had no way to communicate, the Druid never mentioned leaving the form, but this guy is a model player. He doesn't ever meta-game and he plays his character as his character instead of an extension of himself. Basically, the kind of player every DM wants, but his commitment to roleplay killed him.

However, like I said before, 3 of the 5 dumped Strength (8, 8, 10) and a DC 17 trap (perfectly reasonable for their level) with low STR and Disadvantage is a massive challenge. Furthermore, none of those 3 had proficiency in STR saves so they couldn't add their PB to the save.

Consequently....

They failed save after save. Even the Paladin (16 STR) and Barbarian (20 STR) failed more than average. The Barb escaped after 6 rounds, the Pally 9 or 10, and the rest got beaten to death between rounds 8 and 11.

Some effects/spells do have saves to end the Incapacitation, but it's obvious that the way that the Wind Walk spell is worded is that it's intended to balance the incredibly powerful effect. If the spell didn't have the risk it would completely nullify a lot of aspects of the game and force the DM to do some super gay, contrived stuff to level the field.

Speaking of traps in general.

Some DMs use the "CLICK!" clause.

Basically, all it is, is when the DM says "CLICK!" each player has ~2-3 seconds to tell the DM how they respond. It has to be something very simple like - "I dive to the ground" or "I kneel and raise my shield trying to put as much of my body behind it as I can."

Depending on the situation it can help (or even hurt) the players and the DM gives a benefit (or penalty) for how the players respond.

I've tried it a few times, but it was always a clusterfuck. Either the players took way too long trying decide and got butthurt when I said "Time, next." or got butthurt when they'd fall face first into a pit after saying "I dive to the ground."

I always told them that there's no benefit (or penalty) for saying "I do nothing," but everyone always thought they could beat the trap and many times they made it worse and complained so I stopped using it.

I'm sure it would work well with a group of mature players, but that particular group was whiney as fuck.

Session 0 went well. I have 6 players and they are all excited to start. I emphasized the importance of learning their class so hopefully they actually do that. We have 2 weeks until session 1.

Couple of questions about how you all handle encumbrance, sleeping, and eating requirements.

I think for encumbrance, micromanaging the weight of everything will be annoying. So I told them I will just keep an eye on what they're carrying and if it gets ridiculous, tell them they have to start dropping/selling stuff. Any other ideas to keep this easy and streamlined for new players?

Similarly with food and water, just keeping an eye on when was the last time they ate and if it's been more than a few days, start adding Exhaustion. Same for sleeping. For water I said roughly a gallon a day or else Exhaustion begins.

Any ideas to make it easy for new players? Should we just ignore these things entirely?

Talos said:

Session 0 went well. I have 6 players and they are all excited to start. I emphasized the importance of learning their class so hopefully they actually do that. We have 2 weeks until session 1.

Couple of questions about how you all handle encumbrance, sleeping, and eating requirements.

I think for encumbrance, micromanaging the weight of everything will be annoying. So I told them I will just keep an eye on what they're carrying and if it gets ridiculous, tell them they have to start dropping/selling stuff. Any other ideas to keep this easy and streamlined for new players?

Similarly with food and water, just keeping an eye on when was the last time they ate and if it's been more than a few days, start adding Exhaustion. Same for sleeping. For water I said roughly a gallon a day or else Exhaustion begins.

Any ideas to make it easy for new players? Should we just ignore these things entirely?

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we don't play with any strict rules on encumbrance, food and water and resting. resting just sort of takes care of itself with these games, unless it's part of a plot point or something. we'll do a forced march rule where if we need to get some place quick if we travel for more than 16 hours a day we'll start making con saves or take exhaustion, but it happens SUPER rarely. i think in the 7 years we've been playing it's come up twice?

food and water we just deal with rations and say, hey, anytime we're in town and would have reasonably had time to restock our rations, it just auto happens instead of rp'ing a shopping trip. there are plenty of ways for characters to get food that it's not really a big deal. foraging, hunting, we kind of consider that part of setting up camp. and if we're in an inhospitable area, druids and rangers can make goodberries (which are considered a full day's nutrition) and clerics (and i think paladins?) can create food and water after a few levels, so the first few levels we might track that, but sooner or later it's just a foregone conclusion that we'll eat during a rest or snack while traveling and be done with it.

for encumbrance we just look at it as long as your not egregiously abusing carrying capacity, inventory management is not a fun mini-game.

and that's really what all our rulings come down to, whether or not people are having fun. if the rules you're going with are slowing things down, causing headaches, etc, then it doesn't matter how realistic things are.