My most recent dnd session had my DM throw a Purple Worm against the party, which on its first turn nearly swallowed our Fighter and nearly one shot our Ranger/Rogue. After the exhausting combat, the party was discussing out of character about the general mechanics of being swallowed and agreeing it's kind of awful. For example, to escape the Purple Worm it either needs to die or take at least 30 damage in a single turn, and then fail a DC 21 Con save with a +11. Not impossible but unlikely. Otherwise, the swallowed person has to sit there and accept 6d6 Acid damage every turn as a consequence for one failed save. And god forbid your DM is out for blood and has the worm swallow someone and then burrow. So I ask this question for other DMs, what other means would you suggest swallowing being so unfun to combat? Many people suggest the person casts a spell to escape the belly of the creature, but being swallowed Restrains and Blinds the target. I propose the idea of Polymorphing the creature with the PC inside. Have it be that the Polymorph would shrink the creature to the point that the PC bursts out of the Polymorphed form, instantly breaking the spell but freeing the PC. Any other suggestions?
As a CR15 creature, the party should be reasonably well equipped and will be facing threats like this fairly regularly.
The spell Freedom of Movement is non-concentration and allows for the target to automatically escape from magical and non-magical restraints.
The spell Contingency is also a perfect "Get out of jail" emergency button.
Research possible threats in-game before going on quests, and prepare accordingly, rather than trying to recover after the fact. Sometimes that might mean unattuning to one of your favorite magical items, so that you can have something more appropriate for the encounter.
As a CR15 creature, the party should be reasonably well equipped and will be facing threats like this fairly regularly.
The spell Freedom of Movement is non-concentration and allows for the target to automatically escape from magical and non-magical restraints.
The spell Contingency is also a perfect "Get out of jail" emergency button.
Research possible threats in-game before going on quests, and prepare accordingly, rather than trying to recover after the fact. Sometimes that might mean unattuning to one of your favorite magical items, so that you can have something more appropriate for the encounter.
A familiar flying above combat, combined with misty step or similar spells (action to see through familiar, target spot just outside worm), or just the dimension door spell (specify direction to escape) would also work. Any spell that prevents or lessens damage can improve survivability. And it actually becomes easier to force a disgorge before substantial damage is taken if multiple creatures are swallowed, since the damage triggers on the worms turn, not the players (meaning multiple tries before damage is applied, and at least one try by a swallowed PC before damage is applied at all)
Purple worms leave a tunnel when they burrow and can be matched at most speeds when the do so, so they can always be pursued, and killing the creature isn't super hard (it has terrible DEX, INT, and CHA saves, mediocre WIS saves, and moderate AC). Ultimately the disgorge effect has a 50% chance of triggering if the damage requirement is met, and 30 damage is not an absurd threshold given that there is no hindrance to spellcasting inside the worm, so a decent DPR PC should be able to escape in 2-3 rounds (1-2 rounds of damage due to when the damage triggers)
I feel like the damage minimum is pretty difficult to reach. A homebrew I'm considering implementing is basing it on cumulative internal damage between the starts of the Purple Worm's turns. That way other PCs can heroically dive into the worm's mouth to help their friend.
By 11th level a Fighter will minimally have 3 attacks per action, which, with 1d10+5 yields an average of 31 points of damage before magic items, action surge, or any other class features. For a level appropriate party, it's not too hard to reach.
By 11th level a Fighter will minimally have 3 attacks per action, which, with 1d10+5 yields an average of 31 points of damage before magic items, action surge, or any other class features. For a level appropriate party, it's not too hard to reach.
You're assuming they all hit, with disadvantage from being blinded and restrained.
The Fighter is technically considered an Unseen Attacker, which would negate the disadvantage and make it a straight roll with a very reasonable +13 to hit.
Even with disadvantage, if the Fighter is reasonably fresh, there is a very good chance that they'll hit the minimum.
Toss in battle maneuvers and other features to further boost To Hit, or add spell damage, and it becomes a comfortable margin.
By 11th level a Fighter will minimally have 3 attacks per action, which, with 1d10+5 yields an average of 31 points of damage before magic items, action surge, or any other class features. For a level appropriate party, it's not too hard to reach.
You're assuming they all hit, with disadvantage from being blinded and restrained.
The Purple Worm only has an 18 AC. That's not a terribly hard target for an 11th level fighter even if they do have disadvantage.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The Fighter is technically considered an Unseen Attacker, which would negate the disadvantage and make it a straight roll with a very reasonable +13 to hit.
The purple worm has both blindsight and tremor sense, so the fighter won't benefit from being unseen in this case. It might work on some other swallowing monsters, though. Either way +13 is a bit too high for a level 11 melee fighter. Its only a base +9, so you're probably looking at +10/+11 with a magic weapon.
Still a decent chance if you blow your Action Surge or a couple maneuver dice or something similar, but a standard turn is going to be very difficult to reach that threshold.
You guys that say fighting out of being swallowed is easy are on crack. As a player who has had their party and PC swallowed by a Remohaz, a Purple Worm and a Kraken, it's not that easy to get out.
Disadvantage is a big deal. Being blind mean NO spells that require seeing a target, touch spell are at disadvantage. The swallower is not being attacked by an "unseen target", that's plain dumb whether the creature has Tremorsense/Blindsight or not.
My opinion, being swallowed and just a little bad luck probably means you will be rezzing someone if escaping the swallow is necessary. Now having the party defeat the monster and get the PCs out is way more reasonable. My 12th lvl PCs could survive and average of 4-5 rounds inside a Purple Worm. So, if the majority of the party was able to fight as normal, all would be well.
What's dumb is assuming that you can easily miss the purple worm while you're inside it, and that the rules expect it to have the same AC through and through.
Blindsight doesn't matter, because the creature has total cover, but Tremorsense does throw a wrench in the works.
It's a bad situation regardless, doing the requisite damage only triggers the Con Save, it doesn't automatically mean escape. A 50% chance to do 30 points of damage is a 25% to escape. An 80% chance to damage, is still only a 40% chance to escape.
You guys that say fighting out of being swallowed is easy are on crack. As a player who has had their party and PC swallowed by a Remohaz, a Purple Worm and a Kraken, it's not that easy to get out.
Disadvantage is a big deal. Being blind mean NO spells that require seeing a target, touch spell are at disadvantage. The swallower is not being attacked by an "unseen target", that's plain dumb whether the creature has Tremorsense/Blindsight or not.
My opinion, being swallowed and just a little bad luck probably means you will be rezzing someone if escaping the swallow is necessary. Now having the party defeat the monster and get the PCs out is way more reasonable. My 12th lvl PCs could survive and average of 4-5 rounds inside a Purple Worm. So, if the majority of the party was able to fight as normal, all would be well.
I guess it is an unseen target if you don't have any non-visual senses. Unseen doesn't mean you don't know it's there or where it is, it just means you can't observe its movements to anticipate its strike.
But what would be the point of imposing the Restrained condition if it's not meant to give disadvantage? Grappled would be pretty much the same.
I feel like, realistically, the point is it's hard to use your weapon when you're inside a creature's guts. A slashing weapon might do pretty well. A piercing weapon you have to maneuver around to get the pointy end to point outwards, and then you'll do okay. But who can swing a warhammer inside a worm's guts? Without getting too nitpicky on what kind of weapon you have, I think the idea was to just split the difference and give you disadvantage.
It just doesn't seem very well fleshed out. The easiest thing to do would probably be to force a Strength Saving Throw (DC19 for Purple Worm) each round to determine if the swallowed creature can act or not.
Pass the throw and you can take an action.
Fail the throw and you can take a restricted action.
Fail by rolling under 10 and you're incapacitated.
I propose the idea of Polymorphing the creature with the PC inside. Have it be that the Polymorph would shrink the creature to the point that the PC bursts out of the Polymorphed form, instantly breaking the spell but freeing the PC. Any other suggestions?
Not sure that would or should work. I'm applying some interpretation to this rule of Polymorph:
The target's gear melds into the new form. The creature can't activate, use, wield, or otherwise benefit from any of its equipment.
Loosely, we could interpret the contents of the creature's stomach as part of its "gear".
In any case, if your plan works, then wouldn't anyone who tries to Polymorph into a smaller creature fail if they had a big lunch? Or does Polymorph work differently if the contents of your stomach are alive or dead?
When my character was swallowed, I tried the opposite. I Polymorphed myself into a Giant Ape. My DM was generous to let me do it, since technically Polymorph requires sight, but he thought that restriction could be waved if I was using it on myself. I was hoping that I would just bust out of the Purple Worm's stomach, since it can only swallow creatures up to Large, and the Giant Ape is Huge. But the DM wasn't going to let it be that easy. So I was still stuck in there. But the bag of 157 hit points let me survive a good long time.
In general, at high enough level, you will probably have some solution, which is different for every class. I think we were just level 7 or 8 when we fought it, which is pretty low, but we still had a solution. And often, just winning the fight is the solution. You have to be in there for at least 3 rounds to die outright. First round, get swallowed. Second round, take the acid damage and maybe drop to 0 hp. Fail a death save. Third round, take the damage and automatically fail one death save. There's no double fail, because this damage can't crit. Then fail another death save on your turn. Many combats are over in three rounds. Just hope you go late in the initiative or can survive at least one round of acid.
Being swallowed by a monster should be pretty terrifying. The Purple Worm is CR15, and therefore is considered Medium difficulty against 4 level 15 characters. These only take into account non-magic item, non-feat, non-rolled-stat characters though. It's probably a fairly medium encounter for four level 11 characters.
The Purple Worm has a measly 247 hit points and only AC18. My party of five level 7 characters has regularly done 200 damage in just two turns of combat to creatures with similar AC. Monsters in D&D5e over CR3 all have vastly too few hit points, even compared to the CR hit points given in the DM Guide. The best option is to just hammer the living bejeebus out of it.
Assuming some combination of feats, multiclass, magic items, spell boons or whatever, a level 11 fighter will reasonably be putting out something like 1d8+1d8+1d6+7 damage per hit - this would be the case for a 20 Str fighter with a Frostrbrand and any other 1d8 bonus, like battlemaster manoeuvres. It's a rough estimation, not taking into account things like Great Weapon Master, but seems quite reasonable. It's an average of 19 damage per hit, so landing 2 out of 3 attacks gives an escape attempt. Seems pretty fair.
That same fighter will probably be dealing 38 damage in the first turn of combat before the worm takes its turn, and if his 3 friends all do the same, the worm has only about 90 hit points left at the start of the second turn and will pretty much certainly die.
My most recent dnd session had my DM throw a Purple Worm against the party, which on its first turn nearly swallowed our Fighter and nearly one shot our Ranger/Rogue. After the exhausting combat, the party was discussing out of character about the general mechanics of being swallowed and agreeing it's kind of awful. For example, to escape the Purple Worm it either needs to die or take at least 30 damage in a single turn, and then fail a DC 21 Con save with a +11. Not impossible but unlikely. Otherwise, the swallowed person has to sit there and accept 6d6 Acid damage every turn as a consequence for one failed save. And god forbid your DM is out for blood and has the worm swallow someone and then burrow. So I ask this question for other DMs, what other means would you suggest swallowing being so unfun to combat? Many people suggest the person casts a spell to escape the belly of the creature, but being swallowed Restrains and Blinds the target. I propose the idea of Polymorphing the creature with the PC inside. Have it be that the Polymorph would shrink the creature to the point that the PC bursts out of the Polymorphed form, instantly breaking the spell but freeing the PC. Any other suggestions?
Eaten PC can still attack the purple worm from the inside with disadvantage due to being restrained. So you ticked off the DM and no one else can hit it this round. You still swing with disadvantage. 6d6 is an average of 21 pts of acid damage. It is a tunneler leaves a 10-foot-diameter tunnel in its wake.. Which means if your fellows can more 30 or more feet per round they can follow.
The polymorph trick. I can rule nicely. Both of you and the worm save and if you pass but the worm does not, it spits you out and you are prone. Evil DM The worm only gets a save and if it shrinks you shrink. Also Evil DM hits against the worm do damage to the pc if the to hit number breaks +8 of your ac.
It is a CR 15 monster meaning should only see this as maybe a boss level monster at level 10, or just an encounter at Tier 3.
pavilionaire. The minimum damage is not hard to reach. I ran a level 15 party against a worm my last session. The min was hit twice. Would have been more but the worm ate the heavy hitter on the first round.
Recently happened in a game with 2 worms... one swallowed mage D-doored out, but the other swallowed my stunned barbarian companion. So my artillerist artificer gives chase to one on one, gets bit and swallowed. My solution was to cast fireball ground zero on me and the other character *inside* the worm, hoping to do enough damage to be regurgitated. (I cast absorb elements to reduce my damage, too- I had a plan!)
Thinking about it afterwards, had a couple other possible solutions to float for opinions:
1. clairvoyance (or potion of clairvoyance) - create the invisible sensor outside the worm, allowing use of teleport spells which require seeing where you're going (like misty step or thunder step)
2. arcane eye (I can now take that after leveling up post fight, at least) to do the same
3. had another player propose casting invisibility on the worm (no size limit on it, just 'creature'... while creative in the extreme to be able to see out, RAW the blinded condition still applies to the person inside, but someone outside could then use vortex warp on the trapped player.
Side note- the gm was being nasty: the one that ate the barbarian burrowed... hooray for a fast-thinking artificer!
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My most recent dnd session had my DM throw a Purple Worm against the party, which on its first turn nearly swallowed our Fighter and nearly one shot our Ranger/Rogue. After the exhausting combat, the party was discussing out of character about the general mechanics of being swallowed and agreeing it's kind of awful. For example, to escape the Purple Worm it either needs to die or take at least 30 damage in a single turn, and then fail a DC 21 Con save with a +11. Not impossible but unlikely. Otherwise, the swallowed person has to sit there and accept 6d6 Acid damage every turn as a consequence for one failed save. And god forbid your DM is out for blood and has the worm swallow someone and then burrow. So I ask this question for other DMs, what other means would you suggest swallowing being so unfun to combat? Many people suggest the person casts a spell to escape the belly of the creature, but being swallowed Restrains and Blinds the target. I propose the idea of Polymorphing the creature with the PC inside. Have it be that the Polymorph would shrink the creature to the point that the PC bursts out of the Polymorphed form, instantly breaking the spell but freeing the PC. Any other suggestions?
As a CR15 creature, the party should be reasonably well equipped and will be facing threats like this fairly regularly.
The spell Freedom of Movement is non-concentration and allows for the target to automatically escape from magical and non-magical restraints.
The spell Contingency is also a perfect "Get out of jail" emergency button.
Research possible threats in-game before going on quests, and prepare accordingly, rather than trying to recover after the fact. Sometimes that might mean unattuning to one of your favorite magical items, so that you can have something more appropriate for the encounter.
A familiar flying above combat, combined with misty step or similar spells (action to see through familiar, target spot just outside worm), or just the dimension door spell (specify direction to escape) would also work. Any spell that prevents or lessens damage can improve survivability. And it actually becomes easier to force a disgorge before substantial damage is taken if multiple creatures are swallowed, since the damage triggers on the worms turn, not the players (meaning multiple tries before damage is applied, and at least one try by a swallowed PC before damage is applied at all)
Purple worms leave a tunnel when they burrow and can be matched at most speeds when the do so, so they can always be pursued, and killing the creature isn't super hard (it has terrible DEX, INT, and CHA saves, mediocre WIS saves, and moderate AC). Ultimately the disgorge effect has a 50% chance of triggering if the damage requirement is met, and 30 damage is not an absurd threshold given that there is no hindrance to spellcasting inside the worm, so a decent DPR PC should be able to escape in 2-3 rounds (1-2 rounds of damage due to when the damage triggers)
It has a 45% chance of failing, which isn't too bad. You also have to fail a save yourself.
You can still attack and cast spells from inside.
Swallow effects are mostly available to stronger monsters and you should have more options when you finally get around to fighting them.
I feel like the damage minimum is pretty difficult to reach. A homebrew I'm considering implementing is basing it on cumulative internal damage between the starts of the Purple Worm's turns. That way other PCs can heroically dive into the worm's mouth to help their friend.
By 11th level a Fighter will minimally have 3 attacks per action, which, with 1d10+5 yields an average of 31 points of damage before magic items, action surge, or any other class features. For a level appropriate party, it's not too hard to reach.
You're assuming they all hit, with disadvantage from being blinded and restrained.
The Fighter is technically considered an Unseen Attacker, which would negate the disadvantage and make it a straight roll with a very reasonable +13 to hit.
Even with disadvantage, if the Fighter is reasonably fresh, there is a very good chance that they'll hit the minimum.
Toss in battle maneuvers and other features to further boost To Hit, or add spell damage, and it becomes a comfortable margin.
The Purple Worm only has an 18 AC. That's not a terribly hard target for an 11th level fighter even if they do have disadvantage.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The purple worm has both blindsight and tremor sense, so the fighter won't benefit from being unseen in this case. It might work on some other swallowing monsters, though. Either way +13 is a bit too high for a level 11 melee fighter. Its only a base +9, so you're probably looking at +10/+11 with a magic weapon.
Still a decent chance if you blow your Action Surge or a couple maneuver dice or something similar, but a standard turn is going to be very difficult to reach that threshold.
You guys that say fighting out of being swallowed is easy are on crack. As a player who has had their party and PC swallowed by a Remohaz, a Purple Worm and a Kraken, it's not that easy to get out.
Disadvantage is a big deal. Being blind mean NO spells that require seeing a target, touch spell are at disadvantage. The swallower is not being attacked by an "unseen target", that's plain dumb whether the creature has Tremorsense/Blindsight or not.
My opinion, being swallowed and just a little bad luck probably means you will be rezzing someone if escaping the swallow is necessary. Now having the party defeat the monster and get the PCs out is way more reasonable. My 12th lvl PCs could survive and average of 4-5 rounds inside a Purple Worm. So, if the majority of the party was able to fight as normal, all would be well.
What's dumb is assuming that you can easily miss the purple worm while you're inside it, and that the rules expect it to have the same AC through and through.
Blindsight doesn't matter, because the creature has total cover, but Tremorsense does throw a wrench in the works.
It's a bad situation regardless, doing the requisite damage only triggers the Con Save, it doesn't automatically mean escape. A 50% chance to do 30 points of damage is a 25% to escape. An 80% chance to damage, is still only a 40% chance to escape.
I guess it is an unseen target if you don't have any non-visual senses. Unseen doesn't mean you don't know it's there or where it is, it just means you can't observe its movements to anticipate its strike.
But what would be the point of imposing the Restrained condition if it's not meant to give disadvantage? Grappled would be pretty much the same.
I feel like, realistically, the point is it's hard to use your weapon when you're inside a creature's guts. A slashing weapon might do pretty well. A piercing weapon you have to maneuver around to get the pointy end to point outwards, and then you'll do okay. But who can swing a warhammer inside a worm's guts? Without getting too nitpicky on what kind of weapon you have, I think the idea was to just split the difference and give you disadvantage.
It just doesn't seem very well fleshed out. The easiest thing to do would probably be to force a Strength Saving Throw (DC19 for Purple Worm) each round to determine if the swallowed creature can act or not.
Pass the throw and you can take an action.
Fail the throw and you can take a restricted action.
Fail by rolling under 10 and you're incapacitated.
Not sure that would or should work. I'm applying some interpretation to this rule of Polymorph:
Loosely, we could interpret the contents of the creature's stomach as part of its "gear".
In any case, if your plan works, then wouldn't anyone who tries to Polymorph into a smaller creature fail if they had a big lunch? Or does Polymorph work differently if the contents of your stomach are alive or dead?
When my character was swallowed, I tried the opposite. I Polymorphed myself into a Giant Ape. My DM was generous to let me do it, since technically Polymorph requires sight, but he thought that restriction could be waved if I was using it on myself. I was hoping that I would just bust out of the Purple Worm's stomach, since it can only swallow creatures up to Large, and the Giant Ape is Huge. But the DM wasn't going to let it be that easy. So I was still stuck in there. But the bag of 157 hit points let me survive a good long time.
In general, at high enough level, you will probably have some solution, which is different for every class. I think we were just level 7 or 8 when we fought it, which is pretty low, but we still had a solution. And often, just winning the fight is the solution. You have to be in there for at least 3 rounds to die outright. First round, get swallowed. Second round, take the acid damage and maybe drop to 0 hp. Fail a death save. Third round, take the damage and automatically fail one death save. There's no double fail, because this damage can't crit. Then fail another death save on your turn. Many combats are over in three rounds. Just hope you go late in the initiative or can survive at least one round of acid.
Being swallowed by a monster should be pretty terrifying. The Purple Worm is CR15, and therefore is considered Medium difficulty against 4 level 15 characters. These only take into account non-magic item, non-feat, non-rolled-stat characters though. It's probably a fairly medium encounter for four level 11 characters.
The Purple Worm has a measly 247 hit points and only AC18. My party of five level 7 characters has regularly done 200 damage in just two turns of combat to creatures with similar AC. Monsters in D&D5e over CR3 all have vastly too few hit points, even compared to the CR hit points given in the DM Guide. The best option is to just hammer the living bejeebus out of it.
Assuming some combination of feats, multiclass, magic items, spell boons or whatever, a level 11 fighter will reasonably be putting out something like 1d8+1d8+1d6+7 damage per hit - this would be the case for a 20 Str fighter with a Frostrbrand and any other 1d8 bonus, like battlemaster manoeuvres. It's a rough estimation, not taking into account things like Great Weapon Master, but seems quite reasonable. It's an average of 19 damage per hit, so landing 2 out of 3 attacks gives an escape attempt. Seems pretty fair.
That same fighter will probably be dealing 38 damage in the first turn of combat before the worm takes its turn, and if his 3 friends all do the same, the worm has only about 90 hit points left at the start of the second turn and will pretty much certainly die.
Eaten PC can still attack the purple worm from the inside with disadvantage due to being restrained. So you ticked off the DM and no one else can hit it this round. You still swing with disadvantage. 6d6 is an average of 21 pts of acid damage. It is a tunneler leaves a 10-foot-diameter tunnel in its wake.. Which means if your fellows can more 30 or more feet per round they can follow.
The polymorph trick. I can rule nicely. Both of you and the worm save and if you pass but the worm does not, it spits you out and you are prone. Evil DM The worm only gets a save and if it shrinks you shrink. Also Evil DM hits against the worm do damage to the pc if the to hit number breaks +8 of your ac.
It is a CR 15 monster meaning should only see this as maybe a boss level monster at level 10, or just an encounter at Tier 3.
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.
pavilionaire. The minimum damage is not hard to reach. I ran a level 15 party against a worm my last session. The min was hit twice. Would have been more but the worm ate the heavy hitter on the first round.
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.
Recently happened in a game with 2 worms... one swallowed mage D-doored out, but the other swallowed my stunned barbarian companion. So my artillerist artificer gives chase to one on one, gets bit and swallowed. My solution was to cast fireball ground zero on me and the other character *inside* the worm, hoping to do enough damage to be regurgitated. (I cast absorb elements to reduce my damage, too- I had a plan!)
Thinking about it afterwards, had a couple other possible solutions to float for opinions:
1. clairvoyance (or potion of clairvoyance) - create the invisible sensor outside the worm, allowing use of teleport spells which require seeing where you're going (like misty step or thunder step)
2. arcane eye (I can now take that after leveling up post fight, at least) to do the same
3. had another player propose casting invisibility on the worm (no size limit on it, just 'creature'... while creative in the extreme to be able to see out, RAW the blinded condition still applies to the person inside, but someone outside could then use vortex warp on the trapped player.
Side note- the gm was being nasty: the one that ate the barbarian burrowed... hooray for a fast-thinking artificer!