I just played in a game the other day and decimated a bunch of orcs with this combo. There are three things that make it so nasty.
Goblin's nimble escape lets you hide with a bonus action.
GPS has a really nasty attack. +6 to hit, which is fantastic for level 4. You do 1d4+4 piercing and 3d6 poison. DC 11 con save, half damage on a save.
GPS has 10 foot reach on it's attack.
People know about the trick to cast barkskin before wild shaping, but for this setup you actually want pass without trace (which you can use before hand to help your party sneak up. win/win). With pass without trace, the lowest you can get on a stealth roll is a 15. If you are fighting in bushes, brush, water, or somewhere with lots of cover, you can strike at a foe with the 10 foot reach then move out and hide each round. With +6 to hit and advantage from being hidden, you'll almost always hit, and you'll have a decent chance to crit.
When learning the druid, I looked at the Practical Guide to Wild Shape (https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/classes/druid/wildshape.html), but I'm afraid they have vastly underrated the giant poisonous snake. They rated it as bad (the worst rating given). Their reasoning was that "the poison DC is very low, and it's unusable until level 4, at which point you have better options.". I wonder if they misread the stat block (or perhaps it was updated at some point???) because although the DC for the poison damage isn't great, it still does half damage on a save. And the damage is very high to begin with so that even on a save you're averaging around 5 poison damage. Most creatures that are around cr 1/2 to cr 1 are still only going to be around a +2 con on average, so you still have nearly a 50% chance for them to fail and take the full damage.
Anyway, I would say the giant poisonous snake is perhaps one of the best forms, even including cr 1/2 creatures (GPS is 1/4). It does more damage, has a higher hit chance, and has 10 foot reach. With the right combination of factors (nimble escape, cover, and maybe pass without trace) it becomes an unstoppable killing machine, and even without all those things it can rely on front line fighters to hold enemies while it strikes from outside their range.
Pretty good. I would say intelligent enemies would counter you with Ready action after your first or second attack though. Wait until you try to attack, which gives you away if you leave cover. You technically are as you spring forward to make your attack up to 10 ft. Ready Action uses Reaction which interrupts whatever you are doing, allowing an enemy to hit you or cast on you. You still get to make your attack but, now it is more tit for tat.
absolutely. If there are multiple enemies, at least you can try to limit it so that only 1 hits you with their held action. Also, if there is other combat going on, they may be wasting their turn by holding it for you.
True but, you are "Giant Poisonous Snake!!!" I was responding to this:
With the right combination of factors (nimble escape, cover, and maybe pass without trace) it becomes an unstoppable killing machine, and even without all those things it can rely on front line fighters to hold enemies while it strikes from outside their range.
I posted how to attempt to counter, to make it a stoppable killing machine. ; P
As far as wasting turns, this happens a lot anyway when people want to engage a specific target instead of just any target. Sometimes the scariest looking target isn't the most dangerous but, that won't stop mob mentality.
When learning the druid, I looked at the Practical Guide to Wild Shape (https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/classes/druid/wildshape.html), but I'm afraid they have vastly underrated the giant poisonous snake. They rated it as bad (the worst rating given). Their reasoning was that "the poison DC is very low, and it's unusable until level 4, at which point you have better options.". I wonder if they misread the stat block (or perhaps it was updated at some point???) because although the DC for the poison damage isn't great, it still does half damage on a save. And the damage is very high to begin with so that even on a save you're averaging around 5 poison damage. Most creatures that are around cr 1/2 to cr 1 are still only going to be around a +2 con on average, so you still have nearly a 50% chance for them to fail and take the full damage.
Rpgbot gives some of the worst advice I've ever seen. A pity their results show up so high in search engines.
Well if you just cast fog cloud or even major image to make obscurement and GPS has 10 foot blindsight so auto adv for you and disadv for them. I do like the goblins disengage however, if you use a creature with decent movement you walk up get an attack or 2, I think moon Druid would be best for this, in which case there are good options, but after you hit the attacks you disengage let’s say maybe 50 feet from the creature you pick cus most have at least 40 so you are out of reach from a lot of creatures reach
I just played in a game the other day and decimated a bunch of orcs with this combo. There are three things that make it so nasty.
People know about the trick to cast barkskin before wild shaping, but for this setup you actually want pass without trace (which you can use before hand to help your party sneak up. win/win). With pass without trace, the lowest you can get on a stealth roll is a 15. If you are fighting in bushes, brush, water, or somewhere with lots of cover, you can strike at a foe with the 10 foot reach then move out and hide each round. With +6 to hit and advantage from being hidden, you'll almost always hit, and you'll have a decent chance to crit.
When learning the druid, I looked at the Practical Guide to Wild Shape (https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/classes/druid/wildshape.html), but I'm afraid they have vastly underrated the giant poisonous snake. They rated it as bad (the worst rating given). Their reasoning was that "the poison DC is very low, and it's unusable until level 4, at which point you have better options.". I wonder if they misread the stat block (or perhaps it was updated at some point???) because although the DC for the poison damage isn't great, it still does half damage on a save. And the damage is very high to begin with so that even on a save you're averaging around 5 poison damage. Most creatures that are around cr 1/2 to cr 1 are still only going to be around a +2 con on average, so you still have nearly a 50% chance for them to fail and take the full damage.
Anyway, I would say the giant poisonous snake is perhaps one of the best forms, even including cr 1/2 creatures (GPS is 1/4). It does more damage, has a higher hit chance, and has 10 foot reach. With the right combination of factors (nimble escape, cover, and maybe pass without trace) it becomes an unstoppable killing machine, and even without all those things it can rely on front line fighters to hold enemies while it strikes from outside their range.
And finally, snakes are just cool as hell.
Pretty good. I would say intelligent enemies would counter you with Ready action after your first or second attack though. Wait until you try to attack, which gives you away if you leave cover. You technically are as you spring forward to make your attack up to 10 ft. Ready Action uses Reaction which interrupts whatever you are doing, allowing an enemy to hit you or cast on you. You still get to make your attack but, now it is more tit for tat.
absolutely. If there are multiple enemies, at least you can try to limit it so that only 1 hits you with their held action. Also, if there is other combat going on, they may be wasting their turn by holding it for you.
True but, you are "Giant Poisonous Snake!!!" I was responding to this:
With the right combination of factors (nimble escape, cover, and maybe pass without trace) it becomes an unstoppable killing machine, and even without all those things it can rely on front line fighters to hold enemies while it strikes from outside their range.
I posted how to attempt to counter, to make it a stoppable killing machine. ; P
As far as wasting turns, this happens a lot anyway when people want to engage a specific target instead of just any target. Sometimes the scariest looking target isn't the most dangerous but, that won't stop mob mentality.
Rpgbot gives some of the worst advice I've ever seen. A pity their results show up so high in search engines.
I recommend the Druid guide at https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?584818 for more useful ratings.
It's a good form. The obvious counter is Readying an Action to Grapple the snake when it attacks.
Well if you just cast fog cloud or even major image to make obscurement and GPS has 10 foot blindsight so auto adv for you and disadv for them. I do like the goblins disengage however, if you use a creature with decent movement you walk up get an attack or 2, I think moon Druid would be best for this, in which case there are good options, but after you hit the attacks you disengage let’s say maybe 50 feet from the creature you pick cus most have at least 40 so you are out of reach from a lot of creatures reach
This is a pretty cool combo, I used a similar one at lower levels with the Giant Centipede which has similar stats
Player: "Wait, it can't do that in the Monster Manual statblock..."
take a level in rogue and now you get cunning action.