Am in a bit of a quandary as usually I'd say yes for intelligent creatures while Pack Tactics covers exception to just looking at Int values... But I have undead controlled by an malevolent intelligence but is it OK to have a skeleton use the help action to give advantage to another skeleton to overcome disadvantage against a PC who has protection Good/Evil (undead)?
thanks for any replies thoughts
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“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Not usually for me, because as far a I am concerned, two unmodified attack rolls are better than a single attack roll with advantage. The same amount of d20’s are rolled, but this way if both hit, both hit instead of one of the hits being wasted if both rolls of advantage hit. Of course, this could be different if one of the monsters had a significantly more powerful attack, in which case the weaker one is more likely to help.
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I am a swimmer. If you see me running, you should run too, because it means something horrible is chasing me.
Thanks for the reply Geophreigh_the_rather_large I think it's insignificant at 50% chance to hit but gets quite extreme ie target roll of 17 is 20% normally but 4% with disadvantage so 20% v 8% if you have two tries at disadvantage
I realize my personal quandary about the help action when regarding protection wasn't really posed in the heading which probably was a mistake, for some reason I feel I should be giving my player the chance to resist being distracted... something just feels off with the situation to me
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“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Thanks for the reply Geophreigh_the_rather_large I think it's insignificant at 50% chance to hit but gets quite extreme ie target roll of 17 is 20% normally but 4% with disadvantage so 20% v 8% if you have two tries at disadvantage
I realize my personal quandary about the help action when regarding protection wasn't really posed in the heading which probably was a mistake, for some reason I feel I should be giving my player the chance to resist being distracted... something just feels off with the situation to me
Geo's comment is that if you are rolling the d20 twice, then why not go with the option that allows you to roll two lots of damage if both die roll high enough (2 attacks), rather than only allowing one damage roll if one or two die roll high enough.
Unintelligent creatures like undead wouldn't be able to process the situational information required to know whether to use the help action or not.
To answer your first question directly, no, I don't typically have monsters/villians use the Help. There are plenty of ways to grant a monster advantage besides foregoing an action to provide that benefit. Action economy being what it is around here, I find it more valuable to do something like try to Shove or Grapple.
As to your quandry question, it seems like you are asking the question of is it ok for your malevolent controller to use enough resources to overcome the PC's protection from evil/good, that the NPC might not have a way of knowing/understanding. Effectively meta-knowledge for the NPC that the PC is protected from that particular source of harm. My suggestion is that if the "malevolence-in-question" were well connected, has access to intimate knowledge of the PCs and their combat abilities, and understands protection from good/evil, then yes, they would cause their minions to actively counter the PCs baked-in defenses. If the NPC has no knowledge of the party's capabilities, they would have no reason to suspect the need for more agressive tactics.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
thanks for the reply Farling I don't think I misunderstood Geophreigh_the_rather_large and he certainly has a point if you require a +11 on a d20 to hit
and as for undead being mindless well sure if they aren't controlled I did say "I have undead controlled by an malevolent intelligence"
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“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Its very rare i'd have monsters use the Help action in combat.
I would have no problem having a skeleton use the Help action as the outcome could be explained as not exactly as a calculated move, such as the skeleton loosing balance in front of the character and bouncing on it, giving advantage to another enemy to attack it.
Getting the impression the answer to the title question/first question of " Do your monsters use the help action?" is a kind of "well not that often" which is what my answer would be really...
As for the Second regarding overcoming Protection Good/Evil (undead) I'm reading " "OK" under certain circumstances "
I think it might help to expand a little more what's going on in my head currently I'm running CoS for the first time and getting a taste of how powerful "disadvantage" via Protection from Evil and Good with high AC is in D&D I'm quite happy to have Strahd Zombies march mindlessly into the PC's meat grinder it fits its fun... but it's going to be another thing with old Strahd once he decides his toys are no fun anymore... and The PC's will no doubt be stacking Advantage/Disadvantage with Sunlight and Protection from Evil and Good so it will boil down to how many Swarm of Bats or Swarm of Rats or Wolf's do I need doing a Help Action to turn that disadvantage into advantage for Strahd von Zarovich and I'm thinking its about three... that's going to be a nasty surprise for my players if I just spring that on them.
As for Flanking Sanvael I've been doing quite abit of theater of the mind with my group and when on VTT I've not bothered with Flanking but it's probably a good idea to seeing as we're all abit more experienced with the basic rules
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
But that is only relevant if you are using the horrible Flanking optional rule.
In earlier editions there was a penalty for trying to move into a flanking position; that penalty doesn't exist in 5E so flanking is just a stupid rule to use that will ensure that all creatures will have advantage most of the time.
I'm quite happy to have Strahd Zombies march mindlessly into the PC's meat grinder it fits its fun... but it's going to be another thing with old Strahd once he decides his toys are no fun anymore... and The PC's will no doubt be stacking Advantage/Disadvantage with Sunlight and Protection from Evil and Good so it will boil down to how many Swarm of Bats or Swarm of Rats or Wolf's do I need doing a Help Action to turn that disadvantage into advantage for Strahd von Zarovich and I'm thinking its about three... that's going to be a nasty surprise for my players if I just spring that on them.
In my mind, anytime we use the focus of legends and lore, like Strahd... y'know.. from Curse of Strahd... there should be some expectation that they know things that the average "Baddie" wouldn't have access to. In this instance, I would suggest that things would be lopsided in favor of the entity that controls the Demi-plane that they are living in. I would almost expect that the undead in this realm to behave differently than the "normal undead back home".
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I don't believe I've ever had my monsters use help, but that's a combination of not wanting to keep track and it not actually being a good option most of the time.
Yes, creatures that are evolved, are trained, or have learned by experience to help each other (in other words, most monsters) will take the Help action when doing so is a good idea. However, in practice the usefulness of the Help action is oftenlimited to ability checks (for example, two orcs working together to break down a door), because of the simple math - the same simple math that makes this spell completely useless in combat - that one attack with Advantage is worse than two flat attacks.
This concept, of course, assumes that both monsters have the same attack power. A CR 1/8 kobold jumping on top of an adventurer to give its adult red dragon boss Advantage on a Bite attack is a totally different equation, and something I can imagine the kobolds being trained to do.
As for your idea with the swarms of bats and rats being paired with a vampire, I'd like to note that, RAW, Advantage and Disadvantage always cancel each other out no matter how many "Advantages" or "Disadvantages" you end up with on either side. Yes, it's a stupid rule, but it's a core rule of the game, so I'd reconsider before "turning Disadvantage into Advantage." However, in terms of providing a Help action to let Strahd roll flat - or with Advantage if he finds an PC who hasn't been buffed up against undead with holy magic - I think the swarms follow the same equation as my dragon and kobold. The bats are primarily there to provide a distraction, and for them, Helping is doing just that.
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Panda-wat (I hate my username) is somehow convinced that he is objectively right about everything D&D related even though he obviously is not. Considering that, he'd probably make a great D&D youtuber.
"If I die, I can live with that." ~Luke Hart, the DM lair
I think it might help to expand a little more what's going on in my head currently I'm running CoS for the first time and getting a taste of how powerful "disadvantage" via Protection from Evil and Good with high AC is in D&D I'm quite happy to have Strahd Zombies march mindlessly into the PC's meat grinder it fits its fun... but it's going to be another thing with old Strahd once he decides his toys are no fun anymore... and The PC's will no doubt be stacking Advantage/Disadvantage with Sunlight and Protection from Evil and Good so it will boil down to how many Swarm of Bats or Swarm of Rats or Wolf's do I need doing a Help Action to turn that disadvantage into advantage for Strahd von Zarovich and I'm thinking its about three... that's going to be a nasty surprise for my players if I just spring that on them.
An interesting idea! I would use Dire Wolf for the fight with Strahd as they would be unaffected by the protection spells and the sunlight, AND have pack tactics basically giving all of them advantage. The party will have the reassess threat between Strahd and the real killers, the dire wolves.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
In the rules monsters can take the help action and it probably works well for some combats. For example I can imagine an interesting combat where you have a big slow undead monstrosity and a hoard of zombies, grappling, shoving and helping the big monster land hits.
Just keep in mind that for allot of monsters, the help action is not going to be super optimal. Allot of monsters have fairly powerful abilities and attacks they could use instead its really only when you have one very powerful monster and some weak monsters that help comes into play.
Farling - I take it your not a fan of the optional Flanking rules will keep that in mind and test it myself before introducing it to a session
Kaavel - Yes very much so, that was my reading of Ravenlofts Demi-planes of Dread to
Greenstone_Walker & Pantagruel666 - Yeah that's been my DM'ing experience to so far using mainly other actions (shove) if any other then attack.
Panda_wat - It's very much the Kobold & Red Dragon situation I'm pondering on, ah writing "stacking Advantage/Disadvantage" may have been a bit misleading, I wasn't suggesting that the result of a "stack" could be anything other than advantage-normal-disadvantage though I think there is some shenanigan's one can do with the lucky feat but that's beside the point... Ie PC has protection good/evil and have Strahd in Sunlight - Strahd has disadvantage to hit because he is in sunlight, Strahd has disadvantage to hit the PC because he has protection good/evil -> there are 2 disadvantages on the "stack" result = disadvantage now if Strahd wanted to counter that (disadvantage) on (to hit) and turn it into (advantage) for himself he would need 3 advantages on the "stack" ie via the help action from his minions. Anyways that's how I've always handled it.
Wysperra - I think you have the solution to my quandary of not unfairly springing a rule mechanic on my players in the end fight, I have to use the help action before to remind my players it exists!
Solarsyphon - yeah I hadn't been using it really because of this before, now in a new campaign this combination of many weak monsters and one very powerful one is at hand
Thanks again for your Replies and Thoughts feel much more confident about the situation
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“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
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Do your Monsters use the Help Action?
Am in a bit of a quandary as usually I'd say yes for intelligent creatures while Pack Tactics covers exception to just looking at Int values...
But I have undead controlled by an malevolent intelligence but is it OK to have a skeleton use the help action to give advantage to another skeleton to overcome disadvantage against a PC who has protection Good/Evil (undead)?
thanks for any replies thoughts
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Not usually for me, because as far a I am concerned, two unmodified attack rolls are better than a single attack roll with advantage. The same amount of d20’s are rolled, but this way if both hit, both hit instead of one of the hits being wasted if both rolls of advantage hit. Of course, this could be different if one of the monsters had a significantly more powerful attack, in which case the weaker one is more likely to help.
Anything is edible if you try hard enough!
I am a swimmer. If you see me running, you should run too, because it means something horrible is chasing me.
Thanks for the reply Geophreigh_the_rather_large
I think it's insignificant at 50% chance to hit but gets quite extreme ie target roll of 17 is 20% normally but 4% with disadvantage so 20% v 8% if you have two tries at disadvantage
I realize my personal quandary about the help action when regarding protection wasn't really posed in the heading which probably was a mistake, for some reason I feel I should be giving my player the chance to resist being distracted... something just feels off with the situation to me
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Geo's comment is that if you are rolling the d20 twice, then why not go with the option that allows you to roll two lots of damage if both die roll high enough (2 attacks), rather than only allowing one damage roll if one or two die roll high enough.
Unintelligent creatures like undead wouldn't be able to process the situational information required to know whether to use the help action or not.
To answer your first question directly, no, I don't typically have monsters/villians use the Help. There are plenty of ways to grant a monster advantage besides foregoing an action to provide that benefit. Action economy being what it is around here, I find it more valuable to do something like try to Shove or Grapple.
As to your quandry question, it seems like you are asking the question of is it ok for your malevolent controller to use enough resources to overcome the PC's protection from evil/good, that the NPC might not have a way of knowing/understanding. Effectively meta-knowledge for the NPC that the PC is protected from that particular source of harm. My suggestion is that if the "malevolence-in-question" were well connected, has access to intimate knowledge of the PCs and their combat abilities, and understands protection from good/evil, then yes, they would cause their minions to actively counter the PCs baked-in defenses. If the NPC has no knowledge of the party's capabilities, they would have no reason to suspect the need for more agressive tactics.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
thanks for the reply Farling I don't think I misunderstood Geophreigh_the_rather_large and he certainly has a point if you require a +11 on a d20 to hit
and as for undead being mindless well sure if they aren't controlled I did say "I have undead controlled by an malevolent intelligence"
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Its very rare i'd have monsters use the Help action in combat.
I would have no problem having a skeleton use the Help action as the outcome could be explained as not exactly as a calculated move, such as the skeleton loosing balance in front of the character and bouncing on it, giving advantage to another enemy to attack it.
Have them flank the PC instead, if they can.
Thanks Kaavel , Plaguescarred and Sanvael for your replies / thoughts
Getting the impression the answer to the title question/first question of " Do your monsters use the help action?" is a kind of "well not that often" which is what my answer would be really...
As for the Second regarding overcoming Protection Good/Evil (undead) I'm reading " "OK" under certain circumstances "
I think it might help to expand a little more what's going on in my head currently I'm running CoS for the first time and getting a taste of how powerful "disadvantage" via Protection from Evil and Good with high AC is in D&D
I'm quite happy to have Strahd Zombies march mindlessly into the PC's meat grinder it fits its fun... but it's going to be another thing with old Strahd once he decides his toys are no fun anymore... and The PC's will no doubt be stacking Advantage/Disadvantage with Sunlight and Protection from Evil and Good so it will boil down to how many Swarm of Bats or Swarm of Rats or Wolf's do I need doing a Help Action to turn that disadvantage into advantage for Strahd von Zarovich and I'm thinking its about three... that's going to be a nasty surprise for my players if I just spring that on them.
As for Flanking Sanvael I've been doing quite abit of theater of the mind with my group and when on VTT I've not bothered with Flanking but it's probably a good idea to seeing as we're all abit more experienced with the basic rules
Thanks again for all your replies
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
But that is only relevant if you are using the horrible Flanking optional rule.
In earlier editions there was a penalty for trying to move into a flanking position; that penalty doesn't exist in 5E so flanking is just a stupid rule to use that will ensure that all creatures will have advantage most of the time.
Yes. Enemy familiars help on attacks. Mobs help each other grapple and shove.
In my mind, anytime we use the focus of legends and lore, like Strahd... y'know.. from Curse of Strahd... there should be some expectation that they know things that the average "Baddie" wouldn't have access to. In this instance, I would suggest that things would be lopsided in favor of the entity that controls the Demi-plane that they are living in. I would almost expect that the undead in this realm to behave differently than the "normal undead back home".
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I don't believe I've ever had my monsters use help, but that's a combination of not wanting to keep track and it not actually being a good option most of the time.
Yes, creatures that are evolved, are trained, or have learned by experience to help each other (in other words, most monsters) will take the Help action when doing so is a good idea. However, in practice the usefulness of the Help action is oftenlimited to ability checks (for example, two orcs working together to break down a door), because of the simple math - the same simple math that makes this spell completely useless in combat - that one attack with Advantage is worse than two flat attacks.
This concept, of course, assumes that both monsters have the same attack power. A CR 1/8 kobold jumping on top of an adventurer to give its adult red dragon boss Advantage on a Bite attack is a totally different equation, and something I can imagine the kobolds being trained to do.
As for your idea with the swarms of bats and rats being paired with a vampire, I'd like to note that, RAW, Advantage and Disadvantage always cancel each other out no matter how many "Advantages" or "Disadvantages" you end up with on either side. Yes, it's a stupid rule, but it's a core rule of the game, so I'd reconsider before "turning Disadvantage into Advantage." However, in terms of providing a Help action to let Strahd roll flat - or with Advantage if he finds an PC who hasn't been buffed up against undead with holy magic - I think the swarms follow the same equation as my dragon and kobold. The bats are primarily there to provide a distraction, and for them, Helping is doing just that.
Panda-wat (I hate my username) is somehow convinced that he is objectively right about everything D&D related even though he obviously is not. Considering that, he'd probably make a great D&D youtuber.
"If I die, I can live with that." ~Luke Hart, the DM lair
An interesting idea! I would use Dire Wolf for the fight with Strahd as they would be unaffected by the protection spells and the sunlight, AND have pack tactics basically giving all of them advantage. The party will have the reassess threat between Strahd and the real killers, the dire wolves.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
As far as encounters in general, I"ve used the help action in order to remind my players that they have the ability to do the help action themselves.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
In the rules monsters can take the help action and it probably works well for some combats. For example I can imagine an interesting combat where you have a big slow undead monstrosity and a hoard of zombies, grappling, shoving and helping the big monster land hits.
Just keep in mind that for allot of monsters, the help action is not going to be super optimal. Allot of monsters have fairly powerful abilities and attacks they could use instead its really only when you have one very powerful monster and some weak monsters that help comes into play.
Thank you all so much for your replies thoughts Farling, Greenstone_Walker, Kaavel, Pantagruel666, Panda_wat, Wysperra and Solarsyphon
Farling - I take it your not a fan of the optional Flanking rules will keep that in mind and test it myself before introducing it to a session
Kaavel - Yes very much so, that was my reading of Ravenlofts Demi-planes of Dread to
Greenstone_Walker & Pantagruel666 - Yeah that's been my DM'ing experience to so far using mainly other actions (shove) if any other then attack.
Panda_wat - It's very much the Kobold & Red Dragon situation I'm pondering on, ah writing "stacking Advantage/Disadvantage" may have been a bit misleading, I wasn't suggesting that the result of a "stack" could be anything other than advantage-normal-disadvantage though I think there is some shenanigan's one can do with the lucky feat but that's beside the point...
Ie PC has protection good/evil and have Strahd in Sunlight - Strahd has disadvantage to hit because he is in sunlight, Strahd has disadvantage to hit the PC because he has protection good/evil -> there are 2 disadvantages on the "stack" result = disadvantage
now if Strahd wanted to counter that (disadvantage) on (to hit) and turn it into (advantage) for himself he would need 3 advantages on the "stack" ie via the help action from his minions.
Anyways that's how I've always handled it.
Wysperra - I think you have the solution to my quandary of not unfairly springing a rule mechanic on my players in the end fight, I have to use the help action before to remind my players it exists!
Solarsyphon - yeah I hadn't been using it really because of this before, now in a new campaign this combination of many weak monsters and one very powerful one is at hand
Thanks again for your Replies and Thoughts feel much more confident about the situation
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again