"As an action, you can spread a bag of caltrops to cover a square area that is 5 feet on a side. Any creature that enters the area must succeed on a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw or stop moving this turn and take 1 piercing damage. Taking this damage reduces the creature's walking speed by 10 feet until the creature regains at least 1 hit point. A creature moving through the area at half speed doesn't need to make the save."
If you spill more than one sack of caltrops in a square does it do more damage?
Although it might not make logical sense, I believe that according to the rules, adding a second bag of caltrops to the same square would do nothing.
The description says that you use one bag "to cover a square area". So, the area is already covered. Adding another bag can't really "cover it more" or "cover it again" -- the area is already covered. (Of course, we ignore the fact that there are only 20 of them in a bag, and spreading this many objects out over a 5 x 5 area would actually be pretty sparse.)
It wouldn't make sense for more damage to be caused. Either you step on some caltrops or you prevent this with a successful Dex Save.
As for the Dex Save, this is triggered by entering an area that is covered with caltrops. Since it's the same area and you only enter that area once, you should only have to make one Save. And the DC should remain the same. It seems like a reasonable house rule to increase the DC by a few points for every bag used, but really you are just comparing the DC of entering an area that is covered with caltrops vs the DC of entering an area that is covered with caltrops -- so the DC remains the same.
It would seem that you'd be better off covering adjacent areas so that it's not as easy to simply jump over the total area at full speed, and so you'd be effectively setting up a meaningfully sized area of difficult terrain (half speed).
Wow, I just realized that if you set up a bunch of these areas in a row and a particularly unintelligent creature tries to just mindlessly trudge across them all at full speed then if that creature normally has a speed of 30 and they fail just 3 of these saves then their speed is permanently reduced to 0 unless they have some sort of healing. That's pretty nasty! I feel like that probably wasn't the intent, but that's how the description reads.
I think it was the intent; even most animals will recognize the hazard after they get hurt by it and at that point they can simply drop to half speed in most circumstances either because they can see the hazard in front of them or because they're generally unable to see their surroundings and so will move carefully after something in the environment hurts them.
I thought I might increase the DC as it would be harder to avoid more. It takes up your action to place them too. If a player wants to spend multiple turns setting up caltrops in combat I want to reward their effort somehow.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"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?"
Respectfully, if you already know what you as a DM want to do, you don't need to ask the question. And if you're asking as a player the answer is "RAW this does nothing, anything else is up to your DM"; any argument you find here about personal interpretations isn't really something you can bring to the DM as a hard reason why it should be that way.
Regarding "rewarding the player", that depends on how you want to run your table; caltrops barely work as a mid-combat option in the first place, so really if someone is using multiple of them they're laying a trap, so they're not really "spending" time in a measurable way based on how most tables run player actions when initiative hasn't been rolled. So it honestly reads more like a player trying to wheedle an advantage without spending much in the way of "effort" (1 gp per bag is almost never a significant investment of resources unless the characters are brand new and very low level). Adventuring gear is not designed to have strong effects, it's designed to fill basic out of combat applications or be used at low levels before more class features have come online.
If you spill more than one sack of caltrops in a square does it do more damage?
Does the target roll once or twice?
Does it do nothing?
"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
The rules for combining game effects would suggest two bags of caltrops in a square behave exactly like one bag of caltrops in a square.
Although it might not make logical sense, I believe that according to the rules, adding a second bag of caltrops to the same square would do nothing.
The description says that you use one bag "to cover a square area". So, the area is already covered. Adding another bag can't really "cover it more" or "cover it again" -- the area is already covered. (Of course, we ignore the fact that there are only 20 of them in a bag, and spreading this many objects out over a 5 x 5 area would actually be pretty sparse.)
It wouldn't make sense for more damage to be caused. Either you step on some caltrops or you prevent this with a successful Dex Save.
As for the Dex Save, this is triggered by entering an area that is covered with caltrops. Since it's the same area and you only enter that area once, you should only have to make one Save. And the DC should remain the same. It seems like a reasonable house rule to increase the DC by a few points for every bag used, but really you are just comparing the DC of entering an area that is covered with caltrops vs the DC of entering an area that is covered with caltrops -- so the DC remains the same.
It would seem that you'd be better off covering adjacent areas so that it's not as easy to simply jump over the total area at full speed, and so you'd be effectively setting up a meaningfully sized area of difficult terrain (half speed).
Wow, I just realized that if you set up a bunch of these areas in a row and a particularly unintelligent creature tries to just mindlessly trudge across them all at full speed then if that creature normally has a speed of 30 and they fail just 3 of these saves then their speed is permanently reduced to 0 unless they have some sort of healing. That's pretty nasty! I feel like that probably wasn't the intent, but that's how the description reads.
I think it was the intent; even most animals will recognize the hazard after they get hurt by it and at that point they can simply drop to half speed in most circumstances either because they can see the hazard in front of them or because they're generally unable to see their surroundings and so will move carefully after something in the environment hurts them.
I thought I might increase the DC as it would be harder to avoid more. It takes up your action to place them too. If a player wants to spend multiple turns setting up caltrops in combat I want to reward their effort somehow.
"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
Respectfully, if you already know what you as a DM want to do, you don't need to ask the question. And if you're asking as a player the answer is "RAW this does nothing, anything else is up to your DM"; any argument you find here about personal interpretations isn't really something you can bring to the DM as a hard reason why it should be that way.
Regarding "rewarding the player", that depends on how you want to run your table; caltrops barely work as a mid-combat option in the first place, so really if someone is using multiple of them they're laying a trap, so they're not really "spending" time in a measurable way based on how most tables run player actions when initiative hasn't been rolled. So it honestly reads more like a player trying to wheedle an advantage without spending much in the way of "effort" (1 gp per bag is almost never a significant investment of resources unless the characters are brand new and very low level). Adventuring gear is not designed to have strong effects, it's designed to fill basic out of combat applications or be used at low levels before more class features have come online.
It's good to read other people's thoughts on the matter before deciding.
"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