Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
Sign in- Marketplace
Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
Sign in
I’m just gonna say this, passive perception is in no way comparable to spell saving throws at all. Not only is passive perception optional, but it is only useful for detecting traps or hidden enemies while also being able to remove the disadvantage easily with lights or a source of advantage.
For spell DCs, which have very limited ways of increasing itself, a -5 to a DC is massive. Lets say a wizard with a spell DC of 13 casted Burning Hands on a bandit, normally the bandit would have a 45% chance of succeeding the save, now it would jump all the way up to a 70% success rate. This doesn’t affect non spell saving throws which seems unfair, not to mention that the spellcaster could unprone first, making this addition really inconsistent in what it would do.
You two missed the memo. You're supposed to just blindly shoot this idea down!
In all seriousness, i don't disagree re: opportunity attacks. Regarding spells, i like the idea of either making some chance of spell failure of casting somatic or maybe making the casting of a somatic spell while threatened provoke AoO. I wouldn't want to adjust the final result of a spell, though. I feel like spell casting either works or it doesn't.
Wait isn’t this argument supposed to be about being prone? Why are we now only talking about casters.
Being Prone isn’t game breaking in any regards, if an issue takes more than 12 years to surface and has zero record of happening, it’s not an issue at all.
Because it's casters who most benefit from being prone, due to not suffering penalties to their attacking ability.
They are also the most likely to have things end badly should an enemy make it to them while they are Prone. A monster attacking with Advantage the the d6 hit die, 14AC Wizard is a lot more dangerous than hitting the d10 hit die, 20AC Fighter. The first time a monster takes advantage of the Prone Wizard, they are going to regret making themselves vulnerable.
Hey jl8e, I realized I never addressed this approach which appears at first glance to be a solid counter to the strategy. However, a readied action is a huge sacrifice tactically after level 5 and, in some cases, even before then. Basically, by spending nothing, the player going prone is forcing opponents to give up all of their extra attacks in exchange for not being attacked with disadvantage.
So Prone Abuser can stand up and do everything they want to do for the round, and in response the Smart Opponent cannot bonus action extra attack nor can they take any iterative attacks from higher level attack actions. It's completely one sided, and it's a problem that gets even worse at higher levels. Once the Smart Opponent could have 3 iteratives, they will mathematically never hold their attack because 3 attacks (maybe more with bonus action) at disadvantage is still a better deal than 1 attack at baseline.
I think the reason people don't get why this prone thing is so busted is because they are looking at what I'm saying and thinking that I'm saying "Prone so busted OMG you use you win!" but that's not it at all. Prone is busted because it has basically no cost and is a huge defensive buff when planned for. It's also busted mechanically on the lance because the lance gives itself disadvantage at reach. Stepping forward and losing that reach advantage not only opens the lance user up to opportunity attacks, but can catastrophically open them up to grappling -- grappling which, by the way, the prone user can do with no penalty. Losing reach is a big deal and shouldn't be overlooked. Nor should the opportunity cost of holding an action be ignored.
Prone is broken. That people aren't abusing it is just luck, but in the end, it really could use some simple, straightforward tweaks to bring it back in line. I've outlined some thoughts on that elsewhere, but basically it boils down to equalizing the opportunity cost for having such a powerful defensive buff.
Edit: Btw, don't assume that the prone abuser is always going to be a caster. It could just as easily be a high-ac archer doing hit-and-run, using the athlete feat to reduce the stand up penalty, and sharpshooter and/or crossbow expert to maintain crazy distance. If someone manages to get close enough to attack them without what would normally be disadvantage, they still have disadvantage, and the only thing the prone abuser sacrifices is 5' of movement. No action economy, zilch, and they can pop folks with light or heavy crossbow to easily counteract that offset (or even both since they can swap out their 2-h weapon as part of each attack chain).
One thing that is never clear to me is who's overusing prone at your table. You talk below about character builds with sharpshooter and athlete, but here you're talking about the players having to counter it.
No, we're looking at the sort of fights that happen at our tables and understanding that, under most circumstances, people going prone are either not a big deal, or are putting themselves at a disadvantage.
It sounds to me like your table has fallen into an optimization trap. Somebody hit upon the idea about going prone, and the tactics in use at the table were such that it was effective, and then, instead of mixing up tactics, you went all-in.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are looking at our groups and saying "monsters going prone are just asking for the hurting they're about to receive" and the DMs are saying "if my players did this all the time, at worst I'd have to tinker with my enemy mix a bit".
I believe I've run exactly one encounter in my entire current campaign where anybody going prone would've noticeably helped the PCs, and that was the one where they teleported into somebody else's home teleport circle, and were immediately perforated by a horde of cheap golems with crossbows, because the wizard they're trying to help is kind of paranoid. And if they'd thought to drop prone, that would have been good, smart, tactical thinking, because prone is supposed to be sometimes tactically useful.
I'm looking at every single party I've played in, and seeing things like Archfey bladelocks, monks with boots of speed, and, of course, casters. Most of the casters aren't as bad for self-proning opponents as the warlock who'd drop Hunger of Hadar or Maddening Darkness on your heads, then punch you back in with Eldritch Blasts. (Of course, that's most non-bladepact warlocks.) Even the Strixhaven group, who may in fact be combat pessimized, would not find this a particularly problematic enemy tactic. (Because casters.)
It's been understood since the beginning of weapon mastery that prone is only conditionally useful. If it hurts more than it helps, don't do it. That's not "mechanically busted"; it's just not a no-brainer. If you've got a bunch of foot soldiers following in your wake, you do it, even if it means your second attack is at disadvantage, because it leaves them vulnerable to getting murdered by a bunch of peasants with spears. (Not unlike how lances were used in actual real-world warfare, I believe.)
If you've gone out of your way to build this character:
Finally, even if you're right, and this is actually the generally optimal combat tactic, it still doesn't need changing. Like so many other optimization tricks, it doesn't reflect the reality of play at the vast majority of tables, and changing the rules to neuter it for you would make play worse for everybody else, who go prone only when they're facing a lot of archers and don't have cover. D&D is not a tactical wargame.
Is this the most important issue facing the game? Obviously not. And is it urgent? Of course not. But it's an area for improvement.
Prone largely exists as a debuff- by definition it's not supposed to be "healthy" for the subject in most cases.
Just to put this into perspective... you know what is cheaper than prone and is even more protective for your backline? Moving 5' behind the wall you are next to for total cover after your ranged attack. Enemies not being able to attack at all is much better than forcing them to attack at disadvantage. And since many battlefields usually have some form of total cover available for a medium-sized creature, dropping prone as a defensive maneuver is only useful in those few battlefields where cover is difficult to come by.
Now, do all of the (lack of) benefits and detriments that happen to you when you go prone make sense from a real-world perspective? Of course not. But it's not some kind of one-size-fits-all defensive boon, either. If you want to make it seem more realistic in your games by adding all this stuff, feel free, but you've yet to convince me that it's actually a problem with the mechanics of the game.