As someone whos gearing up to study a zoology degree....
You're not wrong. Plankton do have an incredibly large impact on the oceanic environment, however we aren't talking about that. The root of the conversation was about the sleep spell targeting these microorganisms but this idea only being applicable in the ocean, not on land where there could be any number of ants, fleas, flies etc that would constitute the same worth of hit points (essentially none) and have the same environmental impact, because thats how ecosystems are made: they build off of plants and microorganisms.
The decision not to have sleep affect these sorts of miniscule creatures is in the point of fairness and reasonability. If you want to rule otherwise, I'm sure many players would find that tedious and feel punished for the use of a normally quite creative spell. I would also like to add that any system to calculate the number of these plankton or insects would be unfair, as any regular system would not match real life distributions (as that seems to be your main point: that these creatures exist as a significant part of these habitats and it increases immersion have sleep affect them), but random systems would be even more unfair for players.
Id like to end this by saying this is a thread about fun underwater encounters using terrain and ocean environments, not a study of microorganisms and their importance in all ecosystems, and why that makes them constitute for the sleep spell to affect them. If you want to discuss that, I suggest a university or library.
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'The Cleverness of mushrooms always surprises me!' - Ivern Bramblefoot.
"There are also bacteria on any living organisms. I guess it would be also logical and scientific to say any spells we try to cast on any targets in land, air or water, would have missed because there are plenty of bacteria on them.
Now I wonder how any spells would hit anything in anywhere.
Just in case, there can be viruses in the air as one coughs, so next time a mage aims at any one of us, just sneeze/cough.
Plenty of larvae in the pond, guess we are not going to hit that fish with our spells. In the unlikely case, there are semen in the pond too, your spell hits the semen instead.
Let me add fungi to the list too! How can we forget the funniest guy of the smallest thing? See that weird patch of skin on my enemy? Those are fungi on a human! Now my spell will be absorbed by them!
Am I overkilling yet? Wait, there is a chameleon resting on the monster head, your spell hits the chameleon instead of the monster! Hey, there is an octopus right there, it camouflages itself to its background and your character doesn't see that, are you sure you want to aim your spell at the Kraken?"
I just wanna say, all target creature spells should never have worked at all anyway. We are all pointing at some tiny creatures beyond our normal perception. And that is why no magic or spells exists in our Earth. Yes, SCIENCE!
(I would like to thank every scientist for ruining magic. You make impossible IMPOSSIBLE XD)
Me: Okay, DM, you make the rules, if my spell will hit something else, so I shall attack the creature with my sword then.
DM: Your sword hits the bacteria on his hand and they die. Mr. Evil takes 0 point of dmg.
Me: ......🧐
DM!: Your attack misses Mr. Evil completely, but you did hit something after all. Come on, you rolled a 1.
(This reply is brought to you by "Jesus Cries", No.1 album in Hell, approved by Satan, and published by Hades Records)
No need to reply. Just laugh at this whole thing for 10mins and listen to "Jesus Cries". I just wanna prove science can literally kill everything when applied accurately according to the laws and physics surrounding us. Just one more for the lol, my Magic Missiles hit the flea on the Displacer Beast and deals 4 dmg, killing the flea instantly.
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Personal Signature should be creative and original:
Game: DD 5e
Group preferred: On the line
Experience: 2.5 yrs or so.
Location/Timezone: Iseikai Time//EMT (Emilia-tan), but not MIT.
Availability: When I sign up, I know I should be free.
Preferred role: Player. But honestly, I am into serious relationship.
As someone whos gearing up to study a zoology degree....
You're not wrong. Plankton do have an incredibly large impact on the oceanic environment, however we aren't talking about that. The root of the conversation was about the sleep spell targeting these microorganisms but this idea only being applicable in the ocean, not on land where there could be any number of ants, fleas, flies etc that would constitute the same worth of hit points (essentially none) and have the same environmental impact, because thats how ecosystems are made: they build off of plants and microorganisms.
The decision not to have sleep affect these sorts of miniscule creatures is in the point of fairness and reasonability. If you want to rule otherwise, I'm sure many players would find that tedious and feel punished for the use of a normally quite creative spell. I would also like to add that any system to calculate the number of these plankton or insects would be unfair, as any regular system would not match real life distributions (as that seems to be your main point: that these creatures exist as a significant part of these habitats and it increases immersion have sleep affect them), but random systems would be even more unfair for players.
Id like to end this by saying this is a thread about fun underwater encounters using terrain and ocean environments, not a study of microorganisms and their importance in all ecosystems, and why that makes them constitute for the sleep spell to affect them. If you want to discuss that, I suggest a university or library.
While I respect your professional background, I disagree with you. The game already has stats for Swarms of Rats, Swarms of Quippers, even Swarms of Campestri (ambulatory fungi). As such, if the creatures you are dealing with are in large enough concentration to have hit points and be visible, it is fair that PCs should have to account for them provided that the DM is transparent in communications with the players.
Also, Sleep is one spell. The vast majority of spells in 5E do not affect targets based on their # of hit points and even out of those that do, most have only 1 target. Power Word Kill and Finger of Death, for instance, also have a hit point limitation, but they only target one creature. Sleep is an outlier in terms of spell design in 5e, not at all representative of the vast majority of arcane capability of most characters after level 3. If you are cruel enough to throw your PCs into the ocean at level 1 and NOT explicitly warn them of what an underwater campaign might entail, then I would agree with you. But most underwater campaigns don't get into underwater combat until substantially later than level 1. As such, most prepared PCs who are primary spellcasters should have many more tools in their spell toolbox besides just Sleep. You are making this to be a bigger impediment than it actually is when you consider the breadth of PC powers in this edition.
More down to “the sea bed” is dealing with weapons and armor. Given the weights of heavy (metal) armors those wearing them will effectively be tied to the sea floor and what ever reach they have from there. This would actually include most medium armors as well as all heavy armors. Can you swim with these armors? Yes - for a while but not all day, day after day. In fact, armor and weapons may be your biggest problem - iron and steels rust/corrode quickly with constant exposure to sea water. Copper, bronze and brass are somewhat better but are significantly weaker, Admantine is too dense and heavy to be effective and so you are left with mithral as the metal of choice with organic material (Chiton) as an alternative for armors (especially light armors) since leather and padding don’t do well in salt water either. Mithral is probably the primary metal used underwater and sea elves probably control the trade. I have considered running a subsea/coastal campaign but levels 1-5 would basically be coastal where cleaning, drying and oiling armors and weapons would take care of the corrosion problems until the party is fairly well covered with magic items, weapons and armor that could be considered Mithral or at least corrosion resistant due to the magical properties. Given that, tier 1 encounters can be mostly normal creatures with aquatic creatures being introduced at level appropriate times. While there are a number of aquatic (humanoid) monsters available at low levels medium levels haven’t generally been expanded the way creatures like orcs or hobgoblins have. Obviously one easy solution is to generate aquatic versions of these. Another option is to treat creatures like mindflayers as actually being amphibian. I could also see aquatic versions of things like beholders, darkmantles and similar creatures. The OP said it be primarily coral reefs (at least at first) but we all need to remember that reefs reach into the swell zone and so typically have crashing waves as the top of the water column smashing anything/anyone that swims to high.
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Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
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As someone whos gearing up to study a zoology degree....
You're not wrong. Plankton do have an incredibly large impact on the oceanic environment, however we aren't talking about that. The root of the conversation was about the sleep spell targeting these microorganisms but this idea only being applicable in the ocean, not on land where there could be any number of ants, fleas, flies etc that would constitute the same worth of hit points (essentially none) and have the same environmental impact, because thats how ecosystems are made: they build off of plants and microorganisms.
The decision not to have sleep affect these sorts of miniscule creatures is in the point of fairness and reasonability. If you want to rule otherwise, I'm sure many players would find that tedious and feel punished for the use of a normally quite creative spell. I would also like to add that any system to calculate the number of these plankton or insects would be unfair, as any regular system would not match real life distributions (as that seems to be your main point: that these creatures exist as a significant part of these habitats and it increases immersion have sleep affect them), but random systems would be even more unfair for players.
Id like to end this by saying this is a thread about fun underwater encounters using terrain and ocean environments, not a study of microorganisms and their importance in all ecosystems, and why that makes them constitute for the sleep spell to affect them. If you want to discuss that, I suggest a university or library.
'The Cleverness of mushrooms always surprises me!' - Ivern Bramblefoot.
I'll worldbuild for your DnD games!
Just a D&D enjoyer, check out my fiverr page if you need any worldbuilding done for ya!
I am 100% with you.
"There are also bacteria on any living organisms. I guess it would be also logical and scientific to say any spells we try to cast on any targets in land, air or water, would have missed because there are plenty of bacteria on them.
Now I wonder how any spells would hit anything in anywhere.
Just in case, there can be viruses in the air as one coughs, so next time a mage aims at any one of us, just sneeze/cough.
Plenty of larvae in the pond, guess we are not going to hit that fish with our spells. In the unlikely case, there are semen in the pond too, your spell hits the semen instead.
Let me add fungi to the list too! How can we forget the funniest guy of the smallest thing? See that weird patch of skin on my enemy? Those are fungi on a human! Now my spell will be absorbed by them!
Am I overkilling yet? Wait, there is a chameleon resting on the monster head, your spell hits the chameleon instead of the monster! Hey, there is an octopus right there, it camouflages itself to its background and your character doesn't see that, are you sure you want to aim your spell at the Kraken?"
I just wanna say, all target creature spells should never have worked at all anyway. We are all pointing at some tiny creatures beyond our normal perception. And that is why no magic or spells exists in our Earth. Yes, SCIENCE!
(I would like to thank every scientist for ruining magic. You make impossible IMPOSSIBLE XD)
Me: Okay, DM, you make the rules, if my spell will hit something else, so I shall attack the creature with my sword then.
DM: Your sword hits the bacteria on his hand and they die. Mr. Evil takes 0 point of dmg.
Me: ......🧐
DM!: Your attack misses Mr. Evil completely, but you did hit something after all. Come on, you rolled a 1.
(This reply is brought to you by "Jesus Cries", No.1 album in Hell, approved by Satan, and published by Hades Records)
No need to reply. Just laugh at this whole thing for 10mins and listen to "Jesus Cries". I just wanna prove science can literally kill everything when applied accurately according to the laws and physics surrounding us. Just one more for the lol, my Magic Missiles hit the flea on the Displacer Beast and deals 4 dmg, killing the flea instantly.
Personal Signature should be creative and original:
Game: DD 5e
Group preferred: On the line
Experience: 2.5 yrs or so.
Location/Timezone: Iseikai Time//EMT (Emilia-tan), but not MIT.
Availability: When I sign up, I know I should be free.
Preferred role: Player. But honestly, I am into serious relationship.
Game style: I don't fill the chat with ooc.
While I respect your professional background, I disagree with you. The game already has stats for Swarms of Rats, Swarms of Quippers, even Swarms of Campestri (ambulatory fungi). As such, if the creatures you are dealing with are in large enough concentration to have hit points and be visible, it is fair that PCs should have to account for them provided that the DM is transparent in communications with the players.
Also, Sleep is one spell. The vast majority of spells in 5E do not affect targets based on their # of hit points and even out of those that do, most have only 1 target. Power Word Kill and Finger of Death, for instance, also have a hit point limitation, but they only target one creature. Sleep is an outlier in terms of spell design in 5e, not at all representative of the vast majority of arcane capability of most characters after level 3. If you are cruel enough to throw your PCs into the ocean at level 1 and NOT explicitly warn them of what an underwater campaign might entail, then I would agree with you. But most underwater campaigns don't get into underwater combat until substantially later than level 1. As such, most prepared PCs who are primary spellcasters should have many more tools in their spell toolbox besides just Sleep. You are making this to be a bigger impediment than it actually is when you consider the breadth of PC powers in this edition.
More down to “the sea bed” is dealing with weapons and armor. Given the weights of heavy (metal) armors those wearing them will effectively be tied to the sea floor and what ever reach they have from there. This would actually include most medium armors as well as all heavy armors. Can you swim with these armors? Yes - for a while but not all day, day after day. In fact, armor and weapons may be your biggest problem - iron and steels rust/corrode quickly with constant exposure to sea water. Copper, bronze and brass are somewhat better but are significantly weaker, Admantine is too dense and heavy to be effective and so you are left with mithral as the metal of choice with organic material (Chiton) as an alternative for armors (especially light armors) since leather and padding don’t do well in salt water either. Mithral is probably the primary metal used underwater and sea elves probably control the trade. I have considered running a subsea/coastal campaign but levels 1-5 would basically be coastal where cleaning, drying and oiling armors and weapons would take care of the corrosion problems until the party is fairly well covered with magic items, weapons and armor that could be considered Mithral or at least corrosion resistant due to the magical properties. Given that, tier 1 encounters can be mostly normal creatures with aquatic creatures being introduced at level appropriate times. While there are a number of aquatic (humanoid) monsters available at low levels medium levels haven’t generally been expanded the way creatures like orcs or hobgoblins have. Obviously one easy solution is to generate aquatic versions of these. Another option is to treat creatures like mindflayers as actually being amphibian. I could also see aquatic versions of things like beholders, darkmantles and similar creatures. The OP said it be primarily coral reefs (at least at first) but we all need to remember that reefs reach into the swell zone and so typically have crashing waves as the top of the water column smashing anything/anyone that swims to high.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.