Quote from: Sacrosanct;791366Just had another one in my campaign.  From rot grubs nonetheless

The player had never heard of them before.  At first I thought he would have avoided them because he rooted through the pile of garbage with his sword.  When I said he sees giant maggots squirming about, he said he picked one up to show the half orc rogue.

Oops.  

And while I was explaining to him what was happening as the grub was making its way up his arm, he refused to cut it away because "as a dual wielding fighter, what good is it to have only one arm?"

Well, he found out that being dead is worse lol

:rotfl:

Wow! That is a whole new level of idiocy.

Playing Hoard of the Dragon Queen here, and just had a character death.

A critical hit from a roper...45 points of damage, poor cleric never had a chance. "*yum*, crunchy on the outside, juicy in the inside!" shouted the roper.

I'm still debating the wisdom of changing the monsters in 5e from what they were in AD&D. One the one hand, it's very cool because now the players, the veterans anyway, don't really know what they're up against.

On the other, the AD&D roper really doesn't behave like the 5e roper (at least, the one in the adventure), which kinda made things rough for the players...I bet the fight would have gone differently without the preconceived notions of how a roper behaves.

That is funny as the group described previously ran into the roper, who was trying to sneak away quietly rather than face off against a trio whod just taken out Mondath and her kobolds.

The dwarf though was shoot first and ask questions later and I got out. "you notice something moving over..." followed by "I blast it!"

The now blasted roper focused on said dwarf and there proceeded this absurd wrestling match where the roper kept grabbing the dwarf and the dwarf kept shrugging odd the tentacles. It simply could not get a grip on this guy! The battle ended with not a one of the PCs taking any damage...

The exact opposite of PC death from what should have been a pretty hard struggle.

In 5e we have had several but the most memorable one is Dragon Breathes everyone dies. Yup tpk. It was in Hoard or the Dragon Queen.

Quote from: Omega;791425That is funny as the group described previously ran into the roper, who was trying to sneak away quietly rather than face off against a trio whod just taken out Mondath and her kobolds.

The dwarf though was shoot first and ask questions later and I got out. "you notice something moving over..." followed by "I blast it!"

The now blasted roper focused on said dwarf and there proceeded this absurd wrestling match where the roper kept grabbing the dwarf and the dwarf kept shrugging odd the tentacles. It simply could not get a grip on this guy! The battle ended with not a one of the PCs taking any damage...

The exact opposite of PC death from what should have been a pretty hard struggle.

The difference between the two experiences with the same encounter speaks highly of the game in play to me.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;791389:rotfl:

Wow! That is a whole new level of idiocy.

Same guy who, a few years ago when I was DMing ToEE and they found the giant fountain full of clear liquid, said he was "jumping in dive style".

Yep, that fountain.  The one full of acid.

This guy is a Darwin award in action.


Re: battling ropers, the group fought their own last night as well, but not in HotDQ, but in my Felk Mor campaign.  They were all level 4, and at full resources when they faced it:

1/2 orc rogue thief
tiefling sorcerer
human moon druid (his favorite animal was the giant toad they fought earlier)
human eldritch fighter

The druid had the observation feat, so he was able to detect the roper before they got too close, ruining the roper's planned surprise attack.  So initiative was rolled rather than a free attack with advantage.
Druid and fighter were grappled on the first round.  Pulled close on the second.  The thief was shooting his bow from being hidden, used his move to go back behind the wall, and then cunning action to hide.  Rinse, repeat.  The sorcerer ended up crit'ing on a scorching ray which did a shit ton of damage.  The fighter was getting munched and was everything he could do just not to die.  On another round the toad shaped druid got munched hard, making him revert back to human form where he almost died.  The roper was also tired of the sorcerer hitting it with spells and grappled her

In the end they beat it, but they used just about every spell and ability they had, and the fighter and druid were almost dead.

Quote from: Omega;791425That is funny as the group described previously ran into the roper, who was trying to sneak away quietly rather than face off against a trio whod just taken out Mondath and her kobolds.

The dwarf though was shoot first and ask questions later and I got out. "you notice something moving over..." followed by "I blast it!"

The now blasted roper focused on said dwarf and there proceeded this absurd wrestling match where the roper kept grabbing the dwarf and the dwarf kept shrugging odd the tentacles. It simply could not get a grip on this guy! The battle ended with not a one of the PCs taking any damage...

The exact opposite of PC death from what should have been a pretty hard struggle.

The roper never succeeded on a single tentacle hit, ever, and never managed a bite?

That's pretty amazing. 4 tendril attacks at  +7 just about guarantee a hit a round, with 2 hits being far more likely. Shrugging it off is possible, but with a DC of 15 and disadvantage on strength checks, hardly a sure thing. Unfortunately, before the player gets a chance to shrug it off, the roper has a Reel effect. The Reel effect is automatic, and that's every creature hit with a tendril. The bite, likewise is at +7, and the roper will have advantage if it "somehow" managed a tendril hit that very same round.

That was one clumsy as heck roper!

Five 16th level PCs in a cave on the Isle of Dread. Fought several spectators and one reflected a cone of cold back onto the paladin.

A beholder boss floated in. Eventually attacked the paladin. 10 for a death ray. Damage exceeded paladin's hp. Bam, dead.

Quote from: Doom;791460The roper never succeeded on a single tentacle hit, ever, and never managed a bite?

That's pretty amazing. 4 tendril attacks at  +7 just about guarantee a hit a round, with 2 hits being far more likely. Shrugging it off is possible, but with a DC of 15 and disadvantage on strength checks, hardly a sure thing. Unfortunately, before the player gets a chance to shrug it off, the roper has a Reel effect. The Reel effect is automatic, and that's every creature hit with a tendril. The bite, likewise is at +7, and the roper will have advantage if it "somehow" managed a tendril hit that very same round.

That was one clumsy as heck roper!

That is the insane part. I was scoring critical after critical with the tentacles on the dwarf and with disadvantage the dwarf made every single check to shrug off the tentacles.

But the whole session was this series of criticals all over. Mondath being the biggest example with scoring both halberd hits on the sorcerer and taking him out in one go. One of the kobolds really had it in for the dwarf and scored at least two criticals on him. As said elsewhere. One more round of that and only the Paladin would have been left standing and he couldnt reach the kobolds. Not sure what he would have done then.

Running the Moathouse (converted from ADnD).

4th Level party of 4.

After some bad judgement by the Druid in teh party, the end boss and minions were alerted to their presence.
I changed the enemy set up a bit so there were reduced amounts of cult troops (basically low level fighters).
But I added an NPC wizard with the Cleric who the party had been chasing from another home brew adventure I ran earlier.

It ended up with a big fight in one large room with various exits and entrance points.

At one point it was looking pretty grim with the NPC Wizard throwing a fireball at the party, knocking out 2 party members, but they got brought back with potions fortunately.

Then a bit later a lightning bolt got fired, again, knocking out the other 2 characters, but again they were brought back.

However by that point, the Cleric and Wizard enemies) who were the only 2 left after the fighter and Sorceror of the party had whittled down by sword and spell the minions.

Then the Monk got close to the enemy wizard and took him to pieces with his brutal KI attacks , giving him multiple attacks, knockdown etc..

The Fighter, which is often maligned in 5E as weak or boring, really showed how useful he was with his superior HPs, the extra attack, plus his improved crit range and so on.
The second wind was nice too to boost up his HPs, which really made a difference.

So not a TPK, but pretty close as at one stage it was 2 down and unconscious (Monk and Druid both making death saves).
The Sorceror was on 1 HP and all that was left was the fighter on relatively good health,
But the Sorceror managed to get a potion to Monk and Druid and they came back from the brink.
Thereafter the Druid started healing people up.
 
5E is interesting as the combat was very swingy. going to the brink at some stages, but characters have various ways to heal up quickly as well.

Fireballs and Lightning bolts are REALLY nasty at low level as they do 8D6 right off the bat. Luckily the characters make their DEX saves otherwise it would almost certainly have been a TPK.
It made the players think about positioning tactically better in future.
That and NOT making loads of noise when exploring tunnels in dungeons.

All in all, very satisfying for all.