Category: D&D 5e Rules

D&D 5e Rules – Skills – Retrying!

If at first you don’t succeed … can you try, try again?

Know the RulesPart of an ongoing series of 5e Rules notes.

Rolling skills to get something done can be a tense moment. The whole campaign might depend on how well you can sneak, or spot someone sneaking, or open that lock, or disarm that trap.

And, since a D20 provides a linear distribution of results, it’s quite possible to fail that roll.

Then what?

How to Succeed at Skill Rolls while Trying A Whole Bunch

So, what is a Skill (Ability) Check? Well, per PHB 174:

To make an Ability Check, roll a d20 and add the relevant Ability modifier. As with other d20 rolls, apply bonuses and penalties, and compare the total to the DC. If the total equals or exceeds the DC, the ability check is a success — the creature overcomes the challenge at hand. Otherwise, it’s a failure, which means the character or monster makes no progress toward the objective or makes progress combined with a setback determined by the GM..

What happens when you fail a Skill / Ability roll? Can you try again? How many times?

Can you try, try again?

Interestingly enough, there’s no easy answer there. I’ve read DMs assert that they only let a single roll happen; if you fail, that shows it’s just not doable (by you, at least). I’ve read others say you can only retry if the circumstances or your approach explicitly changes.

(I’ve also seen guidance that rolls should only be asked for if the results of failure are significant or interesting. So there’s that, too.)

To my mind, a lot depends on what it is you are trying to do (duh). As much as D&D tries to make all skills identical in their structure and use, they really aren’t. Some skills, in their application or in the circumstances at hand, lend themselves more or less to retries.

  • “I search the room.” Okay, you blew your Perception roll. Can you search it again, search it harder, search it in a way you didn’t before?  Sure. Tell me what you’re doing differently.
  • “I try to convince the guard to let us pass.” Okay, you blew your Persuasion roll. Can you try again? Well, certainly not the same way or with the same line of argument. I mean, if she didn’t believe the Captain sent you when you said it once, she’s not going to believe it a second time.
  • “I try to remember my History to see if I know of the dread Egnarts.” If you fail, chances are you’re not going to succeed in “remembering” again, without explaining a very different approach.

In some cases, letting an attempt be retried is just fine. In other cases, retrying at a Disadvantage seems to make sense (“Oh, did I say the Captain? I meant the Duke, my uncle …”).

What does “failure” mean?

We tend to think of “failure” as “What I asked for didn’t happen.”

  • The lock didn’t pop open.
  • The guard wasn’t convinced.
  • The mule refuses to move.

But look at that definition of an Ability Check again, particularly on the “failure” part:

Otherwise, it’s a failure which means the character or monster makes no progress toward the objective …

Okay, that’s what we usually think of failure like.

… or makes progress combined with a setback determined by the DM.

Which is very modern “failing forward” game design for something like D&D, and, frankly, is something I never thought of for this system — and it’s something that makes sense, esp. if (a) the DM wants to move things along, and/or (b) you just barely missed your roll.

  • You hear a couple of tumblers in the lock move, but it doesn’t open; your next attempt will be at Advantage … but that will take more time.
  • You got the lock open … and the door opens wide, to reveal the room full of guards.
  • You got the lock open, but broke your favorite lockpick, putting you at Disadvantage in picking locks until you can get it replaced.
  • The guard grudgingly lets you pass, but sends a runner to check with the Captain, just in case. 
  • The mule moves, but quite intentionally steps on your foot in doing so. 

Those are all legitimate things for me as the DM to do (or you as the player to suggest).

Can’t I just “Take 10” or “Take 20”?

So those are D&D 3.5 rules, but 5.0 kinda-sorta has them. Kinda-sorta.

Taking 10 in 3.5 usually just meant “Act like I rolled a 10” so as to avoid the chance of a low roll (when a high roll wouldn’t really be needed).

This is essentially the equivalent of using a Passive Skill in 5e.  Which is a little weird (“I’m searching the room … passively”).

Taking 20 was the interesting one in 3.5:

When you have plenty of time (generally 2 minutes for a skill that can normally be checked in 1 round, one full-round action, or one standard action), you are faced with no threats or distractions, and the skill being attempted carries no penalties for failure, you can take 20. In other words, eventually you will get a 20 on 1d20 if you roll enough times. Instead of rolling 1d20 for the skill check, just calculate your result as if you had rolled a 20.

Taking 20 means you are trying until you get it right, and it assumes that you fail many times before succeeding. Taking 20 takes twenty times as long as making a single check would take.

Since taking 20 assumes that the character will fail many times before succeeding, if you did attempt to take 20 on a skill that carries penalties for failure, your character would automatically incur those penalties before he or she could complete the task. Common “take 20” skills include Escape Artist, Open Lock, and Search.

5e doesn’t have this … precisely. But on DMG 237, “Multiple Ability Checks,” there’s a “Take 20”-like mechanism:

Sometimes a character fails an ability check and wants to try again. In some cases, a character is free to do so; the only real cost is the time it takes. With enough attempts and enough time, a character should eventually succeed at the task. To speed things up, assume that a character spending ten times the normal amount of time needed to complete a task automatically succeeds at that task. However, no amount of repeating the check allows a character to turn an impossible task into a successful one.

So in cases where failure doesn’t incur a penalty (except burning time), you can spend ten times the normal amount of time (ask your DM for a SWAG) and just assume a success if the task is possible (which I read to mean, if rolling a 20 on the skill would allow it to succeed). This is a bit looser and more cinematic than 3.5’s rule, but there you go.

It does mean that, if the party is willing to take the time, the DM can dispense with Perception rolls in each room and just say, “After about an hour, you find the hidden compartment under the book case. And, no, that doesn’t count as a Short Rest.”

Is that a good thing? That’s up to you to decide.

D&D 5e Rules – Size!

Size matters! Though … maybe not as much as it once did.

Know the RulesPart of an ongoing series of 5e Rules notes.

If we all remember the Golden Rule of D&D Rules —  This Is Not A Physics Simulator — then the weirdities of how 5e runs “Size” will … be a little less weird.

Let’s Start with a Table!

Size Space Example HD
Tiny 2.5 x 2.5 feet
(4/sq)		 Imp, Sprite d4
Small 5 x 5 feet
(1 sq)		 Giant Rat, Goblin, Halfling, Gnome d6
Medium 5 x 5 feet
(1 sq)		 Orc, Werewolf, Human, Elf, Dwarf, Dragonborn d8
Large 10 x 10 feet
(2×2 sq)		 Hippogriff, Ogre d10
Huge 15 x 15 feet
(3×3 sq)		 Fire Giant, Treant d12
Gargantuan 20 x 20 feet
(4×4 sq)
or larger		 Kraken, Purple Worm d20

So that shows all the size categories, the space they take up on a battle map grid, and some examples, as well as what, in general, their Hit Dice look like.

Most Player Characters are Medium in size — though some races drop down to Small, and a couple of outliers are Large.

How About Some Pictures?

D&D Size Comparison
D&D Size Comparison

Yes, that’s straight out of the book, but it is so pretty. I will take it down if Hasbro asks me to.

Size and Space

The space described in the table above is that personally controlled by the creature. A human is not actually 5×5 feet, but effectively occupies that space, and rules on passing into or through space apply to all squares so controlled.

Guys in a couple of five foot squares
Guys in a couple of five foot squares

You can pass through an enemy creature’s occupied space (ducking past them, under their legs, etc.) if you are 2+ sizes smaller than them. Note that it’s still considered Difficult terrain (double cost), and if you continue on past their reach they will get an Opportunity Attack. So Halflings can duck past an Ogre this way, while Humans could dodge around a Fire Giant’s legs.

(See also: D&D 5e Rules – Moving Through a Hostile Creature’s Space! – Blog of Heroes)

Note also that some creatures (typically those larger than Medium) may have physical melee attack reach of more than the normal five feet.

Surrounded!

Spaces taken by creatures cannot overlap. That means, for example, if you as a Medium humanoid are surrounded by enemies, how many enemies that is depends on their size. You could be surrounded by eight Medium enemies, but only four Large enemies could surround you.  Similarly while you and your Medium friends could surround a Medium Orc with only eight of you, that Large Ogre would need to be surrounded by twelve Medium opponents.

Line of Sight and Cover

Larger creatures are obviously bigger targets. Assuming you are playing on a square grid, then if you can draw an unobstructed straight line between

  • any corner/vertex of one creature’s space on the grid map and
  • any corner/vertex of another creature’s space,

then there is line of sight and each creature can potentially see each other.

In considering cover, pick any corner/vertex of the attacker’s space, and draw lines to the corners of any single square the target occupies.

Cover and obstructions
Cover and obstructions
  • If 1-2 of those lines are obstructed by something, then the target has half-cover;
  • if 3 or more are obstructed but you still have line of sight, then the target has three-quarter cover.

(Obviously, a Huge target will have a lot more single squares hanging out there unprotected.)

(Yes, that’s another beautiful drawing from the official books.)

Grappling and Shoving

You only grapple something no more than 1 size larger than you. When grappling, your speed is halved unless the grappled creature is 2+ sizes smaller than you.

Thus, as a Medium Human, you could grapple an Ogre, but not a Treant.  Similarly, an Ogre could grapple a Halfling and move off with them at full speed.

You can also only try to Shove something no more than 1 size larger than you.

Getting Small

A creature can squeeze into a space one size category smaller.  So a Large creature could squeeze through a 5 ft square opening or 5 ft wide corridor.

When doing so, it counts as Difficult terrain (double movement cost), and the squeezing-through creature has Disadvantage for attacks and Dex saving throws, and attackers have Advantage on them.

What Else Does Size Do?

Not a whole heck of a lot. In 3.5e, small creatures got an AC boost, larger creatures an AC deficit, but this no longer exists in 5e.

Size does have an impact on the Encumbrance load that can be carried, but I try to avoid Encumbrance rules.

 

D&D 5e Rules – Rolls, High and Low!

Yay! I rolled a 20! That means I win everything, right? Right?

Know the RulesPart of an ongoing series of 5e Rules notes.

This is another thing that can engender confusion until it gets spelled out plainly, especially since it’s about something that has changed over various D&D editions, varies with other D20-based games, and has been house-ruled for eons.

What happens when you roll a natural (that’s the face showing on the die) 20 on a d20? What happens when you roll a natural 1?

You rolled a Nat 20 on your skill check

When is a die roll a different die roll?

There are, in 5e, three types of d20 rolls:

  • Attack rolls — rolls you make to successfully hit with an attack (against a given Armor Class (AC)).
  • Ability Checks — rolls you make to check against an ability or skill to see if you succeed in your attempt (against a given Difficulty Class (DC)).
  • Saving Throws — rolls you make to avoid or minimize the effect of a spell or other environmental hazard (against a given DC).

These are all done with a d20, but, despite that, each is treated independently in the rules.

For example, the Rogue’s Reliable Talent class ability (PHB 96) says “Whenever you make an ability check that lets you add your proficiency bonus, you can treat a d20 roll of 9 or lower as a 10.” That applies only to Ability Checks, not Saves or Attacks.

When is a crit not a crit?

This has a more global aspect. On Attacks (only!),

  • a naturally rolled 20 is always a hit (and a critical hit, at that), regardless of modifiers or the target’s Armor Class.
  • a naturally rolled 1 is always a miss, regardless of modifiers or the target’s Armor Class. (5e does not have a “fumble” rule.)

This auto-hit or auto-miss rule, though, does not apply to Saves or Ability Checks.  For example, a natural 20 on a Saving Throw does not guarantee success. In fact, it just means that you have met or beat any DC of 20 or below. If the DC is 25, it doesn’t, Rules-As-Written, mean a thing other than you did not save.

That said …

Most DMs will do something to recognize a natural 20 (especially if it’s called to their attention), and sometimes a natural 1 as well, on a Save or Ability Check, even if the RAW doesn’t call for it.

This might be as simple as something narrated, calling out (without game effect) the natural beauty of the thing you did that you rolled a nat 20 on … or the gob-smacking ineptitude of the thing you did that you rolled a nat 1 on.

You dive for cover from the dragon’s breath, but mis-judge and fly through its center instead. You take [the standard] damage, but you can hear the dragon actually laughing at you.

Sometimes they may even given you a partial success for that nat 20.

You don’t manage a clean landing — but you’re on your feet, even if you’re going to be at half-speed next round.

or

Your valiant effort doesn’t succeed, but it came closer than you thought it would — take an Inspiration.

But don’t count on that, unless the DM is house-ruling something of that sort as a normal case.

Roll20 – Area of Effect templates

A home-made game aid for Roll20 that makes life (for me, at least) a lot easier.

For my Princes of the Apocalypse game (which we ran on Roll20 with a standard 5-foot grid), I built some Roll20 AoE templates for spells, to make it easier to see and use the AoE and to provide a longer lasting way to show a still-active area spell.

So why is this needed?

There are ways to show the area of a spell. At a minimum, you can draw something on the screen — but that gets messy and not always easily movable. It’s also hard to draw some shapes, like cones.

Also, even if you draw something with the circle tool, you have two problems — precisely knowing the center point to anchor it on, and, more importantly, clarity on what squares are affected by the spell or not. Yes, you can interpolate (“I think that’s less than half the square”), but that’s just argument fodder.

Roll20 and various adjuncts to it provide area tools for AoEs (Roll20’s native tools have improved dramatically of late), but they still have a couple of problems. First, again, they are actual geometric figures (e.g., circles), so interpolation is still needed. Second, they are non-persistent — you can set them to Linger, but a player can only have one up at a time (I’m not sure if two players can have theirs up simultaneously); you can maybe eke by for that initial Fireball, but if you have a Spike Growth that stays up for a long time, you’re back to drawing a circle on the map.

What I wanted was a way that players could express a proper spell area (cones, squares, circles, even rectangles) in full squares, that they could move as needed for placement, and that would let me (as the DM) resolve the effects on those within the area, whatever the shape, and that could be left on the map for non-instant duration spells.

The answer: AoE templates.

Now coming to a marketplace near you

You can buy spell templates in the Roll20 marketplace. In fact, I did.

Unfortunately, the ones I bought turned out to be one or more of:

  1. Obtrusive (covering up too much of the underlying terrain).
  2. Ugly (a judgment call on my part, to be sure)
  3. Wrong (there are different ways of calculating a 15-foot or 20-foot radius circle on a grid, partly based on whether you are centering on a square middle or on a square corner. Who knew?) (And D&D 5e renders cones differently from other editions or systems.

I wanted something that would be:

  1. Largely transparent — clear enough to be visible, but not blocking the map people were on.
  2. Reasonably attractive
  3. Correct, based on my reading of how (especially) cones and circles/spheres work, including anchoring on a grid vertex (corner), not (except in rare, specified occurrences) on the centers of grid squares.

So, after a couple of failed tries, I decided to roll my own.

Rolling my own

I used a drawing program I have to basically build up a sample AoE as a drawing, trimmed to the edges, with transparency on anything outside of the borders. There would be a grid within the AoE, with solid borders along the grid, and the squares inside tinted but mostly transparent, with a slightly thicker border around the edges to make its boundary clear. I sized it to fit a 70 pixel cell grid.

For a given shape (a 20-foot radius circle, for example), I usually started with something gray. I could then use the color select / color dump functions to remake it into different colors based on the type of spell — orange for a Fireball, green for a Spike Growth, etc.

Once I had a drawing how I wanted it, I uploaded it to my Art Library in Roll20. Then I created an NPC character named, for example, “Fireball (20r)”. I assigned the drawing to it as its image and as its token.

I dragged out a token, sized it to the grid properly, made it into a drawing, and then reassigned that as the token. Lastly, I assigned that character to be seen and controlled by the mage who could throw fireballs.

AoE 20ft radius orange
20-foot radius orange circle

Now when that mage wants to throw a fireball, they can see in an “AoE” folder in their Journal “Fireball (20r)”.  They can then drag that out onto the map, move it to where they want their fireball to off, and say, “Hey, DM, your orcs are on fire.”  I can easily see the orcs in question, push the fireball token to the “bottom” of the token layer (something which Roll20 does not allow players to do, for some reason) so that I can click on each of those orcs, and start rolling saves …

And, once the excitement is over, I or the mage can easily delete the AoE.  Or, if it were a more persistent spell, leave it there for people to see.

Embellishments and Edge Cases

Moonbeam (5' radius) AoE token
Moonbeam (5 foot radius) AoE token

For some spells, I felt the need to decorate. So, for example, my Moonbeam template has a little Crescent moon in it. And, yes, I did it as a circle, rather than filling up the squares, largely because it’s a small template, and there’s no question which four squares are encompassed by it.

Similarly, for the Dust Devil’s radius of effect, I included a little Dust Devil icon in the center.

AoE 10ft radius Dust Devil
Dust Devil (10ft radius) AoE token

The biggest hassle are cones, both because of 5e’s rules, and because the vary in shape depending on the direction they are cast. Which left me, for example, with these two templates for a 15 foot cone.

Diagonal 30-foot cone
Diagonal 30-foot cone
Orthogonal 30-foot cone
Orthogonal 30-foot cone

Yes, this is all about the confusion of trying to fit a cone cross-section onto a square grid.

Both of these can be rotated, by the player or DM, in increments of 90 degrees and still line up

The orthogonal one includes a bunch of question marks because of 5e’s cone rules. The basic rule there is that the cone is as wide at a given point as it is long. That means at ten feet away, it’s ten feet wide, etc. But you have to then ask “is that ten feet leaning to the left or to the right?” because, for symmetry, at ten feet away orthogonally, it’s actually a potential range across fifteen feet. So for the diagonals, the player has to say “This cone includes the questionable squares on the left, not on the right” or vice-versa. The alternative is to have two orthogonal templates, and that would be kinda crazy.

The diagonal one doesn’t suffer from that, though it does dredge up the concerns about how diagonals are counted distance-wise on a grid in D&D. In 5e, the basic rule is that a diagonal is as long as an orthogonal — vertical or horizontal — distance, which is nonsense, but quite easy to work with, and the rule we use at my table. Other folk use the older 3.x rule (given as an option in the DMG) that the first diagonal is five feet, the second is ten feet, then five, then ten; under that rule, my diagonal template would need to be changed.

Lastly, cones don’t need to be shot as a straight orthogonal or diagonal — they can be further canted. Fine, whatevs. Since I don’t want to force the players to pick from dozens of templates, they can just rotate one of these partially and we’ll interpolate. The “it’s as wide as it is long” rule makes that a bit easier.

In conclusion

Anyway, this works for my virtual table, and it’s pretty easily extensible as people level up and get new AoE spells of different shades and shapes.

I’ve made a bunch of the ones I crafted early days available here, for you to copy, recolor, and have fun with. Some of them are a bit rough, but that’s what you get for free, and, honestly, the roughness is very rarely visible one the Roll20 desktop.

D&D 5e Rules – Ready!

The Ready Action is handled differently than in earlier editions, which leads to a certain amount of confusion.

Know the RulesPart of an ongoing series of 5e Rules notes.

It’s not always possible (or best idea) to just attack-attack-attack. Sometimes you want to … take some time, to seize the right moment, to make sure you understand the situation and can best act on it.

That’s what the Ready Action is for, probably one of the most confusing actions for new (or new, veteran) players.

So, what is the Ready action?

Part of the confusion here is that previous D&D versions have had the concept of “holding” or (4e) “delaying” a turn (“Go ahead and skip over me on Initiative for the round, I’m going to just hold on until I more clearly see what is happening and then act accordingly”). 5e reframes and reduces that concept to Readying an Action. It’s much more constrained as (a) it requires defining a trigger-response pairing, and (b) if the trigger doesn’t happen, your Action for that turn is lost.

Sometimes you want to get the jump on a foe or wait for a particular circumstance before you act. To do so, you can take the Ready Action on your turn, which lets you act using your Reaction before the start of your next turn.

So an important couple of things here. First you are waiting for a particular circumstance, and second, you are not only using your turn’s action for Ready, but it will depend on you having your Reaction left in order to use it. And if the circumstance doesn’t occur … you’ve essentially “wasted” your actions for the turn. (Yes, “they also serve who stand and wait,” but it’s still kind of disappointing.)

A different way of looking at a Readied Action is that it’s a called Reaction to a specific circumstance (vs a canned Reaction such as an Opportunity Attack or a spell that can be cast as a Reaction).  You don’t so much declare an Action as declare a Reaction you are going to take before your next turn. (I wonder if it would be a bit less confusing if they called it “Ready Reaction” rather than “Ready Action”.)

First, you decide what perceivable circumstance will trigger your Reaction. Then, you choose the Action you will take in response to that trigger, or you choose to move up to your speed in response to it. Examples include “If the cultist steps on the trapdoor, I’ll pull the lever that opens it,” and “If the goblin steps to me, I move away.”

So the trigger has to be a perceivable circumstance. You can’t Ready an Action  in response to something you are unaware of.

(Can you make some sort of Perception / Investigation / Insight check as part of that? Good question. The answer is no as an Active check, because that’s an Action (the Search Action, to be specific); the DM could let you do a Passive check, because that’s automatic. But, then, that whole Active/Passive check thing gets complicated, especially when combined with Hidden stuff.)

The Reaction to that perceivable circumstance is then to either take a single Action (if you are a high enough level fighter to have multiple Attack Actions, you can still take only one), or you can move.

(Note: don’t wait until the goblin steps up to you to move, or else they will get an Opportunity Attack on you; wait until the step within ten feet of you.)

When the trigger occurs, you can either take your Reaction right after the trigger finishes or ignore the trigger. Remember that you can take only one Reaction per round.

A Readied Action is binary: when the trigger occurs you must decide to take that Reaction right then, or decide to ignore it and the Readied Action goes away (though it doesn’t count as having lost your Reaction for purposes of other types of Reactions).

If you say, “If a goblin steps out of cover over there, I will throw my javelin,” then once the goblin charges out of cover, you can’t wait until it gets to as closer range to shoot: you have to take the shot right then and there.

When you Ready a Spell, you cast it as normal but hold its energy, which you release with your reaction when the trigger occurs.

To be Readied, a spell must have a casting time of 1 action, and holding onto the spell’s magic requires Concentration. If your Concentration is broken, the spell dissipates without taking effect.

For example, if you are Concentrating on the Web spell and Ready Magic Missile, your Web spell ends, and if you take damage before you release Magic Missile with your reaction, your concentration might be broken.

This is also important; a Readied spell burns the spell, whether or not the Reaction is triggered or you choose to let it be triggered.  For this reason, a lot of magic-users only Ready cantrips, since nothing is “lost” if it isn’t used.

So, in summary:

  • Attacks are limited to a single attack, as with Opportunity Attacks. Even if you normally get three attacks on your turn, you can only Ready one attack. The Extra Attack ability notes that it only applies on your turn. Read more about Actions and Attacks here.
  • It only allows Movement or an Action (not a Bonus Action, as Bonus Actions only occur on your turn).
  • That said, you can Move and take a Bonus Action and still take a Ready action, all on your turn. So it doesn’t mean you are completely paralyzed.
  • You only get one Reaction between turns. If you make an Opportunity Attack, or any other Reaction (like Counterspell) before your Readied Action triggers, you lose your Readied Action (and vice-versa). On the other hand, if you managed to use your Readied Action, you cannot take another Reaction.
  • Readied spells actually burn the spell slot (if any) upon Readying, and require Concentration to hold onto until the trigger occurs (if it ever does), interrupting any other Concentrated-upon spells and possibly being lost if you fail a required Concentration check before it’s triggered.

What conditions can you Ready for?

To my mind, the “perceivable circumstances” for the Readied action require a something you can focus on — a place, a person, a proximity.

Examples that seem to me to be legit Readied (Re)actions

(beyond the ones mentioned in the actual Ready text above):

  • If an opponent steps into the doorway, I will Flamebolt them. [place]
  • When that archer steps back out from behind the tree to shoot me, I will shoot them. [place]
  • If an opponent steps next to me, I will hit them. [proximity]
  • Once the paladin engages an opponent, I will shoot their opponent. [person] [Rogues, this could allow a Sneak Attack, as that is allowed on any turn, not just yours.]
  • If an opponent steps onto the trap door, I will pull the lever. [place]
  • If an opponent gets within ten feet of me, I will run toward the door. [proximity]
  • Whichever of the two people I am standing next to first has someone step next them I will attack their attacker them. [person]
  • If Bob gets out of that cluster of bad guys, I’ll drop a Fireball there. [place]
  • If the guard pulls out her sword, I’ll stab her. [person]

Examples that seem to be to be too broad or complex or rule-bending to be an Readied action:

  • If an opponent steps next to me then I will Disengage and move toward the door. [You can act or you can move. Disengage is an action, and does not include actual movement]
  • If an Orc comes through the door, I will Flamebolt them. But if it’s an Orcish captain, I’ll Fireball them. [You can only prep one spell, and discernment as to Orcish rank is probably more complex than than you can take as a Reaction.]
  • When the Orcs arrive, If I am attacked I will Dodge, but if not, then I will Help my neighbor [You can’t plan more than one action or circumstance. Just Dodge instead.]
  • If an opponent gets within ten feet of me, I will Dash away. [Movement from a Ready is only up to your normal full movement, and is an alternative to taking an Action; Dash would be an Action, but it doesn’t actually move you, it just changes how far you can move.]
  • If people come out of one of the other three doors to the room, I shoot them. [Unless the doors are right next to each other, that’s too much to keep track of for a trigger; I tend to rule that focus of that sort is, most, over a 90 degree arc, about how broadly you can really see without moving your head.]

Remember that you are not obliged to follow through on a Readied action; you have enough Reaction time to either do the Readied action or to abort it (which, for  a spell, means the slot has still been used up).

Spells

Also note that, for Readying a spell, that takes Concentration to maintain the readiness (you basically casting but holding the spell), so any Concentration spell you have running would drop when you do so. This is true:

  1. Even if the spell you are casting doesn’t normally require Concentration — it’s the Readying and holding of it that requires the Concentration.
  2. Even if you don’t eventually fire the spell — it’s the Readying that burns the spell and starts the Concentration.

There is an interesting extrapolation that since a Readied spell is actually cast on the player’s turn, not on the Ready-triggered release toward an enemy, then Counterspell would need to be cast as a Reaction on the casting, not the release. Which is really weird as it implies that the attacker knows you’ve cast (say) Fireball before it actually goes off, and is especially pernicious with an attack of Readying / casting a spell outside of Counterspell range, then running close enough to be able to actually release it as the trigger condition. Counterspell already makes my head hurt with its causality issues, so I’m going to try not to think about it.

So why does Ready work this way?

The Sage Advice Compendium goes into a bit of detail as to why things were designed this way, vs. previous editions (esp. 4e) that allowed folk to simply delay their position on the Initiative list in a round. It doesn’t change gameplay, but it’s still kind of interesting to understand the design goals.

For a variety of reasons, we didn’t include the option to delay your turn:

  • Your turn involves several decisions, including where to move and what action to take. If you could delay your turn, your decision-making would possibly become slower, since you would have to consider whether you wanted to take your turn at all. Multiply that extra analysis by the number of characters and monsters in a combat, and you have the potential for many slowdowns in play.
  • The ability to delay your turn can make initiative meaningless, as characters and monsters bounce around in the initiative order. If combatants can change their place in the initiative order at will, why use initiative at all? On top of that, changing initiative can easily turn into an unwelcome chore, especially for the DM, who might have to change the initiative list over and over during a fight.
  • Being able to delay your turn can let you wreak havoc on the durations of spells and other effects, particularly any of them that last until your next turn. Simply by changing when your turn happens, you could change the length of certain spells. The way to guard against such abuse would be to create a set of additional rules that would limit your ability to change durations. The net effect? More complexity would be added to the game, and with more complexity, there is greater potential for slower play.

Two of our goals for combat were for it to be speedy and for initiative to matter. We didn’t want to start every combat by rolling initiative and then undermine turn order with a delay option. Moreover, we felt that toying with initiative wasn’t where the focus should be in battle. Instead, the dramatic actions of the combatants should be the focus, with turns that happen as quickly as possible

In short, the 5e designers decided that somewhat more elaborate, and limited, rules for Readying Actions would actually make the game flow smoother, quicker, and in a less complicated fashion. I can’t say that I disagree.

D&D 5e Rules – Ranged Attacks and Relative Height!

Combat is not always on the same level, no matter how two-dimensional the map looks.

Know the RulesPart of an ongoing series of 5e Rules notes.

This actually doesn’t come up very often, unless you have flying characters (insert cat hissing here). But sooner or later, at the very least you will encounter flying enemies — or else you’ll have people shooting down (or up) at you from a ledge in a big chamber, or things like that.

And inevitably the question will be asked: “How far away are you?”

So let’s consider a couple of approaches, since the question of how to deal with it is not addressed in RAW that I’ve been able to find.

How far away are you?

Let’s assume you are:

  • shooting at something that is
  • A feet away from you horizontally, and
  • B feet above you (or below you) vertically.

For range purposes, what is the actual distance C you are firing/throwing?

1. Pythagoras

Huzzah for ancient Greek geometers. The actual distance C is the square root of (A2 + B2 ).

This is geometrically accurate, but also requires a calculator (or a right angle calculator).

2. Diagonals

This is actually a pretty clever workaround:  C = (A + (B/2)).

This “works” from extending the grid system and using the DMG 252 optional rules for diagonal movement (treat the first diagonal as 5 feet, the second as 10 feet, etc.).

In my games, we don’t use that style of movement because it’s a PitA and the basic grid rules on PHB 192 are fine enough — but for these purposes it makes for an easy head calculation.

But there’s a problem here we’re not talking about

This is all cool if you are just shooting lasers (or firing spells) — weapons that ignore gravity.

But a lot of these use cases are for when you twang with your bow, or throw something (often pointy).

Gravity is your enemy if you are twanging/throwing upward. It’s your friend, to a degree, when twanging/throwing downward.

Amusing memes aside, the high ground does carry an advantage.  But beyond that, aiming at things above you (or below you) isn’t something that most people train on.

So that brings us another suggestion:

3. Simple Math

If you are twanging/throwing at something higher than you, the effective distance C is (A + B).

If you are twanging/throwing at something lower than you, the effective distance C is the greater of A or B.

This takes into account that gravity is a bitch (harder uphill ranges), while keeping things easy and rewarding the high ground.

Let’s Test It.

Target 1. Pythagoras 2. Diagonals 3. Simple Math
100 ft away, 30 ft up 104 115 130
30 ft away, 100 ft up 104 115 130
100 ft away, 80 ft up 128 140 180
100 ft away, 100 ft down 141 150 100

Which is “best”? Whichever one is easiest and feels right. My house rule inclination is to go with Option 3 for everything, or, if you are feeling a bit more adventuresome, use Option 3 for thrown/twanged attacks, Option 2 for magic attacks.

Note that this affects the Bad Guys as much as it does you.

D&D 5e Rules – Perception and Investigation (and Passive Perception)!

Perception! Investigation! Never have skills meant to clarify the world made it so muddled.

Know the RulesPart of an ongoing series of 5e Rules notes.

Perception and Investigation

Once upon a time D&D had things like “Detect Traps” and “Disarm Traps” and lots of other very specialized skills for spotting and understanding and doing things about hidden things, and dangerous things, and dangerous and hidden things.

5e’s mechanics are arguably simpler and cleaner and more straightforward … but understanding when you should use them is definitely not. Questions always come up …

Is this a Perception roll or an Investigation roll? Or should this be done as Passive Perception?

If a module says one way or the other (“The trap can be found with a Perception roll of 13 or better”), that’s generally the way to do it. Most DMs, in lieu of that, default to their favorite.

Intelligence and Investigation

Intelligence measures mental acuity, accuracy of recall, and the ability to reason. Intelligence checks are used to draw on logic, deductive reasoning, memory, knowledge, and/or education.

Investigation: The ability to put together clues and make deductions the others wouldn’t make. E.g. …

  • “There should be a hidden panel right there.”
  • “This wound was caused by a stiletto.”
  • “He’d want his magic wand close at hand in case his pursuers found him. I’m going to look in the bedding and side table.”
  • “Are any of the books in this book case levers for a secret door?”
  • “That’s the point where the tunnel is most likely to collapse.”
  • “It took me a while, but I found where this scroll refers to an item in our quest.”
  • “What do I think this room was used for?”
  • “Good spotting those scratches on the floor. Here’s what I think they mean.”
  • “I go through the files to see if they tell us who the wizard’s father is.”
  • “That patch of floor you pointed out … it looks like if you step there, it will depress and, I suspect, trigger a trap.”
  • “How large of a creature made these tracks?”
  • “I’ve never seen a trap like that before. Let’s figure out how you can disarm it.”
  • “The baron is incredibly vain. I’m going to focus my search for the map behind his giant portrait.”
  • “Can I figure out why the shopkeeper is so angry?” (That he is angry is, if needed, an Insight roll.)

Just trying to find something is not an Investigation; it’s Perception. Using what is obvious (or has been Perceived by you or someone else) to figure something out is Investigation.

Wisdom and Perception

Wisdom reflects how attuned you are to the world around you and represents perceptiveness and intuition. Wisdom checks are used to test that.

Perception: This is used to spot, hear, or detect something’s presence, usually using natural senses, esp. if they are obscured or easily missed. It represents general awareness of surroundings and keenness of senses. Perception is the player’s ability to spot and detect people or items; it has nothing to do with making intelligent decisions about those people or items.

  • “I can hear them talking on the other side of that door.”
  • “I’m looking for tracks.”
  • “Something is creeping forward through that brush.”
  • “Is there anything strange about that crowd of people?”
  • “I smell something disgusting.”
  • “I am looking for a secret door.”
  • “I think I spotted folk lying in wait up there.”
  • “I heard footsteps following behind us–but I don’t see anything.”
  • “The floor tiles in that part of the room are a little different color.”
  • “Ah, there’s the sign for the street he told us to turn on.”
  • “Wait, there’s light coming from under this stone wall; there might be something behind it.”
  • “I need more arrows; I’m keeping my eyes open for an armorer.”
  • “I’m searching his quarters for any paper or documents.”
  • “Ah, there are some dandelions I can use for that potion.”
  • “At this point, I think this tunnel is passing right under the castle.”
  • “There’s a needle trap on this chest; I’ve seen this kind of thing before.”
  • “Is there anything unusual about this room?”

Are you attempting to hear, spot, or detect something? Are you using your senses (sight, smell, taste, touch)? Does what you’re trying rely on awareness of the surroundings (or one focused point)? Are you attempting to merely perceive or find something, not determine a deeper, hidden message? Then it’s Perception.

Investigation and Perception

Just because you can Perceive a clue, doesn’t mean you can understand it; that’s where Investigation comes in. Perception might notice small holes in the wall. Investigation would determine they are a dart trap — or perhaps vents allowing a door to close, or recessed buttons to open a secret panel.

The DMG, p 238, also notes:

If you have trouble deciding whether to call for an Intelligence or a Wisdom check to determine whether a character notices something, think of it in terms of what a very high or low score in those two abilities might mean.

A character with a high Wisdom but low Intelligence is aware of the surroundings but is bad at interpreting what things mean. The character might spot that one section of a wall is clean and dusty compared to the others, but he or she wouldn’t necessarily make the deduction that a secret door is there.

In contrast, a character with high Intelligence and low Wisdom is probably oblivious but clever. The character might not spot the clean section of wall but, if asked about it, could immediately deduce why it’s clean.

Wisdom checks allow characters to perceive what is around them (the wall is clean here), while Intelligence checks answer why things are that way (there’s probably a secret door).

Ideally, one would have someone with high Perception to find things, and then someone with high Investigation* to understand what those things mean.

*Or other INT-based Ability.

Another point to consider: the underlying question from the GM should always be, “What is your character doing?” “I’m searching the chamber” is perhaps too vague — are you going along and tapping all the walls? Are you standing in the middle and getting a sense of the layout of things? Are you lifting up each crate, or rifling through each drawer? What are you searching for, and how are you trying to find it? That can make clear if you are Investigating or Perceiving (and affect what a successful roll means).

And all that said, it’s important not to make things too cumbersome. “All right, Bob, make a Perception roll to see if there’s something off about that chest lock. Okay, Susan, you’ll need to Investigate to identify the trap that Bob is found. Excellent, now Ted, make a Dexterity (Thieves Tools) roll to disarm it.” That’s an accurate way to do things, but also kind of clumsy. Most cases described in official materials related to traps tend to go Perception+disarm rolls, leaving out the Investigation piece. That makes sense for normal, “obvious” traps. For more elaborate traps, that may not be the case.

(Another idea I’ve seen is letting an added Investigation check be made to gain an Advantage on the disarm.)

And a final thought: The question is always, “How can we best have fun?” The rules and interpretation and all should be promoting that end, not defeating it. Depending on how we see what “fun” is (challenge, competition, story, humor, simulation, etc.) may create variation, but worrying too much about “Are we following every rule to the letter, and where the rules are ambitious how can we succeed in our duty?” is not (except for the extremely LN amongst us) most likely to get us there.

References

Here are some places to look for more information, including some good web pages for reference (much of the material there has soaked into the above):

Bonus Topic: Passive Perception (Again, Still, Some More)

That there are Active and Passive versions of most skills is clear in the rules. I still find it frustrating in how Active vs Passive Perception is described and its varied applications (let’s hope the new  2024 not-an-edition of D&D gives us a bit more clarity on this)

Then this SkullSplitterDice article caught my eye, and I found it summarizes a lot of the debates and struggles I had over the concept of Passive Perception and what it means and when one can or should use it, so I’m going to walk through it and comment.

Passive Skill Checks are used, the article suggests, for three reasons:

1. “To gloss over a lot of time attempting the same thing over and over.”

Or, as it says as an example on PHB 175, “Such a check can represent the average result for a task done repeatedly, such as searching for secret doors over and over again.” This is roughly like “Take 10” in D&D 3.5. If there’s no cost to re-attempting (re-rolling) or failing (or consequence to the time it takes), then the Passive Skill lets the GM simply say, “Yeah, you eventually do it” if it is higher than the DC of the obstacle.

From a Passive Perception standpoint, this would be difference between, “I am going to search the room” and “I am going to spend an hour searching and re-searching the room, because that secret door has got to be here somewhere.”  The former would be an Active roll; the latter a Passive check.

The problem is, if the DC is 20 and your Passive Perception is 15, you can theoretically spend forever doing it, Passively, and never find that Secret Door.

Plus, this stops mattering with the rule on DMG 237 for “Multiple Ability Checks”:

Sometimes a character fails an ability check and wants to try again. In some cases, a character is free to do so; the only real cost is the time it takes. With enough attempts and enough time, a character should eventually succeed at the task. To speed things up, assume that a character spending ten times the normal amount of time needed to complete a task automatically succeeds at that task. However, no amount of repeating the check allows a character to turn an impossible task into a successful one.

That takes a lot out of “re-rolling,” rendering this aspect of Passive Skills moot.

2. “To average out a lot of minor consequences.”

The example given here is using a Bard’s Perform as a Passive to represent how they do on any given night, rather than rolling for each hour, or each bar, or each song. (One could question, in this case, whether the consequences of a spectacular performance before the right crowd, or a complete botch-up of one before the wrong crowd, might not be so minor.)

I’m not sure how to fit that into Passive Perception, however.

3. “To allow the DM to get check results without the players knowing about it.”

This always comes up, as if to trump any and all other vagueness.  “Use this, because then you don’t have to warn the players that something is up by having them roll or by your rolling behind the screen.”  Very meta.

Also, very useless if the GM is using macros in a VTT like Roll20. One click and I can generate the party’s Active Perception rolls, as easily as having their Passive Perceptions on a piece of paper in front of me. (In fact, the macro I use shows the Passive and a thrown Active Perception for each player, so it’s literally the same effort for me.)

So this use of Passive Perception doesn’t gain anything.

All that said …

I will add two more uses I read about that aren’t included in the article:

4. To provide a basement for Active Rolls.

This is a weird one, and while used by a lot of people (including some important WotC folk), it bugs me. The idea is that if Passive Perception is, say, 12 … you can never roll on Active Perception below a 12, because, well, if Passive Perception is what you just automatically notice, how could you Actively notice any less than that?

I disagree, for two reasons:

First, Passive Perception in this case is normal conscious and unconscious awareness in a situation.

  • If I start peering at the bookcase looking for a crack that signals a secret door, I should very much be more likely to find it than if I just glanced around the room — but I am also less likely to notice the crack in the opposite wall.
  • If I’m worried there are Orcs in the bushes ahead, I might be distracted from noticing the Roper in the tree above me.

I.e., my Active Perception can definitely “roll” lower than my Passive Perception.

Second, the Rogue’s Reliable Talent ability at 11th Level literally does this basement thing.

By 11th level, you have refined your chosen skills until they approach perfection. Whenever you make an ability check that lets you add your proficiency bonus, you can treat a d20 roll of 9 or lower as a 10.

That’s essentially the level of a Passive check. If we treat Passives as the basement for an Active roll, this Class Feature is meaningless. Boo.

5. To let monsters search for you without a die roll.

There is one other use case the article doesn’t mention, and, interestingly, it’s the only place in the rules that really spells out a case of using Passive Perception:

When you hide, there’s a chance someone will notice you even if they aren’t searching. To determine whether such a creature notices you, the DM compares your Dexterity (Stealth) check with that creature’s passive Wisdom (Perception) score, which equals 10 + the creature’s Wisdom modifier, as well as any other bonuses or penalties. If the creature has Advantage, add 5. For Disadvantage, subtract 5. For example, if a 1st-level character (with a Proficiency Bonus of +2) has a Wisdom of 15 (a +2 modifier) and proficiency in Perception, he or she has a passive Wisdom (Perception) of 14.

(In general skill contests between players and opponents, 5e leans toward die rolling on the player side (for obvious feelings of having agency). While some contests are roll-vs-roll, if there is one side that will not be rolling, it will be the non-player side.)

The question is, why use the the non-PC’s Passive Perception? Why not have the monster roll, too? It’s literally just as easy for the DM to do that.

So what does all this mean?

There are a lot of folk who lean heavily on using Passive skill rolls, including for Perception.

But all the above means I’m not likely as a DM to do much with Passive Perception or other Passives. They don’t add much other than letting the DM be sneaky, and I can be imperceptibly (see what I did there?) sneaky without them.

The only thing that might change that would be if someone in my game took the Observant feat, which adds +5 to your Passive Perception and Passive Investigation. That might make me re-evaluate all this, which I’d rather not, so I hope they don’t.

Bonus Topic: Other Intelligence checks

Intelligence (Investigation) tends to be about the here and now, figuring out present clues and circumstances to deduce and understand them. Other Intelligence abilities are more academic.

Use Intelligence (History) to recall lore about historical events, legendary people, ancient kingdoms, wars, locations, etc.

Use Intelligence (Arcana) to recall lore about spells, magic items, eldritch symbols, magic traditions, planes of existence (and their inhabitants).

Use Intelligence (Religion) to recall lore about the gods, rites and prayers, churches, holy symbols, and cults.

These three are largely not interchangeable, at least in terms of the info they give, though there could be some overlap. For example, imagine standing in front of a statue of a woman in regal robes and holding a staff with an interesting design on it.

  • History would potentially inform you of who that is, or maybe least their era or realm (based on the fashion style). The style of the sculpture might also provide some further information; if the statue itself is or resembles a famous one, the lore behind it might be revealed. The crown on her head, the pattern on her cloak, a national symbol on a necklace could provide clues.
  • Arcana could tell you about that staff and its history and abilities. Or it might recognize who the figure is if they were a ground-breaking spell-caster or researcher. Their gloves might have warding symbols against fire, indicating who their opponents were. If they are in the midst of spell-casting (showing a somatic element), that might be identifiable as well.
  • Religion might inform you about that holy symbol woven into their robes, or if this matches a recorded form of a deity. It might also tell you if their stance or garb matches a particular faith practice or ritual, with possible further info (including time and place) stemming from that.

Also, of course, use Intelligence (Nature) to recall lore about terrain, plants, animals, weather, and natural cycles. That might not help with the statue … except it could assist with recognizing the stone and where it’s from, or how the wear pattern indicates an age, or even, if creatures or plants are depicted in the statue (the flowers at her feet, the dragonet sitting on her shoulder) provide information about the time or place being referenced.

D&D 5e Rules – Moving Through a Hostile Creature’s Space!

Sometimes you need to get past an enemy without taking the time to kill them.

Know the RulesPart of an ongoing series of 5e Rules notes.

There are a number of rules that deal with the basic question of “How do I get past that guy?” Note that all the below are caveated by class or racial powers that may say otherwise. Monks and rogues and some smaller creatures get special abilities to do some of this stuff.

Note also that if you use any of these, you still run the risk of an Attack of Opportunity if, once past, you continue running beyond someone’s reach.

Also, if the either of the opponents here is one of those that does damage to a melee attacker “within five feet,” I would as DM incur that penalty to these maneuvers as well (even if they are not, strictly speaking, melee attacks). In other words, if you are shoving, shoving past, or even tumbling around that flaming guy, you’re going to get burned (and if it’s the flaming guy trying to move through, the target’s going to get burned, regardless of whether the attempt was successful).

The Magic of the Five Foot Square

Guys in a couple of five foot squares
Guys in a couple of five foot squares

Okay, if you are doing Theater of the Mind, more power to you. I run on a 5-foot square grid.

Obviously a Medium creature (as most players and many opponents are) does not fill the entire square, like some sort of gelatinous cube. Instead, the square represents what war-gamers would call a “zone of control.” A player in a 5-foot square can be anywhere (and, in a sort of quantum fashion, everywhere) within it. Even if you are leaning waaaaaaaay over to one side to shoot arrows at that goblin behind partial cover, you are still blocking that orc from traipsing through the other side of your 5-foot square.

The basic rules of 5e (and D&D in general) is that, with some identified exceptions and weird edge cases, opposed beings cannot occupy the same 5-foot square. So, other than slaying that enemy in your way, how can you get past them?

Here is a summary of the ideas spelled out below …

If you are _____ than your opponent … … then consider _____.
Bigger Overrunning
Bigger (a lot) or Smaller (a lot) Moving Through
Stronger Shoving, Shoving Aside, or Overrunning
More Agile Tumbling Past

Moving Through

You can move through a hostile creature’s space only if the creature is at least two sizes larger or smaller than you. Remember that, even in those cases, another creature’s space is Difficult Terrain for you.

Cost: Difficult Terrain movement.

Shoving

There are a couple of possibilities here — a bog-normal Shove attack, or an optional Shove Aside.

Note that in neither case do you need to worry about “Difficult Terrain” as you are never deemed to be in the same square as the enemy (don’t think about it too hard).

If we think of You (Y) doing one of these attacks against the Enemy (E), here is where they would end up with a Shove (S) or an (optional) Shove Aside (A)

S  S  S 
A  E  A
   Y

Shove

You can use a Shove as an attack in the round, pushing the target away from you 5 feet (think of the offensive line in a football game). Once you push them away, you can step into their space and then beyond.

“Away” on a square grid would be straight back or diagonally back. (The DM might want to opine on that one, but Jeremy Crawford says diagonal counts as “away”. More discussion here.)

For a Shove, the target can’t be more than one size larger. You as the shover make a Strength (Athletics) roll vs. their (choice of) Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics).

You could also knock them Prone with a Shove attack but that doesn’t clear out the space for you to move through.

Cost: One Attack.

Shove Aside

This is an Optional Rule on DMG 272: Rather than using a Shove to move someone back (or Prone), you use Shove to move them to the side.

Essentially, this is a more difficult Shove attack, with the same skill comparison, so you as the shover roll at Disadvantage. If successful, the opponent is shoved 5 feet to the side, meaning you can move through their square at no additional movement penalty.

As a DM, the added difficulty seems quite fair and I wouldn’t hesitate to allow this optional rule.

Cost:  One Attack.

Tumbling Past

This is an optional rule, so check with your DM first. DMs, this can provide color, but it can also make your sneaky rogue types (who probably have a high DEX) a lot more dangerous.

This can be found in the DMG, page 272: As an Action or Bonus Action, you do a Dexterity (Acrobatics) vs Dexterity (Acrobatics) check; if you win, you can move through the hostile creature’s space (as difficult terrain).

There’s no specific penalty for failure here — except that you’ve burned an Action or Bonus Action, successful or not.

Costs: Action or Bonus Action; Difficult Terrain movement.

Overrunning

Yet another optional rule, on DMG page 272, this is basically just shoving your way past the opponent (or using your Strength to do a Move Through).

As an Action or Bonus Action, you roll a Strength (Athletics) check vs the defender’s Strength (Athletics). You are at Advantage if of a larger size, or Disadvantage if of a smaller size. If successful, you can move through the square (as Difficult terrain).

Cost: Action or Bonus Action; Difficult Terrain movement

But what about Jumping Over them?

The Jumping rules really don’t allow this. Or don’t work well with it.

First, High Jumps don’t help, since they are only up-and-down, according to the rules. (Yes, Olympic High Jumps involve some horizontal distance, though often not much,  I don’t think anyone is envisioning jumping backwards over an orc and then landing on their own back on a huge fluffy pad.)

Second — this is not an easy thing to do. Even under highly controlled non-combat situations.

You just can’t jump high enough on a Long Jump to reliably get over an opponent’s head.  The height you achieve on a Long Jump, with a successful Strength (Athletics) check vs DC10, is (distance/4) feet; assuming the space a Medium creature controls space is not just 5×5, but 5x5x5, you would need a distance jumped of 20 feet (20/4=5) to get past them (i.e., with a Running Long Jump, that means you’d need a STR of 20).

Magic might help: a Jump spell (or Ring of Jumping) triples your jumping distance, thus your someone with a STR of, say 16, would theoretically be able to Jump 48 feet, clearing 12 feet high …

… although that the irritating Jumping rules still, even with  a spell, restrict your Jumping distance to your Speed. If your speed is 30, you can only jump 30 feet (or 20 if you are doing a Running Long Jump that takes a 10 foot run-up). That still lets you clear that 5 foot height (20/4), and it means you only need a Strength 10 to (barely) jump over an opponent. (Speed magic would help here even more.)

That said … is a 5 foot height being the vertical control zone actually a real thing? Eh … given that D&D tends to be a bit vertically challenged in terms of accommodating things that are above ground level, you could argue it for most Medium characters (esp. as weapons and armor aren’t generally pointed at / oriented toward / limber regarding upward attacks). If you remember the Golden Rule that D&D is not a physics simulator (it’s not even a combat simulator), it kinda-sorta works fine.

Since you would be flying over the enemy’s head, there is no Difficult Terrain consideration. Thank goodness for that.

Taller creatures will tend to be Large in Size, and thus fill up (or control) a 10-foot square space (a lot more to jump over), but even if they don’t, maybe the best way to handle it is with a higher DC on that Strength (Athletics) check (DM discretion).

What does happen if that Strength (Athletics) check to jump over something fails?  In theory, just as with a non-opponent Long Jump, the jump fails at that point, and you end up, probably Prone, in the square in front of the enemy you tried to jump over. But we’ll leave those esoterica as an exercise for the student.

But Don’t Forget …

The Rule of Cool.

Sliding past/under, or jumping up-over, a bad guy is a pretty bad-ass cool move, the sort of thing that will have characters (or their players) bragging about over beers for months or years to come.

Which means, on an exceptional basis (e.g., in a boss fight) the DM should probably be willing to bend the rules at least a bit to allow such an attempt, even of the numbers don’t quite work out. The rules are there to let you know what should normally work and what normally shouldn’t. But ultimately, that judgment belongs to the DM — and a balls-to-the-wall unexpected heroic attempt … should get at least a bit of latitude.

 

D&D 5e Rules – Mounted Combat!

Sooner or later, either the good guys or the bad guys are going to charge in on a mount.

Know the RulesPart of an ongoing series of 5e Rules notes.

This came up in my Princes of the Apocalypse game, related to Earth cult Burrowshark riders atop Bulettes, but the questions discussed apply to random folk on horseback just as much.

Conquistadors on horsebackAn historic note that may be of interest or illumination to some of the questions here: it is said that when the early indigenous peoples of the horse-less Americas — including in the sophisticated realms of the Aztecs and Incas — first saw the Conquistadors on horseback, they thought they were seeing some horrifying human-animal hybrid. The dividing line between the Rider and the Mount is the focus of most of the rules in 5e around mounted combat. As you might expect, the answers are not always intuitive ones, otherwise “anyone could do it.”

Main Caveat

As noted endless times before, D&D 5e is not an accurate simulator of reality; it’s a fairly effective (usable with minimal fiddling) simulator of reality, with just enough verisimilitude to make it both fun and grokkable. Also, even though it’s derived originally from military miniatures combat rules, Napoleon’s Old Guard didn’t have to deal with gigantic flying dragons with Liches riding them, so its miniature/grid rules sometimes get weird.

Second Caveat

A lot of this also depends on playing on a grid (square or hex; the examples I’ll give are for squares).  If you are running Theater of the Mind, you can rule on this however you like, and nobody can say you nay.

In other words …

In other words, Rules As Written (RAW) are pretty crappy (or, to be more delicate, inadequate to the task) on this overall subject. Let’s look at them — Mounted Combat rules (PHB 198).

Right. Time for my interpretation.

So here’s my first question: Where is the rider on their larger mount, and how does that attack the rider’s reach and the reach of those around the mount?

Where is the Rider on the Mount?

So, take the image to the right:

The Bulette is a Large creature, and so “occupies” a 10×10 space (4 squares). The Rider is a Medium creature, and so “occupies” a 5×5 space (1 square).

(Note that this would work the same for a Horse (a Large creature) and its Medium Rider.)

So some questions:

  1. In which of the four squares of the Bulette does the Rider actually sit?
  2. How does that affect the Rider’s ability to attack (their reach)?
  3. How does that impact Area of Effect spells that only partially overlap the Mount?
  4. What about Opportunity Attacks against the Bulette — will they also reach the Rider, or only if the Rider is “adjacent” to the attacker?

In the picture, I have the Rider in the upper right corner of the Bulette. The Rider is a 5 foot reach from Initiate 1, but 10 feet from Initiate 2. So …

  1. Can Rider only attack Initiate 1?
  2. Can Initiate 2 only attack the Bulette, not the Rider?
  3. If the Rider wanted to attack Initiate 2, can the Rider just move to the lower left-hand corner of the Bulette? If so, does that cost Movement for the rider, and does it provoke an Opportunity Attack from Initiate 2?
  4. If the Bulette moves one square diagonally down-right, both Initiates could presumably Opportunity Attack the Bulette, and Initiate 1 could Opportunity Attack the Rider … but could Initiate 2 Opportunity Attack the Rider?

On the last question, as noted above, the rules actually answer it:

If the Mount provokes an opportunity attack while you’re on it, the attacker can target you or the Mount.

But how can that be?

It can be, because where your token is in your occupied area, regardless of size, is an approximation.

As a Medium creature, you “occupy” five feet square of space.  But you don’t really occupy that space like a 5×5 wood frame.

Guys in a couple of five foot squares
Guys in a couple of five foot squares

There’s a lot of space there to shift around in. Heck, if on the opposite sides of the squares, those guys couldn’t even reach each other with swords.

Put another way, a Bulette is not really a circle with a radius of 5 feet. It does not actually occupy a 10×10 foot square.

A Burrowshark (Bulette rider) on a Bulette.

So looking at the picture, a Bulette is pretty wide. But not square. And that’s even more the case for horse. A horse is a Large (10×10) creature  for game purposes, but for real purposes it should be more like 5×10.

The area a Large creature takes up (ditto for even bigger categories, but let’s keep it “simple”) is the area it “controls” in game terms, such that you cannot stop within it unless you are two size categories smaller or more. In a quantum sense, the creature exists within that area as an abstraction, a probability field, moving and shifting and occupying all that space such that a horse (or Bulette) can be attacked with 5-foot reach weapons from either side.

(Remember the Main Caveat about D&D rules, above.)

The same is true for the Rider, who exists as an abstract occupant of the entire area of their Mount, moving around as the Mount moves around, attacking and attacked by all 12 adjacent squares. That’s the only way of rationalizing “If the Mount provokes an opportunity attack while you’re on it, the attacker can target you or the Mount” (or the Mounted Combatant feat that lets the Rider force an Opportunity Attack to be on them, not their Mount).

Knight on Horseback in BattleAgain, think of a knight on horseback in combat. He’s not sitting there like a 5×5 lump on a 10×10 bigger lump. The horse is wheeling around, rearing, as the knight guides it forward and back and side-to-side and about in circles, raining blows in all directions.

Remember, Facing is an optional rule. If in a six second turn, a creature can attack both front and back, without spending any  movement to do so, than the Rider on that creature can do the same.

So to go back to my questions above. In my informed opinion:

  • The Rider can attack both Initiate 1 and Initiate 2 — and be attacked by them.
  • If the Rider has the Bulette withdraw, both the Bulette and the Rider can potentially take an Opportunity Attack by either or both Initiates.

Now, as you can imagine, this is not immediately obvious, and not well-spelled out by the rules, and is subject to a lot of varying opinions. D&D 5e Designer Jeremy Crawford has provided a number of guidances here that don’t necessarily agree with my opinion.

Aura issues get weird — if the Rider has an aura extending ten feet away from them, is their abstracted location all-encompassing (the aura extends from the full Mount, not just a square (the rider) within it? Or do we still pick a square? I don’t have a good answer for that.

AoE issues are also weird — if that Fireball hits one, two, three squares of that four-square mount, does the Rider have to make a save? Or maybe a save at Advantage? Well, the Mount takes full damage and has to make its save. I would suggest that the Rider has to do the same. .

This gets even weirder when you consider long weapons, like lances, which explicitly Disadvantage you if you are attacking a creature five feet away. The only ruling that makes any sense to me here is that if there is a square within the area of the Mount that is ten feet away, then you can control the Mount to be there so that you are not at Disadvantage.

(Note that I keep referring to “you” as the Rider. The rules also apply Uzbarkh the Unholy is the Rider bearing down on you.)

Nazgul and Fell Beast (by Coliandre)Does this begin to break down when you consider Huge Mounts or above — a character flying on an ancient red dragon is not going to simultaneously be on every square the dragon takes up, for attack or defense right? Except, again, the figures are shown on a grid as squares/circles, which means there’s a presumption of movement within the space, and if a dragon can bite in every direction on its turn, presumably the Rider on its neck can do the same with their sword.

Some pertinent articles:

Controlling Mounts and Attacks

I didn’t do this well when I was overseeing that Bulette battle. Going back to the mounted combat rules in the PHB:

While you’re mounted, you have two options. You can either control the Mount or allow it to act independently. Intelligent creatures, such as dragons, act independently.

You can control a Mount only if it has been trained to accept a rider. Domesticated horses, donkeys, and similar creatures are assumed to have such training. The initiative of a controlled Mount changes to match yours when you mount it. It moves as you direct it, and it has only three action options: Dash, Disengage, and Dodge. A controlled Mount can move and act even on the turn that you mount it.

An independent Mount retains its place in the initiative order. Bearing a Rider puts no restrictions on the actions the Mount can take, and it moves and acts as it wishes. It might flee from combat, rush to attack and devour a badly injured foe, or otherwise act against your wishes.

So, first off are Bulette’s intelligent creatures? The general threshold for Intelligent creatures is INT 4 (Animal Friendship, Awaken, and Detect Thoughts all fail if INT is higher than 3). Bulettes (and Horses) are INT 2, so they are not intelligent.

The Wisdom (Animal Handling) skill can come into play here (bulletizing mine):

When there is any question whether you can

  • calm down a domesticated animal
  • keep a Mount from getting spooked
  • intuit an animal’s intentions

the GM might call for a Wisdom (Animal Handling) check. You also make a Wisdom (Animal Handling) check to:

  • control your Mount when you attempt a risky maneuver.

Note that AH is not actual training. You can only control your unintelligent Mount if it has been trained. And for combat purposes, a Mount really needs to be trained to the noise, smells, and pain of combat, otherwise it will be uncontrolled and probably try to run unless you’re spending all your actions on AH (to an unintelligent, untrained Mount, anything in combat is a “risky maneuver”).

To break the above down into a matrix:

Controlled Mount Independent Mount
Unintelligent Mount Requires training/AH to accept a Rider.
Use Rider’s Init.
Moves as directed (may need AH for dangerous sitches).
Can only Dash, Engage, Dodge as actions.		 Requires some training/AH to accept a Rider.
Has its own Init.
Can move and act as it pleases, including attacks.
With training/AH, can be guided by the Rider.
Intelligent Mount N/A. Intelligent Mounts are always Independent Has its own Init.
Can move and act as it pleases.
As it is intelligent, it may coordinate with the Rider if training or communication is possible.

So if we assume that the Burrowsharks have trained their Bulettes to combat (they have, plus there’s some mystic ju-ju going on), then they have two choices:

  • Keep the Bulette under control. Initiative is synchronized. The Bulette will only Dash/Engage/Dodge, but is unlikely to break, flee, etc.
  • Let the Bulette be “independent” under its combat training. The Bulette and its Rider have different Initiatives (requiring more coordination), but the Bulette can attack. Note that it may sometimes choose to attack (or dodge, or whatever) differently than the Rider wants. (This is a bit more fuzzy when the GM is running both characters.)

D&D 5e does not, btw, demand DEX (or Athletics) saves for Riders whose Mounts do something the Rider doesn’t expect.

When I first did this kind of thing, I allowed the Bulette to act independently, but synced its Init with the Rider. I also had their attacks probably more coordinated than they should have been (combat training will let the Rider guide the attacks of their unintelligent Mount, just as the Rider can guide their movement, but the Mount remains independent and more likely to snap at what attacks it).

Something else to note here: the restrictions on a Controlled Mount are to Actions. One can posit that a Controlled mount should still have access to Bonus Actions (very rare) and Reactions, including Opportunity Attacks.

Pertinent link: When is a mount considered too intelligent to be controlled?

Falling Off Mounts

This didn’t come up last I ran mounted combats, but it could have. For the record:

  • If the Mount is moved against its will by an outside force (e.g., a Thunderwave spell), the Rider must make a DC 10 DEX save, or else fall off.
  • If the rider is knocked Prone by an attack/spell/effect, the Rider must instead make a DC 10 DEX save, or else fall off.
  • If the mount is knocked Prone, the Rider can use their Reaction to dismount as it falls and land on their feet, or else fall off.

Fall off = land Prone on a space within 5 feet of the mount. The RAW does not address the (very real in historic terms) danger in that last instance of having your mount fall atop you, probably doing substantial damage.

D&D 5e Rules – Magic Items: Investigating and Using!

What do I do with this loot that just might be magic?

Know the RulesPart of an ongoing series of 5e Rules notes.

I grew up in the era where you always had a mage in the party who took  Detect Magic to spot the glowy magic items, and then Identify to suss out what it is.

5e has simplified this a great deal, though much of the info is in the DMG (p. 136). There are several ways of getting at whether an item has magical properties and, if so, what they are:

  1. As the DMG says, the fastest and easiest way to reveal an item’s properties is with the Identify spell. Note that Identify can be done as a Ritual, so any wizard, bard, or cleric of divination can do it, taking 10 minutes and not burning a spell slot. If you don’t know the spell, then 10gp will hire someone (in an appropriate locale) to cast it for you.
  2. You can also focus on a magic item you are in physical contact with during a Short Rest. I usually require the characters to sort of wield the item more or less like they would — wear the boots, hold ring in your hand, wave the sword around a bit. At the end of the rest, you have learned the item’s properties and how to invoke them.
  3. You can also try to do an Intelligence (Arcana) check to see if something about the object can identify it (“The elves often put wings on the leather of Boots of Flying” or “That is the symbol for the Orcish God of Fire” or “Rings that chime with that particular note are most likely magic, from the lost realm of Midoria”). This is much quicker than the Short Rest option, but likely less complete. (Some suggestions on how this might work.)
  4. A little taste of a potion will tell the taster what it does, and probably won’t kill them.
  5. Alternately, you can guess from clues on the item itself, or can just start wielding it and figure out how it works.

Attunement

Some magical items require more than just identification and working instructions to invoke its magical powers. Instead, they are of sufficient power that they require a mystical bond be created between the wielder and the item called Attunement.

If an item requires this, it is listed with the item. Until such an item is Attuned, its magical properties do not manifest (an unattuned +3 Vorpal Sword is just a very cool looking normal sword in combat). Note that some items can have a prerequisite (e.g., class, race) for Attunement.

Attunement takes an additional Short Rest (beyond the initial identification), in physical contact and focusing on the item. Practice use of or meditation over the item might be helpful here. At the end of the rest, “the creature gains an intuitive understanding of how to activate any magical properties of the item, including any necessary command words.” More complex or powerful items may require additional Short Rests or presentation of circumstances where an ability manifests. (“You suddenly feel no fear of the flames, realizing they are not harming you but humming softly.”)

An item can be attuned to only one person at a time, and a person can only attune to three unique items at a time.

Attunement ends if prerequisites are no longer met, if the item is over 100 feet away for at least 24 hours, if the owner dies, or if another creature attunes to the item. You can also voluntarily drop an attunement with another Short Rest.

Spell-casting items

Items that allow spells to be cast are cast at the lowest possible spell and caster level, don’t expend any spell slots, and require no components (unless otherwise specified). Rules for range, casting time, duration, and concentration apply (again, unless otherwise specified).

For items that depend on the user’s spellcasting ability, if you don’t actually have a native spellcasting ability (e.g., a Rogue with Use Magic Device), the ability modifier is +0 but your Proficiency bonus does apply.

D&D 5e Rules – Magic Items: Buying and Selling!

Past editions have been profligate with magic items. 5e is a different beast.

Know the RulesPart of an ongoing series of 5e Rules notes.

TL;DR: Anything with magic items is expensive and difficult and unlikely under 5e.

For design reasons having to do with Bounded Accuracy and stuff like that, magic items — especially anything permanent, or anything to alter combat stats (TH, AC) — are rare as hen’s teeth in 5th Edition D&D.

The following is meant to provide guidelines. Bearing in mind how magic items can unbalance a campaign (especially weapons and armor with plusses), the DM should, as always, look for ways to make things fun and make things work for the story.

The rules on this stuff are something of a mess, to be honest, scattered in the PHB, the DMG, with major (optional) updates in XGE, which is what I’ll mostly follow (starting round XGE 134) None of it makes it easy along the lines of “I step into Ye Olde Magick Ytem Shoppe and …” For most stuff beyond the common, it’s a matter of searching out, then negotiating with buyers/sellers. This can literally take weeks.

It might be easier to go attack a dragon and check out their horde …

Buying the Easy Stuff

Okay, it’s not all that bad (or I won’t let it be in my game). Common stuff — the equivalent of picking up items at the local drug store — is relatively easy to find, if only because demand for it is there. In addition to XGE, I’ve found a very nice set of purchase tables (explained here) that discuss all sorts of purchasing (and selling) at different types of shops in different locals.

Some quick summaries of readily available items.

Rarity Potion Cost (gp) Scroll Cost (gp)
Common 50 Lvl 0 – 50
Lvl 1 – 100
Uncommon 250 – cities only Lvl 2 – 250 – cities only
Lvl 3 – 500 – cities only
Rare 2500 – cities only, if at all Lvl 4 – 2500 – cities only, if at all
Lvl 5 – 5000 – cities only, if at all

So, for example, a Common Potion of Healing is available at 50gp or so; quantities may be limited, and may vary by locale and shop. Especially as you get into Uncommon and Rare, the chances are high that stock and locations will be constrained.

Buying the Hard Stuff

Once you start getting beyond what gets stocked at the local Walgreens, it becomes a lot harder. Magic is rare, so finding it in a shop is situational (e.g., “Poor Drunken Bob used to be a mighty paladin. He finally hocked his +1 Greatsword with me last week. Only reason I’d carry something like that.”). It’s possible a shop in a trading town or small city might have something immediately on hand, but not guaranteed. The following is based largely on the “Downtime” rules in XGE.

Finding a magic item to purchase takes at least one workweek (5d) of effort, and 100gp in Expenses. You roll Charisma (Persuasion) to determine the quality of the seller, +1/extra work week you take, +1/extra 100gp you spend. (This also provides a wealthy lifestyle, so you can impress them). The roll is against the DC to Find in the table below.

Rarity Level Find
a seller		 Asking Price (gp) Example
Common 1+ DC 10 (1d6+1) * 10
Avg 45		 Potion* of Healing 2d4+2
Uncommon 1+ DC 15 (1d6) * 100
Avg 350		 Potion* of Greater Healing 4d4+4
Weapon +1
Adamantine Armor
Wand of Magic Missiles
Rare 5+ DC 20 (2d10) * 1K
Avg 11K		 Potion* of Superior Healing 8d4+8
Weapon +2
Armor +1
Wand of Fireballs
Very Rare 11+ DC 25 (1d4+1) * 10K
Avg 35K		 Potion* of Supreme Healing 10d4+20
Weapon +3
Armor +2
Wand of Polymorph
Legendary 17+ DC 30 (2d6) * 25K
Avg 175K		 Vorpal Sword
Armor +3
Ring of 3 Wishes

* Potions, scrolls, and other consumables cost only half price.

So, what do you find?

DC Check Total 

 Items Acquired

1-5

Roll 1d6 times on Magic Item Table A. (Common)

6-10

Roll 1d4 times on Magic Item Table B.

11-15

Roll 1d4 times on Magic Item Table C.

16-20

Roll 1d4 times on Magic Item Table D. (Uncommon)

21-25

Roll 1d4 times on Magic Item Table E.

26-30

Roll 1d4 times on Magic Item Table F.

31-35

Roll 1d4 times on Magic Item Table G. (Rare)

36-40

Roll 1d4 times on Magic Item Table H. (Very Rare)

41+

Roll 1d4 times on Magic Item Table I. (Legendary)

Complications can happen.

Spellcasting Services

Rather than buy a (consumable) magic item, you can also hire a spell-caster to do something for you. Services for relatively common spells (Cure Wounds, Identify) are easy enough to find in a city, possibly even in a town, costing 10-50gp (plus any expensive material components) (PHB 159)

The general rule of thumb for such costs:

(Level)2 × 10 + (Consumed Materials×2) + (Non-consumed Materials×0.1)

Temples are likely to provide the following spell services to the general public, assuming it’s a large enough establishment to have clerics that can do it:

Spell Level Cost (gp)
Cure Wounds 1 10
Prayer of Healing 2 50
Gentle Repose 2 50
Lesser Restoration* 2 50
Remove Curse 3 100
Revivify 3 400
Divination 4 210
Greater Restoration 5 450
Raise Dead 5 1000

*Outside of temples, itinerant priests can perform these.

Temples may perform other spells, but most likely only for adherents to the god in question.

Other magical services that can be relatively easily obtained outside of temples (in addition to the above spells that are not solely in cleric/adjacent classes):

Spell Level Cost (gp)
Identify 1 20

Prices, as with all things, can be affected by social interactions and local economic circumstances. I.e., you may be able to use Charisma (Persuasion) to sweet talk getting a desired service. On the other hand, if there is a major war or plague going on, such services may be swamped by the demand.

Selling a Magic Item

This is similar to buying one (and similarly comes from XGE, pp 133-34).

Unless you’re talking about something Common, most vendors can’t afford to buy such items, especially in smaller towns. You can pretty easily sell something to the local Walgreens that they stock, or even something of the same rarity, but anything beyond that requires a vendor with resources, and likely some sort of Charisma (Persuasion) roll to assure the buyer of the quality.

For a more formal approach, you can find a buyer for one magic item by spending 1 work week and 25gp to spread the word. You can only sell one item at a time. Make a Charisma (Persuasion) check to determine the offer (you don’t have to take it).

Rarity

Base Price (gp)
(half for consumables)
Common

100
Uncommon

400
Rare

4K
Very Rare

40K
Legendary

200K

DC Check Total

 Offer % of base price

1-10

50%

11-20

100%

21+

150%

Every work week (5d) spent provides a 10% chance of a complication — also known as DM fun! Maybe someone else in the area is looking for such an item (making buyers eager to pick one up … or making buyers who have one want to get rid of the competition).

D&D 5e Rules – Jumping!

Y’know, it makes me want to JUMP (where “it” is a bottomless crevasse)!

Know the RulesPart of an ongoing series of 5e Rules notes.

So not a lot exciting here, but sooner or later a player’s going to want to know if they can jump up to something, jump over something, etc.

Basic Jumping Rules

Jumping is all about Strength.

  • Running1 Long Jump: Travel STR feet forward.4
  • Standing Long Jump: Travel STR/2 feet forward.2,4
  • Running1 High Jump: Travel (STR bonus + 3) feet upward.3
  • Standing High Jump: Travel (STR bonus + 3)/2 feet upward.2,3

1 “Running” means you move at least 10 feet before making the jump. This is presumably, but not RAW, in the direction of the jump.
2 Round down!
3 A Strength(Athletics) roll might let you go a little higher.
4 In a long jump you can clear a low obstacle (distance/4 feet high) with as DC10 Strength (Athletics) check

So, as an example, the 6-foot tall Fighter with a Strength of 16 (+3 Bonus) can:

  • Do a Running Long Jump of 16 feet forward (clearing a 4 foot high obstacle)
  • Do a Standing Long Jump of 8 feet forward (clearing a 2 foot high obstacle)
  • Do a Running High Jump of 6 feet high (with a reach of up to 9 feet)
  • Do a Standing High Jump of 3 feet high (with a reach of up to 6 feet)

If you land in difficult terrain, you need a DC10 Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to not fall down prone.

You can extend your arms half your height above yourself during the jump. Thus, you can reach above you a distance equal to the (height of the jump ) + (1½ times your height). (See, putting a height value on your character sheet finally means something!)

Movement and Jumping

The RAW rule is, your jump in feet (up or across) counts against your Movement. That implies that if you have a Speed of 30, and you want to try and long jump 20 feet, you can only move 10 feet beforehand. (Jumps can’t split across turns.)

Jump spells can extend your jump, but the rule of 1 foot / 1 foot against Movement still applies.

For example, the Jump spell or a Ring of Jumping lets you triple your Jump — so the Fighter described above would get a Running Long Jump of (16×3=) 48 feet, right? Nope. If their Speed is only 30, they can only Jump that far (or less, given the 10 foot lead-up to a Running Long Jump).

This limitation can be extended, though, through:

  • Speed magic (e.g., Haste, which doubles your Speed)
  • The Dash action (which effectively doubles your Speed for the turn).

Note that while the RAW indicate this limitation, there is some dispute among 5e’s designers.

Jumping and Falling

There are cases with spells where it is possible to jump higher than 10 feet, which raises the question as to whether you then take damage upon landing again.

People can disagree, but I’d be inclined to say no, especially as magic is involved: if your (magically-enhanced) muscles can propel you upwards 20 feet, they can absorb the (same) shock in landing after returning to the ground.

D&D 5e Rules – Round Down!

It’s a little thing, but it can make a big difference … and know it will help stop arguments at the table.

Know the RulesPart of an ongoing series of 5e Rules notes.

So this one is short and sweet, but an important guideline to remember. It shows up in multiple 5e rulebooks, including the introductory material to the Players Handbook [PHB 7], repeated for emphasis in Xanathar’s and Tasha’s (emphasis mine):

Whenever you divide a number in the game, Round Down if you end up with a fraction, even if the fraction is one-half or greater.

That is, for those of you with an Excel frame of mind, always use TRUNC(), rather than ROUND() or CEILING().

A common example of this is with damage Resistance, which some monsters have. Resistance to a type of damage means it’s halved. If you do 15 points of fire damage to a creature with Resistance to Fire, they only take 7 points (15 / 2 = 7½, Round Down to 7).

Is there some deep, important, mystical and/or pragmatic reason to Round Down by default? No. I suspect things would all balance out decently enough if we handled rounding in a different fashion.  But it is important that there be a rule so that one isn’t having to look up every case where fractions show up, seeing how the rounding should work for each. Consistency makes for faster, easier, less contentious gameplay.

Of course, as the preceding general rule in the PHB says, exceptions beat general rules, and there are places where there are specific exceptions to Rounding Down called out — either specifically changing how things should be rounded, or more often providing a minimum. For example, you regain half of your maximum Hit Dice used after a Long Rest, but the rules note a minimum of 1 Hit Die is recovered (otherwise 1st level characters would get nothing, as 1 HD / 2 = ½ HD, rounded down is 0 HD).

But unless an exception is called out, the general rule is always to Round Down.

 

D&D 5e Rules – Invisibility!

Invisibility seems like the most incredible defensive thing. But … in 5e? Not so much.

Part of an ongoing series of 5e Rules notes.

Know the Rules

So Invisibility is one of those “DM Bane” spells. But (spoilers!) in D&D 5e, it’s … useful, but not game-breaking.

The Invisibility Spell:

A creature you touch becomes invisible until the spell ends [Concentration, up to 1 hour]. Anything the target is wearing or carrying is Invisible as long as it is on the target’s person. The spell ends for a target that attacks or casts a spell.

Invisible Man by HG Wells

Well, that sounds ominous. Uber-rogues! Hidden assassins! Parties just waltzing through dungeons!

Hmmmm … but what does that really mean?

An Invisible creature is:

  • Impossible to see without the aid of magic or a special sense (see below for more detail).
  • Heavily Obscured (so that you are effectively “Blinded” while dealing with such a target).
  • Still detectable by any noise it makes or any tracks it leaves or any scent it gives off. A fairly common ruling, though not backed by RAW, is that this (under certain circumstances) represents a Disadvantage on Perception checks. Note that being detected doesn’t necessarily change the Disadvantage to attack such a target; in general, it mainly offers the opportunity to attack it.
    • “I have no visual or auditory or olfactory sign that there is anything near me. So I will not start swinging my sword.”
    • “I heard a footstep, I saw a splash in a puddle, I smelled a familiar perfume — I swing, but I know I am at a Disadvantage.”
    • On the other hand, “I saw footsteps running through the puddle!” while not making you an easy target, does make your presence known and, potentially, dealable with.
    • It is sometimes observed that being Invisible is different from being (successfully) Hidden. Taking the Hide action entails the other senses that make one perceivable.

Looking at PHB 194:

When you attack a target that you can’t see, you have Disadvantage on the attack roll. This is true whether you’re guessing the target’s location or you’re targeting a creature you can hear but not see. If the target isn’t in the location you targeted, you automatically miss, but the DM typically just says that the attack missed, not whether you guessed the target’s location correctly. When a creature can’t see you, you have Advantage on attack rolls against it.

What does that mean, basically?

  • Attack Rolls against an invisible creature have Disadvantage
  • Attack Rolls by an invisible creature  have Advantage.

Which is pretty awesome, but is not game-dominating.

Delving deeper, the Invisibility spell:

  • Requires Concentration. That makes it pretty good for “I will make you invisible, go scout ahead.” Less so for “Here, let me make you invisible mid-battle, as long as I OH MY GOD THE FIREBALL!”
    • Unless you are an Invisible Stalker, where Invisibility an innate condition that doesn’t require Concentration.
  • Ends when an Invisible creature attacks or casts a spell.
    • Prepping for an attack doesn’t drop the Invisibility (we’re not talking Romulan warbirds here); making the attack roll signifies the attack, dropping the Invis (even if it misses).
      • But executing a spell that creates a saving throw result still counts as dropping the Invis, even though there is no attack roll.
      • Readying an Attack doesn’t drop the Invis, but Readying a spell does.
    • For a Rogue, that attack that drops the spell is probably a Sneak Attack, since that gives them Advantage.
    • For a multi-turn spell-casting, starting the spell breaks the Invisibility.

So what might counter Invisibility (beyond footprints and being noisy)?

  • Blindsight: “A creature with blindsight can perceive its surroundings without relying on sight.” These are mostly underdark creatures.
  • Tremorsense: “A monster with tremorsense can detect and pinpoint the origin of vibrations within a specific radius, provided that the monster and the source of the vibrations are in contact with the same ground or substance “
  • Truesight: A creature with truesight can, out to a specific range, see in normal and magical darkness, and see Invisible creatures and objects.

In general, the above are either (a) creatures living belowground or in the dark, or (b) beings of a higher order.

  • Dispel Magic will work against an Invisibility spell just fine … but you need to be able to target it, meaning (most likely) a Perception roll first, with the caveats above.
  • Create Water is also a good way to be able to perceive an invisible creature, either through raindrops or through puddles.

And, just as a general note, Area of Effect spells are an excellent tactical counter to Invisibility (think “Depth charges vs suspected enemy submarine”).

D&D 5e Rules – Inspiration!

Inspiration can be used to reward good roleplay and memorable moments. I like it.

Know the RulesPart of an ongoing (if occasional) series of D&D 5e Rules notes.

So in addition to being a Tactical Guy, I’m a role-player, so I will likely emphasize those aspects in any game I can.

D&D is not a RP-heavy system by design; it’s originally derived from miniatures warfare gaming (which doesn’t reward someone running into the middle of the battlefield with a white flag to negotiate a truce), and the Experience Points that folk are incented after are for, frankly, killing things.  So, as a general rule, one does not hop into a D&D game expecting penetrating psycho-drama and lengthy inter-character dialogs.

Right. Got it.

There Will Be Role-Playing

I still encourage players to think about the personality aspects of their characters — 5e has rather clumsily loaded traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws into the character creation process, related to background. It’s a start, but I would hope players would come up with something a bit more organic, using those background-driven items as, well “inspiration.”

Role-playing is also important, in my games, when encountering people not in the party. The folk encountered, especially in town, are not pop-up clue dispensers.  I can’t promise Shakespeare, but there will be character interactions, so I expect something more than “I walk up to the Bartender and roll on Deceive.” 

All of which ties into the post topic: Inspiration [PHB 125]!

What is Inspiration?

Inspiration
Inspiration!

From a meta standpoint, Inspiration is an optional rule, based on whether the DM wants to use it. I’m not sure why they would not, but if your tables doesn’t use it … it’s worth asking why not.

Mechanically, here’s what the book say (emphasis mine):

Inspiration is a rule the game master can use to reward you for playing your character in a way that’s true to his or her personality traits, ideal, bond, and flaw.

By using inspiration, you can draw on your personality trait of compassion for the downtrodden to give you an edge in negotiating with the Beggar Prince. Or inspiration can let you call on your bond to the defense of your home village to push past the effect of a spell that has been laid on you.

Those examples given are a little misleading. You get Inspiration by (as a limited example) drawing on those personality traits in some fashion … and can then use Inspiration to do something batter. RP-wise, you can draw on that connection (“As I talk to the Beggar Prince, I remember that morning giving my last gold piece to that hungry child [for which I got Inspiration], and I hold onto that insight as to what hunger really means as I negotiate for my friends’ release”), but it’s not completely necessary.

Gaining Inspiration

Your GM can choose to give you inspiration for a variety of reasons. Typically, GMs award it when you play out your personality traits, give in to the drawbacks presented by a flaw or bond, and otherwise portray your character in a compelling way. Your GM will tell you how you can earn inspiration in the game.

As noted, good role-play will (or should — see below) almost always net Inspiration at my table. Sometimes it might not happen until after the session when I’m doing the game logs, but …

As noted below, I also give Inspiration for particularly fun, imaginative, or memorable action by a character.  If it’s the sort of thing you’d tell stories about afterwards in a tavern, or that might even be mentioned in the Saga of You that some bard will write someday — it’s worth Inspiration.

Since the DM controls the reward of Inspiration, you can keep it from becoming too mechanical or from players “gaming” the system for it. Inspiration should feel like a real reward for doing something for doing something that makes the game more interesting, entertaining, or enjoyable for everyone at the table

Using Inspiration

If you have inspiration, you can expend it when you make an attack roll, saving throw, or ability check. Spending your inspiration gives you Advantage on that roll.

Basically, any time you roll a D20, you can burn your Inspiration to gain Advantage. It’s not always a game-changer, but it’s a nifty little boost.

Some tables include house rules letting you burn Inspiration to give someone else Advantage, or even to given an enemy Disadvantage. Thematically that’s a bit more dubious; it’s also potentially imbalancing.

Something tangential to the that, though, is this:

Additionally, if you have inspiration, you can reward another player for good roleplaying, clever thinking, or simply doing something exciting in the game. When another player character does something that really contributes to the story in a fun and interesting way, you can give up your inspiration to give that character inspiration.

Don’t let this erode down to players just giving their own Inspiration at the very last second to someone else who badly needs to make a roll. It should most likely happen out of combat, and the giver should provide some justification. (Note, though, that some tables effectively pool their Inspiration together; to me, that robs it of some of its color.)

Use It Or Lose It

Inspiration is a binary — you either have it or you don’t. You can’t earn multiple “points” of Inspiration.

That means that if you do something Inspiration-worthy, and you still have your Inspiration, you don’t get anything.

The biggest problem I see with players (myself included, when in that role) is holding onto their Inspiration “just in case.” Better to use it at the first point where it would be useful, and work at earning more.

The DMG [p. 240] suggests each character should get around one Inspiration a session. That seems a bit high to me (and I’m not wild about an Inspiration quota), but if you have players that are doing solid RP and coming up with interesting ideas, it’s certainly not an impossible rate for them.

Some GMs put some bounds as to how long Inspiration can hang around out there — resetting it at the time of a Rest of some sort, for example. I understand that thematically, and it certainly encourages people to use their Inspiration while they have it, but I tend to be more lenient than that.

Helping the DM

There are a couple of ways (at my table) that helping the DM can generate Inspiration.

A player who makes substantive contributions to the game outside of it (keeping game logs, posting lots of funnies in the campaign forum, etc.) might sometimes get Inspiration for their character. I don’t do this every time because I don’t want it to be quite so quid pro quo, but occasional Inspiration is a nice tip-o-the-hat to a helpful player.

I know as a GM that I often have a dozen balls in the air, and keeping an eye out for someone making the game “more exciting, amusing, or memorable” sometimes fails because I’m too busy trying to decide what spell the evil wizard is about to cast.

Because of that, I encourage players to let me know if someone deserves Inspiration. I rarely say no (largely because I’m rarely asked  for an unworthy cause).

Closing Thoughts

The DMG [p. 240]  has further suggestions of when and why to award Inspiration, and some variants on the rule. It’s worth a read.

Gold D20
Inspiring!

I find that players often forget they have Inspiration available when playing in a VTT like Roll20. A simple way around that is to create or designate a Token Marker for Inspiration. I use the Dealer API/Script by Keith Curtis (see here and here) with some simple macros to put (or take) a shiny gold D20 on the player IDs on the Roll20 desktop, complete with an inspiring message. Fun!

D&D 5e Rules – Insight!

It’s not mind reading, but it can be helpful to get some clue about what’s in an NPC’s head.

Know the RulesPart of an ongoing (if occasional) series of D&D 5e Rules notes.

I’ve found Insight rules terribly underutilized in the D&D games I’ve been in. Wisdom (Insight) [PHB 178] is essentially Perception for personalities.

Your Wisdom (Insight) check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie or predicting someone’s next move. Doing so involves gleaning clues from body language, speech habits, and changes in mannerisms.

Examples of using Insight

Bob the Tailor is a town elder, who’s fluttering around trying to keep the party from the abandoned mine outside the town. It would be useful to know where his fear is oriented — toward the party, toward the town, or toward himself. Is he lying when he talks about the mysterious music people have heard in the area? If we we say we’re going to the mine anyway, does his fear spike — or is it anger? Is his smile when he sees the constable approaching the confidence of seeing an approaching ally, or a deceptive cover for terror at being discovered? Insight can help with all that.

In other cases, you might use Insight to figure out if the guy you’re gambling with is confident in his hand? How does he feel about that last card he drew?  Is your date having a good time? Sure, she says she likes that roast beast you ordered for her … but how is she really feeling?

If someone’s trying to actively resist others using their Insight against them, they usually roll Charisma (Deception). (This is a case where one could easily use other base states for the Deception role, however — an academic using Intelligence (Deception) in hiding their bias in a paper, for example, or someone using Strength (Deception) to hide how incredibly freaking heavy that chest of gold is.)

But rather than active rolls, this is also a case where passive skills come into play — the GM can consider passive Insight (or another’s passive Deception) to give give unsolicited clues about “He’s behaving a little twitchy,” or “He seems genuinely worried about you,” or even “You notice she seems attracted to the barkeep.”

Limitations of Insight

It does have limitations. It can indicate that someone is lying — but not necessarily what they are lying about,  or why they are lying, or what the truth is. People lie, after all, for a lot of reasons. Insight might tell you that the city guard you’re talking with still seems highly suspicious of you after your story … but it won’t tell you that he’s going to let his friends know to keep an eye out on you, or that he’s going to try to ambush you later on.

Insight gives you, well, insight into underlying feeling, reactions, etc., but not necessarily why they are reacting that way. Is the guard at the door speaking a bit flatly when he tells you about how great a guy the grand vizier is? Yeah, you can pick that up with Insight, but it’s going to be more difficult (i.e., take more time and questions and other actions) to tell if the change because of some sort of loyalty spell, or from fear that the vizier’s secret police are monitoring him, or even just boredom with people pumping him for information about the vizier.

The nature of Insight — picking up on tells, physical and verbal expressions, etc. — requires you have a way of perceiving and interpreting such things. Dealing with the human barkeep at the tavern is one thing. Trying to read the body language of a gelatinous cube is another.

Even in less extreme situations, Insight might be hampered by unfamiliarity with the target’s customs and culture: shouting and waving around your spear might be an expression of hostility by this never-before-met humanoid, or it might be a ritualized greeting, or a mating display. Insight might still work, but less reliably.

Remote use of Insight

Finally, Insight can be used without the target standing in front of you — picking out a great gift for your girlfriend (or for the prince) based on what they’ve enjoyed in the past, or figuring out how the savage Orcish war leader you keep encountering is likely to attack the city or respond to various counters. I’d probably use a normal Difficulty DC as the opposition, and familiarity (or lack thereof) with the target would be a key in determining how difficult the estimate was.

Overusing Insight

Because it deals with interpersonal relationships, Insight can be easily abused or overused. Overuse of  Insight is a bit like overuse of Perception (“I evaluate every person in the bar” is like “I search every room thoroughly”); it’s doable, but should carry some costs (time being a major one, but also something like the likelihood someone is going to catch you staring at them — or their love interest — and take offense).

Overuse also takes away a bit from Role Playing. The DM should be able to use passives to feed needed clues to the players about how people are behaving without their insisting on active Insight rolls, just as they feed visual prompts in the normal course of things rather than  players requiring active Perception  roles as they walk through town.

Who rolls Insight?

Note: Insight is one of those skills (like Perception, etc.) where sometimes it makes more sense for for the DM to roll it for a character, to determine if you can figure out something, can’t figure out something, or are deceived in your insight about something.

D&D 5e Rules – Initiative and Cunning Plans!

Not surprisingly, a bunch of heroes clustered in a corridor are not quite as coordinated as you might think.

Know the RulesPart of an ongoing (if occasional) series of D&D 5e Rules notes.

So something happened in the game the night before I wrote this up that, at the time, I kind of blew through, but  I wanted to give it some thought. This is, of course, just the sort of thing I have sometimes taken justified criticism for overthinking. But it’s a situation we’ve run into more than once, and I’d like to have figure out a rubric for myself to adjudicate against.

And, as a caveat, it’s always worth noting up front that time and combat in D&D are abstractions designed to turn the chaos of real-life combat into something manageable. While a level of verisimilitude is the goal, the manageability always trumps that. Just as D&D is not a physics simulator, it’s not a great combat simulator (falling somewhere between an FPS and Chess).

When the slow guy is supposed to lead off the attack

So, here was the sitch: as the party crept up stairs into the upper floor where the local BBEG had their throne room, the plan was that Theren the Sorcerer was going to begin combat by lobbing his Vitriolic Sphere into the center of the bad guys.

How should the combat have been sequenced? Even handwaving aside the question of whether anyone knew that Theren was going first (there was probably an excess of allowable coordination between the two subgroups, since you were going up two different sets of stairs and not using any sort of communication magic) …

  • Did Theren’s action take place outside of the Initiative order? Did his executing the attack start the combat so that’s when everyone rolls Init?
    • (Short answer: no.)
  • Did Theren’s Init get changed to the top of the Initiative order? Since he’s the one initiating the combat?
    • (Short answer: still no.)
  • Did everyone with Init rolls before Theren sort of get skipped over? (That’s what I did, but it effectively means that those higher Init rolls become low Init rolls, which is “unfair”.)
    • (Short answer: it should have been “voluntary”)
  • Did everyone before Theren in the Initiative order (ally and enemy) actually get go in some fashion before Theren did?
    • (Short answer: it should have been that way, yes.)(TL;DR: The ultimate
  • And did it matter if the bad guys were surprised or not?
    • (Short answer: Yes and No. But in this case they were not — the Baroness had perceived you coming up the stairs and called for you to come in and play.)

"Warriors! Come out to play!"In 5e, combat takes place with the Order of Combat:

  1. Determine Surprise.
  2. Establish positions.
  3. Roll Initiative.
  4. Take turns in rounds of combat.

In short:  Initiative is rolled when combat begins. You can not make an attack outside of Initiative. 

So, no, Theren doesn’t get to bypass the Initiative roll, or have his Init moved to the top of the order, or whatever. (Some folk have house rules for this, but they create their own problems.)

So let’s simplify the situation a bit and say that the top initiative order, when rolled, was (leaving out other players and bad guy mooks):

  1. 20 – William
  2. 15 – Baroness BBEG (the enemy)
  3. 10 – Theren

The first question is: is there Surprise? This is determined before Initiative is rolled, technically, though I don’t think it makes a difference.

If you’re surprised, you can’t move or take an action on your first turn of the combat, and you can’t take a reaction until that turn ends. A member of a group can be surprised even if the other members aren’t.

So if Baroness BBEG were surprised by this attack out of nowhere in her throne room (ignoring the previous sounds of the battles below), it counters her Initiative to a large degree. The beginning of the combat can be handled this way:

  1. William says he is choosing to Ready an attack if anyone runs up to the top of the stairwell before his next turn. He’s doing this to let Theren get that shot off as agreed, rather than running into the middle of the room and spoil the AoE plans. It’s essentially giving up his turn, but there you go.
  2. Baroness BBEG is Surprised — she’ll effectively see Theren coming, but will be unable to act on her turn. After her turn occurs, she would be able to take a Reaction (if she had Counterspell, she could then use it against Theren’s impending attack), and she will be able to act normally at the beginning of her next turn.
  3. Theren pops up and acid bombs everyone’s ass.

So Surprise mechanics make things simple(r), because they provide for higher-Init enemies to be locked in place (but ready to go next time).

But in the case of the game that triggered this discussion, there was no Surprise (the party simply wasn’t stealthy climbing those stairs). Which means that there is a disconnect between Intent (lob an Vitriolic Sphere before they can act) and Execution (oh, they acted before I could lob my Vitriolic Sphere, because they had better rolls on Initiative). Or, as one site I saw put it:

“If your player wants to stab the bandit in the face before he has time to act, that’s what a high Initiative roll is for, not a surprise round.”

Without Surprise, it’s Theren starting to move for his guns first, but the other folk outdrawing him.

“But Dave,” you may say, “she couldn’t see Theren before he came up the stairs.” That’s true, but because she isn’t Surprised (i.e., she was aware of a threat, and so ready to act/react), she still is able to act first as she chooses, because her Initiative is higher.

This gets into the whole idea that 6-second Rounds are themselves an abstraction — if there are six people in the room it’s not that Person 1 literally goes in the first second, Person 2 in the second second, etc. It means that within that six second timeframe, Person 1 acts before Person 2, who acts before Person 3, etc. That doesn’t completely match reality, because not everyone is declaring their actions before they happen as in some games (so that higher Initiative folk know what is coming), but it is essentially how 5e abstracts “People running around and into each other with intent to do mayhem.”

So here’s what should happen (should have happened in this simplification of last night):

  1. William does whatever he’s doing — Dodging, Readying an action, casting Spike Growth in the middle of the room to make sure that nobody runs away before Theren can act, whatever. He’s choosing to back Theren’s play, but still moves faster/before Theren does, because he has higher Initiative.
  2. Baroness BBEG “Readies an action.” Because I’m the GM, you don’t get to know what it is (“Chuck my spear at the first person atop the stairs over there”). Neener-neener. But she does this before Theren because she isn’t surprised and has higher Initiative.
  3. Theren reaches the top of the stairs and turns to cast his spell …
    … and Baroness BBEG executes her Readied action (throwing her spear at the first person atop the stairs, Theren, which hits) …
    … and, if still alive, Theren throws his Vitriolic Sphere.

(Note: one of the players reminded me afterwards that Theren was Invisible. This gets into Perception checks, Active vs Passive, etc., to deal with his footsteps and verbal components, etc.  In which case she might have been Surprised or she might have been aware something screwing was going on and still chucked her spear with Disadvantage against an Invisible foe before Theren could cast his spell (which would then drop his Invis).

Note that Theren could have said, “Well, heck, they aren’t Surprised so someone might plan to attack me” and change his plans from what had been intended. Or maybe, despite his intent and the team’s plans, William might have taken an action to attack or distract the Baroness, which might have led to another change of plans by Theren. While Initiative lets people act first, the structure of the game from that point means that people are aware of the actions taken previously by people with better Init, and can revise their plans accordingly.

(In the Action Economy, there’s a significant advantage in going first … but after that, Initiative is, like Time: just a way to keep everything from happening at once.)

The bottom line is, you can’t easily plan your way into something that is the equivalent of Surprise (“I go before anyone else does”) if there is no Surprise present and you roll a low Initiative. That’s what Initiative is kind of for — if you roll poorly, you go later in the round. If the other players who would have gone first want to effectively skip their turn (do a Dodge or a Ready or maybe even a Help), that’s their prerogative for the tactical situation. The enemy is under no such obligation, and if any of them have higher Init than the “this is how I am starting this combat,” they get to do their thing first (which may be standing there in Surprise, or may be shooting you under the table).

Han rolled higher initiative
Even if Greedo intended to fire first.

Here are some articles that touch on this — which, given the volume, shows this is something a lot of GMs fret about, though most of the scenarios here involve Surprise, which, as noted, simplifies the question a lot.

“We get ready to enter the room”

So there’s one more area where this kind of thing has come frequently into play, the “We arrange ourselves at the door and charge in” scenario, when the Doughty Fighters at front roll crap Init (because they used Dex as a dump stat) and everyone queued up behind them roll sbetter than them and basically have to:

  • Move through the Doughty Fighters (as Difficult Terrain, and potentially exposing themselves to attack, which is kind of why you wanted the Doughty Fighters to run in first).
  • Ready an Action to move in when the Doughty Fighters have and the space is clear (but not then being able to attack or anything, because Ready only lets you take a single action or move).
  • Fire ranged attacks past the Doughty Fighters.
  • Waste their turn.

The bottom line there is: yup, those are kind of your choices when everyone in front of you is slower. Hopefully the bad guys inside the room are Surprised!

D&D 5e House Rules

I tend to be rule-abiding. But sometimes the rules just aren’t fun. So … sometimes the rules need to change.

So here are the house rules we play with at my table.

I tend to follow the Rules as Written (RAW), sometimes the Rules as Intended (RAI), as makes sense. I’m not big into whole-hog replacing play-tested sub-systems, if only because I’ve seen how easily that can send things heterodyning all over the place.

That said, not all rules are created equal, and things that make for grinding busy-work and management by the player or GM can usually be elided or adjusted when playing with mature individuals who are there for fun.

My House Rules

  1. I use Inspiration. I also encourage players to nominate each other’s characters (or call out their own character to me) to receive Inspiration. It’s a fun mechanic to reward special moments of RP or action.
  2. Bookkeeping that is no fun is no fun.
    1. I tend to be loosey-goosey about Material spell components, except for expensive ones. (Verbal and Somatic I do pay attention to.)
    2. I tend to be loosey-goosey about encumbrance, unless things look ridiculous.
    3. Keep track of your arrows. I mean, it’s not that big a deal. When guidance is needed, I use the “you can recover half your missiles from any combat.”
  3. Dead bodies constitute Difficult Terrain.
  4. We play on a square grid. We use the basic “1 square vertical, horizontal, or diagonal = 5 feet” variant in the PHB 192, rather than the someone more accurate “the first diagonal square is 5 feet, the second is 10, the next is 5, etc.” variant in DMG 252, because it’s just simpler.
  5. Leveling takes place during a Long Rest. Unless for meta purposes it makes sense to do it some other time. But, in general, “I just realized, I know more spells” seems more suitable to happen overnight than while walking down a path.
  6. I prefer Milestone Leveling to getting finicky about XP, dealing with absences from encounters or the table, etc., in ways that leave players unbalanced. Defining adventure goals as the basis for leveling just makes more narrative sense to me, and makes it easier for me and the players.
  7. You take a Short Rest as you Long Rest.  So you can be back up some HP if attacked before the end of your Long Rest.
  8. I tend to Roll Actives vs use Passives, since VTTs make it trivial to do so.
  9. You can use a successful Dexterity (Acrobatics) roll to keep you from going prone when you land from a fall, vs a DC equal to the damage you took (stick the landing!).
  10. Flashing Before Your Eyes: Any time you are dying during your turn (other profound incapacitations might apply), the DM (if he remembers or is reminded) will ask you a question about your character or their history. If you answer the question, you get Inspiration.
  11. If an obstacle to your ranged weapon is closer to you than to what you are shooting, you can ignore the obstacle (no cover); otherwise, use the cover rules (usually half-cover, AC+2). I.e., a close obstacle can be easily shot around.
  12. Ranged attacks with altitude difference: (Discussion)
    1. thrown/twanged weapon at a higher altitude target: the effective range is the sum of the horizontal and vertical distance
    2. thrown/twanged weapon at a lower altitude target: the effective range is the greater of the horizontal or vertical
    3. spell: the range is the sum of horizontal and 1/2 the vertical.  
  13. People may be assumed to be sleeping in their armor, unless humor or the DM who has a specific reason for it otherwise make a note that it is not so. Changing out of or into armor is time-consuming and Not Fun. If there are no 5e rules penalizing swimming in armor, we can assume that in this world armor is lightweight and comfortable to wear and sleep in.
    1. In a similar fashion, it’s assumed peoples’ weapons are always with them, unless it is noted otherwise by players or DMs. That would be socially (and logistically) awkward most of the time, but the alternative is a lot of Not Fun moments.

Concluding Notes

Finally, I always try (though sometimes fail) to remember two things about Rules and D&D:

  1. D&D 5e is not a physics simulator. It’s not even a great combat simulator. Appeals to reality are less important than verisimilitude (feeling like reality), and both of those are less important than keeping the game rolling along smoothly.
  2. The Rule of Cool should always have a place at the table. If someone proposes doing something one-off that is going to be one of those cool moments in a movie that people will talk about for ages … don’t worry about RAW, but remember why you’re all gathered around the table to begin with.

D&D 5e Rules – Help!

You can, in fact, get by with a little Help from your friends.

Know the RulesPart of an ongoing (if occasional) series of D&D 5e Rules notes.

Everybody wants to be the hero.

Every character wants to be the one to land the killing blow.

But sometimes, it’s better to ask for — or give — some help.

A lot of player characters, especially in the support classes, have spells that will enhance other people’s rolls, which is very cool.

But in a sense, everyone has that ability, through the Help action (PHB 192):

Helping with Ability Checks

You can lend your aid to another creature in the completion of a task. When you take the Help action, the creature you aid gains Advantage on the next ability check it makes to perform the task you are helping with, provided that it makes the check before the start of your next turn.

This mechanic is explained more under “Working Together.”

Sometimes two or more characters team up to attempt a task. The character who’s leading the effort–or the one with the highest ability modifier–can make an ability check with advantage, reflecting the help provided by the other characters. In combat, this requires the Help action.

A character can only provide help if the task is one that he or she could attempt alone. For example, trying to open a lock requires proficiency with thieves’ tools, so a character who lacks that proficiency can’t help another character in that task.

Moreover, a character can help only when two or more individuals working together would actually be productive. Some tasks, such as threading a needle, are no easier with help.

So it’s not enough to Help by holding the thief’s tool kit while they are picking the lock, or shouting encouragement to the guy trying to climb a cliff wall. You have to be able to do the thing you are assisting, and describe how you are helping.

What is the difference between Help and Working Together? The former is an action type during combat. As GM, I might be a little lenient on combat-setting “how are you helping?” actions, e.g., “I stand there, looking menacing at the attacking goblins, while screening the Rogue from view as she tries to pick the lock so we can get out of here” (you’re not directly assisting with the lockpicking, but you are sacrificing your action to let the Rogue focus on their without worrying about being stabbed = Advantage!).

Helping with Combat Rolls

More frequently, Help is applied directly to combat situations, as well.

Alternatively, you can aid a friendly creature in attacking a creature within 5 feet of you. You feint, distract the target, or in some other way team up to make your ally’s Attack more effective. If your ally attacks the target before your next turn, the first att⁠ack roll is made with Advantage.

This might be a way, for example …

  • If you know the opponent has resistance or immunity to your flaming sword, maybe you can be more effective Helping the other fighter with a cold-based weapon.
  • If you know the opponent will be hit harder and more effectively by an ally (because of the nature of their weapon, or just because they have a huge damage bonus on strength), you might consider whether its worth effectively giving up your attack(s) for them to get an attack at Advantage.
  • While a Rogue will be automatically able to Sneak Attack if you’re within 5 feet of a target, giving them Advantage to deal out that ton of damage they’re about to roll may be tactically the best course.

Note that this not a matter of Reach, but a 5 foot limit. So if someone with a Glaive wants to provide Help, they need to step in to 5, not hang out at 10 feet.

Also note that Help is just for the first attack. That makes it somewhat more useful at lower levels, when you are only sacrificing one attack to make that happen, and the bonus is going to the only attack the attacker has yet.

Also note that you are Helping a specific attacker. “I am going to help the Rogue with their attack on the goblin I’m next to.”  If the Paladin goes after the goblin first, they so not get the Advantage bonus. And if the Rogue decides on a different target, the Help has been wasted.

Help is also usable to assist with spell attacks, granting advantage on any sort of spell attack roll against that target.

Finally, Help is an action frequently assigned to familiars and animal companions and the like — these often cannot attack, but can be commanded (or urged) to “Help the Fighter!” (“Bark bark!”)

As a GM, I like to encourage players to give me some idea of what they are doing to “help” in this way. “I wave my hands and attract the orc’s attention.” “I try to keep her sword busy clinched with mine.” “I shout, ‘Ashtuk, is that you?'” No mechanical effect is applied except the Advantage it provides, but it’s nice color regardless.

 

D&D 5e Rules – Grappling and Restraint!

Grappling and Restraint sound similar, but aren’t. How do you make them work for you?

Know the RulesPart of an ongoing (if occasional) series of 5e Rules notes.

Questions about this pop up sooner or later in every campaign, as it’s an area that 5e either does fine or poorly, depending on which online forum you go to or  specific question you examine.

So what happens when instead of bashing each other with hunks of steel or eldritch energies, you get up-close and personal

You can attack to Grapple

This is discussed on PHB 195. Essentially you use one of your Attacks to make a skill contest:

  • Attacker: roll Strength (Athletics)
  • Defender: roll Strength (Athletics) or Dex (Acrobatics)

In other words, Grapplers need to be a lot better at that skill, or be pretty darned strong.

If you win, the target is Grappled (technically, has the Grappled condition, PHB 290).

Which, honestly, doesn’t do much.  It basically reduces Speed to 0, even if it has other features that increase its speed beyond base.

But a grappled target can still punch grappler, stab them, etc. They are more restrained by being within 5′ of their grappler (which gives them Disadvantage on spell attacks or ranged attacks), but melee attacks are just fine.

Grappling does keep the grappled target from running away until help arrives or until the target breaks the Grapple. They can try that by  taking their Action to roll Strength (Athletics) or Dex (Acrobatics) vs the grappler’s Strength (Athletics) again. 

The grappler can also slowly (half speed) drag a grappled target with them — or continue attacking them at close range (with no particular advantage, and with the same disadvantages).

Note:

  • When you have Grappled someone, you are not yourself considered Grappled.
  • When you have Grappled someone, you are using up one hand (the other hand is considered free for attacks, etc.)

Aside from breaking free of the Grapple through a contest, it can also be broken by:

  • The grappler being Incapacitated.
  • An effect knocking the grappled target out of the reach of the grappler or the Grappling effect, e.g., being knocked away by a Thunderwave.

What if more than one person at a time is Grappling you?

While executing a Grapple takes one Attack (of however many you have within your Attack action), escaping a Grapple takes an entire Action. If more than one person has you Grappled, you can only escape one Grapple per turn … which means tag-teaming Grapplers can seriously cause you a problem.

Monster and Spell Grapples and Restraints

This is where things get a little tricky. Or more straightforward. You decide. The Grappled and Restrained conditions are quite separate, but come up a lot in spell and monster attacks: e.g., a Giant Octopus grapples you with tentacles; a Web spell causes the Restrained condition (PHB 292).

  • Just like with a Grapple, a Restrained creature’s speed becomes 0, and it can’t benefit from any bonus to its speed.
  • Attack rolls against the Restrained  target have Advantage, and the their attack rolls have Disadvantage.
  • The Restrained target also has Disadvantage on Dexterity saving throws.

(Note that the Grappler feat lets the grappler get Advantage on the Grappled target — but, more interestingly, it lets a grappler roll a second Grapple attack, which, if it succeeds, means both the grappler and the grappled target are both Restrained. Which actually seems kinda sucky.)

So, Dave, how do I do something useful with this?

Grappling by itself is kind of limited in what it can do. But with a little work, it can make an effective attack.  So  how do you grab an opponent and actually subdue him.

The vast consensus I’ve read on this is Grapple them (so they can’t get away) and then do a Shove attack (PHB 195, same Ability checks as the Grapple) to knock them Prone …

…  at which point they get the Prone condition’s effects (PHB 292), and as Prone:

  • they can only crawl (but not if they’re Grappled and at speed 0!)
  • or they can get up (but not if they’re Grappled and at speed 0!)
  • they are at a Disadvantage to attack (Prone!)
  • attacks on them have Advantage (Prone!)
  • … and they probably have to use their whole Action to try to desperately break the Grapple.

People have created whole builds around this.

Are you, the attacker, also Prone at that point? A good question. Consensus seems to be “No, but describe what you are doing to your DM.” I’d think of it as the arm twist behind the guy on the ground; you’re enough on your feet that you are not considered Prone, and can defend attacks normally (albeit with one hand), etc.

Given that, as long as you maintain this, you can continue attacking the Grappled+Prone guy and other folk can attack them, too, with Advantage, and that should distract them from attacking you back (as they desperately try to break the Grapple).