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12 months ago ::
Jun 30, 2012 - 11:06PM
#1
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The sleep spell is formidable enough with its 20' radius. Monsters awaken when they take damage, but why not simple coup de gras them instead? And for that matter, the wizards cat familiar can double the number of coup de gras a wizard can execute in his turn.
Cast sleep on your turn, then immediately deal a death blow to one of the unconscious monsters with your familiar, this makes the sleep spell effectively a first level death spell.
In our play test we had two wizards, the results where devastating to the hobgoblins. One of us would cast sleep, then between two cat familiers we racked up essentailly two extra kills per round. All the while, the bugbears who made there saves struggled to wake up their companions while the rest of the party had at them.
Should the familiar be able to perform a coup de gras? If animal companions are added later, should they also have this power?
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12 months ago ::
Jun 30, 2012 - 11:20PM
#2
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Sleep only actually puts enemies to sleep if they have 10 or fewer HP (and even then, only if they fail the save). Most of the characters in the playtest are capable of dealing 10+ damage anyway (the Fighter even does so on average), so I don't really see the issue. I mean, sure, the familiar isn't, but you don't get the familiar until level 3 anyway. Plus, there's no duration on the sleep effect, so there's no actual rush to kill the sleepers. That means doubling your coup de grace speed isn't really that big a deal.
And how was this devastating to the bugbears? They definitely have more than 10 HP to start, so you must have had to wound them to get them into Sleep range. I mean, finishing off the weak guys is kind of the entire point of Sleep anyway...
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12 months ago ::
Jul 01, 2012 - 12:54AM
#3
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..."window.parent.tinyMCE.get('post_content').onLoad.dispatch();" contenteditable="true" />And how was this devastating to the bugbears? They definitely have more than 10 HP to start, so you must have had to wound them to get them into Sleep range. I mean, finishing off the weak guys is kind of the entire point of Sleep anyway...
You are correct, I ment the hobgoblins, most of which had ten hitpoints. I'll edit that post.
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12 months ago ::
Jul 01, 2012 - 5:55AM
#4
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...coup de gras...
Off-topic: This is the most hilarious misspelling that I have encountered recently. The very idea made me crack up...
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12 months ago ::
Jul 01, 2012 - 8:38AM
#5
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You are correct, I ment the hobgoblins, most of which had ten hitpoints. I'll edit that post.
Hobgoblins have 11 HP to start, so you still would have had to hurt them. The only creatures susceptible to Sleep right off the bat in the packet are the rats, centipedes, kobolds, and goblins.
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12 months ago ::
Jul 01, 2012 - 8:55AM
#6
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That's a case where a DM should rule that cat familiars can't coup de grâce. Not for reasons of balance but because they don't have appropriate weapons to do so.
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12 months ago ::
Jul 01, 2012 - 9:10AM
#7
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Date Joined:
Aug 25, 2007
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cats are such dangoes pets.
if you forget to feed them one time BAM he coup degrace while you sleep.
we al know how often sombody gets killed by a cat.
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12 months ago ::
Jul 01, 2012 - 10:16AM
#8
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That's a case where a DM should rule that cat familiars can't coup de grâce. Not for reasons of balance but because they don't have appropriate weapons to do so.
Look, that's not fooling anyone. You're clearly trying to balance it. There's absolutly no indication in the playtest rules that "appropriate weapons" are needed to CdG, nor is it logical that your familiar could not perform one. You are clearly trying to balance out this interaction of features.
We all have to stop treating "balance" as a dirty word, and we also have to stop putting the burden of balancing the game on the DM. This clearly exposes a problem that comes up when you give a character an extra creature to control that can perform actions each turn at no cost to the character with no indication that it has more limited capabilities than any other creature. We should not just say "meh, we can just houserule it", we should use this as an example for WotC so that they can improve the game they expect us to pay money for. That is the best thing we can do for them, as pretending it isn't an issue just means that they will have no idea there is a problem.
EVERY DAY IS HORRIBLE POST DAY ON THE D&D FORUMS.
Everything makes me ANGRY (ESPECIALLY you, reader)
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12 months ago ::
Jul 01, 2012 - 10:30AM
#9
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Date Joined:
Jun 23, 2002
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Well here was the essential issue. Lets not get too far afield: Tthe Two wizards in question ARE third level. They sent their cats to kill people in their sleep. The rules allowed it in the strictest sense. As DM, you have two options. Apply common snese (one scratch would technically have awoken them long before any normal cat could have finished the job) or apply the playterst rules. We have been trying to apply the playtest rules so we can find the problems. this problem exists. So I think it should be addressed. The 10 HP limit does limit the effectiveness of the spell, I agree, o na technical level. But it is incredibly potent for its level, I think we can agree on that.
Now in this adventure they have here, several rooms will quickly have their inhabitants attracted by the noises of combat, casting, and so on. So the players have been less than subtle in their approach and thus have ended up in mass combats a LOT. and when they have the numbers can be next to ovrwhelming. MOST of the party went down at various points. Only becasue the Pelor Cleric took their money and made potions in town earier was the party able to previal because otherwise they'd have been done for.
The Cats being able to kill sleeping things was pretty silly, yet legal. So i am thinking we gotta' do something bout that. Even if it weren't the sleep spell and was something more powerful, a cat doing this is silly.
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12 months ago ::
Jul 01, 2012 - 10:46AM
#10
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The Cats being able to kill sleeping things was pretty silly, yet legal.
I don't actually think it's legal, though, now that I checked the rules.
In the Coup De Grace rules section, it states, "Doing so requires you to attack that creature." The familiar stat block has no attacks. So, by a strict reading of the rules (which is the only kind of reading that would make someone thing a cat should be able to auto-murder someone), the cat can't attack and thus can't coup de grace.
So, by logic, the cat can't coup de grace, and by the rules, the cat can't coup de grace. No problems here.
But I also want to point out that murdering helpless people twice as fast really isn't something that comes up, even with the sleep spell. Unless you have some kind of weird time murder spree time limit, it just won't matter in practicality.
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