[Campaign Advice] The Divine Right Of Kings (To Screw Up)

[Dean]

You're way over-complicating things. Just eliminate "Detect Evil" as a spell. Truly ludicrous amounts of ink has been spilt over the last 20 years about how detect evil is incredibly bad and destructive for the game. A lot of that writing has been done by D&D authors in official D&D books and then they wring their hands and talk around it or offer advice on how you can use hundreds of magic items and spells throughout your campaign to reduce it's damaging effects.

None of that bullshit is necessary. Just axe it. It's actively destructive to the game and has been for longer than I've been alive. You can definitely start a game and say X,Y,and Z spell don't exist in this world and that's totally fine. What Franks objecting to is basically telling the players it's in the game and secretly removing it. Such that someone could select a power you told them they could select and then use that power and then have you tell them 3 months down the line that the power they've been using for months never worked. You can just come out at the start and tell players that Detect Evil doesn't exist in your world. I would wager that's actually the norm now. Vocal arguments for its removal from the game have been around long enough to vote, it is not a contentious position.

[hyzmarca]

This GiTP thread, particularly post #20, does some analysis of how a sizable army with bows would stand up to Zariel. The army would fare poorly in a knock down drag out because Zariel can keep them at long range to impose disadvantage, take a pittance of damage and regenerate it, then kill ~50/round with fireballs (there's an inherent tension between bringing all your bows to bear and being fireball resistant).

If you're handing out shortbows to random peasants, yes. If you're levying even slightly competent longbowmen (if, for example, you're English and it's the Hundred Years War), you've got better range than almost all spells and your odds of hitting a 21 AC have relatively skyrocketed (a +3 archer will hit on an 18 instead of a 20, three times as often). Frank's constant insistence that 50 longbowmen can kill anything in the Monster Manual is very straightforwardly and mathematically false and the actual number is considerably higher, but it is also considerably lower than the several thousand necessary to take out Zariel using random yahoos given shortbows.

Also, specifically mentioning "the lords of Hell" is doubly stupid, on account of demon princes being some of the only monsters in the game who have flat-out immunity to non-magical weapons. The only archdevil to receive official stats is Zariel, who is resistant and has regeneration, thus being vulnerable to a sufficient amount of archers, although that amount is at least considerably higher than, for example, the amount needed to bring down an ancient red dragon from the original Monster Manual, who have no damage resistances, are immune only to fire, whose flight speed and fear aura are outranged by a longbow meaning they're obligated to tank arrows when flying in for a strafing run, and whose frightful presence must be used as an action instead of its breath weapon rather than in addition (although it can at least make melee attacks in addition to frightful presence, which is helpful against heroes, though useless except for edge cases against armies).

700 longbowmen can safely alpha strike an ancient red as it moves into range to use its breath weapon (although not all 700 will be able to hit it in the very first round, each of them will be able to attack the dragon at least once before they are within range of its breath weapon - because the breath weapon is shorter range than the longbows, many of them will be able to attack twice). A similar number have less of a knockout blow against Zariel because Zariel has resistance, but they are still very probably going to win because they have more than enough attacks to stay ahead of her regeneration by a wide enough margin that she probably can't inflict significant fatalities against them before succumbing to volleys (assuming they're smart enough to space themselves out, although they can probably win even in a close formation - the radius on a fireball isn't great). These are monsters that couldn't terrorize Yorkshire, let alone the entire kingdom of England. Late medieval kings assemble armies over an order of magnitude larger than that when they go to war, and those armies are peanuts next to the armies of classical antiquity. That is the kind of framing the issue needs, because it draws attention to the fact that 700 longbowmen is actually a very small number, all things considered. It seems very large next to "thirty or forty archers," who, even if they got phenomenally lucky and all crit, would deal an average of about 60% of an ancient red's health before being vaporized by its breath weapon.

Of course, Zariel wouldn't be fighting 700 archers alone. She'd be accompanied by about a dozen Pit Fiends, each leading a a battalion of Devils. So like 9600 total devils on the field. Or more. I'm just pulling that number out of my ass, but it can and should be arbitrarily large.

I mean, one archer could kill Trump in a straight one-on-one fight. Make it Trump, Pence, and Mcconnell together, three against one, and I'd still put good money on the Archer winning. It does not follow that therefore the United States is easily defeated by a medieval army, or even that Trump is particularly vulnerable to archers in day to day practice.

It is not necessary that your top dogs be personally unkillable by large numbers of mortals. It is only necessary that your top dogs have appropriately scaled resources and manpower.

[Chamomile]

You say that like it's a counterpoint, but, uh, no, that's the entire point. The secret to power in 5e is the same as it is in real life: Having lots of people who do what you say. Dragons cannot terrorize kingdoms. They can have hobgoblin legions that terrorize kingdoms, but it makes almost no difference that a dragon is in charge rather than a hobgoblin with a big hat. That's a betrayal of the source material.

[Omegonthesane]

This GiTP thread, particularly post #20, does some analysis of how a sizable army with bows would stand up to Zariel. The army would fare poorly in a knock down drag out because Zariel can keep them at long range to impose disadvantage, take a pittance of damage and regenerate it, then kill ~50/round with fireballs (there's an inherent tension between bringing all your bows to bear and being fireball resistant).

If you're handing out shortbows to random peasants, yes. If you're levying even slightly competent longbowmen (if, for example, you're English and it's the Hundred Years War), you've got better range than almost all spells and your odds of hitting a 21 AC have relatively skyrocketed (a +3 archer will hit on an 18 instead of a 20, three times as often). Frank's constant insistence that 50 longbowmen can kill anything in the Monster Manual is very straightforwardly and mathematically false and the actual number is considerably higher, but it is also considerably lower than the several thousand necessary to take out Zariel using random yahoos given shortbows.

Also, specifically mentioning "the lords of Hell" is doubly stupid, on account of demon princes being some of the only monsters in the game who have flat-out immunity to non-magical weapons. The only archdevil to receive official stats is Zariel, who is resistant and has regeneration, thus being vulnerable to a sufficient amount of archers, although that amount is at least considerably higher than, for example, the amount needed to bring down an ancient red dragon from the original Monster Manual, who have no damage resistances, are immune only to fire, whose flight speed and fear aura are outranged by a longbow meaning they're obligated to tank arrows when flying in for a strafing run, and whose frightful presence must be used as an action instead of its breath weapon rather than in addition (although it can at least make melee attacks in addition to frightful presence, which is helpful against heroes, though useless except for edge cases against armies).

700 longbowmen can safely alpha strike an ancient red as it moves into range to use its breath weapon (although not all 700 will be able to hit it in the very first round, each of them will be able to attack the dragon at least once before they are within range of its breath weapon - because the breath weapon is shorter range than the longbows, many of them will be able to attack twice). A similar number have less of a knockout blow against Zariel because Zariel has resistance, but they are still very probably going to win because they have more than enough attacks to stay ahead of her regeneration by a wide enough margin that she probably can't inflict significant fatalities against them before succumbing to volleys (assuming they're smart enough to space themselves out, although they can probably win even in a close formation - the radius on a fireball isn't great). These are monsters that couldn't terrorize Yorkshire, let alone the entire kingdom of England. Late medieval kings assemble armies over an order of magnitude larger than that when they go to war, and those armies are peanuts next to the armies of classical antiquity. That is the kind of framing the issue needs, because it draws attention to the fact that 700 longbowmen is actually a very small number, all things considered. It seems very large next to "thirty or forty archers," who, even if they got phenomenally lucky and all crit, would deal an average of about 60% of an ancient red's health before being vaporized by its breath weapon.

Of course, Zariel wouldn't be fighting 700 archers alone. She'd be accompanied by about a dozen Pit Fiends, each leading a a battalion of Devils. So like 9600 total devils on the field. Or more. I'm just pulling that number out of my ass, but it can and should be arbitrarily large.

I mean, one archer could kill Trump in a straight one-on-one fight. Make it Trump, Pence, and Mcconnell together, three against one, and I'd still put good money on the Archer winning. It does not follow that therefore the United States is easily defeated by a medieval army, or even that Trump is particularly vulnerable to archers in day to day practice.

It is not necessary that your top dogs be personally unkillable by large numbers of mortals. It is only necessary that your top dogs have appropriately scaled resources and manpower.

That is Tussock levels of wrong.

This is D&D - it is explicitly necessary that your top dogs be personally unkillable by large numbers of mortals. Because they are meant to be killed in a combat encounter between them alone and the player party of 4-6 alone, which isn't meant to be an assassination, and thus you have to justify why you are sending a tiny group of heroes and not sending in the army.

Literally no part of Zariel's entourage is unkillable by arbitrarily many longbowmen from what I understand of 5e, so the comparison to modern armies is disingenuous. The US army cannot be easily defeated by enough plumber skeletons with longbows because it has tanks and air support - even its riflemen would lose eventually. (Against skeletons anyway; living forces would probably break and run before that point.)

(ignore how skeleton archers function as anti-air against helicopters and UFOs in 8-Bit Armies)

[JigokuBosatsu]

hobgoblin with a big hat

I like this.

Just wanted to say that.

[Zaranthan]

hobgoblin with a big hat

I like this.

Just wanted to say that.

It just became the BBEG of my next campaign. I mean, he's still a level 15 tome monk, but now he's a level 15 hobgoblin tome monk with a big hat. The artifact of world-ending macguffinry just became the hat, too.