Fun fact about the fight with the duergar; I didn't have my monster manual with me so I was unable to quickly find the stats for it, though, the party is god damn lucky that I didn't realize that the stats were in Tales' mini beastiary; that fucker had multi-attack, sneak attack (2d6), the thief advantage thing, enlarge and invisibility.
As such, the party lucked out with him being just a regular duergar that did 30 on a crit off of 4d8+2 as opposed to the rogue who would have done 8d6+3 +2d6+3 for some truly disgusting damage (I estimate this would come out to 40).
Like, granted the party is sort of sequence breaking due in no small part to the fact that they took a back entrance and I had to jurry rig something for them (due to the fact that their is an entrance to this area but apparently no entrance in the map section leading to a massive wtf on my part), but still, even without the crit he'd still be looking at a minimum of 4d6+3 on a single hit (averaging 17 damage).
Also, that dwarf is specifically starting with invisibility on so the party wasn't even in a position to isolate them and attack.
The binding in my players handbook is coming undone. There's a whole chunk of pages from character creation to personality and background that's literally hanging on by a thread. Anyone know of any tutorials to fix it? Is it as simple as superglue?
飛べねぇ豚はただの豚だ。
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KayWhat we need...Is a little bit of PANIC.Registered Userregular
Been playing a Blood Hunter in 5E (he's a pirate, yarr,) but we've been playing far more 4E lately. There is no 4E thread, however.
The binding in my players handbook is coming undone. There's a whole chunk of pages from character creation to personality and background that's literally hanging on by a thread. Anyone know of any tutorials to fix it? Is it as simple as superglue?
WotC will replace it for you for free, I think there is a form on the website.
It's pretty great, but as a Concentration spell it can be awfully fragile. One good hit, or a multi-attack and there goes a spell slot for classes that generally have precious little of them. Also, it takes at least 2 turns to get rolling since the bonus attack and casting it (or Hunter's Mark) are both Bonus Actions so are mutually exclusive. Also Also, don't underestimate what other things you could be doing with your Concentration. Darkness, Protection from Evil & Good, Crown of Madness, Hold Person, Invisibility, Suggestion are all great to fantastic spells that you'd have to drop Hex to use or vice versa.
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KayWhat we need...Is a little bit of PANIC.Registered Userregular
It's pretty great, but as a Concentration spell it can be awfully fragile. One good hit, or a multi-attack and there goes a spell slot for classes that generally have precious little of them. Also, it takes at least 2 turns to get rolling since the bonus attack and casting it (or Hunter's Mark) are both Bonus Actions so are mutually exclusive. Also Also, don't underestimate what other things you could be doing with your Concentration. Darkness, Protection from Evil & Good, Crown of Madness, Hold Person, Invisibility, Suggestion are all great to fantastic spells that you'd have to drop Hex to use or vice versa.
Well, as a level 6 Blood Hunter, my spells are pretty limited. Armour of Agathys, Hex, and Protection from Evil and Good are the three I took. I seem to be better off casting a concentration spell that helps me in melee then wading in, than casting anything with damage attached, given that my effective spell slot level is still 1. (Except Eldritch Blast at range.)
Even a stock Warlock can cast 2nd Level spells at Level 3, what are you running?
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KayWhat we need...Is a little bit of PANIC.Registered Userregular
I mentioned Blood Hunter in each post, with the Profane Soul specialisation at level 3. They're a Matt Mercer custom class, though. Think Eldritch Knight, but a Warlock, and the base class is sort of a fighter but with tracking undead/unnatural stuff and some blood magic in there.
About two months ago a group of 5 of us started playing Lost Mine of Phandelver. For I think four of us (myself included) it was the first time we had ever played D&D. For the last few sessions we had cleared through the campaign, clearing Goblin mines and castles and manor houses and finally the titular Lost Mine. We had left one thing to tackle for the final weekend, the green dragon in Thundertree.
So the 4 of us set out to complete the final task (myself, Half Elf Wizard, a Dragonborn Monk, a Tiefling Bard and a Human Paladin) all level 5 (except the Monk, 4) along with Sildar the NPC we'd hired to come with.
As I look at the fight today, after the fact, I realize how little the DM held back. And I'm glad he didnt. There were lair effects, vines pulling at us, thorns comes from the tower to stab, mind numbing fogs. The dragon was there to fight to the death, no retreat. And he kept mostly to the air, where the scary dude in plate couldn't smite him. Two thirds of the way through the fight two of the giant spiders who use to inhabit the tower emerged from the thicket, looking for easy prey.
It was fucking nuts.
I opened the fight with a crazy alpha strike, a fireball (my first ever cast) along with Melf's Minute Meteors, that I think left both the dragon and the DM reeling. From there it devolved into a much more drawn out affair of positioning and whittling down the dragons impressive HP.
The fight wasnt without its casualties. Sildar died fighting giant spiders. Which was met with mostly shrugs as he had done a terrible job actually hitting anything all fight. Our bard, never of high constitution or hit points was instantly killed by a poisonous dragon breath, failing his save and taking full damage. This was met with much greater concern.
Along with a steady stream of firebolts I did manage to web the dragon to the ground, ever so briefly. Finally, having enough of my shit, the dragon wore me down through shields and wards, leaving me flat on the ground but still breathing.
Our Paladin and Monk managed to close out the fight, mostly at range, until the dragon got too close and the Monk planted his mace across the beasts face for the killing blow.
And a cheer went up around the table.
Our Paladin got me back on my feet, shaky but a hero. We celebrated. Real and in game beers were opened. We divvied up the loot. And we buried our dead.
So my group did a one off today with a party consisting of:
1. kobold sun soul Monk
2. firbolg war priest
3. 2 warlocks with great old one pact.
Imagine our glee as we were informed that our 20th level characters would all get to pick our magic items with 1 legendary, 1 very rare and 1 rare each.
What followed was hilarity made manifest as we carefully picked our options for maximum nonsense including
various things to make our casting abilities deadlier and our kobold vastly more tanky (a belt of storm giant strength, bracers of defense and a displacer cloak that I suggested was a minature tuxedo). Oh and for increased nonsense we had a flying carpet.
The GM seemed pretty sure of himself and how we were all screwed and all gonna die and that lasted right up until we rolled into the first fight he had planned for us; us versus 3 beefy displacer beasts... one of whom didn't even get to go before I nailed it with a hold monster that was virtually impossible for it to resist (seriously, Rod+robes+Cha 20+Prof 6= spell save 24) and the other two were blasted into oblivion by a combination of spells and furious beat down.
Our second fight saw us take on 7 beefy ghasts and a pair of Death Knights, one of whom was wielding a magic great sword, and the 4 of us proceded to fuck them up pretty hard; we started the fight inside of a darkness spell that we were able to fight pretty efficiently from with our combination of devil sight and sun soul stuff. Highpoints of the fight for me included obliterating the ghasts with a shatter spell, using power word kill to take out the two DKs, pushing one of them some 100 feet and eating both of their fireball effects with a fork and a knife (the two 20d6 fire/necrotic effects caused a grand whopping total of 41 damage).
Ammusingly, the other warlock revealed the deck of many things to us after the fight and everyone but me got screwed by it; the kobold lost all his money and items that weren't magical, the priest wound up having his soul sucked away and the other warlock got imprisoned.
I just wound up with a meagre 50k of gems and jewelry.
After tuesday I may have a new favorite monster: the animated table.
It didn't do very much to the party other then stall them for more then a few rounds but the expression on their faces as this thing proved far tougher then they would have assumed and the sheer surprise of this things appearance was great.
Also, this thing can fuck people up on it's first attack; it's charge does 4d8+4 as a CR2.
Id suggest reading a lot of history about the french revolution and napoleon's rise to emporer.
For the industry aspect, read about the industrial revolution, and some of the authors from that time period, like charles dickens, robert owen and elizabeth gaskell.
There's no reason to make stuff up when you got history and authors that already did the heavy lifting for you.
Edit**
Or hell, binge these topics on youtube for an afternoon.
Two players in my stores games have perished to Perytons.
I mean, I feel like throwing one of them at a party of level 4s would seem... kind of fair? But I still don't know how the PCs deal with it diving and retreating, they'd just likely not die instantly.
Just for funsies I rolled its attack a few times - 31, 29, 20, 30, 17.
Even the garbage rolls would nearly, if not completely, assassinate a level 2. The better rolls would gib a level 4-5. Jebus.
I was looking at the peryton last night and as a CR2 it can dive bomb ambush a player for 3d8+3 and 2d4+3, then escape. That just seems cruel.
Yup, but its only got 13 AC and 33 HP and +3 strength with no range. Unless its able to sneak up on your party your players should be able to take it down pretty easily even with that.
The key aspects are thus: 20 ft speed unless its flying. No Darkvision. No save proficiencies.
Since its flying it should not be able to sneak up on you unless it does it at night and its not nocturnal so it can't find you at night either. Its a daytime predator. Thus the players will almost certainly see it coming.
Then the charge attack is the only thing that is particularly strong. In order to effectively charge attack the peryton has to get to 30 ft range of a target on the turn before the attack. Which means that on the first round of combat it needs to move to 30 feet and be still in the air while it waits for the players to take actions.
Players can stymie this by moving closer to the creature or further away so that it will not be able to fly away. Or they can impose some sort of CC on them. Or they can ready an attack action (use the grapple feature, and now the target is on the ground and no longer flying) or it can dodge in order to reduce the likelihood while your damage pelts it.
Still potentially deadly for a 1st level party (and 2 CR creature is potentially deadly for a 1st level party) but definitely not impossible or too terribly difficult for a second level one.
edit: A lot of its power depends on how you read dive attack. Does it get 1d8+3 + 2d8 (gore) and 2d4+3 +2d8 claw? Or is it just 1d8+3 + 2d8 (gore) and 2d4+3? Additionally does anything interrupting that dive negate the bonus damage? If a target grapples it as soon as it enter their space has does it still meet the requirements? Is it still flying?
I would suggest "no". That it does not get the bonus damage. So clever readied actions can really negate the actions of a peryton.
Two players in my stores games have perished to Perytons.
I mean, I feel like throwing one of them at a party of level 4s would seem... kind of fair? But I still don't know how the PCs deal with it diving and retreating, they'd just likely not die instantly.
Just for funsies I rolled its attack a few times - 31, 29, 20, 30, 17.
Even the garbage rolls would nearly, if not completely, assassinate a level 2. The better rolls would gib a level 4-5. Jebus.
This is what happens when your system for assigning CR to monsters is "I dunno, eyeball it. It'll be fine."
Maybe I'm misunderstanding. Even if the party sees it, it has 60ft fly speed. Dive 30, murder a caster (two attacks + dive bonus), fly 30 back up. It has flyby so there's no OA. That means the party gets one turn to attack it at range.
Would the party's passive perception have to beat it's stealth roll to avoid them getting surprised, as well?
re: the dive attack bonus, I was only applying it to the first attack, not both.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding. Even if the party sees it, it has 60ft fly speed. Dive 30, murder a caster (two attacks + dive bonus), fly 30 back up. It has flyby so there's no OA. That means the party gets one turn to attack it at range.
Would the party's passive perception have to beat it's stealth roll to avoid them getting surprised, as well?
re: the dive attack bonus, I was only applying it to the first attack, not both.
The party sees it. They cannot not see it if its flying since it doesn't have cover or concealment and therefore cannot hide. They're able to see it as soon as its in visual range. They can notice its not an eagle probably further than 150 feet. Shit, i can identify an eagle at 300 feet and its half the size and my eyes are shit.
Its much more likely, even with the things good eyes, that the party sees it before it sees the party if there is any kind of cover on the ground (because the party can make better use of that than a flying creature can) or in the air (as the bird will also not be able to see through clouds).
So in order to dive 30 it needs to GET to 30. Which means at least one or two turns at range. When its at 30 its probably at 30 to only one, maybe two players. So they can move to be further or closer to the target. You can also isolate such that only your armored targets are close to it (and then have them grapple as a readied action)
Ok, Goum, thank you for clearing up the ready action bit for me, I didn't understand that very well.
Does passive perception have a direction or is it spherically omnipresent? The scenario in my head was a party walking a partially covered tree lined road and the Peryton is gliding down to its dive height from behind them. I'm not trying to murder my players, it's just that that's the scenario that came into my head when I read its entry.
Passive perception is omni-directional and also kind of irrelevant.
By default you see every creature that isn't hiding. Creatures can only take the hide action when they have full cover from the target. Creatures can only remain hidden if they have cover or concealment from the target.
Its possible to have the players be in a forested area and so make it impossible for them to see the peryton. But at the same time the peryton probably can't get a 30 foot dive in those situations and also might not even find them. It should be very rare for a peryton to get the jump on a party; they're a bright red and blue human sized bird with antlers.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited June 2017
They are also resistant to non-magical weapons too. Coming from the sun (eg it's at their back) counts as concealment when flying (one of the most basic aerial predator tactics).
They deal very heavy damage and readying actions is gambling trying to deal with them. The best solution is to hope you see them first and have casters that can hurt them at range.
Also keep in mind that passive perception checks can have disadvantage (say, if the party is distracted by climbing a mountain side), and the peryton's stealth check can be at advantage - it has the sun to its back. That's a net swing of ~10, so it's fairly unlikely that the party notices the peryton if they're doing something else. Just hanging out? Not an issue.
For my players (4 level 5 characters), they wanted to check out a fabled mystical lab who's entrance was way up on a mountain. While they were resting and recovering at the base of the mountain, they stumbled upon a mangled corpse, which under some examination, yielded information about a large animal attacking it from above. Then, while they were hiking up, they had a short encounter with a peryton that was essentially giving them a fly-by-warning to turn back or find another way up - this was just a single dive bomb attack, and then the peryton retreated - teaching the players that this thing doesn't provoke OA, that it's fast, clever, and hard to pin down. However, also not particularly interested in fighting to the death.
Lastly, while climbing on rope up the final pitch of the mountain, after not finding a different path (they were presented with a few choices, the one they were on being the most direct and easiest ascent, however...perytons), they were subject to the full on ambush of 4 full grown and angry perytons. Since the party was on ropes, this mostly became a test of how long they could survive while climbing, though the highlight was the beefcake barbarian grabbing one of the perytons, smashing it into the stone of the mountain, and flinging it, all with one hand on the rope.
Perytons are like goblins, I think, but in the opposite direction. Meaning, goblins, if fought just straight up, will be a pushover and not likely to really do any lasting damage. However, if they use their bonus action to hide, and constantly hide and retreat, they can be incredibly difficult to pin down and kill (for a low level party, or even for a higher level party if they're engaged with harder enemies). Perytons, I think, should be telegraphed a bit, so the party knows that they have to do something about the dive bomb strike, and to try some way to neutralize flyby. Once the party works out a strategy to deal with them, they're not hard to put down - 2 to 3 attacks should be all that it takes, and at 13 AC, that should only be 3-4 actions at most. With a druid around (web), or with a dedicated archer (xbow master), they might not even need to bother with strategy.
Diagnosed with AML on 6/1/12. Read about it: www.effleukemia.com
At or around level 2, it's likely to take more than 2-3 hits to do 33 points of damage to something that's resistant to nonmagical weapons. Average attack damage from a player at that level is usually gonna be in the vicinity of ~8 per hit. (1d8+3 averages 7.5, 1d10+3 averages 8.5, 2d6+3 w/great weapon fighting from a real heavy hitter is still only gonna be an average of 12). Players aren't likely to have magical weapons at level 2, so anyone not shooting spells at it is gonna be dealing half that. You're looking at more like 6-7 nonmagical hits to kill a peryton, and since players will likely have a +5 to attacks at level 2, that 13 AC means they're hitting about 2/3 of the time - so, roughly 10 actions to drop one. (With the additional consideration that if the peryton got the drop on the party, one member is probably bleeding out and unable to act, and the flybys mean that some party members - like the heavy-hitter with the greatsword - might not be able to even attack it every turn since it'll be up in the air).
And 'the players should see it coming' doesn't really work as a drawback - firstly there are plenty of circumstances where they won't, secondly if that's an intended part of the creatures balance it should be discussed at length in the creature entry and possibly included in the statblock ("disadvantage on stealth checks" or whatever) rather than relying on the DM to interpret the circumstances around the monster in the intended way without guidance, and thirdly the actual likely play pattern matters - a lot of DM aren't going to be interested in starting an encounter with a monster 200 feet away, they're going to say "narrative stuff, mood-setting, roll initiative, there's a peryton...here" and put it in the room with the party already. Doubly so for the sort of novice DMs who are likely to take CR at face value and not realize they're about to kill some players.
Perytons are fine when you're tossing a couple of them, or one peryton+some other stuff, at a party of level 5 characters - those characters have the HP to soak a dive bomb or two before they drop and probably have some magic weapons (and a lot more spells) to deal with its magic resistance - and that's probably how they were written to be used. They're unreasonably lethal against level 2 characters (who have no magic weapons and 10-20 hp vs a dive bomb attack that deals an average of 24 damage), and probably shouldn't be used as a solo fight against a level 2 party. The problem is that the CR system has no way of differentiating between those two uses, and so tells DMs that a peryton is a fair fight for their level 2 party when it's not.
Just a couple more days, then I can throw my players into a hole so deep it makes Alice In Wonderland look like a 1 foot pit.
Oh lord, are they signing up for Fantasy Cutco?
If I say yes, what would your reaction be?
Make sure that even if they figure out that it's a giant scam and they go after the people who are perpetrating it, they are still on the hook for all the suffering and financial crimes they may have committed.
Posts
As such, the party lucked out with him being just a regular duergar that did 30 on a crit off of 4d8+2 as opposed to the rogue who would have done 8d6+3 +2d6+3 for some truly disgusting damage (I estimate this would come out to 40).
Also, that dwarf is specifically starting with invisibility on so the party wasn't even in a position to isolate them and attack.
Adventure coming in September is called Tomb of Annihilation
Set on the island of Chult in the Forgotten Realms
Theme is Undead and Dinosaurs
Hex plus dual wielding is pretty OP in 5E, huh?
3DS FCode: 1993-7512-8991
WotC will replace it for you for free, I think there is a form on the website.
Well, as a level 6 Blood Hunter, my spells are pretty limited. Armour of Agathys, Hex, and Protection from Evil and Good are the three I took. I seem to be better off casting a concentration spell that helps me in melee then wading in, than casting anything with damage attached, given that my effective spell slot level is still 1. (Except Eldritch Blast at range.)
3DS FCode: 1993-7512-8991
3DS FCode: 1993-7512-8991
So the 4 of us set out to complete the final task (myself, Half Elf Wizard, a Dragonborn Monk, a Tiefling Bard and a Human Paladin) all level 5 (except the Monk, 4) along with Sildar the NPC we'd hired to come with.
As I look at the fight today, after the fact, I realize how little the DM held back. And I'm glad he didnt. There were lair effects, vines pulling at us, thorns comes from the tower to stab, mind numbing fogs. The dragon was there to fight to the death, no retreat. And he kept mostly to the air, where the scary dude in plate couldn't smite him. Two thirds of the way through the fight two of the giant spiders who use to inhabit the tower emerged from the thicket, looking for easy prey.
It was fucking nuts.
I opened the fight with a crazy alpha strike, a fireball (my first ever cast) along with Melf's Minute Meteors, that I think left both the dragon and the DM reeling. From there it devolved into a much more drawn out affair of positioning and whittling down the dragons impressive HP.
The fight wasnt without its casualties. Sildar died fighting giant spiders. Which was met with mostly shrugs as he had done a terrible job actually hitting anything all fight. Our bard, never of high constitution or hit points was instantly killed by a poisonous dragon breath, failing his save and taking full damage. This was met with much greater concern.
Along with a steady stream of firebolts I did manage to web the dragon to the ground, ever so briefly. Finally, having enough of my shit, the dragon wore me down through shields and wards, leaving me flat on the ground but still breathing.
Our Paladin and Monk managed to close out the fight, mostly at range, until the dragon got too close and the Monk planted his mace across the beasts face for the killing blow.
And a cheer went up around the table.
Our Paladin got me back on my feet, shaky but a hero. We celebrated. Real and in game beers were opened. We divvied up the loot. And we buried our dead.
When its on, this game is really awesome.
1. kobold sun soul Monk
2. firbolg war priest
3. 2 warlocks with great old one pact.
Imagine our glee as we were informed that our 20th level characters would all get to pick our magic items with 1 legendary, 1 very rare and 1 rare each.
What followed was hilarity made manifest as we carefully picked our options for maximum nonsense including
various things to make our casting abilities deadlier and our kobold vastly more tanky (a belt of storm giant strength, bracers of defense and a displacer cloak that I suggested was a minature tuxedo). Oh and for increased nonsense we had a flying carpet.
The GM seemed pretty sure of himself and how we were all screwed and all gonna die and that lasted right up until we rolled into the first fight he had planned for us; us versus 3 beefy displacer beasts... one of whom didn't even get to go before I nailed it with a hold monster that was virtually impossible for it to resist (seriously, Rod+robes+Cha 20+Prof 6= spell save 24) and the other two were blasted into oblivion by a combination of spells and furious beat down.
Our second fight saw us take on 7 beefy ghasts and a pair of Death Knights, one of whom was wielding a magic great sword, and the 4 of us proceded to fuck them up pretty hard; we started the fight inside of a darkness spell that we were able to fight pretty efficiently from with our combination of devil sight and sun soul stuff. Highpoints of the fight for me included obliterating the ghasts with a shatter spell, using power word kill to take out the two DKs, pushing one of them some 100 feet and eating both of their fireball effects with a fork and a knife (the two 20d6 fire/necrotic effects caused a grand whopping total of 41 damage).
Ammusingly, the other warlock revealed the deck of many things to us after the fight and everyone but me got screwed by it; the kobold lost all his money and items that weren't magical, the priest wound up having his soul sucked away and the other warlock got imprisoned.
I just wound up with a meagre 50k of gems and jewelry.
It didn't do very much to the party other then stall them for more then a few rounds but the expression on their faces as this thing proved far tougher then they would have assumed and the sheer surprise of this things appearance was great.
Also, this thing can fuck people up on it's first attack; it's charge does 4d8+4 as a CR2.
Id suggest reading a lot of history about the french revolution and napoleon's rise to emporer.
For the industry aspect, read about the industrial revolution, and some of the authors from that time period, like charles dickens, robert owen and elizabeth gaskell.
There's no reason to make stuff up when you got history and authors that already did the heavy lifting for you.
Edit**
Or hell, binge these topics on youtube for an afternoon.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Two players in my stores games have perished to Perytons.
I mean, I feel like throwing one of them at a party of level 4s would seem... kind of fair? But I still don't know how the PCs deal with it diving and retreating, they'd just likely not die instantly.
Just for funsies I rolled its attack a few times - 31, 29, 20, 30, 17.
Even the garbage rolls would nearly, if not completely, assassinate a level 2. The better rolls would gib a level 4-5. Jebus.
Yup, but its only got 13 AC and 33 HP and +3 strength with no range. Unless its able to sneak up on your party your players should be able to take it down pretty easily even with that.
The key aspects are thus: 20 ft speed unless its flying. No Darkvision. No save proficiencies.
Since its flying it should not be able to sneak up on you unless it does it at night and its not nocturnal so it can't find you at night either. Its a daytime predator. Thus the players will almost certainly see it coming.
Then the charge attack is the only thing that is particularly strong. In order to effectively charge attack the peryton has to get to 30 ft range of a target on the turn before the attack. Which means that on the first round of combat it needs to move to 30 feet and be still in the air while it waits for the players to take actions.
Players can stymie this by moving closer to the creature or further away so that it will not be able to fly away. Or they can impose some sort of CC on them. Or they can ready an attack action (use the grapple feature, and now the target is on the ground and no longer flying) or it can dodge in order to reduce the likelihood while your damage pelts it.
Still potentially deadly for a 1st level party (and 2 CR creature is potentially deadly for a 1st level party) but definitely not impossible or too terribly difficult for a second level one.
edit: A lot of its power depends on how you read dive attack. Does it get 1d8+3 + 2d8 (gore) and 2d4+3 +2d8 claw? Or is it just 1d8+3 + 2d8 (gore) and 2d4+3? Additionally does anything interrupting that dive negate the bonus damage? If a target grapples it as soon as it enter their space has does it still meet the requirements? Is it still flying?
I would suggest "no". That it does not get the bonus damage. So clever readied actions can really negate the actions of a peryton.
This is what happens when your system for assigning CR to monsters is "I dunno, eyeball it. It'll be fine."
Would the party's passive perception have to beat it's stealth roll to avoid them getting surprised, as well?
re: the dive attack bonus, I was only applying it to the first attack, not both.
We killed one of them, but had a couple of us go unconscious in the process
Luckily the second one left after it killed one of the NPCs we were protecting and took his heart, or it would have gone down to the wire
At level 9 it's still one of the harder, or at least surprisingly deadly, encounters we've had
The party sees it. They cannot not see it if its flying since it doesn't have cover or concealment and therefore cannot hide. They're able to see it as soon as its in visual range. They can notice its not an eagle probably further than 150 feet. Shit, i can identify an eagle at 300 feet and its half the size and my eyes are shit.
Its much more likely, even with the things good eyes, that the party sees it before it sees the party if there is any kind of cover on the ground (because the party can make better use of that than a flying creature can) or in the air (as the bird will also not be able to see through clouds).
So in order to dive 30 it needs to GET to 30. Which means at least one or two turns at range. When its at 30 its probably at 30 to only one, maybe two players. So they can move to be further or closer to the target. You can also isolate such that only your armored targets are close to it (and then have them grapple as a readied action)
Does passive perception have a direction or is it spherically omnipresent? The scenario in my head was a party walking a partially covered tree lined road and the Peryton is gliding down to its dive height from behind them. I'm not trying to murder my players, it's just that that's the scenario that came into my head when I read its entry.
By default you see every creature that isn't hiding. Creatures can only take the hide action when they have full cover from the target. Creatures can only remain hidden if they have cover or concealment from the target.
Its possible to have the players be in a forested area and so make it impossible for them to see the peryton. But at the same time the peryton probably can't get a 30 foot dive in those situations and also might not even find them. It should be very rare for a peryton to get the jump on a party; they're a bright red and blue human sized bird with antlers.
They deal very heavy damage and readying actions is gambling trying to deal with them. The best solution is to hope you see them first and have casters that can hurt them at range.
For my players (4 level 5 characters), they wanted to check out a fabled mystical lab who's entrance was way up on a mountain. While they were resting and recovering at the base of the mountain, they stumbled upon a mangled corpse, which under some examination, yielded information about a large animal attacking it from above. Then, while they were hiking up, they had a short encounter with a peryton that was essentially giving them a fly-by-warning to turn back or find another way up - this was just a single dive bomb attack, and then the peryton retreated - teaching the players that this thing doesn't provoke OA, that it's fast, clever, and hard to pin down. However, also not particularly interested in fighting to the death.
Lastly, while climbing on rope up the final pitch of the mountain, after not finding a different path (they were presented with a few choices, the one they were on being the most direct and easiest ascent, however...perytons), they were subject to the full on ambush of 4 full grown and angry perytons. Since the party was on ropes, this mostly became a test of how long they could survive while climbing, though the highlight was the beefcake barbarian grabbing one of the perytons, smashing it into the stone of the mountain, and flinging it, all with one hand on the rope.
Perytons are like goblins, I think, but in the opposite direction. Meaning, goblins, if fought just straight up, will be a pushover and not likely to really do any lasting damage. However, if they use their bonus action to hide, and constantly hide and retreat, they can be incredibly difficult to pin down and kill (for a low level party, or even for a higher level party if they're engaged with harder enemies). Perytons, I think, should be telegraphed a bit, so the party knows that they have to do something about the dive bomb strike, and to try some way to neutralize flyby. Once the party works out a strategy to deal with them, they're not hard to put down - 2 to 3 attacks should be all that it takes, and at 13 AC, that should only be 3-4 actions at most. With a druid around (web), or with a dedicated archer (xbow master), they might not even need to bother with strategy.
Talking about things like this is actually one of the best parts of D&D.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
And 'the players should see it coming' doesn't really work as a drawback - firstly there are plenty of circumstances where they won't, secondly if that's an intended part of the creatures balance it should be discussed at length in the creature entry and possibly included in the statblock ("disadvantage on stealth checks" or whatever) rather than relying on the DM to interpret the circumstances around the monster in the intended way without guidance, and thirdly the actual likely play pattern matters - a lot of DM aren't going to be interested in starting an encounter with a monster 200 feet away, they're going to say "narrative stuff, mood-setting, roll initiative, there's a peryton...here" and put it in the room with the party already. Doubly so for the sort of novice DMs who are likely to take CR at face value and not realize they're about to kill some players.
Perytons are fine when you're tossing a couple of them, or one peryton+some other stuff, at a party of level 5 characters - those characters have the HP to soak a dive bomb or two before they drop and probably have some magic weapons (and a lot more spells) to deal with its magic resistance - and that's probably how they were written to be used. They're unreasonably lethal against level 2 characters (who have no magic weapons and 10-20 hp vs a dive bomb attack that deals an average of 24 damage), and probably shouldn't be used as a solo fight against a level 2 party. The problem is that the CR system has no way of differentiating between those two uses, and so tells DMs that a peryton is a fair fight for their level 2 party when it's not.
Oh lord, are they signing up for Fantasy Cutco?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
If I say yes, what would your reaction be?
Make sure that even if they figure out that it's a giant scam and they go after the people who are perpetrating it, they are still on the hook for all the suffering and financial crimes they may have committed.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar