Aura of Personal Space
It was Ravenloft. It was legendary gothic horror / fantasy mashup Ravenloft, and I was stoked. Count Strahd von Zarovich lurked somewhere in the fog-shrouded night, heroes from across time and space assembled to oppose him, and legacy characters from my group’s original run of Ravenloft (1983) were set to join the fray! No doubt our band of stalwart companions would be the ones to take him down. Working as a well-oiled combat machine, we would stand shoulder-to-shoulder against the tides of darkness, and so let that dread wave break upon our indomitable wills! Of course I was going to be a paladin. Good deeds shine most brightly in the darkest etc. etc.
As you may have guessed however, the discipline exhibited by The Anti-Party in today’s comic was lacking in my own. War games are chaotic at the best of times, and that’s if you’re plugging along in 40k or similar on single-player mode. Getting a table full of PCs to march in formation is damn near impossible. Whenever the werewolves or giant mutant war pigs attacked, my stalwart companions would inevitably scatter in all directions. And when that happens, it’s either quarterbacking time or deciding to grin and bear it.
If you’ve ever gone raiding in an MMO, you know how hard it is to keep dudes from standing in the fire. The same applies to standing inside AoE buffs, and the problem exists on the tabletop just as much as the digital world. Usually it comes down to telegraphing your info. If you’re on Roll 20 and can turn on a visual aura, you’re covered. If you happen to own a bit of bent wire with a 10′ radius, you can repeat the effect in meat space. Even a few standees listing your bonuses can help. Gods know that’s how I like to play my support bards. Of course, these strategies are all a little beside the point.
When you approach TTRPGs like they’re tactical games first and foremost, you’re going to get frustrated. That’s because it’s a team sport, and your personal idea of perfect play isn’t likely to happen. The big takeaway is to adapt to your teammates rather than insisting that they adapt to you. Sure formation marching and standing in the optimal spot might come together every once in a while, but running around the grid like chaos elementals is fun. Lawful good alignment or no, my paladin’s blood pressure went way down once she learned to accept the chaos.
How about the rest of you paladins? Have you ever struggled to apply your auras effectively? Does your group coordinate tactics like a well-oiled machine? And if you’ve got any tips for wrangling PCs into appropriate grid coordinates, please don’t hesitate to share down in the comments!
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I think the first conversation that needs to be had about tactical positioning is the one that wizards and sorcerers need: “If we’re up against more than three monsters, maybe make a ranged attack or ready an action if you go before me, so I can start us off with a fireball?”
I don’t think any of my groups have ever reached that level of tactical sophistication, though. 🙁
I feel you. Remember the stinking cloud episode I talked about back here?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/artillery
That was also my Ravenloft paladin. #frustrating
What I found ‘worked’ was starting off with a fireball anyway. Eventually they’ll learn, right?
Won’t win you any popularity contests, but it is effective! Then again, it doesn’t really matter whether you’re well-liked by piles of ash.
I had a lot of issues when my group was fighting an invisible beholder convincing them to stand within my 10′ aura so they wouldn’t (as a quick for instance) get petrified. Again. Seriously.
Do auras work in the antimagic cone?
Doesn’t matter, their eye-rays don’t work in the AM cone, so if they’re shutting down your aura they can’t shoot you. Your allies can still arrow them though.
I’ve had this issue trying to cast haste at the start of a battle. With the target being “1 creature/level, no two of which can be more than 30′ apart” in pathfinder I can comfortably get the whole party. Or at least I could, if the kineticist wasn’t hanging back fussing over his undead giants. Or if the witch hadn’t run off ahead just because I’d made a mind-controlled ogre grab her and shake her around a bit. Amateurs…
When you’re dealing with giant undead minions, there’s a certain odor involved. I wouldn’t want to stand too close either.
Back when I was on the player side of the DM screen, my group somehow managed to work out an understanding that as the nigh-invincible paladin, I would be the anchor for the group’s “tactics”, being both the front liner responsible for protecting the archer and wizards, and the poor sacrificial dummy responsible for clumping all the monsters in a small space around me for being fireballed.
This became significantly easier once I got a ring that gave me access to Free Action. Our DM immediately regretted it once we started just lobbing webs and entangles on my position then waiting a round for me to walk out before unleashing hell.
Strategery! Way to see the potential in an item.
My Paladin preferred in-universe quaterbacking.
(Read all of his dialogue in a thick New York accent, as all real Dwarves have New York accents. All Duergar have Boston accents as an evil reflection of Dwarves.)
“Form up!” “Target the caster!” etc.
As a result, if I can find an ongoing group that will let me play this really well-designed, well-reviewed Warlord that’s what I’m playing next.
https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-LW4agTNJcbwe6kSv4H2
Yeah… I don’t trust myself to play an in-universe quarterback. It’s too easy to become an IRL quarterback in the process.
I find it works if handled carefully. For example the scenario in the above-comic would be avoided through it because Medusae have a workaround.
DM: You see several alarmingly detailed statues of terrified people.
Me: Do I know aboot creatures that can petrify?
DM: Give me an Intelligence check.
Numbers.
DM: You know that Basilisks and Medusae petrify through being looked at.
Me: “‘F yeh don’t wanna be petrihfied stayuh at yeh feet!”
A party member ended up petrified when they failed to follow this advice.
I played a recent 5e session that I unfortunately had to abandon future sessions due to scheduling. However I made warforged with very high AC. Most of the rest of the party had ranged options and my warforged being a protecter first, commanded them to stay behind and use range while I attacked in melee.
Then they went melee too and my high AC build was pointless because enemies would target the weaker-looking members first.
You know how I have a think against the concept of “tanking?”
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/tanking
This mess right here is why.
There are a few ways to tank in 5E. What class and subclass was your Warforged?
forge cleric, was gonna dip fighter after taking the sentinel feat at cleric 4 (was only 3rd level)
Yeah, Sentinel is pretty much the only way for Clerics to tank in 5E. Being durable doesn’t make you a tank.
Do you remember that scene in the Avenger when the whole group is fighting in NY against Loki’s army and show how the fight is going among the different avengers in different places of the city? Well we will need big, huge coordination to pull that.
Now that i think about it, other than tactical advantage, which is the reason to work in team? Back in Dragon Age II, the devs change the mechanic of the combos. In Origins a mage could make combo of its spells, like combining grease with a fireball or sleep with horror. Then in the second game they change that, now in that game the combos where among classes. One of the three classes generates a condition and one of the characters of the other two can exploit that to make more damage. Now try to pull this in D&D, Exalted or other game, yes, you can if the DM allows it, other than that, no, you can’t. Damage is a good carrot to put in front of the players if you want for them to play together. Try this, our DM allows it and is one of the reasons we try to maybe be something like a team working together 🙂
I think one of the biggest hurdles is a lack of information. Most players aren’t as intimately familiar with your character as you are. That means they’ll forget auras, not realize how big your AoE needs to be, or wind up standing just out of range of your buff spells. Reminding them of this information (or not) is a careful tightrope between “the party would have discussed this” and “obnoxious micromanaging.”
Why should someone remind them of that info? Is all there in the handbook, the other one 😉 If the players forget the paladin aura and because of that their pc suffers a terrible death mix of gore and hentai in the tentacles of an eldritch abomination is their problem. Now if for example you have a party of mixed exalted then the player must alert of that things because if all the info is in one book you can’t blame the other person, if the player are handling multiple books then players must warn among them of that kind of things.
With that already said, no rule, no DM or book can’t stop us of going full chaotic-free-for-all. Here a good resume of typical play among us:
https://www.chapelcomic.com/30/ 🙂
lol. Looks like I have another comic to check out.
It’s more funny if you know the games to which it makes reference, but with good jokes still. Glad you like it 🙂
Our party got better at keeping themselves within auras, mostly due to a incident that almost killed my wizard that I described before.
Long story short, our witch had a circle vs evil on herself, which protected us from the dominating gazes of several vampires.
…until she turned into a tiny, invisible fox (kitsune with a ring of invisibilty) and buggered away from our Gloomblade fighter. A few failed will saves later, fox was running back to keep said fighter from smashing wizard’s skull like a melon (after he barely survived a crit).
Luckily, things work better magic-related positioning. With three casters in the party, we know how to position ourselves without being in the way of our lightning bolts, fireballs, and such. It also helps we have a spell, Linked Legacy, which lets us identify monsters and transfer the relevant weaknesses and abilities to each other via mental link (or as we like to call it, ‘wiki magic’).
And if you have access to ‘telekinetic charge’, you can position your beefy party members yourself!
I once had a wand of telekinetic charge. I made the mistake of handing it to my pseudodragon familiar. No telling where the barbarian was going to wind up!
The anti-party is right to be shaken/frightened of those black tentacles. They’ve seen the ‘other’ handbook.
Yeah… We did do that joke on Handbook of Erotic Fantasy, didn’t we? I’m not proud.
Alas, it was inevitable.
At least Magus was a happy camper!
On the subject of pride in writing, have you ever seen the ‘seducer’ witch archetype?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/comments/cjgsyn/garden_of_delight_dilemma_how_far_into_the/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Does it stack with the White Haired Witch archetype? I ask because reasons. >_>
Alas, it does not, barring a generous DM or Gestalt build. But you can always get the prehensile hair hex (weaker and limited duration, but it’s still murder hair), or the strangling hair spell (spell slots for murder hair). Our Leyline Kitsune Witch did just that, to decent effect with touch/reactive spells and spell storing enchantments
Last week, we were fighting trolls and I wanted to use my fire breath weapon. But it’s a cone and a bunch of the others were in the way and would have been hit. There was no place to move where they wouldn’t have been. I had to use Fire Bolt instead.
I like to think of the cone as “the frustration template.”
I was excited to play a dragonborn and use fire breath. So far, I’ve only used it to light the campfire. Oh well, we’re only level 3. There’ll be plenty of time I can use it. I hope.
Yesterday during the game, we ended up ambushed by a red dragon. I got knocked out by its breath weapon on the first turn. And I have fire resistance. The cleric healed by so I was able to get two attacks off. Then I got knocked out again.
I gather that you decided to dip your toe into 5e then. Prepare to yo-yo into death and out again. Healing word for days!
Yeah, it’s a fun group and I didn’t want to leave it. And the GM was nice enough to let me use both a homebrew class and a homebrew background I found on D&D Beyond. Pretty much all of my attacks other than a backup dagger and my crossbow do fire damage though. So I probably wouldn’t have been able to hit the red dragon with that much damage overall anyway.
I’ve seen several 5e paladin’s played, and it can be really great get a bonus to saves if you huddle together. The only problem, though, is that most of those games heavily featured dragons. So the party could huddle up, and with that massive bonus be almost certain of making the save for half damage… or they could split up, and have only a few people be melted. Fun times.
My take is that Paladin gets a barbari-buddy in that scenario. The catch the breath weapon by being clustered, but soak it with high hp. Give the dragon no good choices!
Has Paladin gotten an art upgrade recently, or have I just been blind for the past hundred strips?
No, he’s just that sexy. Always has been.
Paladins gotta rock that Charisma. Hence why Dwarves make the best Paladins.
Never been a proper Paladin, just the opposite. Negative auras are a lot easier to manage. As are Cruelties (the opposite of Mercies) because you just pick what you want your enemies to suffer, rather than having to guess what’s going to happen to your allies. However, my Antipaladin had pretty good teamwork. She took the same sort of role as the Evil Parties antipaladin, except she could heal herself.
Yeah… This one’s more of a 5e joke. Paladins have some serious passive buffs in that edition!
What was the antipaladin build, btw? Straight up smiting, or were you going for the intimidate strat?
Went for a cavalry build, using my fiendish boon as a mount. Nothing quite like charging enemies from the back of a Bebelith.
I adore my Oath of Ancients paladin, and that aura of warding has singlehandedly prevented TPKs at many an AL game. Like a Cleric player with bless, my “remember to add a D4 to that” is “Good news, you’re in Hector range!”. Combined with a bombastic voice, a few memorable character quirks (for one thing, he doesn’t believe in Dwarves), and those GODLY auras, every week I have people asking me if Hector’s coming out tonight.
Ah man… I had to quit my group’s Ravenloft campaign just before my auras came online. I believer I was Rogue 2 / Paladin 5 at the time. The auras + cunning action (read: aura delivery service) was what got me interested in the build in the first place. Sad times.