Quote from: Omega;837472Thats the goofball thing with 5e. All restrained does is stop you from moving around. It reduces your movement to zero. The restrained is at disadvantage on attacks and those attacking it have advantage. And disadvantage on DEX saves.

All grapple does is reduce speed to zero.

That is it.

At least in Next you could take a grappled target and on another successful check then restrain them. But even in Next restrain just stops movement.

I am not sure there is a way to physically silence or restrain limbs in 5e short of asking the DM and doing a DEX or STR check vs the target.

But just in terms of how the mechanic would be represented in the game, the character would have to be restrained SOMEHOW, he wouldn't just be pinned down by a magic forcefield. One of those arms pinning him down could be pinning the guy's mouth or hand. That I think would just be left to DM fiat.

Quote from: Necrozius;837448Hang on, what? I didn't see this in the Grappling Rules, the Grappled Condition or in the spell chapter. Where does it "spell" this out in the rulebook?

Sorry, my statement was not worded very well; the official rules state that free movement and so on are necessaryfor casting spells with somatic components, but do not mention grappling per se. This is a curious ommission, that in my opinion needs to be corrected: thus, while the official rules do not explicitly state that grappling prevents casting (with somatic components), I consider this to be an oversight and would insist of an according houserule to fix this issue.

Quote from: Doom;837452Anyway, cantrips are a bit of a problem. They don't do amazing damage, but they warp the game. Now, spellcasters have a choice of damage types--they're always going to have a way to hit vulnerable monsters at their weakest, and they'll always have a way to get around resistances.

The worst of the lot is Sacred Flame. A cleric basically has no reason to wield a weapon after level 4, because Sacred Flame does comparable (or more) damage, works on high armor targets, is a ranged attack you can trivially use on adjacent targets, and cover is irrelevant, making it good at long range or in the middle of a melee, too. That's alot of versatility for a "weak" cantrip. Toss in that a cleric will "Aid" every out of combat roll, and it makes sense to consider if WotC really thought about these cantrips much at all.

Sacred Flame is one of those eye-rolling cantrips, as it circumvents so much of the regular combat cantrip dynamics, as you've delineated. Since you add your PB to your spell-casting save, and not all creatures have good DEX (let alone NPCs crafted on PC class templates having DEX as a class save), you can get away with even middling WIS scores on your Clerics. And Clerics have a nasty spread of early Bonus Action spells to tinker with (Healing Word, Sanctuary, Shield of Faith, Spiritual Weapon, Mass Healing Word), so their offensive and defensive action economy starts out high.

Clerics, just like any caster, can blow their wad fast. But they have what it takes to go nova, as well as be that "reset button." That's where the Short/Long Rest economy comes in. That's the primary leash, hold it tight.

But that doesn't bother me nearly as much as the infinite utility cantrips. Those can disrupt a game's social and exploration facets like none other. By sheer dint of being infinite, you can spam just so much environmentally altering stuff. It's likely to tick off the non-magical because it can be a sheer constant. Mage Hand, Minor Illusion, Prestidigitation/Thaumaturgy/Druidcraft, Guidance (the "Aid" Doom is likely talking about), and Message can saturate play in ways that'll make it hard to process. Throw in the new Elemental Evil tinkering cantrips like Control Normal Fires, Create Bonfire, Gust (Fus Roh Dah!), Mold Earth, and Shape Water and you can have a field day with creatives just bullying down tables with hijinks.

Quantity is a Quality all its own.

Yes, yes, you need to play with non-assholes, but I also want to support creative play. Mage Hand away some potential opponent's 10 lbs. or less weapon or MacGuffin 30' up a tree or roof once, awesome, clever. Do that constantly with even the slightest challenges?, tedious. When you have a hammer, all you begin to see is nails.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;837473But just in terms of how the mechanic would be represented in the game, the character would have to be restrained SOMEHOW, he wouldn't just be pinned down by a magic forcefield. One of those arms pinning him down could be pinning the guy's mouth or hand. That I think would just be left to DM fiat.

I already mentioned, quoted, and cited this multiple times before on this forum:

Grapple and Restrained are explicitly defined conditions already; they don't prevent spell-casting. (5e D&D Basic .pdf, August 2014. p.106, 107.)

Grappling requires one hand for the attempt. There is no mention of what is grabbed, only that it imposes the Grappled condition (which reduces Spd to zero). It also has no maintenance requirement; it explicitly does not state whether grappling occupies one of your hands thereafter success. So if you have multiple attacks like a Fighter, a valid interpretation is that you are tucking their heads all between your thighs (or something), while leaving the bulk of them to stick outside of your 5' square. And they all have free use of their arms to mess with your Fighter on their turn.
(5e D&D Basic .pdf, August 2014. p.74.)

Somatic and Material components both only need one hand AND it may be the same hand. (5e D&D Basic .pdf, August 2014. p.79.)

And the GM resource to assist with creating a different, unspecified action is built in under the Improvise an Action tan box. (5e D&D Basic .pdf, August 2014. p.72.)

Quote from: Beagle;837478Sorry, my statement was not worded very well; the official rules state that free movement and so on are necessaryfor casting spells with somatic components, but do not mention grappling per se. This is a curious ommission, that in my opinion needs to be corrected: thus, while the official rules do not explicitly state that grappling prevents casting (with somatic components), I consider this to be an oversight and would insist of an according houserule to fix this issue.

Yeah I agree: it just doesn't make sense for somatic-required spells being doable without issue while grappled... At least not without an attack of opportunity...

We had this exact issue in our last game and the table was divided over it. We ended up just going by the book and agreed to look it up later. You got my hopes up that there was a definite answer. Ah well.

Quote from: Natty Bodak;837428What an odd tautology.

Because having Willie the Wizard blow his spell wad in the first fight and spend the rest of the time bitching that he's out of spells is how I want to spend my afternoon.

It becomes less of an issue with more levels under the belt, but Caster vs Everything Else is a different argument.

Quote from: Warboss Squee;837495Because having Willie the Wizard blow his spell wad in the first fight and spend the rest of the time bitching that he's out of spells is how I want to spend my afternoon.

It becomes less of an issue with more levels under the belt, but Caster vs Everything Else is a different argument.

If Willy the Wizard cannot manage his resources, it is his own damn fault. You cannot truly reward smart thinking and ressourcefulness if you don't occasionally punish recklessness and bad ressource management. In the long run, having meagre ressources and the resulting increase in tension and relevance of actual tatctical decisions resulting from it are a decent upgrade for the actual game, and probably are worth it, even if that means listening to the mage player's whining while he needs to readjust his entitlement issues.

Quote from: Beagle;837507If Willy the Wizard cannot manage his resources, it is his own damn fault. You cannot truly reward smart thinking and ressourcefulness if you don't occasionally punish recklessness and bad ressource management. In the long run, having meagre ressources and the resulting increase in tension and relevance of actual tatctical decisions resulting from it are a decent upgrade for the actual game, and probably are worth it, even if that means listening to the mage player's whining while he needs to readjust his entitlement issues.

QFT. WotC really needs to have some non-spellcaster players have input on the rules.

Quote from: Opaopajr;837483Grappling requires one hand for the attempt. There is no mention of what is grabbed, only that it imposes the Grappled condition (which reduces Spd to zero). It also has no maintenance requirement; it explicitly does not state whether grappling occupies one of your hands thereafter success. So if you have multiple attacks like a Fighter, a valid interpretation is that you are tucking their heads all between your thighs (or something), while leaving the bulk of them to stick outside of your 5' square. And they all have free use of their arms to mess with your Fighter on their turn.
(5e D&D Basic .pdf, August 2014. p.74.)

Except that the entry on grapple does not say your hand is freed up after you grapple them. It specifically says "Using one free hand you try to seize the target." More importantly under moving the grappled target it says you "Drag or carry". I dont see anything there about Thigh Mastering the hapless target.

Same applies to spell focuses (or components for that matter). The entry just says you need a free hand to access it. By your reading then there is nothing to prevent someone from wearing it around their neck as a necklace or embed it in a bracer like a gem and just touching it as needed. And thus never have to worry about being disarmed of it.

Next.

Quote from: Warboss Squee;837495Because having Willie the Wizard blow his spell wad in the first fight and spend the rest of the time bitching that he's out of spells is how I want to spend my afternoon.

It becomes less of an issue with more levels under the belt, but Caster vs Everything Else is a different argument.

Then why the hell did you take a caster in a game where it says right there in the class entry that you have VERY limited ammo? That is like using a bow and then bitching about being out of arrows.

Quote from: Opaopajr;837483Sacred Flame is one of those eye-rolling cantrips, as it circumvents so much of the regular combat cantrip dynamics, as you've delineated. Since you add your PB to your spell-casting save, and not all creatures have good DEX (let alone NPCs crafted on PC class templates having DEX as a class save), you can get away with even middling WIS scores on your Clerics. And Clerics have a nasty spread of early Bonus Action spells to tinker with (Healing Word, Sanctuary, Shield of Faith, Spiritual Weapon, Mass Healing Word), so their offensive and defensive action economy starts out high.

Clerics, just like any caster, can blow their wad fast. But they have what it takes to go nova, as well as be that "reset button." That's where the Short/Long Rest economy comes in. That's the primary leash, hold it tight.

But that doesn't bother me nearly as much as the infinite utility cantrips. Those can disrupt a game's social and exploration facets like none other. By sheer dint of being infinite, you can spam just so much environmentally altering stuff. It's likely to tick off the non-magical because it can be a sheer constant. Mage Hand, Minor Illusion, Prestidigitation/Thaumaturgy/Druidcraft, Guidance (the "Aid" Doom is likely talking about), and Message can saturate play in ways that'll make it hard to process. Throw in the new Elemental Evil tinkering cantrips like Control Normal Fires, Create Bonfire, Gust (Fus Roh Dah!), Mold Earth, and Shape Water and you can have a field day with creatives just bullying down tables with hijinks.

Quantity is a Quality all its own.

Yes, yes, you need to play with non-assholes, but I also want to support creative play. Mage Hand away some potential opponent's 10 lbs. or less weapon or MacGuffin 30' up a tree or roof once, awesome, clever. Do that constantly with even the slightest challenges?, tedious. When you have a hammer, all you begin to see is nails.

I agree with this.
The cantrips don't do huge damage but neither does a standard fighter with a bow unless he specialises.
Our Warlock was doing 1d10+3 damage at 3rd level (til the other guys killed him) which was slightly more than the Archer although the Warlock had advantages, needed one hand, no restriction on space etc. and the archer could trigger a second wind at some point. Yes the mage needed to roll to hit but he has hte same "thaco" as a fighter anyway so ...
Now that was okay and didn't seem too unbalanced but the message cantrip and the prestitigious mage hand the rogue uses all the time so make fundermental differences.

One of the interesting things is Eldritch knights, and other "hybrids" who don't bother to pack missile weapons, they just rely on their cantrip for missile after all its as good as carrying a bow, it never runs out, it doesn't need to be carried about so it totally makes sense.

In addition my party have been fighting undead/demons and so on and need silver or magical weapons a fair bit of the time and the pew pew of the casters is still effective.

So I think Cantrip do have a major influence if its keeping the PCs linked with walkie talkies using message or eliminating the risk of traps with mage hand or pickpocketing at range with same, to the limitless ammo of the firebolt/eldrich blast/ray of frost etc.....

I haven't had complaints exactly but a few grumbles and it certainly led to character choices at 3rd level with Arcane trickster and Eldrich knight being a change to the players initial character plans.

Quote from: Doom;837512QFT. WotC really needs to have some non-spellcaster players have input on the rules.

They did. That is why non casters, especially fighters can pump out more damage a round than a caster with Eldritch Bolt ever can.

Example: Jan's fighter and my warlock are about to hit level 11.
EB does 1d10, Jans bow does 1d8 with her longbow. We both have the same attacks per round at the same level bumps of 5 and 11. Ok, So so far I am out DPSing her. Except that she has Archery, so she is hitting a little more frequently than I am. Then at level 5 she gets Sharpshooter and uses the -5 to hit penalty to crank her damage up to 1d8+10 for what is the equivalent now of a -3 to hit. Her attacks can benefit from a magic bow or arrows where I do not. Thus if she can get ahold of them then her to-hit loss can be removed and her damage bumps up a little again. And me and Kefra sat down and spent a month of downtime working together to craft a batch of +1 arrows for her.

It gets even better for melee fighter who doesnt have to worry about ammo. And by the way I carry an extra quiver of arrows for Jan.

There appears to be a distinct lack of enemy archers utilizing their range advantage in some folks' games.  Wondering how some groups play out the situations where a tower must be assaulted by force?  Wondering why some groups appear to not utilize bow range in their party's tactics?

Quote from: Old One Eye;837528There appears to be a distinct lack of enemy archers utilizing their range advantage in some folks' games.  Wondering how some groups play out the situations where a tower must be assaulted by force?  Wondering why some groups appear to not utilize bow range in their party's tactics?

For the same reasons some groups charge in and attack willy nilly. Or groups that never ever try to negotiate, talk, barter, intimidate, trick or interact at all. Different play styles, lack of imagination, how they were conditioned to play, etc.

I've had to game with these sorts. Some are just impatient. They want to get on with the adventure. Some dont like someone else having a moment in the spotlight while they stand in the background. Some just want to kill kill kill.

Quote from: Omega;837534For the same reasons some groups charge in and attack willy nilly. Or groups that never ever try to negotiate, talk, barter, intimidate, trick or interact at all. Different play styles, lack of imagination, how they were conditioned to play, etc.

I've had to game with these sorts. Some are just impatient. They want to get on with the adventure. Some dont like someone else having a moment in the spotlight while they stand in the background. Some just want to kill kill kill.

Well, I will certainly agree that if the inherent advantages of some attack forms are ignored in the game, then other attack forms will appear to be more powerful in comparison.

Quote from: Omega;837523Except that the entry on grapple does not say your hand is freed up after you grapple them. It specifically says "Using one free hand you try to seize the target." More importantly under moving the grappled target it says you "Drag or carry". I dont see anything there about Thigh Mastering the hapless target.

Same applies to spell focuses (or components for that matter). The entry just says you need a free hand to access it. By your reading then there is nothing to prevent someone from wearing it around their neck as a necklace or embed it in a bracer like a gem and just touching it as needed. And thus never have to worry about being disarmed of it.

Next.

It deliberately says nothing. It is completely up to GM fiat. "Grab a creature or wrestle with it" covers the whole wrestling aspect that certain PCs like, including figure four leg holds, et al. There's no definition beyond vague comments and a reference to the conditions section.

Maintaining a hold has nothing to do with the initial seizing a target requirement. The rules are way more concerned with removing the condition. Further, with drag or carry, it in no way explains what is required for maintaining a grapple while moving. No definition, thus open to interpretation, thus guess the fun in AL or mixed edition tables?

It is all deliberately vague for GMs to hash through. You may choose to interpret that grapple occupies X amount of hands for your campaign's grapplers. I don't know why one would do so, because all their opponents will have their hands free regardless of being grappled (unless you reinterpret the whole section in your campaign under Improvise an Action).

I don't mind a few deliberately vague rules, but this section is a bit annoying. It annoys in Org Play or mixed edition scenes because it doesn't explicitly mess with spellcasting, and -- as part of its give and take -- similarly doesn't mess with hand economy of the grappler either. It's like an intentional backing off of the subject saying to all sides, "hey guys, we're all winners here!"

Grappling
When you want to grab a creature or wrestle with it, you can use the Attack action to make a special melee attack, a grapple. If you're able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them.
 The target of your grapple must be no more than one size larger than you, and it must be within your reach. Using at least one free hand, you try to seize the target by making a grapple check, a Strength (Athletics)
check contested by the target's Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (the target chooses the ability to use). If you succeed, you subject the target to the grappled condition (see appendix A). The condition
specifies the things that end it, and you can release the target whenever you like (no action required).
 Escaping a Grapple. A grappled creature can use its action to escape. To do so, it must succeed on a Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check contested by your Strength (Athletics) check.
 Moving a Grappled Creature. When you move, you can drag or carry the grappled creature with you, but your speed is halved, unless the creature is two sizes smaller than you.
(D&D 5e Basic .pdf, August 2014. p. 74.)

As for S&M components it again leaves it open to interpretation.

Forget about wearing it (which is a good, flavorful idea by the way,) to avoid disarms and the like. You could juggle it all in one hand. Naked, bound caster frees one hand and grabs a wand/crystal/amulet/sprig of mistletoe -- boom, back in business.

Now that really messes with setting development because now the GM has to figure out new ways to tamp down casters from escape. This affects things like realm jurisprudence and the like. Sure it can create new adventures as "the evil caster once again escaped his imprisonment!" But it can just as easily grow stale and lead to more permanent and direct protocol of "just cut out his tongue and thumbs already. If he's found innocent we'll just cleric magic them back on... or not."

The openness to appeal to all camps starts to warp assumed setting. Several earlier edition restrictions actually made things easier overall, from bookkeeping to setting conceits. This is another section that leaves me rolling my eyes -- and I do like 5e on the whole.

Somatic (S)
Spellcasting gestures might include a forceful
gesticulation or an intricate set of gestures. If a spell
requires a somatic component, the caster must have free
use of at least one hand to perform these gestures.
Material (M)
Casting some spells requires particular objects,
specified in parentheses in the component entry.
A character can use a component pouch or a
spellcasting focus (found in chapter 5) in place of
the components specified for a spell. But if a cost is
indicated for a component, a character must have that
specific component before he or she can cast the spell.
 If a spell states that a material component is
consumed by the spell, the caster must provide this
component for each casting of the spell.
 A spellcaster must have a hand free to access these
components, but it can be the same hand that he or she
uses to perform somatic components.
(D&D 5e Basic .pdf, August 2014. p. 79.)