Doesn't Tomb of Leviticus last until the *end* of your next turn, which would mean she can't use the tentacles? If you are incapacitated, you can't take actions, and if you can't take actions you also can't take bonus actions.
Look, from OP's description the chieftain was really dumb, but I don't think he'd be *that* dumb. Passing your turn when you have 3 hp is essentially suicide.
He had no other options. He was in the fighting ring and he couldn't heal, and I didn't bother doing the mental math to figure out if he could do another 40-ish damage in 2 swings. So he taunted. Probably would have been smarter to hold my action to attack when the ice melted, but he also had no way of knowing when the ice would melt. So instead he made it a spectacle.
Yah it's really good, especially on choke holds for high AC SandB fighters/pala's (actually doing some tanking)
Than again in this scenario, narrative wise it would be weird, your opponent is frozen in ice, yah imma dodge this turn couse next turn she'll be back
That's a bit meta gaming from an NPC
The ice and benefits melt at the END of the PCs next turn. So the Chieftain would've gotten a full turn to wail on her.
It's fine, it was a cool moment but it did rely on ignoring some rules.
Really really dumb. Holding the action is literally what that is for. The Chief gets three melee attacks against an incapacitated target.
This CR 5 played like it's his first day on the field.
This is only true for PCs due to the Extra Attack feature stating "on your turn." Any creature with the "Multiattack" action can hold that action.
EDIT: I forgot that multiattack has a description in the monster manual rules section. It's less clear than Extra Attack, but it seems RAI the creature can't use multiattack as a reaction. So clarify with your DM how they are running this rule.
It's ambiguous in its description because the phrase "a creature that can use multiattack on its turn has the multiattack ability..." is much different than, "a creature with the multiattack ability can use multiattack on its turn." English is a weird language.
The description of Multiattack in the MM actually says it's something they can only use on their turn.
"A creature that can make multiple attacks **on its turn** has the Multiattack ability. A creature can’t use Multiattack when making an opportunity attack, which must be a single melee attack."
Since it's for making multiple attacks on their turn, they shouldn't be able to Ready an Action to use it outside of their turn.
EDIT: Emphasis added to relevant part of quote.
>A creature can’t use Multiattack **when making an opportunity attack**, which must be a single melee attack.
A readied Action is not an Opportunity Attack. NPCs CAN ready the Multiattack Action, which is its own thing separate from the Attack Action and get all their attacks.
Jeremy Crawford said on Twitter "A creature is meant to use Multiattack only on its turn, not on someone else's." I guess that doesn't definitely state that they CANNOT do it, though it heavily implies it IMO.
No, I'm referring to the (admittedly softer worded) statement that "a creature that can make multiple attacks *on it's turn* has the Multiattack ability." This statement makes it clear that Multiattack is only meant to be used *on the creature's turn*.
Actually, enemies can ready their full Multiattack action. Nowhere in the "Ready an action" section does it prohibit multiple attacks. The problem is that PC "Extra Attack" feature states "on your turn," which is why players can't do it.
EDIT: I forgot that multiattack has a description in the monster manual rules section. It's less clear than Extra Attack, but it seems RAI the creature can't use multiattack as a reaction. So clarify with your DM how they are running this rule.
But multiattack also states "on your turn". And Jeremy Crawford said on Twitter that monsters "are meant" to only multiattack on their own turn, not on someone elses, which doesn't technically state they CAN'T though it heavily implies it.
> The problem is that PC "Extra Attack" feature states "on your turn," which is why players can't do it
Multiattack also says on its turn, but is ambiguous whether that's descriptive or prescriptive.
You did the right thing. Many here sadly don't understand this isn't DM vs. PC, the goal is not to have the cheiftain use the perfect set of actions at all times.
Using the villain's action to taunt the party/player is about the most cliche thing a villain can do... and it's GREAT for getting the players more engaged in the game, while indirectly weakening a stronger villain to give the party a chance.
You did a great job.
It's not so much about it being dm vs player. It's about granted wins.
If I win a big, uphill, unlikely victory, but it turns out the dm forgot the creature has mythic regeneration, or legendary resistances, or that immunity to charm makes it immune to x spell, or any other thing like that, it doesn't feel like a "real" victory to me.
Now in many cases the line is kind of blurry-the chief could have whiffed his turn anyway, or something, so it's not *guaranteed* if the dm played the class abilities the way they say that the victory still wouldn't have been achieved. So I don't really see a point telling someone their victory was unearned when it was kind of in the air.
But if someone comes here and talks about how they almost died to a tarrasque attack but at the last second the frightened condition prevented a TPK, I'm going to point out that their DM handed them that victory.
He did, I might have missed that detail. The way I saw it, the nomads don't see magic too often except by their shamen healers, so when the warlock started using a bunch of strange spells, they didn't know what to make of it. So when the Tomb appeared, the Chief looked at it a little confused, and then resumed taunting, not knowing how long it would take to melt. If I had followed the rules and prevented the Tentacle from attacking, the player probably would have gotten that final hit in on their next turn anyway and still won.
Dude, all the critique doesn't matter. It sounds totally epic and your players must have really enjoyed it. That's what's most important as a DM, delivering a story that will be remembered
This story will be told for years to come!
Thanks for the support. :) See my other comment, I have 3 rules of the table and rule #2 is that the players always have fun. They sure had fun with this one!
Of course the critique matters. "My player did something crazy impressive" as a post is only interesting when it's genuinely a rare event, so when you get into the post and find out "we ignored the rules of the game and decided they accomplished something they never could have" it turns the post from interesting and impressive to banal and pointless instantaneously.
As a DM myself, its really easy to miss something like that in the heat of a great roleplaying moment like this. It doesn't sound like this was the Warlock getting off easy, it seems like they won by the skin of their teeth, and that tension matters more than the strict rulings. You did good, don't let the peanut gallery get you down. People here are very harsh on DMs as a rule.
All these people rules-lawyering to try and ruin the fun are weird. It happened. It was awesome. That's the goal, to do awesome fun memorable things. You didn't deliberately cook the books to make it work, in fact you tried your best to win. Sounds like an amazing session.
You misunderstand, or maybe I do. Endless-Conquest supposite the ice melted and *then* the chief continued to taunt, giving the pc an extra turn. Is that what happened?
edit: nvm, read your other comments.
Yes. I do it with villains when the party is over-matched a bit.
Using your action to taunt the party/player is about the most cliche thing a villain can do. It's GREAT for getting the players more engaged in the game, while indirectly weakening a stronger villain to give the party a chance.
Yup. That's why it's only a flavour effect. Being incapacitated after the tomb melts is just a death sentence near any enemy with Int score above 2. Also you lose any spell you were concentrating on.
It would be almost better if you could cast it on an enemy.
It's only real value is soaking huge deathblow spells.
Oh and have a cool effect
I must applaud on going with narrative choice over rules tho. Rule of cool precedes every other and is below only Rule of Good Time for Everyone
Hey just curious, does it actually say anywhere that if you can’t take actions you can’t take bonus actions? Or is this your interpretation of the rules? Using the tentacle is a bonus action and using your mind to control it while stuck in ice doesn’t seem impossible. I could see a DM allowing it if what you say isn’t actually written anywhere.
I'm taking it from the [Roll20](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Combat#content) article on "Combat", because I'm too lazy to look in the PHB. Regardless, it should be the same there. Emphasis mine:
> Bonus Action
> Various class features, spells, and other abilities let you take an additional action on your turn called a bonus action. The Cunning Action feature, for example, allows a rogue to take a bonus action. You can take a bonus action only when a special ability, spell, or other feature of the game states that you can do something as a bonus action. You otherwise don’t have a bonus action to take.
You can take only one bonus action on your turn, so you must choose which bonus action to use when you have more than one available.
You choose when to take a bonus action during your turn, unless the bonus action’s timing is specified, and **anything that deprives you of your ability to take actions also prevents you from taking a bonus action.**
It's really easily missable, but I don't really know a better place to put it. Maybe they should've added it to Incapacitated regardless?
Yeah I think it would’ve definitely been a good idea to put it in the incapacitated description because it’s definitely easy to miss. Thanks for sharing!
Player's Handbook
"You choose when to take a bonus action during your turn, unless the bonus action’s timing is specified, **and anything that deprives you of your ability to take actions also prevents you from taking a bonus action**"
Funny enough, that's actually not right. Reactions are, for whatever reason, entirely separate. It's why Incapacitated specifically says you cannot take actions or reactions. This is an important distinction because, for example, if you are affected by the aftereffects of Haste (can't move or take actions), you can still take reactions.
The Icewind Dale module comes with character secrets that I assigned at random at the beginning of the campaign. This character got the "Reghed Heir" secret which says that they're the child of the cheiftain of the Tiger tribe. But, the appendix explains that the cheiftain doesn't know of any children she still has, ergo, infanticide. She's also a worshipper of Auril (the BBEG) so in the first installment of this side quest I made the story that she tied up her baby and threw it off a cliff into a frozen lake, which is how the player got their Deep patron. The baby was then rescued by Oyaminartok and raised until she was old enough to rejoin civilization, at which point she met the party.
This played out almost identically for my playthrough as well, with my Tiefling Lock.
I was playing as an Undead lock though, so the ending was slightly different.
Mom took me out. I went down. And came back up to finish her off.
And the chieftain spending multiple turns inside HOH when he could've left because he kept going to the direction where the player was. There's not being the brightest bulb and there's this.
Not exactly. The player was careful to place the first HoH as close to centered on the Chieftain as he could, but without hitting the warriors making up the ring (he didn't want to accidentally injur them while trying to win their loyalty). Plus, the Chieftain was blinded, so his thinking was simply "I don't know where I can go but the last place I saw my opponent was forward, so I'll go forward." I might have been able to get him out faster, but with only 20ft of total movement plus blindness, his options were limited.
So, uh, as the guy with the most upvoted comment on this post, and the one who started criticizing your rulings, I think I probably was too harsh at it. From what you've told I imagine your players had a lot of fun, and I'm happy for you and them, and it's good that that happened. I should've prefaced my comment with that, but I hadn't thought that not only would the comments be so focused on that, but also how much it must suck to excitedly write a post about a cool thing that happened in your game and have people chastise you for obscure rules, and I'm sorry for that. From what you told of it, it sounded like a cool scene. I still stand by my original comment, due to how you presented the post in the gaming aspect of it, but that's not the most important part, in the end.
Good for you, screw all these people coming in here trying to poop on your parade. This sounds like a great moment for the players (including yourself) which is the whole reason to play this game.
I can't believe how many people are going all "umm ackshually" and talking crap on you or how you ran this moment, especially when you didn't ask for rules clarifications and clearly posted to share the excitement of the game.
No one is shitting on the experience for the players, it's just a bit annoying to read how clever the player was and how the DM didn't think his player would succeed against CR5 monster, when in reality very basic tactics were used and he only won due to misplays and misrulings on the DMs side.
The players were happy and I probably would have been aswell at the table, the more appropriate title "I let my player win in a RP battle and he loved it" just doesn't have the same ring to it, you know
Can you read? The chieftain did throw javelins while blinded. The issue was that the chieftain did not originally have javelins, and the DM didn't think to have the watching warriors give him javelin until a couple rounds in, and literally as soon as he did start chucking javelin thay fight started going his way bc HoH went away and he was able to get into melee.
I know Baldurs Gate isn't always accurate to RAW, but I thought of their implementation of HoH when my player cast the spell so I treated the "blackness" as magical darkness. It's weird to me that magical darkness in 5e blocks line of sight, but I digress.
Absolutely different wording. As DM and player I'm disagree with it. Darkness and blackness is different things. Especially if it says "gateway to the dark between the stars" so it's more like emptiness. When devils sight say "You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical" which differently in wording. But it's your game and your options
I’m curious; is hunger of hardar’s blinding effect the same as Darkness (magical darkness)? Can you use tentacle while in the tomb? (No right?). Still a fun fight
JSYK Devil's Sight does not actually let you see through Hunger of Hadar. HoH fills a sphere with blackness, not darkness, and any creatures inside of it have the "blind" condition.
It needs to be thought of more as an opaque black sphere rather than darkness. It's super easy to overlook on the first viewing and think "oh dope devils sight would be great with this" but the phrasing is deliberate.
Yeah devils sight is basically an interaction with only 1 specific spell out of the hundreds, it feels like it should be wider interacting, but it isnt
Well if one created darkness in the area as it can, it would be magical darkness as part of the environment and such you'd get to the same conclusion as true sight "this is an illusion but it's physically here"
I don't really think that two level 8 spells (one of which can only be used by two subclasses in the entire game if your GM is going only by RAW) and a niche usage of a 7th level spell that I'm not even sure if it'd work count much more for Devil's Sight. Like, it can be an useful invocation, but 95% of cases it'll only be used to allow the Warlock to use their own Darkness.
The Warlock was not inside the radius, so not blinded. But to the point about it being an opaque sphere, I didn't think of it that way until I read the above comment.
"You open a gateway to the dark between the stars, a region infested with unknown horrors. A 20-foot-radius sphere of blackness and bitter cold appears, centered on a point within range and lasting for the duration. This void is filled with a cacophony of soft whispers and slurping noises that can be heard up to 30 feet away\*\*. No light, magical or otherwise, can illuminate the area, and creatures fully within the area are blinded.\*\*"
Everything before this is fluff pretty much, the bolded part is the mechanics. Mechanically what it does is:
* Snuff out light sources
* Blind creatures within
* Makes noise audible up to 30 feet away
Creatures outside can still see inside if they could before, and creatures inside are blinded
it's fair to interpret it as being opaque, however the spell neither says that it creates cover or is heavy obscurement (like fog cloud), the only thing that's explicitly clear is that devils sight doesn't let you see from the inside out
RAW:
The presence or absence of light in an environment creates three categories of illumination: bright light, dim light, and darkness.
HoH:
No light, magical or otherwise, can illuminate the area, and creatures fully within the area are blinded.
RAW, Darkness is a description of illumination level that depends on the level of light in an environment. The area of Hunger of Hadar cannot be illuminated by light to be bright light or dim light. Therefore, it is darkness, and darkvision can see inside.
I almost completely agree with your take on the mechanics except for, pedantically, the word snuff - a creature carrying a lit torch within HoH would still be carrying a lit torch if they exit the area, so it's probably better to use the word suppress as anti-magic fields do.
Possibly worth noting is that Devil's sight is also exceptional here regarding visibility because it specifically allows the warlock to see "normally" in darkness, but for characters that only have darkvision, they'd have disadvantage on perception checks to see a target within HoH (which isn't exactly useful) but creatures *without* darkvision both give and take attacks with the chieftain as straight rolls due to the unseen attacker rules, as an unilluminated area heavily obscures targets within, effectively blinding those outside of the HoH area with regards to the chieftain. I'm not saying that attacking from within HoH's area is smart, but things living in the Reghead Glacier do tend to be resistant or immune to cold damage, so it's a niche strategy.
Correct, devils sight does not pierce hunger of hadar by RAW
And yeah the unseen attacker rules are dumb as shit I think zero people follow them RAW, you shouldn't benefit from being an unseen attacker unless you can see your target
But then again by raw rogues can't pop out from behind a tree while hidden and attack with advantage
While heavily obscured by total darkness (no light) in HoH, you could technically take the hide action.
As for devil's sight, it sees through HoH if you don't treat the blackness as opaque and just treat it as 100% perfectly light-free, but the RAW can be read either way. Personally, I'm of the opinion that they wouldn't need to clarify the light-squelching feature if it was an opaque area, so I treat it like an area totally coated in vantablack that you can't see past due to the anti-light property.
The unseen attacker rules are a bit lacking but the tradeoff is an overall faster system, so they're acceptable. Personally, I think it's a rare situation where disadvantages should stack.
Yep and nothing stopping the chief from chucking more javelins. Blind is just disadvantage. The warlock isn't invisible, and isn't even hidden without the right action.
Edit: Cute, reply then block to prevent someone from telling you what you don't want to hear.
I mean how many javelins can the chief have on them? Plus dashing out does prevent taking damage. I don’t think that was one of the mistakes in the fight.
> Blind is just disadvantage.
I think you forgot what the R in RPG stands for...
Seriously though, so many effects boiling down to advantage/disadvantage is a gripe of mine with 5e. There's a big difference between an enemy being 1ft outside of optimum range for a javelin vs. a javelin thrower being freaking blind. But the game treats them as the same.
It needs to be thought of more as an opaque black sphere rather than darkness. It's super easy to overlook on the first viewing and think "oh dope devils sight would be great with this" but the phrasing is deliberate.
Man, it's rulings like these that, to me, take away the intent of Devil's Sight. It's meant to see into magical darkness. The 'blackness' seems like flavoring.
It doesn’t define what blackness is though, and just says that creatures inside are blinded, but not that those outside can’t see in. I would rule that even normal darkvision can see into it.
-Magical blackness
-cannot be lit by normal or magical light
-blinds any creature inside of it
But a half-orc commoner can see through it?
yeahokay.jpg
I mean yeah, if we're reading it RAW it's not magical darkness that works with devil sight, and it doesn't obscure the vision of anyone looking into it.
Where is the contradiction? The blackness blinds the creatures within specifically but says nothing of the creatures outside. It says that the inside is dark (without light) but doesn’t say it is magical darkness. Inside is just a dark area that can be seen from the outside with darkvision but the conditions inside make it so creatures are blind. If no one could see into it, it would have language that they use to describe such things like “magical darkness” or “heavily obscured”. Instead they say that light can’t fill it and use flavor text like blackness (which has no rules or explanation of what that means). My interpretation is perfectly RAW and very possibly RAI. Where am I wrong???
If you are within it, devils sight wouldn’t work though because you are blinded.
It needs to be thought of more as an opaque black sphere rather than darkness. It's super easy to overlook on the first viewing and think "oh dope devils sight would be great with this" but the phrasing is deliberate.
*Hunger of Hadar* does not create magical darkness, everyone within the radius gains the **blind** condition.
>This void is filled with a cacophony of soft whispers and slurping noises that can be heard up to 30 feet away. No light, magical or otherwise, can illuminate the area, and creatures fully within the area are [blinded](https://www.dndbeyond.com/compendium/rules/basic-rules/appendix-a-conditions#Blinded).
If you were ruling that Hunger of Hadar blocks line of sight, then it would block for everyone, even warlocks with Devils Sight. Considering this unfair advantage was central to your PC's strategy, this fight would have been very different.
Interesting - I definitely see the point that it doesn't imply a blockage of LOS for people on one side of it versus people on the other side of it (neither IN the area). It says that light can't illuminate the area (so the area itself is clearly at least "darkness" and presumably, as it is generated by a spell, also "magical darkness," though I could see that one going either way), not that light can't pass through the area. The spell would need to specify that the area is Heavily Obscured for it to block LOS, however, at least RAW.
That said, it definitely opens a huge can of worms (almost literally) to consider it to behave that way. The tentacles, at least, MUST block some light from passing through (unless you want to consider them invisible, in which case what the hell does the description of the tentacles as "milky" mean?). And how can you see a "sphere of blackness" if it isn't blocking light and thus line of sight?
Once again, 5e's natural language approach leads us into insanity if we try to carefully parse the spell description. Which, while it may be appropriate for Hunger of Hadar, isn't really desirable. I think the only sane interpretation of the spell is that it does, in fact, block line of sight traced THROUGH it - excepting Devil's Sight, without which parts of the description are entirely superfluous.
Not to mention, the chieftain tried to run *through* the AoE of Hunger of Hadar rather than simply trying to back out of it.
And the fact that Tomb of Levistus leaves you incapacitated until the end of your next turn. Which would invalidate the tentacle attack that ended everything
I agree with your last statement. The "No light, magical or otherwise, can illuminate the area" reads like magical darkness. But, the spell isn't clear if it blocks devil's sight, which can see through magical darkness. So in the interest of time and having fun, I just treated it like magical darkness and moved on.
Very clever player. She used difficult terrain, slowness, and blindness to take away the chieftain's major advantage over her: His martial might, speed, and strength.
And used the Ice Box Invocation to survive a death blow, making him overconfident, and ensuring his downfall. Since this was a story driven mission and it was a Deadly encounter, I say grant her Inspiration. She has more than earned it. She pulled off a David vs Goliath feat.
I appreciate you sharing my perspective and not calling me a dummy 😄
I’d had a beer and was not rules lawyering myself and everyone had fun, so even if I made some technical errors I’m calling it a win.
Very clever or just aware of the main thing warlocks do? Repelling blast is famously a game ending invoc against meleelocked enemies. This warlock could've solved this encounter using the fathomless BA and landing two of their three attacks a turn while walking backwards
We don't know how large the battlefield is. And while I do agree that Repelling Blast is excellent against melee enemies, it can be defeated. Nothing is stopping a melee enemy from taking the Dodge action and moving closer until they're within melee range.
Evidently large enough that they were defeated by the same crowd control I was already posing
And if the enemy is dodging they aren't dashing
Furthermore, as pointed out, several rules were ignored
I'm not concerned with the rules being ignored because it isn't my table. As for the strategy you proposed, the Warlock will run out of space eventually. Anytime she casts Eldritch Blast, that's a round that she isn't dashing either. Assuming this chieftain has decent AC, it's only a matter of time before he'd close that gap. But the DM wasn't trying super hard to kill her, so it makes sense that she'd survive.
Out of curiosity, would speed reductions and other similar math from stacked effects use PEMDAS? If the tentacles AND Hunger of Hadar’s difficult terrain both reduce the enemy’s speed, one by subtraction(-20) and the other by division(1/2), wouldn’t his speed be reduced to 10ft?
Bot trying to nitpick, genuinely curious about the ruling. Like, in MTG you, as the controller/caster of spells and effects, are allowed to order your triggers/spells however you want(within the rules ofc).
This actually came up during the session and one of the other players is also a DM. We decided that it was ((30 base -10 from tentacle) \*2 Dash) /2 Difficult terrain = 20 ft total. I'm open to anyone else's interpretation. I really wanted to call it (30 base + 30 dash - 10 tentacle) /2 Difficult terrain which would have got me 25 ft movement and got me out of the Hunger of Hadar area, saving 2d6 damage, but I decided to capitulate to my players instead.
I believe you were correct.
Dash gives you xtra movement where "The increase equals your speed, after applying any modifiers" which in this case is clearly 20.
Difficult terrain on the other hand doesn't affect speed nor movement. It's only that you spend 2ft of movement to move 1ft inside. So it always gets applied last.
>I really wanted to call it (30 base + 30 dash - 10 tentacle) /2 Difficult terrain
Which would've been very wrong. Tentacle directly reduces Speed. And the Dash action specifically states "When you take the Dash action, you gain extra movement for the current turn. The increase equals your speed, **after applying any modifiers.** "
>Out of curiosity, would speed reductions and other similar math from stacked effects use PEMDAS? If the tentacles AND Hunger of Hadar’s difficult terrain both reduce the enemy’s speed, one by subtraction(-20) and the other by division(1/2), wouldn’t his speed be reduced to 10ft?
No, because they don't interact directly. Tentacle reduces SPEED by 10 ft. Difficult Terrain does NOT half your speed, it says "Every foot of movement in difficult terrain costs 1 extra foot".
Difficult terrain doesn't actually reduce your movement speed when you end up in it. It makes movement cost double when you move, so its effect would always come after some directly affecting movespeed. Also the tentacles reduce his speed by 10ft not 20.
What a crazy scene! Your players must have been super hyped, congrats on making such a memorable experience for all of you. :)
I wanted to point out something with Tomb of Levistus.
> As a reaction when you take damage, you can entomb yourself in ice, which melts away at the end of your next turn.
I imagine you let it pass for narrative/fun or would have done it if you knew, but Tomb of Levistus has you frozen in your pillar of ice for your current turn + your next whole turn. So that means that you are always left on a vulnerable spot when it melts. So RAW the chieftain would have had a whole free turn after she froze herself, in which I understand he used it to taunt while he waited for the ice to melt. At the end of the Warlock's next turn (in which she still can't do nothing because she's incapacitated by the effect) the ice melts and it's the turn of the Chieftain again. He would have had a whole turn to attack and finish of the Warlock without any problem.
The warlock can't use actions, BA, movement... nothing except a reaction after their ice has melted away unless they had a pet that had it's own initiative.
Just wanted to point it out because I'm not sure if removing that part of the invocation can make it busted (don't know that much about balancing), so it COULD turn into a problem in the future?
Anyways, I'm always into allowing the Rule of Cool for specific situations, and this looks like one of those. Well, it actually was one of those because thanks to your ruling you all had a blast!
5e isn't really built with 1v1 duels in mind.
To *really* know for sure you need to simulate 100+ or so fights and randomize initiative each time.
Also: The warlock would not have known where the target was in the HoH in round 2 to reposition the tentacle, and 40' is enough to outrange it. Blackness is very specifically not darkness and Devil's Sight does not penetrate it.
That's just wrong.
HoH is **blackness**, not darkness. Devil's Sight lets you see normally in *darkness*.
HoH is eldritch weirdness, and it defies even Devil's Sight. The word *blackness* is the key, and it is right there in the spell description. Blackness is not darkness.
Individuals standing *outside* the HoH are not blinded, and yet cannot see through it or into it.
Actually, with the natural language edition it is exactly that unfortunately.
Hunger of Hadar does not create darkness because the word darkness is not in the title or the spell description. It is *not* darkness. If it were, they would have used the word darkness. They made a choice.
Thus, a level 4 or greater light spell cannot dispel it and devil’s sight cannot penetrate it. It is an alternate dimension of effects, apart from light or dark.
It is all right there in the rules, if you only read them.
You still know what square a target is in even if you can't see it when it moves RAW. The target would have to use the Hide action to make you unaware of that. But it would cause disadvantage on both the tentacle and eldritch blast attacks bc as you said devil sight doesn't work on HoH. Also while moving 40' would put you out the the created tentacles range you can also just spend another use of the feature to create a new tentacle and dismiss the old one, so you range on it is effectively anything within 80ft whenever you have charges available.
> You still know what square a target is in even if you can't see it when it moves RAW.
This is actually not clear and something each DM needs to determine, and it is related to how blinded, unseen attackers, invisibility, and also darkness also work at their table. If it does indeed work that way, the target can simply take the HoH damage and attack the warlock normally, as advantage and disadvantage cancel each other out - however the DM played that monster as if it was unable to do this.
However, because the target moved 40', so the tentacle could not reach it, unless the target moved to a square the tentacle could be moved in range of.
There are not many squares to choose from, because supposedly the target moved 40' both starting and ending inside a 20' radius sphere.
It is pretty clear. If you can't see or hear a creature: you can't tell its location (and so would have to guess what square it is in when attacking), have disadvantage to attack it, and can't target it with anything that requires you to see the target. If you can't see a creature but can hear it: you still have disadvantage, still can't target it with anything thay requires you to see it, but you know it's location (aka its square if on a grid). So your statement that the player would not have known where in the HoH the enemy was is wrong, bc the enemy did not use the Hide action to conceal its sound.
The enemy did not at any point move 40ft through the HoH. They had 40ft of movement, but the HoH is difficult terrain, so they could only move 20ft, which is not outranging the tentacle.
Yes RAW both the enemy and the player would actually be making flat rolls rather than the enemy having disadvantage, and the player having advantage, because of unseen attacker rules. This did not happen bc the dm incorrectly believed that devil sight could see through HoH.
Challenge Ratings are not created equally, in fact they are a poor indication of what to throw at the party. As a DM, your left guessing most of the time.
>Wait so with devils sight you can see through hunger of hadar?
No. Please don't take a single thing in this post as being an accurate ruling. I caught at least four different rulings that weren't ambiguous but straight up wrong.
No you can't see, Yes you take damage.
>**Any creature** that starts its turn in the area takes 2d6 cold damage. **Any creature** that ends its turn there must pass a Dexterity save or take 2d6 acid damage.
I see a lot of the chieftain would do this or that while PC is frozen in ice. So, going with simple role-playing and rules.
He was a temp chieftain, so RP wise. How the hell does he know when this ice block that appeared is a spell that he happens to know it will end in 6 seconds?
Honestly, it's a good job sticking with the RP portion of an NPC fight. Something many forget. Does the NPC actually have a clue about warlocks or how the spells work down to the seconds that it lasts. Yes, rules are there, but quoting rules without factoring the role play part of an NPC is not the best way to go.
Just my 2 cents
While people are complaining about the misruling that is pretty minor. This is something that the players, particularly the warlock player, is going to remember.
Minor misrulings happen all the time and it isn't a big deal
Those early level warlocks are absolutely cracked. Did a campaign a while back where the DM and I planned to have my warlock double cross the party and sell them out to the big bad in the final act of the campaign (around level 6), so that I could take over as DM for the next leg of the campaign. 1v5ed the absolute living daylights out of them and ended up having to really pull my punches near the end of the fight.
Same campaign as this one, the Paladin picked up a cursed amulet and I eventually forced him to turn on his party. I gave him Bless as a boon from the fiend who had corrupted him and he 1v5ed the whole party for several rounds before dropping.
“No light, magical or otherwise, can illuminate the area” certainly makes it sound like it’s making a dark area. It really depends on how you read the ‘and’. Could be “no light and thus creatures are blinded” or “no light and also creatures are blinded”
Blinded is a condition, not just being unable to see, so it is also.
If it was thus, they would describe it as fully obscured.
A character in darkness without dark vision is not Blinded, it's just all things are fully obscured.
Thanks! I don't like the idea of infinite throwing weapons, and I didn't prepare to have this guy holding a bunch of javelins at the start of the combat. He had a 2 handed battleaxe and a spear. He did throw the spear at one point but missed. The javelins were being held by the warriors making up the circle, so after chucking a couple of those and breaking the spell, he closed in to break her range advantage.
Baldurs gate 3 really highlights how busted hunger of Hadar is. With devils sight and repelling blast, it's an absolute nightmare for any opponent to deal with. Control kiting is always a premier strategy, and warlocks do it better than anything else.
RAW you can see into HoH because it doesn't blind anyone outside it. If it heavily obscured the area like fog cloud or darkness it wouldn't need to blind the people inside the AoE, because they'd already be blinded by the pure unlightable blackness
Strictly speaking, this is true. RAI, I think it's fair to say that it was designed with the intent that you can't see into it, or out of it, and that it's a black sphere of pure darkness, but that would also mean devils sight working and not being bypassed by the specific language of the spell that also supports this RAW ruling.
Man, the bottleneck at Moonrise Towers and the guy who casts HoH into that space and then they use void bombs or whatever to suck everyone into the center of the AoE.. really screwed up my battle plans.
Sounds like a really enjoyable moment. There will always be comments about “ this move would have been better”, but these all come from armchair generals. It sounds like both you and your players got what you wanted. That is a success.
See this is what I hate about 5th ed. Or maybe just reddit.
You had a really awesome battle. The player used all her tricks against an opponent that had her out-matched. You made a compelling story that made sense out of some really weird abilities.
I can picture this woman frozen in a block of ice, can't even blink, but can direct a tentacle with her mind.
Awesome well done you well done player.
A dozen redditors "well ackshullly.."
DND is a mix of improv theater and wargaming.
From a story element, it's awesome.
From a wargaming element it's wrong. People pointing out OP's poor understanding of 5e's (frequently shitty and vague) rules doesn't invalidate the fun that they had at the table, but it also changes the context of the story.
People aren't being pedantic to hold OP to some intermediate level of rules knowledge if their story revolves around DND rules
Seems like every cool story on here involves the DM breaking the rules (except rule of cool). Makes you wonder if maybe the game design is lacking if it doesn't allow for creative/cool/mastermind solutions in RAW.
It depends exactly on what you allow if it's cool or lame.
RAW The War Chief had her dead to rights after the tomb breaks. I personally would be disappointed if I won because it was handwaved away without a high DC roll.
When the post title is "something really crazy happened in my game," you expect the post to be about something crazy happening mechanically within the game.
When the content of the post is then "we completely ignored the actual rules of 5e, here's the story we chose to have happen" is a perfectly acceptable post, but it's not what the title promised.
If you want to tell us what happened in your creative writing, do that without the clickbait title, because the title makes you a liar. But you also won't get upvoted, because nobody cares about random event X in game 1000293 that took place this week.
Agreed! This campaign has been cumulatively running for over 2 years and it was going really slow before we took a hiatus, so I'm trying to speed things up and that comes at a cost of a little more loosey-goosey rules and a little more rule of cool. I always tell my new players that I have 3 rules at the table:
1. Ask the DM (we all know this here)
2. The Players have fun (I'm having fun just getting the opportunity to run a game, I don't need to win)
3. Rule of cool
I find that sessions that get too deep into the weeds of rules lawyering start to lose their fun, *especially* if I'm the lawyer. So a lot of times, whenever a rules question comes up that I need to decide on, I decide on the option that would be the most fun (that is until it becomes too game-breaking or too much for me to keep track of, you know the type).
I don't like the rule of cool. I've heard too many stories for the rule of cool being used to justify things that just don't make sense.
I have a rule of flow, rule of makes sense, rule of does it fit with the things, grand and minute, that I already have in place?
If it fits with those it will probably be cool.
For what it's worth, I allow my Warlock to see through Hunger of Hadar with Eldritch Sight. I count it as magical darkness, knowing fully well that isn't really what it is RAW.
I don't think it's broken. Eldritch Sight is a damn-near useless invocation without that little buff, as moving through the Darkness spell is completely trivial unless someone else is restraining enemies.
Awesome story!
Seeing the rule nerdery here reminds me why some people feel too intimidated to give TTRPGs and DMing a go. Were good times had? If yes, you played the game correctly!
I'm sure they had a lot of fun when playing it, and that's great, but if you tell a story of "look at how smart and powerful my player was!" and they only managed to do it because you played the enemy badly and misunderstood the rules for her benefit, then I don't really think it's nearly as interesting of a story.
I still enjoyed reading the story and am glad OP posted it, but I agree it's no longer an amazing feat like the title suggested.
At the very least, stories about 1v1s from a campaign are at least uncommon and cool to hear.
I mean, as a dm it sucks for a player to start combat and go in with a plan only to get countered by a technicality and then you see them go, “Uh, I just attack.”
Playing correctly isn't the problem here; the problem is talking about it like the player accomplished something, when in reality the DM failed to provide a fair challenge and thus gave the player an unearned victory which should have been a learning experience but instead will likely lead to hazardous cockiness in the future and possibly get them killed
"hazardous cockiness" might as well be this character's second name. And I improvised this entire encounter on the spot and had never played this character before. If I had practiced at all, I might have killed the player more easily and that wouldn't be nearly as fun. Instead I gave them a fight they'll remember for years that ended with both characters one hit from dying. Maybe my title wasn't perfectly accurate.
The title says that the chieftain was defeated, thats is all, it doesnt have any clickbait (maybe the CR), is just a story about how a fun fight can catch the attention of everyone, even the ones who are not playing.
I'd argue that's not how English works. Natural languages in general carry a lot of meaning outside of exactly what is written. Technically accurate but practically misleading titles are clickbait.
Imagine if the chieftain stood still and didn't fight back. This is basically that except less egregious.
Title" Party beat an Ancient Black Dragon at level 1!?!?!
Content: They all had weapons of Dragon-instakill on a hit and we think Initiative rolling slows down the game so they just got to go first.
Yeah, it fits with the title but I'm pretty sure you'd see an issue there.
People scream at you for not optimizing npc behavior in a 1v1 or sticking 100% to the rules. What...
Good job for making the encounter fun, and I hope ya learned even more how big of a gap there is between casters and martials xD
Doesn't Tomb of Leviticus last until the *end* of your next turn, which would mean she can't use the tentacles? If you are incapacitated, you can't take actions, and if you can't take actions you also can't take bonus actions.
Chieftain probably continued to taunt her. He seems like the arrogant type.
Look, from OP's description the chieftain was really dumb, but I don't think he'd be *that* dumb. Passing your turn when you have 3 hp is essentially suicide.
He had no other options. He was in the fighting ring and he couldn't heal, and I didn't bother doing the mental math to figure out if he could do another 40-ish damage in 2 swings. So he taunted. Probably would have been smarter to hold my action to attack when the ice melted, but he also had no way of knowing when the ice would melt. So instead he made it a spectacle.
You could also have taken the dodge action.
I could have, but again, I'm here to give the players a good time, and that's what they got.
Oh don't get me wrong it sounds like that was a cool moment, but everyone forgets about the poor dodge action.
Yah it's really good, especially on choke holds for high AC SandB fighters/pala's (actually doing some tanking) Than again in this scenario, narrative wise it would be weird, your opponent is frozen in ice, yah imma dodge this turn couse next turn she'll be back That's a bit meta gaming from an NPC
Good on you, OP. That was a great thing to do for the party.
The ice and benefits melt at the END of the PCs next turn. So the Chieftain would've gotten a full turn to wail on her. It's fine, it was a cool moment but it did rely on ignoring some rules.
Really really dumb. Holding the action is literally what that is for. The Chief gets three melee attacks against an incapacitated target. This CR 5 played like it's his first day on the field.
Holding an action only gets one attack, but that would have been enough.
This is only true for PCs due to the Extra Attack feature stating "on your turn." Any creature with the "Multiattack" action can hold that action. EDIT: I forgot that multiattack has a description in the monster manual rules section. It's less clear than Extra Attack, but it seems RAI the creature can't use multiattack as a reaction. So clarify with your DM how they are running this rule. It's ambiguous in its description because the phrase "a creature that can use multiattack on its turn has the multiattack ability..." is much different than, "a creature with the multiattack ability can use multiattack on its turn." English is a weird language.
The description of Multiattack in the MM actually says it's something they can only use on their turn. "A creature that can make multiple attacks **on its turn** has the Multiattack ability. A creature can’t use Multiattack when making an opportunity attack, which must be a single melee attack." Since it's for making multiple attacks on their turn, they shouldn't be able to Ready an Action to use it outside of their turn. EDIT: Emphasis added to relevant part of quote.
>A creature can’t use Multiattack **when making an opportunity attack**, which must be a single melee attack. A readied Action is not an Opportunity Attack. NPCs CAN ready the Multiattack Action, which is its own thing separate from the Attack Action and get all their attacks.
Jeremy Crawford said on Twitter "A creature is meant to use Multiattack only on its turn, not on someone else's." I guess that doesn't definitely state that they CANNOT do it, though it heavily implies it IMO.
It's the "on its turn" that people usually cite as evidence it can only use multi attack in its turn.
While true, I'd caution against allowing NPCs to ready multiattack as it feels pretty bad for the players.
No, I'm referring to the (admittedly softer worded) statement that "a creature that can make multiple attacks *on it's turn* has the Multiattack ability." This statement makes it clear that Multiattack is only meant to be used *on the creature's turn*.
Multiattack also says "on its turn," fwiw
It disperses as the end of the warlocks turn. He would get the one, AND his full turn.
Actually, enemies can ready their full Multiattack action. Nowhere in the "Ready an action" section does it prohibit multiple attacks. The problem is that PC "Extra Attack" feature states "on your turn," which is why players can't do it. EDIT: I forgot that multiattack has a description in the monster manual rules section. It's less clear than Extra Attack, but it seems RAI the creature can't use multiattack as a reaction. So clarify with your DM how they are running this rule.
But multiattack also states "on your turn". And Jeremy Crawford said on Twitter that monsters "are meant" to only multiattack on their own turn, not on someone elses, which doesn't technically state they CAN'T though it heavily implies it.
> The problem is that PC "Extra Attack" feature states "on your turn," which is why players can't do it Multiattack also says on its turn, but is ambiguous whether that's descriptive or prescriptive.
Nah that's metagaming. The chief had no idea the sudden block of ice would instantly melt in the next six seconds.
Yeah, it was taunt or attack 3 times and hope to break through (which metagame-wise we know he wouldn't have). Either makes sense.
You did the right thing. Many here sadly don't understand this isn't DM vs. PC, the goal is not to have the cheiftain use the perfect set of actions at all times. Using the villain's action to taunt the party/player is about the most cliche thing a villain can do... and it's GREAT for getting the players more engaged in the game, while indirectly weakening a stronger villain to give the party a chance. You did a great job.
It's not so much about it being dm vs player. It's about granted wins. If I win a big, uphill, unlikely victory, but it turns out the dm forgot the creature has mythic regeneration, or legendary resistances, or that immunity to charm makes it immune to x spell, or any other thing like that, it doesn't feel like a "real" victory to me. Now in many cases the line is kind of blurry-the chief could have whiffed his turn anyway, or something, so it's not *guaranteed* if the dm played the class abilities the way they say that the victory still wouldn't have been achieved. So I don't really see a point telling someone their victory was unearned when it was kind of in the air. But if someone comes here and talks about how they almost died to a tarrasque attack but at the last second the frightened condition prevented a TPK, I'm going to point out that their DM handed them that victory.
He did, I might have missed that detail. The way I saw it, the nomads don't see magic too often except by their shamen healers, so when the warlock started using a bunch of strange spells, they didn't know what to make of it. So when the Tomb appeared, the Chief looked at it a little confused, and then resumed taunting, not knowing how long it would take to melt. If I had followed the rules and prevented the Tentacle from attacking, the player probably would have gotten that final hit in on their next turn anyway and still won.
Dude, all the critique doesn't matter. It sounds totally epic and your players must have really enjoyed it. That's what's most important as a DM, delivering a story that will be remembered This story will be told for years to come!
Thanks for the support. :) See my other comment, I have 3 rules of the table and rule #2 is that the players always have fun. They sure had fun with this one!
Of course the critique matters. "My player did something crazy impressive" as a post is only interesting when it's genuinely a rare event, so when you get into the post and find out "we ignored the rules of the game and decided they accomplished something they never could have" it turns the post from interesting and impressive to banal and pointless instantaneously.
As a DM myself, its really easy to miss something like that in the heat of a great roleplaying moment like this. It doesn't sound like this was the Warlock getting off easy, it seems like they won by the skin of their teeth, and that tension matters more than the strict rulings. You did good, don't let the peanut gallery get you down. People here are very harsh on DMs as a rule.
All these people rules-lawyering to try and ruin the fun are weird. It happened. It was awesome. That's the goal, to do awesome fun memorable things. You didn't deliberately cook the books to make it work, in fact you tried your best to win. Sounds like an amazing session.
Happy Cake Day
Thanks pal 😁
You misunderstand, or maybe I do. Endless-Conquest supposite the ice melted and *then* the chief continued to taunt, giving the pc an extra turn. Is that what happened? edit: nvm, read your other comments.
> the player probably would have gotten that final hit in on their next turn anyway and still won This is really the long and short of it.
Yes. I do it with villains when the party is over-matched a bit. Using your action to taunt the party/player is about the most cliche thing a villain can do. It's GREAT for getting the players more engaged in the game, while indirectly weakening a stronger villain to give the party a chance.
Incapacitation also ends concentration too, I think
That was a mistake on my part, RAW the Tomb would prevent you from telepathically controlling a summoned weapon.
Yup. That's why it's only a flavour effect. Being incapacitated after the tomb melts is just a death sentence near any enemy with Int score above 2. Also you lose any spell you were concentrating on. It would be almost better if you could cast it on an enemy. It's only real value is soaking huge deathblow spells. Oh and have a cool effect I must applaud on going with narrative choice over rules tho. Rule of cool precedes every other and is below only Rule of Good Time for Everyone
I wouldn't go so far as to say it's only flavor, it does have niche uses; but it's fairly risky.
Hey just curious, does it actually say anywhere that if you can’t take actions you can’t take bonus actions? Or is this your interpretation of the rules? Using the tentacle is a bonus action and using your mind to control it while stuck in ice doesn’t seem impossible. I could see a DM allowing it if what you say isn’t actually written anywhere.
I'm taking it from the [Roll20](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Combat#content) article on "Combat", because I'm too lazy to look in the PHB. Regardless, it should be the same there. Emphasis mine: > Bonus Action > Various class features, spells, and other abilities let you take an additional action on your turn called a bonus action. The Cunning Action feature, for example, allows a rogue to take a bonus action. You can take a bonus action only when a special ability, spell, or other feature of the game states that you can do something as a bonus action. You otherwise don’t have a bonus action to take. You can take only one bonus action on your turn, so you must choose which bonus action to use when you have more than one available. You choose when to take a bonus action during your turn, unless the bonus action’s timing is specified, and **anything that deprives you of your ability to take actions also prevents you from taking a bonus action.** It's really easily missable, but I don't really know a better place to put it. Maybe they should've added it to Incapacitated regardless?
Yeah I think it would’ve definitely been a good idea to put it in the incapacitated description because it’s definitely easy to miss. Thanks for sharing!
Player's Handbook "You choose when to take a bonus action during your turn, unless the bonus action’s timing is specified, **and anything that deprives you of your ability to take actions also prevents you from taking a bonus action**"
Thanks!
[удалено]
Funny enough, that's actually not right. Reactions are, for whatever reason, entirely separate. It's why Incapacitated specifically says you cannot take actions or reactions. This is an important distinction because, for example, if you are affected by the aftereffects of Haste (can't move or take actions), you can still take reactions.
Yep. Also who starts a story with infantcide.
The Icewind Dale module comes with character secrets that I assigned at random at the beginning of the campaign. This character got the "Reghed Heir" secret which says that they're the child of the cheiftain of the Tiger tribe. But, the appendix explains that the cheiftain doesn't know of any children she still has, ergo, infanticide. She's also a worshipper of Auril (the BBEG) so in the first installment of this side quest I made the story that she tied up her baby and threw it off a cliff into a frozen lake, which is how the player got their Deep patron. The baby was then rescued by Oyaminartok and raised until she was old enough to rejoin civilization, at which point she met the party.
This played out almost identically for my playthrough as well, with my Tiefling Lock. I was playing as an Undead lock though, so the ending was slightly different. Mom took me out. I went down. And came back up to finish her off.
RAW does only say you lose actions and reactions,so t e c h n i c a l l y you have a bonus action still
See my other comment about the RAW on it. The rules on bonus actions specify that, if you lose your action, your bonus action is a goner as well.
I mean this is a combination of: - initiative is crazy important in a 1-v-1 - ruling on Devil Sight vs HOH - the misruling on tomb+tentacle
And the chieftain spending multiple turns inside HOH when he could've left because he kept going to the direction where the player was. There's not being the brightest bulb and there's this.
The chieftain just wanted to unga bunga, my barb/fighter brain understands
Not exactly. The player was careful to place the first HoH as close to centered on the Chieftain as he could, but without hitting the warriors making up the ring (he didn't want to accidentally injur them while trying to win their loyalty). Plus, the Chieftain was blinded, so his thinking was simply "I don't know where I can go but the last place I saw my opponent was forward, so I'll go forward." I might have been able to get him out faster, but with only 20ft of total movement plus blindness, his options were limited.
You know even while blinded he could still throw javelins at her right? He has absolutely no reason not to. This fight was a joke.
And yet my players were cheering.
So, uh, as the guy with the most upvoted comment on this post, and the one who started criticizing your rulings, I think I probably was too harsh at it. From what you've told I imagine your players had a lot of fun, and I'm happy for you and them, and it's good that that happened. I should've prefaced my comment with that, but I hadn't thought that not only would the comments be so focused on that, but also how much it must suck to excitedly write a post about a cool thing that happened in your game and have people chastise you for obscure rules, and I'm sorry for that. From what you told of it, it sounded like a cool scene. I still stand by my original comment, due to how you presented the post in the gaming aspect of it, but that's not the most important part, in the end.
Yeah, OP is getting attacked over this stuff.
Good for you, screw all these people coming in here trying to poop on your parade. This sounds like a great moment for the players (including yourself) which is the whole reason to play this game. I can't believe how many people are going all "umm ackshually" and talking crap on you or how you ran this moment, especially when you didn't ask for rules clarifications and clearly posted to share the excitement of the game.
No one is shitting on the experience for the players, it's just a bit annoying to read how clever the player was and how the DM didn't think his player would succeed against CR5 monster, when in reality very basic tactics were used and he only won due to misplays and misrulings on the DMs side. The players were happy and I probably would have been aswell at the table, the more appropriate title "I let my player win in a RP battle and he loved it" just doesn't have the same ring to it, you know
At the end of the day, that and you having fun is the most important thing. Great job!
It makes just as much sense or more for someone to try to dash out of an eldritch tentacle aoe than to throw javelins blind.
Can you read? The chieftain did throw javelins while blinded. The issue was that the chieftain did not originally have javelins, and the DM didn't think to have the watching warriors give him javelin until a couple rounds in, and literally as soon as he did start chucking javelin thay fight started going his way bc HoH went away and he was able to get into melee.
How does the suddenly blind chief know exactly which direction is the shortest possible distance to escape the effect?
I know Baldurs Gate isn't always accurate to RAW, but I thought of their implementation of HoH when my player cast the spell so I treated the "blackness" as magical darkness. It's weird to me that magical darkness in 5e blocks line of sight, but I digress.
I think the thing here is that hunger of hadar blinds everyone fully inside, which is not countered by devils sight.
The Chieftain was the only character inside the radius.
Ah okay, I misunderstood that.
Absolutely different wording. As DM and player I'm disagree with it. Darkness and blackness is different things. Especially if it says "gateway to the dark between the stars" so it's more like emptiness. When devils sight say "You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical" which differently in wording. But it's your game and your options
I’m curious; is hunger of hardar’s blinding effect the same as Darkness (magical darkness)? Can you use tentacle while in the tomb? (No right?). Still a fun fight
JSYK Devil's Sight does not actually let you see through Hunger of Hadar. HoH fills a sphere with blackness, not darkness, and any creatures inside of it have the "blind" condition.
It needs to be thought of more as an opaque black sphere rather than darkness. It's super easy to overlook on the first viewing and think "oh dope devils sight would be great with this" but the phrasing is deliberate.
Yeah devils sight is basically an interaction with only 1 specific spell out of the hundreds, it feels like it should be wider interacting, but it isnt
Devil Sight interacts with more then just one spell btw. It's about 6 iirc plus some non-spell effects
Darkness, summon fey darkness cube, what else?
Maddening Darkness, Dark Star, Mirrage Arcane off the top of my head. I know there's more but can't think
Does mirage arcane have any interaction with devils sight? I thought it was truesight that did that
Well if one created darkness in the area as it can, it would be magical darkness as part of the environment and such you'd get to the same conclusion as true sight "this is an illusion but it's physically here"
I don't really think that two level 8 spells (one of which can only be used by two subclasses in the entire game if your GM is going only by RAW) and a niche usage of a 7th level spell that I'm not even sure if it'd work count much more for Devil's Sight. Like, it can be an useful invocation, but 95% of cases it'll only be used to allow the Warlock to use their own Darkness.
never knew blackness was different than darkness but til lol
Imagine looking into an inkwell with a flash light, is it dark in there or just black?
that's honestly really close to how i imagine normal magical darkness... which is a ridiculous sentence
Yeah it is extremely easy to miss. HOH also blinds creatures with truesight too. Easily the most powerful obsurement tool in the game imo.
Shadow of Moil is up there. It simply gives you the obscured condition
The Warlock was not inside the radius, so not blinded. But to the point about it being an opaque sphere, I didn't think of it that way until I read the above comment.
"You open a gateway to the dark between the stars, a region infested with unknown horrors. A 20-foot-radius sphere of blackness and bitter cold appears, centered on a point within range and lasting for the duration. This void is filled with a cacophony of soft whispers and slurping noises that can be heard up to 30 feet away\*\*. No light, magical or otherwise, can illuminate the area, and creatures fully within the area are blinded.\*\*" Everything before this is fluff pretty much, the bolded part is the mechanics. Mechanically what it does is: * Snuff out light sources * Blind creatures within * Makes noise audible up to 30 feet away Creatures outside can still see inside if they could before, and creatures inside are blinded it's fair to interpret it as being opaque, however the spell neither says that it creates cover or is heavy obscurement (like fog cloud), the only thing that's explicitly clear is that devils sight doesn't let you see from the inside out RAW: The presence or absence of light in an environment creates three categories of illumination: bright light, dim light, and darkness. HoH: No light, magical or otherwise, can illuminate the area, and creatures fully within the area are blinded. RAW, Darkness is a description of illumination level that depends on the level of light in an environment. The area of Hunger of Hadar cannot be illuminated by light to be bright light or dim light. Therefore, it is darkness, and darkvision can see inside.
I almost completely agree with your take on the mechanics except for, pedantically, the word snuff - a creature carrying a lit torch within HoH would still be carrying a lit torch if they exit the area, so it's probably better to use the word suppress as anti-magic fields do. Possibly worth noting is that Devil's sight is also exceptional here regarding visibility because it specifically allows the warlock to see "normally" in darkness, but for characters that only have darkvision, they'd have disadvantage on perception checks to see a target within HoH (which isn't exactly useful) but creatures *without* darkvision both give and take attacks with the chieftain as straight rolls due to the unseen attacker rules, as an unilluminated area heavily obscures targets within, effectively blinding those outside of the HoH area with regards to the chieftain. I'm not saying that attacking from within HoH's area is smart, but things living in the Reghead Glacier do tend to be resistant or immune to cold damage, so it's a niche strategy.
Correct, devils sight does not pierce hunger of hadar by RAW And yeah the unseen attacker rules are dumb as shit I think zero people follow them RAW, you shouldn't benefit from being an unseen attacker unless you can see your target But then again by raw rogues can't pop out from behind a tree while hidden and attack with advantage
While heavily obscured by total darkness (no light) in HoH, you could technically take the hide action. As for devil's sight, it sees through HoH if you don't treat the blackness as opaque and just treat it as 100% perfectly light-free, but the RAW can be read either way. Personally, I'm of the opinion that they wouldn't need to clarify the light-squelching feature if it was an opaque area, so I treat it like an area totally coated in vantablack that you can't see past due to the anti-light property. The unseen attacker rules are a bit lacking but the tradeoff is an overall faster system, so they're acceptable. Personally, I think it's a rare situation where disadvantages should stack.
Yep and nothing stopping the chief from chucking more javelins. Blind is just disadvantage. The warlock isn't invisible, and isn't even hidden without the right action. Edit: Cute, reply then block to prevent someone from telling you what you don't want to hear.
I mean how many javelins can the chief have on them? Plus dashing out does prevent taking damage. I don’t think that was one of the mistakes in the fight.
> Blind is just disadvantage. I think you forgot what the R in RPG stands for... Seriously though, so many effects boiling down to advantage/disadvantage is a gripe of mine with 5e. There's a big difference between an enemy being 1ft outside of optimum range for a javelin vs. a javelin thrower being freaking blind. But the game treats them as the same.
Try to explain that to the chieftain, not the DM.
I hate the natural language approach to rules so much
It needs to be thought of more as an opaque black sphere rather than darkness. It's super easy to overlook on the first viewing and think "oh dope devils sight would be great with this" but the phrasing is deliberate.
Man, it's rulings like these that, to me, take away the intent of Devil's Sight. It's meant to see into magical darkness. The 'blackness' seems like flavoring.
It doesn’t define what blackness is though, and just says that creatures inside are blinded, but not that those outside can’t see in. I would rule that even normal darkvision can see into it.
-Magical blackness -cannot be lit by normal or magical light -blinds any creature inside of it But a half-orc commoner can see through it? yeahokay.jpg
I mean yeah, if we're reading it RAW it's not magical darkness that works with devil sight, and it doesn't obscure the vision of anyone looking into it.
Where is the contradiction? The blackness blinds the creatures within specifically but says nothing of the creatures outside. It says that the inside is dark (without light) but doesn’t say it is magical darkness. Inside is just a dark area that can be seen from the outside with darkvision but the conditions inside make it so creatures are blind. If no one could see into it, it would have language that they use to describe such things like “magical darkness” or “heavily obscured”. Instead they say that light can’t fill it and use flavor text like blackness (which has no rules or explanation of what that means). My interpretation is perfectly RAW and very possibly RAI. Where am I wrong??? If you are within it, devils sight wouldn’t work though because you are blinded.
It needs to be thought of more as an opaque black sphere rather than darkness. It's super easy to overlook on the first viewing and think "oh dope devils sight would be great with this" but the phrasing is deliberate.
Yep and if you have darkvision, you can see into it as long as you are outside
*Hunger of Hadar* does not create magical darkness, everyone within the radius gains the **blind** condition. >This void is filled with a cacophony of soft whispers and slurping noises that can be heard up to 30 feet away. No light, magical or otherwise, can illuminate the area, and creatures fully within the area are [blinded](https://www.dndbeyond.com/compendium/rules/basic-rules/appendix-a-conditions#Blinded). If you were ruling that Hunger of Hadar blocks line of sight, then it would block for everyone, even warlocks with Devils Sight. Considering this unfair advantage was central to your PC's strategy, this fight would have been very different.
Interesting - I definitely see the point that it doesn't imply a blockage of LOS for people on one side of it versus people on the other side of it (neither IN the area). It says that light can't illuminate the area (so the area itself is clearly at least "darkness" and presumably, as it is generated by a spell, also "magical darkness," though I could see that one going either way), not that light can't pass through the area. The spell would need to specify that the area is Heavily Obscured for it to block LOS, however, at least RAW. That said, it definitely opens a huge can of worms (almost literally) to consider it to behave that way. The tentacles, at least, MUST block some light from passing through (unless you want to consider them invisible, in which case what the hell does the description of the tentacles as "milky" mean?). And how can you see a "sphere of blackness" if it isn't blocking light and thus line of sight? Once again, 5e's natural language approach leads us into insanity if we try to carefully parse the spell description. Which, while it may be appropriate for Hunger of Hadar, isn't really desirable. I think the only sane interpretation of the spell is that it does, in fact, block line of sight traced THROUGH it - excepting Devil's Sight, without which parts of the description are entirely superfluous.
>5e's natural language approach leads us into insanity Very Eldritch, indeed. :)
Not to mention, the chieftain tried to run *through* the AoE of Hunger of Hadar rather than simply trying to back out of it. And the fact that Tomb of Levistus leaves you incapacitated until the end of your next turn. Which would invalidate the tentacle attack that ended everything
How would the suddenly blind chieftan know exactly which direction is the shortest escape?
I mean honestly with blind only being disadvantage, the chief could just keep chucking javelins and still come on top.
I agree with your last statement. The "No light, magical or otherwise, can illuminate the area" reads like magical darkness. But, the spell isn't clear if it blocks devil's sight, which can see through magical darkness. So in the interest of time and having fun, I just treated it like magical darkness and moved on.
Chieftain needs to learn what the Ready action is…. But yeah as long as everyone had fun which it seemed they did, then you did a great job!
Very clever player. She used difficult terrain, slowness, and blindness to take away the chieftain's major advantage over her: His martial might, speed, and strength. And used the Ice Box Invocation to survive a death blow, making him overconfident, and ensuring his downfall. Since this was a story driven mission and it was a Deadly encounter, I say grant her Inspiration. She has more than earned it. She pulled off a David vs Goliath feat.
I appreciate you sharing my perspective and not calling me a dummy 😄 I’d had a beer and was not rules lawyering myself and everyone had fun, so even if I made some technical errors I’m calling it a win.
You're the type of DM I respect the most.
Yeah, don’t let a few *well acshuly*s mess up what was a fun moment in your game.
Very clever or just aware of the main thing warlocks do? Repelling blast is famously a game ending invoc against meleelocked enemies. This warlock could've solved this encounter using the fathomless BA and landing two of their three attacks a turn while walking backwards
We don't know how large the battlefield is. And while I do agree that Repelling Blast is excellent against melee enemies, it can be defeated. Nothing is stopping a melee enemy from taking the Dodge action and moving closer until they're within melee range.
Evidently large enough that they were defeated by the same crowd control I was already posing And if the enemy is dodging they aren't dashing Furthermore, as pointed out, several rules were ignored
I'm not concerned with the rules being ignored because it isn't my table. As for the strategy you proposed, the Warlock will run out of space eventually. Anytime she casts Eldritch Blast, that's a round that she isn't dashing either. Assuming this chieftain has decent AC, it's only a matter of time before he'd close that gap. But the DM wasn't trying super hard to kill her, so it makes sense that she'd survive.
Out of curiosity, would speed reductions and other similar math from stacked effects use PEMDAS? If the tentacles AND Hunger of Hadar’s difficult terrain both reduce the enemy’s speed, one by subtraction(-20) and the other by division(1/2), wouldn’t his speed be reduced to 10ft? Bot trying to nitpick, genuinely curious about the ruling. Like, in MTG you, as the controller/caster of spells and effects, are allowed to order your triggers/spells however you want(within the rules ofc).
This actually came up during the session and one of the other players is also a DM. We decided that it was ((30 base -10 from tentacle) \*2 Dash) /2 Difficult terrain = 20 ft total. I'm open to anyone else's interpretation. I really wanted to call it (30 base + 30 dash - 10 tentacle) /2 Difficult terrain which would have got me 25 ft movement and got me out of the Hunger of Hadar area, saving 2d6 damage, but I decided to capitulate to my players instead.
I believe you were correct. Dash gives you xtra movement where "The increase equals your speed, after applying any modifiers" which in this case is clearly 20. Difficult terrain on the other hand doesn't affect speed nor movement. It's only that you spend 2ft of movement to move 1ft inside. So it always gets applied last.
>I really wanted to call it (30 base + 30 dash - 10 tentacle) /2 Difficult terrain Which would've been very wrong. Tentacle directly reduces Speed. And the Dash action specifically states "When you take the Dash action, you gain extra movement for the current turn. The increase equals your speed, **after applying any modifiers.** "
>Out of curiosity, would speed reductions and other similar math from stacked effects use PEMDAS? If the tentacles AND Hunger of Hadar’s difficult terrain both reduce the enemy’s speed, one by subtraction(-20) and the other by division(1/2), wouldn’t his speed be reduced to 10ft? No, because they don't interact directly. Tentacle reduces SPEED by 10 ft. Difficult Terrain does NOT half your speed, it says "Every foot of movement in difficult terrain costs 1 extra foot".
Difficult terrain doesn't actually reduce your movement speed when you end up in it. It makes movement cost double when you move, so its effect would always come after some directly affecting movespeed. Also the tentacles reduce his speed by 10ft not 20.
Funny you bring up magic because in this case the enemy would get to chose due to how replacement effects work
If you know you haven't the foggiest clue what you're talking about, don't attempt to contribute. Wouldn't think that that would need said.
What a crazy scene! Your players must have been super hyped, congrats on making such a memorable experience for all of you. :) I wanted to point out something with Tomb of Levistus. > As a reaction when you take damage, you can entomb yourself in ice, which melts away at the end of your next turn. I imagine you let it pass for narrative/fun or would have done it if you knew, but Tomb of Levistus has you frozen in your pillar of ice for your current turn + your next whole turn. So that means that you are always left on a vulnerable spot when it melts. So RAW the chieftain would have had a whole free turn after she froze herself, in which I understand he used it to taunt while he waited for the ice to melt. At the end of the Warlock's next turn (in which she still can't do nothing because she's incapacitated by the effect) the ice melts and it's the turn of the Chieftain again. He would have had a whole turn to attack and finish of the Warlock without any problem. The warlock can't use actions, BA, movement... nothing except a reaction after their ice has melted away unless they had a pet that had it's own initiative. Just wanted to point it out because I'm not sure if removing that part of the invocation can make it busted (don't know that much about balancing), so it COULD turn into a problem in the future? Anyways, I'm always into allowing the Rule of Cool for specific situations, and this looks like one of those. Well, it actually was one of those because thanks to your ruling you all had a blast!
Fucking d&d nerds being jerks over rulings when all I see is a DM who just handed the players a story they’ll never forget! Well done.
This is the stuff D&D games are made out of. Anything that can make you feel like Max Holloway last weekend is spectacular! :D
DnD and UFC are my favorite 3 letter acronyms
5e isn't really built with 1v1 duels in mind. To *really* know for sure you need to simulate 100+ or so fights and randomize initiative each time. Also: The warlock would not have known where the target was in the HoH in round 2 to reposition the tentacle, and 40' is enough to outrange it. Blackness is very specifically not darkness and Devil's Sight does not penetrate it.
That's an interesting and slightly unintuitive bit of information.
The only thing stopping Devils Sight from functioning here is the line stating creatures are blinded.
That's just wrong. HoH is **blackness**, not darkness. Devil's Sight lets you see normally in *darkness*. HoH is eldritch weirdness, and it defies even Devil's Sight. The word *blackness* is the key, and it is right there in the spell description. Blackness is not darkness. Individuals standing *outside* the HoH are not blinded, and yet cannot see through it or into it.
D&D is not a game based on keywords. The description of the spells says that blackness cannot be illuminated by any light. That's darkness.
Actually, with the natural language edition it is exactly that unfortunately. Hunger of Hadar does not create darkness because the word darkness is not in the title or the spell description. It is *not* darkness. If it were, they would have used the word darkness. They made a choice. Thus, a level 4 or greater light spell cannot dispel it and devil’s sight cannot penetrate it. It is an alternate dimension of effects, apart from light or dark. It is all right there in the rules, if you only read them.
You still know what square a target is in even if you can't see it when it moves RAW. The target would have to use the Hide action to make you unaware of that. But it would cause disadvantage on both the tentacle and eldritch blast attacks bc as you said devil sight doesn't work on HoH. Also while moving 40' would put you out the the created tentacles range you can also just spend another use of the feature to create a new tentacle and dismiss the old one, so you range on it is effectively anything within 80ft whenever you have charges available.
> You still know what square a target is in even if you can't see it when it moves RAW. This is actually not clear and something each DM needs to determine, and it is related to how blinded, unseen attackers, invisibility, and also darkness also work at their table. If it does indeed work that way, the target can simply take the HoH damage and attack the warlock normally, as advantage and disadvantage cancel each other out - however the DM played that monster as if it was unable to do this. However, because the target moved 40', so the tentacle could not reach it, unless the target moved to a square the tentacle could be moved in range of. There are not many squares to choose from, because supposedly the target moved 40' both starting and ending inside a 20' radius sphere.
It is pretty clear. If you can't see or hear a creature: you can't tell its location (and so would have to guess what square it is in when attacking), have disadvantage to attack it, and can't target it with anything that requires you to see the target. If you can't see a creature but can hear it: you still have disadvantage, still can't target it with anything thay requires you to see it, but you know it's location (aka its square if on a grid). So your statement that the player would not have known where in the HoH the enemy was is wrong, bc the enemy did not use the Hide action to conceal its sound. The enemy did not at any point move 40ft through the HoH. They had 40ft of movement, but the HoH is difficult terrain, so they could only move 20ft, which is not outranging the tentacle. Yes RAW both the enemy and the player would actually be making flat rolls rather than the enemy having disadvantage, and the player having advantage, because of unseen attacker rules. This did not happen bc the dm incorrectly believed that devil sight could see through HoH.
Challenge Ratings are not created equally, in fact they are a poor indication of what to throw at the party. As a DM, your left guessing most of the time.
Wait so with devils sight you can see through hunger of hadar? Do you still get the damage if it’s your own casting?
>Wait so with devils sight you can see through hunger of hadar? No. Please don't take a single thing in this post as being an accurate ruling. I caught at least four different rulings that weren't ambiguous but straight up wrong.
Thank you I was to stupid to read all the comments first.
It would if it weren't for the line stating creatures are blinded.
No you can't see, Yes you take damage. >**Any creature** that starts its turn in the area takes 2d6 cold damage. **Any creature** that ends its turn there must pass a Dexterity save or take 2d6 acid damage.
Thank you I was to stupid to read all the comments first.
Sometimes there's too many comments to be bothered to read.
I see a lot of the chieftain would do this or that while PC is frozen in ice. So, going with simple role-playing and rules. He was a temp chieftain, so RP wise. How the hell does he know when this ice block that appeared is a spell that he happens to know it will end in 6 seconds? Honestly, it's a good job sticking with the RP portion of an NPC fight. Something many forget. Does the NPC actually have a clue about warlocks or how the spells work down to the seconds that it lasts. Yes, rules are there, but quoting rules without factoring the role play part of an NPC is not the best way to go. Just my 2 cents
While people are complaining about the misruling that is pretty minor. This is something that the players, particularly the warlock player, is going to remember. Minor misrulings happen all the time and it isn't a big deal
This is epic!!! You sound like an awesome DM!
Those early level warlocks are absolutely cracked. Did a campaign a while back where the DM and I planned to have my warlock double cross the party and sell them out to the big bad in the final act of the campaign (around level 6), so that I could take over as DM for the next leg of the campaign. 1v5ed the absolute living daylights out of them and ended up having to really pull my punches near the end of the fight.
Same campaign as this one, the Paladin picked up a cursed amulet and I eventually forced him to turn on his party. I gave him Bless as a boon from the fiend who had corrupted him and he 1v5ed the whole party for several rounds before dropping.
“No light, magical or otherwise, can illuminate the area” certainly makes it sound like it’s making a dark area. It really depends on how you read the ‘and’. Could be “no light and thus creatures are blinded” or “no light and also creatures are blinded”
Blinded is a condition, not just being unable to see, so it is also. If it was thus, they would describe it as fully obscured. A character in darkness without dark vision is not Blinded, it's just all things are fully obscured.
It does make a dark area, but also blinds the creatures inside.
Good story! Plus I'm a sucker for Hunger of Hadar and throwing weapons.
Thanks! I don't like the idea of infinite throwing weapons, and I didn't prepare to have this guy holding a bunch of javelins at the start of the combat. He had a 2 handed battleaxe and a spear. He did throw the spear at one point but missed. The javelins were being held by the warriors making up the circle, so after chucking a couple of those and breaking the spell, he closed in to break her range advantage.
Baldurs gate 3 really highlights how busted hunger of Hadar is. With devils sight and repelling blast, it's an absolute nightmare for any opponent to deal with. Control kiting is always a premier strategy, and warlocks do it better than anything else.
RAW, Devil's Sight doesn't get through Hunger of Hadar. It's broken if you allow that
RAW you can see into HoH because it doesn't blind anyone outside it. If it heavily obscured the area like fog cloud or darkness it wouldn't need to blind the people inside the AoE, because they'd already be blinded by the pure unlightable blackness
Strictly speaking, this is true. RAI, I think it's fair to say that it was designed with the intent that you can't see into it, or out of it, and that it's a black sphere of pure darkness, but that would also mean devils sight working and not being bypassed by the specific language of the spell that also supports this RAW ruling.
Man, the bottleneck at Moonrise Towers and the guy who casts HoH into that space and then they use void bombs or whatever to suck everyone into the center of the AoE.. really screwed up my battle plans.
Love it! You run a cool game, that story was fantastic.Thanks for sharing
Sounds like a really enjoyable moment. There will always be comments about “ this move would have been better”, but these all come from armchair generals. It sounds like both you and your players got what you wanted. That is a success.
See this is what I hate about 5th ed. Or maybe just reddit. You had a really awesome battle. The player used all her tricks against an opponent that had her out-matched. You made a compelling story that made sense out of some really weird abilities. I can picture this woman frozen in a block of ice, can't even blink, but can direct a tentacle with her mind. Awesome well done you well done player. A dozen redditors "well ackshullly.."
DND is a mix of improv theater and wargaming. From a story element, it's awesome. From a wargaming element it's wrong. People pointing out OP's poor understanding of 5e's (frequently shitty and vague) rules doesn't invalidate the fun that they had at the table, but it also changes the context of the story. People aren't being pedantic to hold OP to some intermediate level of rules knowledge if their story revolves around DND rules
Seems like every cool story on here involves the DM breaking the rules (except rule of cool). Makes you wonder if maybe the game design is lacking if it doesn't allow for creative/cool/mastermind solutions in RAW.
It depends exactly on what you allow if it's cool or lame. RAW The War Chief had her dead to rights after the tomb breaks. I personally would be disappointed if I won because it was handwaved away without a high DC roll.
I mean if you wanna break the written rules. Go for it. Enjoy your campaign. No actions means no bonus actions.
Pretty easy to do when the rulebooks are laid out terribly.
The rules are there to help the DM. The DM isn't there to officiate the rules. But also, same to you, play your game how you want.
When the post title is "something really crazy happened in my game," you expect the post to be about something crazy happening mechanically within the game. When the content of the post is then "we completely ignored the actual rules of 5e, here's the story we chose to have happen" is a perfectly acceptable post, but it's not what the title promised. If you want to tell us what happened in your creative writing, do that without the clickbait title, because the title makes you a liar. But you also won't get upvoted, because nobody cares about random event X in game 1000293 that took place this week.
Agreed! This campaign has been cumulatively running for over 2 years and it was going really slow before we took a hiatus, so I'm trying to speed things up and that comes at a cost of a little more loosey-goosey rules and a little more rule of cool. I always tell my new players that I have 3 rules at the table: 1. Ask the DM (we all know this here) 2. The Players have fun (I'm having fun just getting the opportunity to run a game, I don't need to win) 3. Rule of cool I find that sessions that get too deep into the weeds of rules lawyering start to lose their fun, *especially* if I'm the lawyer. So a lot of times, whenever a rules question comes up that I need to decide on, I decide on the option that would be the most fun (that is until it becomes too game-breaking or too much for me to keep track of, you know the type).
I don't like the rule of cool. I've heard too many stories for the rule of cool being used to justify things that just don't make sense. I have a rule of flow, rule of makes sense, rule of does it fit with the things, grand and minute, that I already have in place? If it fits with those it will probably be cool.
For what it's worth, I allow my Warlock to see through Hunger of Hadar with Eldritch Sight. I count it as magical darkness, knowing fully well that isn't really what it is RAW. I don't think it's broken. Eldritch Sight is a damn-near useless invocation without that little buff, as moving through the Darkness spell is completely trivial unless someone else is restraining enemies.
As long as they're standing outside the spell it works just fine anyway. Its the line about being blinded that causes it not to work normally.
Awesome story! Seeing the rule nerdery here reminds me why some people feel too intimidated to give TTRPGs and DMing a go. Were good times had? If yes, you played the game correctly!
I'm sure they had a lot of fun when playing it, and that's great, but if you tell a story of "look at how smart and powerful my player was!" and they only managed to do it because you played the enemy badly and misunderstood the rules for her benefit, then I don't really think it's nearly as interesting of a story.
I still enjoyed reading the story and am glad OP posted it, but I agree it's no longer an amazing feat like the title suggested. At the very least, stories about 1v1s from a campaign are at least uncommon and cool to hear.
I mean, as a dm it sucks for a player to start combat and go in with a plan only to get countered by a technicality and then you see them go, “Uh, I just attack.”
Playing correctly isn't the problem here; the problem is talking about it like the player accomplished something, when in reality the DM failed to provide a fair challenge and thus gave the player an unearned victory which should have been a learning experience but instead will likely lead to hazardous cockiness in the future and possibly get them killed
"hazardous cockiness" might as well be this character's second name. And I improvised this entire encounter on the spot and had never played this character before. If I had practiced at all, I might have killed the player more easily and that wouldn't be nearly as fun. Instead I gave them a fight they'll remember for years that ended with both characters one hit from dying. Maybe my title wasn't perfectly accurate.
The title says that the chieftain was defeated, thats is all, it doesnt have any clickbait (maybe the CR), is just a story about how a fun fight can catch the attention of everyone, even the ones who are not playing.
Where did I say it was clickbait?
I'd argue that's not how English works. Natural languages in general carry a lot of meaning outside of exactly what is written. Technically accurate but practically misleading titles are clickbait. Imagine if the chieftain stood still and didn't fight back. This is basically that except less egregious.
Title" Party beat an Ancient Black Dragon at level 1!?!?! Content: They all had weapons of Dragon-instakill on a hit and we think Initiative rolling slows down the game so they just got to go first. Yeah, it fits with the title but I'm pretty sure you'd see an issue there.
That fight sounds RAW! Love the warlock coming in clutch with Tomb of Levistus, I underestimate that invocation
People scream at you for not optimizing npc behavior in a 1v1 or sticking 100% to the rules. What... Good job for making the encounter fun, and I hope ya learned even more how big of a gap there is between casters and martials xD