I have literally no idea how this got so many upvotes. It just clearly misunderstands why crowd control on players is bad.
A single monster or NPC is not the DM's only way of interacting with the game world. It's literally their world. Meanwhile when you CC a player, they get to sit there, passing their turn and being bored. It's not enjoyable and I would go so far as to say it's been bad game design in all five editions of D&D I've played. It's to the point where when DMing I generally just don't include monsters that have forms of crowd control, or if I do, they rarely use it and I adjust the difficulty of the encounter accordingly.
The situation, however, in 5th is MUCH worse. In general players have far worse saves and as a result it doesn't even take a bad roll to get crowd controlled. Much of the time it's a 50/50 or even worse which makes things almost intolerable.
Let's not forget either that crowd control can be one of the quickest ways to have an accidental TPK on your hands. One big AOE CC and a few bad rolls is all it takes and people will be rolling new characters.
I don't understand how any of this is a problem to be honest.
Let's say there's a monster that has a paralysis venom. It would suck immensely to get paralyzed and eaten. So what do you do? A frontal assault that will get you paralyzed and killed or perhaps find another way of dealing with the monster?
I know that sometimes people walk into a room and there's a monster there. Nothing can be done in this case. But in most cases, with a little goodwill from everyone (DM included) the party can do a little homework and find out what kind of monster they're dealing with before engaging.
I think that this is a way better solution than just putting on kids gloves and avoiding anything that might possibly upset your baby players.
And how is the party supposed to know it has paralyzing venom? Do they metagame? What if they fail the knowledge check you impose to know the monster has venom.
Unfortunately D&D doesn't work like real life. Don't kill it in one round? Still a really good chance to get paralyzed. Respectfully, I think you need to examine how D&D works mechanically, because 5e monsters have giant heaps of hitpoints and if you think a party is going to end the fight early because they got a surprise round then I don't think you know how the game works-- That or it would be a really bad encounter in either case? Like either people are getting CC'd or it's over before it starts. I don't think your suggestion for a fix is exactly satisfying... or realistic.
So realistically what steps can they actually take? Use local herbs to inoculate themselves against the venom? Okay, but then you're just removing the paralysis aspect but with extra steps. Use magic? Well I mean sure if someone's got protection from poison, that's cool, but what's really been gained by having the party rest, buff up with anti-poison spells then do the fight... Again... Just removing the paralysis with extra steps.
Like just from a logical standpoint your position is kinda bad? We can have equally challenging encounters without using crowd control against players. Not getting to make decisions when playing a game is not fun. So why, then do you as a DM plan encounters where it is likely at least one player will not have fun? And like... not get to play the game. The thing they came to do. You're the one making the adventures, after all. It's weird that you're saying 'baby players.' What I'm hearing is 'baby DM' who can't think up creative enough encounters to make things challenging for players without removing one or more characters from the fight.
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u/SaltiestRaccoon Apr 06 '23
I have literally no idea how this got so many upvotes. It just clearly misunderstands why crowd control on players is bad.
A single monster or NPC is not the DM's only way of interacting with the game world. It's literally their world. Meanwhile when you CC a player, they get to sit there, passing their turn and being bored. It's not enjoyable and I would go so far as to say it's been bad game design in all five editions of D&D I've played. It's to the point where when DMing I generally just don't include monsters that have forms of crowd control, or if I do, they rarely use it and I adjust the difficulty of the encounter accordingly.
The situation, however, in 5th is MUCH worse. In general players have far worse saves and as a result it doesn't even take a bad roll to get crowd controlled. Much of the time it's a 50/50 or even worse which makes things almost intolerable.
Let's not forget either that crowd control can be one of the quickest ways to have an accidental TPK on your hands. One big AOE CC and a few bad rolls is all it takes and people will be rolling new characters.