It’s honestly really funny to me how frequently some DMs forget basic writing principles. If something is set-up, either by yourself or your players, you should find a way to pay it off. It’s a really lame story if your monk has developed an immunity to poison and it never comes up a single time. Chekov’s gun was made to be fired!
Your monk can catch arrows now? Don’t stop shooting them. Shoot them more.
Monk - burns reaction catching arrow
Dm - “and now they turn the balista on you”
Monk - O_O
DM- “Catch this, monk boy”
I’d like to imagine the monk catching the ballista projectile and getting whisked away by it
In a comedically Looney Toons style
You also don’t need to make every enemy an idiot like a videogame. Monk catches an arrow? Archer wastes a turn figuring that out, calls it out to his teammates start of next turn and targets someone else.
A green dragon, depending on your source books, should be more than smart enough to notice its breath attack didn’t work on someone and change tactics.
It doesn’t work in every situation, like with enemies that shouldn’t be smart enough to figure it out, but there’s some great room for fun reminding your players that the enemies aren’t always braindead.
It also can add an extra layer to combat. Take out the commander that’s noticing this stuff to prevent it. Kill the archer before he can call out the monk caught his arrow, so another archer wastes a turn.
I dunno if the new books do this, but when I started DMing, I was surprised that actually the NPCs are like a video game. They have rules for their behavior that dictates what they will attempt to do, and will be fairly stupid if you just do things by the book.
I managed to work up an immunity to Poison, so our DM had a drow princess get one last action when she got to 0 hp to attack me with her only attack spell as I had severely pissed her off, and it was cast at 5th level
But her only attack spell was Ray of Sickness
How long did you have to spend to become immune to Iocane powder?
But you know that I know that you know that I know!
Now this is how you make a player feel like a badass.
But by no longer utilizing poison against the party because of the monk, the monk has effectively made the entire party immune to poison by virtue of it no longer being present in encounters! Hah!
But seriously though, cutting out stuff you know the party will hard-counter is just going to make the party not feel as cool. A balance of both is important. Believe me, as the guy in the party who could cast Silence, I know; hard-countering every boss encounter kind of makes the boss feel lame instead of fun.
I feel like too many DMs play against the players instead of with them
The goal is not for the DM to win and feel cool
The goal is to let the players win and feel cool
I prefer the BLeeM method: try to kill them and then be amazed at how they, like cockroaches, survive anyways
I don’t understand how silence “hard-counters”… I mean it blocks most casting for a round but it’s only a 20 foot sphere, that can easily be moved out of. Yes it gives like one turn of disabling a caster, but honestly, lots of spells give that already.
Dilligent casters in a magic heavy setting probably know the dangers of silence and have prepared ways to work around it.
I just don’t understand how it’s possible, like you say, “hard-counter every boss”. In specific situations, sure. But “every”? That would seem to me like just not a very smart/tactical DM you play with.
Did that and when the monk was engulfed in the cloud of poison taking no damage he felt like quite the badass going for a flurry of blows with advantage (I told him with advantage because the dragon wasn’t expecting him to be unfazed and he kept himself concealed in the cloud on his approach).
That’s also when the rest of the party found out the monk was immune to poison.
10/10 would do that again
No party is immune to 100 twig blights in close proximity.
Turn undead and fire spells.
I have started to balance the game less and less and its getting more and more fun.
They removed that from monk in 2024 😭
