Even with a vicious weapon and all attacks hitting 100 hp of damage seems high for a valor bard. 1d8+2d6+5 per attack. Then 1d8+3d6+2d6+5 per true strike. That totals to 70.5 for 2 true strikes and an attack. Rolling extremely high could hit 100 damage but is extremely unlikely. Is there something else other than the vicious weapon really boosting the bards damage? I mean even the combat inspiration ability is at most adding 3d12 = +19.5. What am I missing?
I took a guess. It is a Longsword wielded in 2 hands - 2 attacks, plus Truestrike. So it is like 3d10 sword + 6d6 vicious + 3d6 truestrike + 15. Probably.
Fighter is only doing an average of 19 per attack with a vicious maul.
Fighter has Greeat Weapon Master, and is attuned to both a Hammer of Thunderbolts and a Belt of Giant Strength, giving him an extemely high strength, I am guessing its around 28.
He also usually rolls with advantage due to topple, which enemies usually fail and crits on an 18.
If you add in his crit range with advantage, a +6 for GWM strength it is over 30 per hit. On average he usually doing about 200 damage if he action surges. This I do know. The last fight had a lot going on and it is possible some of those guys took damage from AOEs. The other 3 fights I am pretty confident about.
THL is great now. But it didn't have much of a huge effect on this encounter. Enemies died too fast, and seemingly faster than they should have.
It is action economy.
In the first fight Tasha's Hideous Laughter made it so 3 enemies, all who got a turn, had a total of 1 action ... and it would have been 0 actions if the third enemy was visible when I cast the spell.
In the boss fight, the boss got 2 turns and 2 actions. The other 3 non-minions got around 10 turns between them in 4 rounds but they only got to take 3 actions in those 10 turns. So lets say Tasha's hideeous laghter took away around 6 turns from the enemy, and whatever the Bard cast took away 1 turn.
This is in addition to making them prone so the Fighter (and the rest of us) attacked with advantage.
THL is also much better at high level when your DC is near impossible for someone without proficiency and even more so when they are rolling with disadvantage.
Given the performance of THL in this adventure, I would argue if upcast at 5th level, it is substantially better than Hold Monster.
That's not how fear works. If they have no where further to run they don't lose their action even if they can see the caster.
They take the Dash action every turn, so they can not take other actions. This is how it was in 3E as well. It is not like turn undead where they can take another action if they can't move any further.
Sorry if I was not clear on that.
