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Reene posted:Once you reach the levels where you can cast Animate Object instead there are very few reasons not to just do that instead. You get (potentially) more creatures that can fly just because, hit things more easily and sometimes harder, are harder to hit if they're medium or smaller, while also neatly sidestepping the potential intraparty conflict of "oh my god what are you doing to those corpses." thefakenews posted:Animate Object lasts 1 minute and is concentration. Animate Dead is indefinite and not concentration. Other posters already did the maths, but you can have a large group of skeletons animated indefinitely. To add a little more to that; you're not using Animate Dead on-the-fly; you're using it over time to build a massive army, the expected dpr of which completely dwarfs anything other classes can put out.
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Apr 28, 2017 13:54
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Sage Genesis posted:My results are:
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Apr 28, 2017 14:08
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Sage Genesis posted:I can't fudge, we used orokos (an online die roller which stores your rolls). Make a Death Cleric. Elf, gets you good Dex and rounds out your Wis a bit. Just run lots of buffs and use a Rapier to stab people while casting Bless and Healing Word on people that fall over. The domain class features don't really care about Wis so you should be okay there, other than a kinda limited spell selection. At 4 you can either bump to 18 Dex or grab Resilient Con to get 16 Con and Prof with that save for your concentration spells that you'll probably be leaning on.
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Apr 28, 2017 14:26
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Splicer posted:Which would work if he was playing a game designed for oldschool play, which 5E is not. great idea, but make the ranger a npc and play the ape instead.
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Apr 28, 2017 14:31
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Thanks guys. I don't think Death Domain is going to be an option (it's in the DMG so clearly verboten to a plebeian like me) but I might look at the Gnome Wizard. I forgot their Int bonus is +2, it could work out.
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Apr 28, 2017 14:43
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Ambi posted:Do you seriously not believe that the mechanics and presentation of a game don't affect how people play that game, or is your ability to extrapolate atrophied and withered beyond use? I think it wass a dumb stretch to take a pointless jab, and it's frankly a ridiculous argument. It's the kind of poo poo I'd expect to see in politics, not tabletop gaming. quote:The DM is running with the rules as presented in the books Nah. The PHB has the player assign the scores where they want. Also, the standard array is presented in literally the same paragraph as rolling, and the phrasing makes it sound like it's the player's choice which gets used.
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Apr 28, 2017 14:45
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Generic Octopus posted:To add a little more to that; you're not using Animate Dead on-the-fly; you're using it over time to build a massive army, the expected dpr of which completely dwarfs anything other classes can put out. Jack the Lad posted:A Necromancer's Animate Dead gets you 2 Skeletons at level 3 and 2 more for each spell level above that when cast as a higher level spell, and you have control of them for 24 hours. You can also cast Animate Dead before your control lapses to 'refresh' your control of 4 + 2*level-above-3 Skeletons.
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Apr 28, 2017 14:46
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Petr posted:Nah. The PHB has the player assign the scores where they want. Also, the standard array is presented in literally the same paragraph as rolling, and the phrasing makes it sound like it's the player's choice which gets used. AD&D, for example, presents each of the different rolling methods with a paragraph on likely yields complete with sample output, and tells you why you might want to use one over the other.
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Apr 28, 2017 15:31
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Animate Dead is a pretty nutty spell on paper, but it has several practical matters to consider. There's the ethical matter of acquiring the bones/corpses, the logistics of equipping them and keeping them under your control, and the fact that since you're literally fielding an army the bad guys are going to start doing the same.
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Apr 28, 2017 15:49
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Ambi posted:The supposition that having shittier ability scores will push you to roleplay better is some serious crossed wires, stemming from the misinterpretation of "flawed characters are more narratively interesting": having flaws makes for a more interesting character, but more flaws does not map to a further increase in how interesting the character is. Flaws do not also preclude a character from being competent at what they do - a thief who cannot sneak is not a tensely dramatic character, they are a two-dimensional comedic farce. Wow okay last night I played a goliath thief, an andre the giant looking fucker who tip toes stomps around and tries to slip his basketball-palming hands into people's coin purses very much as a farce but he's going to learn and get better. You'll see.
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Apr 28, 2017 15:49
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SettingSun posted:Animate Dead is a pretty nutty spell on paper, but it has several practical matters to consider. There's the ethical matter of acquiring the bones/corpses, the logistics of equipping them and keeping them under your control, and the fact that since you're literally fielding an army the bad guys are going to start doing the same. d&d's ruleset is largely given over to rules for killing things, PCs get piles of money that they don't have any particular outlet for, and the GM can always make things harder in any game
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Apr 28, 2017 15:50
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Cease to Hope posted:d&d's ruleset is largely given over to rules for killing things, PCs get piles of money that they don't have any particular outlet for, and the GM can always make things harder in any game All of this is correct, there's no good reason not to raise an army of the dead!
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Apr 28, 2017 15:52
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SettingSun posted:Animate Dead is a pretty nutty spell on paper, but it has several practical matters to consider. There's the ethical matter of acquiring the bones/corpses, the logistics of equipping them and keeping them under your control, and the fact that since you're literally fielding an army the bad guys are going to start doing the same.
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Apr 28, 2017 16:01
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SettingSun posted:Animate Dead is a pretty nutty spell on paper, but it has several practical matters to consider. There's the ethical matter of acquiring the bones/corpses, the logistics of equipping them and keeping them under your control, and the fact that since you're literally fielding an army the bad guys are going to start doing the same. Ethics of the character is firmly in the player's control, so that's not really an issue. Skeletons come with their own equipment (because magic; even if the DM decides to "hotfix" the spell by saying you need to equip them yourself...it's not like you have anything else to spend money on in 5e). Keeping them under your control isn't an issue at all, nor is commanding them. If your enemies can field armies to match yours, a) why weren't they doing that in the first place, and b) what is any other class supposed to do against such a threat? And all that aside, this single spell is dictating so much of the narrative. Meanwhile, the Fighter gets to swing their sword in a feeble attempt to matter. Generic Octopus fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Apr 28, 2017 |
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Apr 28, 2017 16:04
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All I'm trying to get at is that as a player it sounds like a hassle and as a DM it sounds like a pain to design encounters around.
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Apr 28, 2017 16:25
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SettingSun posted:All I'm trying to get at is that as a player it sounds like a hassle and as a DM it sounds like a pain to design encounters around. It might be a hassle, it's definitely a pain for the DM. However its got an entire wizard archetype built around it in the PHB so it's not like they didn't expect team PC to utilize it.
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Apr 28, 2017 16:34
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SettingSun posted:All I'm trying to get at is that as a player it sounds like a hassle and as a DM it sounds like a pain to design encounters around. This is precisely the point.
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Apr 28, 2017 16:36
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gradenko_2000 posted:You're right that it should be 4d6-drop-lowest-assign-as-desired, but there's a difference between presenting these two options (rolling versus standard array) as just different options without detailing what the exact implications of either of them are, versus explicitly making those distinctions and making recommendations based on kind of outcome that the DM might want to achieve. I absolutely agree with all of this, and still maintain that blaming Sage's DM being a dick on 5th edition's playtesting is very silly. You're not gonna get an argument out of me that 2nd ed doesn't rock.
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Apr 28, 2017 17:30
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Petr posted:I absolutely agree with all of this, and still maintain that blaming Sage's DM being a dick on 5th edition's playtesting is very silly. The point is that 5e is designed to emulate "feeling like D&D" instead of having cohesive mechanics to facilitate a given playstyle, and this lends itself to being picked up by "veteran" players who will try to play the way they feel D&D is meant to be played in spite of the fact that the game itself doesn't support their playstyle very well/at all.
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Apr 28, 2017 17:38
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Generic Octopus posted:The point is that 5e is designed to emulate "feeling like D&D" instead of having cohesive mechanics to facilitate a given playstyle, and this lends itself to being picked up by "veteran" players who will try to play the way they feel D&D is meant to be played in spite of the fact that the game itself doesn't support their playstyle very well/at all. Roll per-stat with no reassignment has been a dick-DM move for decades. 5th edition did not invent dick DMs.
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Apr 28, 2017 17:43
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Petr posted:5th edition did not invent dick DMs. Never said it did, just that it does little/nothing to discourage poor dming.
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Apr 28, 2017 17:45
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OK cool, hot take registered.
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Apr 28, 2017 17:47
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Krinkle posted:Wow okay last night I played a goliath thief, an andre the giant looking fucker who tip toes stomps around and tries to slip his basketball-palming hands into people's coin purses very much as a farce but he's going to learn and get better. You'll see. Granted, "a thief who cannot thief" would be a more accurate but less parseable way of putting it. Big strong tough thief can be part of the traditional thief school of "give me your stuff or I will Gregor Clegane you". It sounds like you're going a comedy route anyway, and I guess here is further elaboration I missed previously: playing the inept stooge can be fun, but usually it's fun when it's something you choose to do. In the case of rolling some awful array of scores, the choice is thrust upon you - play a mediocre hero, or a comedically inept stooge, when everybody who didn't roll garbage can be whatever they want. Also all of this is dependent on the rolls introducing an unequal playing field - if stats don't matter, or everyone rolls equally well/badly, then the point is null. Hell, my one-shot ability score generations are;
None of the players are significantly stronger, as the ability scores are only used when all of their skills are inapplicable, and everyone goes into it with the expectation of getting shafted randomly. Rolling and arrays presented in the same breath is misleading.
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Apr 28, 2017 17:50
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Petr posted:Roll per-stat with no reassignment has been a dick-DM move for decades. 5th edition did not invent dick DMs. And yet 5th edition isn't helping. There's a reason why the preceding edition buried the random roll option one page later with a long explanation of why it's a bad idea to want to try and use. And yeah, maybe you're going to come back with "a dick DM is going to gently caress up their game no matter what's written on the book", but then consider the DM that ends up sticking their player with a bad set of rolls not out of any deliberate maliciousness, but because they're running the game as is, don't know any better, and just follow what the book tells them to do.
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Apr 28, 2017 17:49
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the best thing about animate dead is that former PCs can still show up in fights! had a campaign once where we had to fight multiple raised characters of a single player who kept dying
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Apr 28, 2017 17:54
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Generic Octopus posted:Never said it did, just that it does little/nothing to discourage poor dming.  The PHB gives you the choice of two reasonable methods of stat generation and the DM chose to explicitly ignore what the book encourages. How are you blaming 5e? mango sentinel fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Apr 28, 2017 |
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Apr 28, 2017 18:00
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mango sentinel posted:The PHB gives you the choice of two reasonable methods of stat generation and the DM chose to explicitly ignore what the book encourages. How are you blaming 5e? They've shifted arguments from "Sage's DM is a dick because 5e" to a vague "5e doesn't do enough to discourage bad DMing," which might be true when you compare it to things like AD&D, but doesn't make the original take any less hot.
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Apr 28, 2017 18:02
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5e doubles down on certain toxic attitudes that encourage bad GMs to be even worse GMs. if you don't already have those attitudes, fine, it's not a problem with the rules as written. but when you say "this is for old school players who want an old school game," you need to make certain efforts to be clear that some poo poo is better off left in 1989 and mearls and co. lacked the awareness and skill to do so.
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Apr 28, 2017 18:10
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mango sentinel posted:The PHB gives you the choice of two reasonable methods of stat generation and the DM chose to explicitly ignore what the book encourages. How are you blaming 5e? Comically large screenshot aside, that excerpt does 2 things; it presents randomly generated scores as the primary method of chargen with the array being an alternative if you don't like it, and it suggests that the game supports random scores & modifiers, when if you examine the game math, it really doesn't. Petr posted:"Sage's DM is a dick because 5e" You're the only one to actually say this.
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Apr 28, 2017 18:17
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Cease to Hope posted:5e doubles down on certain toxic attitudes that encourage bad GMs to be even worse GMs. if you don't already have those attitudes, fine, it's not a problem with the rules as written. but when you say "this is for old school players who want an old school game," you need to make certain efforts to be clear that some poo poo is better off left in 1989 and mearls and co. lacked the awareness and skill to do so. What toxic attitudes?
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Apr 28, 2017 18:56
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Generic Octopus posted:You're the only one to actually say this. Then how did version wars even enter into it? The original discussion was about a dick DM until gradenko_2000 came in like "o that's cause 5e"
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Apr 28, 2017 18:58
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Generic Octopus posted:Comically large screenshot aside, that excerpt does 2 things; it presents randomly generated scores as the primary method of chargen with the array being an alternative if you don't like it, and it suggests that the game supports random scores & modifiers, when if you examine the game math, it really doesn't. Sorry, phone posting and I couldn't tell in the app. I agree that the math of the game does not really support random stats but that block of text tells you a) players should allocate rolls to stats how they choose and b) what the authors consider a fair baseline set of stats if they roll like poo poo. Both are things that discourage players from being locked into a handicapped character they don't want to play.
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Apr 28, 2017 19:06
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Petr posted:Then how did version wars even enter into it? The original discussion was about a dick DM until gradenko_2000 came in like "o that's cause 5e" I said what I did because 5e was heavily marketed on nostalgia for older editions of D&D, largely as an reactionary overcorrection for 4e being lambasted as "too different" and "not really D&D" And when that is your target market, you're going to, quelle surprise, encourage behavior like prompting people to do roll-stats-in-order because that's how it used to be in the good old days
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Apr 28, 2017 19:11
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Cool, I'm glad we agree on how that discussion happened. Like I said: hot take registered. I still think the most likely explanation is that actually that DM is a dick in any edition, and I think bringing edition wars into it was silly, but you don't have to agree \  /
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Apr 28, 2017 19:16
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gradenko_2000 posted:And when that is your target market, you're going to, quelle surprise, encourage behavior like prompting people to do roll-stats-in-order because that's how it used to be in the good old days The book that explicitly and repeatedly tells players to assign their stats as they please encourages rolling down the line? mango sentinel fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Apr 28, 2017 |
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Apr 28, 2017 19:20
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The real hot take here is that both Sage's DM AND 5e are dicks.
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Apr 28, 2017 19:34
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I keep coming back to the PHB weapons list and saying "is that all there is?" Also if Goliaths were large for the purpose of what they can carry shouldn't they be large for the purpose of what counts as a finesse weapon. That long sword is proportionally a short sword is what I'm saying.
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Apr 28, 2017 19:35
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Krinkle posted:I keep coming back to the PHB weapons list and saying "is that all there is?" Also if Goliaths were large for the purpose of what they can carry shouldn't they be large for the purpose of what counts as a finesse weapon. That long sword is proportionally a short sword is what I'm saying. Whereas I look at it and go "It could be smaller". For instance, there's no difference between a halberd and a glaive according to the rules. Why have both?  There's a 3rd-party book called Beyond Damage Dice that gives martial classes maneuvers based on what weapon they have equipped. Kinda like  , different weapons give different movesets. I'm thinking of testing it out.
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Apr 28, 2017 19:48
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Getting back into DnD after years away, I feel like it's the old school old man grogs coming back in because of the new interest that are the problems, not the rules. They see opportunities for the incredibly number focused, boring and pedantic game they remember playing in the rules and run with it.
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Apr 28, 2017 20:32
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Generic Octopus posted:To add a little more to that; you're not using Animate Dead on-the-fly; you're using it over time to build a massive army, the expected dpr of which completely dwarfs anything other classes can put out. My DM insists you can only cast the spell once, you can't just blow all your slots on it and use them to maintain forever. vOv
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Apr 28, 2017 20:33
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