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my cat is norris posted:Any pitfalls I should know about? Anything I can do to make sure my players have a good time? In no particular order: * Try to get the party out of level 1 quickly. Level 3 is where the "real" game starts, for better or worse * Low HP counts will mean that you may get knockouts, if not outright deaths, fairly often at low level. This dovetails well with "get the party out of level 1 quickly". * The party should really get to have a Short Rest at least once every 2 combat encounters. * Use the standard array. I'd make an exception if you were maybe running a oneshot, but not for any long-term play With regards to the grid: you won't need it a lot of the time. You'll probably want to have tokens/miniatures on the table anyway to at least represent relative positioning. The simplest I would cut it down to would be to just write down the linear/absolute distance between any two characters, and then maybe add a tag for "is behind a corner" or "is up on a tree"
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Feb 12, 2016 15:58
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I like to run semi-TotM, with a whiteboard to scrawl maps all over without concern for things like "scale" and "detail". Objects and features in rooms are generally either objectives, key props, or exist when people need/want them to. The problem with movement rates is that they're junk.
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Feb 12, 2016 16:06
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Unless positioning is super important I usually use a whiteboard to quickly throw down the major features or landmarks of the combat space. "I stay near the door" or "I move nearish the big oak tree in the courtyard".
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Feb 12, 2016 16:31
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I have played several 5e campaigns without a cleric and had no problem.Probably no one thing is perfect by itself, but everyone gets by just fine with hit die, bards with Healing Word and potions.
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Feb 12, 2016 16:48
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Man, it's nice to get so many responses.  It makes me feel like people are still excited by D&D. I haven't played in years (since 4E got boring for me) so I'm pretty out of touch with this community.
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Feb 12, 2016 16:50
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my cat is norris posted:Man, it's nice to get so many responses. I'll be honest...a big reason we tend to want to use the grid is because i'm a relatively competent mini painter, and my group really likes a lot of the custom minis I've made for our game.
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Feb 12, 2016 17:29
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Bluedeanie posted:I have played several 5e campaigns without a cleric and had no problem.Probably no one thing is perfect by itself, but everyone gets by just fine with hit die, bards with Healing Word and potions. The only thing that actually makes clerics good at healing in 5e (unless they're the life domain) is their access to healing spells while being a full caster, so it makes sense that a bard in your party would address things. A warlock with at least two levels of paladin for cure wounds would probably be better.
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Feb 12, 2016 17:43
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AlphaDog posted:I've usually done about 2 per short rest, and same as you guys per long. I'm a bit surprised that you get away with so few shorts. Is the party caster-heavy? Yeah, it is. We have two wizards, a cleric, and a warlock. Vanguard Warden posted:The only thing that actually makes clerics good at healing in 5e (unless they're the life domain) is their access to healing spells while being a full caster, so it makes sense that a bard in your party would address things. I've never heard of that particular setup before, could you explain why it would be better? Savidudeosoo fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Feb 12, 2016 |
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Feb 12, 2016 20:20
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Savidudeosoo posted:Yeah, it is. We have two wizards, a cleric, and a warlock. Because warlocks get spells per short rest that are always cast at their max level. Having a handful of cures like that would be great for patch jobs.
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Feb 12, 2016 20:52
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Roadie posted:Well, keep in mind that Dreamscarred is going to be releasing 5e versions of at least some of their stuff at some point, which is likely to take some of the wind out of the sails of any other "make martials less poo poo" projects. Where did you hear this? I'd be interested in seeing a Path of War for 5th, on account of how "blah" I found the Battlemaster Fighter.
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Feb 12, 2016 22:16
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Savidudeosoo posted:Yeah, it is. We have two wizards, a cleric, and a warlock. That sounds like it'd stomp stuff pretty good, yeah. The main two groups I've played with have been cleric/warlock/rogue/fighter and (moon)druid/paladin/barbarian/wizard. The first group did poorly - the warlock was OK, the fighter (me) and rogue kinda sucked, and the cleric spent most of their time keeping everyone else up. The second group did OK, since the barbarian was pretty tough, the paladin was survivable and dished out enough small heals to help the barbarian, the wizard hardly ever got hit, and I (as moon druid) was unstoppable to the point where we were joking about just letting me solo stuff (which I don't think would have actually worked, but goddamn moon druids are nice). TheWyrmDude posted:Because warlocks get spells per short rest that are always cast at their max level. Having a handful of cures like that would be great for patch jobs. Does multiclassing warlock give you all your other spells back per short rest as well? Why would a caster ever not do that? 
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Feb 12, 2016 23:54
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AlphaDog posted:Does taking a level of warlock give you all your other spells back per short rest as well? Why would a caster ever not do that? No, but per the multiclass rules you can use Warlock short-rest-slots to cast any spells you know/prepared, including those from other classes. So if you've got a single Cure Wounds spell then you can use your Warlock slots to cast a couple of those. And then an hour later, a couple more. And then an hour later, couple more. Etc.
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Feb 12, 2016 23:56
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Sage Genesis posted:No, but per the multiclass rules you can use Warlock short-rest-slots to cast any spells you know/prepared, including those from other classes. So if you've got a single Cure Wounds spell then you can use your Warlock slots to cast a couple of those. And then an hour later, a couple more. And then an hour later, couple more. Etc. Oh, right. This was discussed previously, wasn't it? I should try to remember these things better. Taking a couple of Paladin levels then going Warlock to take advantage of that as a healer is an amazing idea and the character story easily writes itself. I'm gonna go with that next time I play.
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Feb 13, 2016 00:09
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AlphaDog posted:Oh, right. This was discussed previously, wasn't it? I should try to remember these things better. Double-check with your DM whether or not you'll be using any of the DMG optional rules regarding rest times. If short rests are made longer, then stay away from Warlocks. If short rests are only five minutes... well, then you're going to be awesome.
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Feb 13, 2016 00:12
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Sage Genesis posted:Double-check with your DM whether or not you'll be using any of the DMG optional rules regarding rest times. If short rests are made longer, then stay away from Warlocks. If short rests are only five minutes... well, then you're going to be awesome. I think I'll be fine. Literally nobody I know IRL or that I play internet D&D with thinks that hour long "short" rests are good, and have in various ways changed it to <10 minutes for reasons ranging from "dramatic pacing is important" to "that's not how BECMI did it  " to "imagine telling the coach your plan is to fight for 30 seconds and then rest for an hour" to "who loving cares? You rest and then..."
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Feb 13, 2016 01:43
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It seems like the reason for making short rests take an hour must have involved spell durations. Stuff that is supposed to last you all day lasts 8 hours, like mage armor. Stuff that's supposed to only last for one fight last a minute, like haste. They needed a duration for spells that wouldn't extend past a short rest, but long enough that they wouldn't plausibly expire while you were just screwing around in the dungeon, so stuff like invisibility lasts an hour. There's a bunch of stuff that lasts 10 minutes too, though, so who the hell knows.
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Feb 13, 2016 02:00
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Vanguard Warden posted:It seems like the reason for making short rests take an hour must have involved spell durations. Stuff that is supposed to last you all day lasts 8 hours, like mage armor. Stuff that's supposed to only last for one fight last a minute, like haste. They needed a duration for spells that wouldn't extend past a short rest, but long enough that they wouldn't plausibly expire while you were just screwing around in the dungeon, so stuff like invisibility lasts an hour. You're probably putting more thought into than the excuse for designers on the project
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Feb 13, 2016 02:09
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Outside of combat a warlock can keep up pretty much any spell. Invosibilty, unseen servant. And that is RP cool.
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Feb 13, 2016 02:31
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Vanguard Warden posted:It seems like the reason for making short rests take an hour must have involved spell durations. Stuff that is supposed to last you all day lasts 8 hours, like mage armor. Stuff that's supposed to only last for one fight last a minute, like haste. They needed a duration for spells that wouldn't extend past a short rest, but long enough that they wouldn't plausibly expire while you were just screwing around in the dungeon, so stuff like invisibility lasts an hour. They didn't want to make a "per-encounter" refresh category of abilities, to distance themselves from 4e, so they needed to set the length of a Short Rest to something that you couldn't justify in-game as doing after every fight. It's just that it probably didn't occur to them that an hour's rest is something that you couldn't justify in-game as doing after every two fights, either.
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Feb 13, 2016 02:35
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Wasn't the change to hour-long short rests specifically in response to "fighters are too good"? Fighters get their expertise dice back on short rests, and the designers really loving hated the fact that fighters got to do something interesting on the reg.
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Feb 13, 2016 03:54
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Dick Burglar posted:Wasn't the change to hour-long short rests specifically in response to "fighters are too good"? Fighters get their expertise dice back on short rests, and the designers really loving hated the fact that fighters got to do something interesting on the reg. That bugs me. A fighter's power is determined entirely by dm. Last game I was I rolled a fighter and in multiple occasions I wanted to do something cool and the dm vetoed it due to lack of RAW justification. It isn't my fualt there are no rules extant for suplexing a wizard or implaleing a orc with my spear to hold him in place.
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Feb 13, 2016 04:02
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Dick Burglar posted:Wasn't the change to hour-long short rests specifically in response to "fighters are too good"? Fighters get their expertise dice back on short rests, and the designers really loving hated the fact that fighters got to do something interesting on the reg. It's actually more petty then that - it was in response to "fighters don't appreciate their powers enough."
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Feb 13, 2016 04:15
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ProfessorCirno posted:It's actually more petty then that - it was in response to "fighters don't appreciate their powers enough." Which is pretty cognitive dissonant in the sense that if Fighters had powers that could only be used once per day so that they'd be more inclined to ration them out and feel like they're valuable for doing so (in itself a specious argument), then that just puts Fighter powers on the same relative scale as a spellcaster's daily spells, which in turn leads us back towards the "all classes are the same because all classes have spellcaster-like daily abilities" argument leveled against 4e.
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Feb 13, 2016 04:19
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ProfessorCirno posted:It's actually more petty then that - it was in response to "fighters don't appreciate their powers enough." Do you have a link to the actual update where he posted that or has it been erased from Wizard's archives?
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Feb 13, 2016 04:20
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Caphi posted:Do you have a link to the actual update where he posted that or has it been erased from Wizard's archives? Pretty much all of their articles that were printed during 5e's development are gone, but this one interview remains! http://suvudu.com/2014/07/interview-with-dd-lead-designer-mike-mearls-gamers-wanted-5e-to-be-fast-flexible-and-easy-to-play.html quote:The complex fighter regains expertise dice, the resource used to power maneuvers, after taking a one hour rest. In essence, those are encounter powers.
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Feb 13, 2016 05:43
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Dick Burglar posted:Wasn't the change to hour-long short rests specifically in response to "fighters are too good"? Fighters get their expertise dice back on short rests, and the designers really loving hated the fact that fighters got to do something interesting on the reg. Before that change, you were also doing 4 easy/average to 2 tough encounters per long rest, with a short rest after each fight - meaning you were short resting at lest twice as often and doing fewer fights per long rest. Just changing that to where it is now (6-8 medium-hard encounters, short rest every 2) while keeping short rests short would gently caress fighters hard enough.
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Feb 13, 2016 06:05
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ProfessorCirno posted:Pretty much all of their articles that were printed during 5e's development are gone, but this one interview remains! It's so amazing how people value their encounter abilities more when they can't actually use them every encounter. I love that he seems to equate "value" of a thing with people not using it.
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Feb 13, 2016 09:15
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Mendrian posted:It's so amazing how people value their encounter abilities more when they can't actually use them every encounter. you know what never runs out? Sneak attack.
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Feb 13, 2016 13:39
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Are a ton of 5e adventures run on a time clock, like you have 2 in-game days to complete the whole adventure or something? I'm new to 5e and never played 4e but I don't understand what would really change between calling the short rest 5 minutes or 1 hour unless it was a ticking clock scenario.
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Feb 13, 2016 18:12
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J Miracle posted:Are a ton of 5e adventures run on a time clock, like you have 2 in-game days to complete the whole adventure or something? I'm new to 5e and never played 4e but I don't understand what would really change between calling the short rest 5 minutes or 1 hour unless it was a ticking clock scenario. There are a lot of situations where certain spells or abilities last for one hour, like the Druid's ability to shapeshift into an animal. I don't work for WotC so can only guess as to the actual method to that madhouse, but whether intentional or not, the short rest mechanics prevent someone from doing a power squat and recovering a bunch of health via hit dice while still remaining a giant spider or a badger or whatever. In terms of what a short rest actually is in game, it's taking a solid break to eat and drink, bandage wounds, poop and do whatever else you would need to do to try and recover some stamina and improve your well-being, so it also makes sense you wouldn't be able to do all that in five minutes vs. an hour.
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Feb 13, 2016 19:03
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Bluedeanie posted:There are a lot of situations where certain spells or abilities last for one hour, like the Druid's ability to shapeshift into an animal. I don't work for WotC so can only guess as to the actual method to that madhouse, but whether intentional or not, the short rest mechanics prevent someone from doing a power squat and recovering a bunch of health via hit dice while still remaining a giant spider or a badger or whatever. Ahhh I see well that makes sense (as far as explaining why people would feel differently about a 5 minute rest v. one hour rest, anyway).
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Feb 13, 2016 19:22
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While some of that seems intentional it does seem pretty dumb to say that a Warrior's extra damage dice are in any way equivilent to a sun cleric's two channel divinities per short rest or the Warlock's entire spell use pool.
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Feb 13, 2016 19:29
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Bluedeanie posted:In terms of what a short rest actually is in game, it's taking a solid break to eat and drink, bandage wounds, poop and do whatever else you would need to do to try and recover some stamina and improve your well-being, so it also makes sense you wouldn't be able to do all that in five minutes vs. an hour. It doesn't make sense that a trained fighter would take an hour to recover from 30 seconds of fighting.
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Feb 13, 2016 21:18
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That's why I honestly never saw a problem with powers being usable x times per day or x times per encounter. Like performing a max-effort Olympic lift, it's not that you'd need to rest an hour between each attempt but you're going to eventually burn out on how many times you can do it in a day.
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Feb 13, 2016 21:40
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AlphaDog posted:It doesn't make sense that a trained fighter would take an hour to recover from 30 seconds of fighting. Well if you're taking a short rest you most likely lost enough HP that you felt it was a better idea to burn a HD or two to recover before starting another encounter, so regardless how long it took you to sustain those wounds, I'd say taking an hour to deal with getting stabbed in the chest and losing enough blood to drain half of your life force or whatever is in fact personally reasonable. I'm not passionately defending the long rest as an hour or anything. If you want to use one of the homebrew systems that distill them down to 5-10 minutes, go hog wild, it's your game. But I don't think it's all that bad or illogical for it to be an hour, either.
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Feb 13, 2016 21:45
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Bluedeanie posted:I'd say taking an hour to deal with getting stabbed in the chest and losing enough blood to drain half of your life force or whatever is in fact personally reasonable. It doesn't make sense to take an hour to "recover your stamina" from 30 seconds of fighting. It doesn't make sense to take an hour to recover from a sucking chest wound, either. Either 5 minutes or an hour is fine as a game abstraction, do whatever you like. It's deeply stupid to pretend that an hour is the rest you "logically" need after a 30 second fight whether or not you've sustained an actual serious injury. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Feb 13, 2016 |
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Feb 13, 2016 21:58
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I used to die after just one stab to the chest, but then I had some fighting practice and now I can survive two.
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Feb 13, 2016 22:06
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Really Pants posted:I used to die after just one stab to the chest, but then I had some fighting practice and now I can survive two. I've practiced so much that getting stabbed in the chest doesn't affect me at all until like the 13th or 14th stab. Scrub. e: Does anyone know of a training routine that'll improve my recovery time though? I swung my axe twice at a guy yesterday, and after the second stroke cut him in half I couldn't breath for an hour and my legs felt like jelly. Do I need cardio? Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Feb 13, 2016 |
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Feb 13, 2016 22:11
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Kurieg posted:While some of that seems intentional it does seem pretty dumb to say that a Warrior's extra damage dice are in any way equivilent to a sun cleric's two channel divinities per short rest or the Warlock's entire spell use pool. Yeah, that's sorta the other catch, isn't it? Battlemaster abilities are entirely uninspiring, and in fact, because of how the class is set up, it actually gets increasingly more boring the longer you play as it, as it never gains access to new maneuvers. At level 1 you choose the BEST maneuvers, the ones you like the most. Every time you go back to that pool after that, the maneuvers get less and less interesting - because you've already chosen the ones you care about. It would not surprise me in the slightest if the Battlemaster - much like several other things in 5e - was literally never playtested. And I'm not talking about the "open playtest" that they absolutely ignored and just used as easy PR.
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Feb 13, 2016 22:20
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Has anyone else seen a reduction in activity in their FLGS options since 5E? Used to be that the store I usually go to in Seattle struggled to find enough GMs and we usually had two tables of players for Encounters. Card Kingdom in Ballard apparently also had numerous tables. Now both struggle to put together enough players/GMs for one table of 5E. The 5E table at my FLGS is all little kids.
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Feb 13, 2016 22:29
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