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Noon EST is when they are releasing it, servers willing.
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Jul 3, 2014 13:55
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And it's out. http://wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/basicrules
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Jul 3, 2014 17:59
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@Plaguescarred : Does Empowered Evocation let you add your INT mod to every magic missiles? @mikemearls : nope, just per target. Even though missiles are separate, it's technically one damage roll per target, not missile @Plaguescarred : Ok thanks @ritorix : So if you split the missiles to 3 different targets, it would get INT mod to each. @mikemearls : Correct. Basically, it's gain +Int mod once per creature affected by the spell. I was surprised about this one. So you only get +INT to a spell once, except sometimes you don't. We are used to that with AE spells but not with something like individual missiles. Seems a bit wacky but the alternative is you have to pick one target that gets +INT and the rest don't. Also there's some encounter design math up: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20140707 As usual you multiply by number of party members.  Also those rat swarms are now worth tons of XP: "To account for this [being swarmed], multiply the XP value of an encounter by 1.5 if the monsters outnumber the adventurers by two-to-one. If the monsters outnumber the characters by three-to-one, multiply the XP total by 2. For a four-to-one advantage, multiply the XP total by 2.5, and so on." ritorix fucked around with this message at 07:20 on Jul 7, 2014 |
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Jul 7, 2014 07:18
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So we wrapped up the goon PBP of Dead in Thay and figured I will give it a mini-review. The last PBP I did for the 5e playtest was Mines of Madness about a year ago. I managed to get 12 goons to play, two full groups, some with multiple characters along the way. Everyone was level 6, and reached 7 towards the end. So we got to see a bit of everything and I tried a bunch of wacky things on the DM side. Random observations: -Fast combat was the norm. Most fights took 2-3 rounds. It was also a lot easier to keep track of things (conditions, buffs, etc) than the typical 4e PBP games I ran on here. I didn't feel overwhelmed with system management while running two groups simultaneously. -Characters are really hard to kill, thanks to 4e-style death saves. I played around with how far I could push things, and no one died pretty much until I started dropping rocks on the players. Overall you get the same drama as 4e with death saves ticking down and allies forced to save the dying 'at the last minute' and healing from zero and all that. The feel there is very similar. -PC damage can get pretty crazy. The most a player managed was 135 (from one attack, a turn undead) but that was AE and likely won't work at release. For melee, a paladin managed to do something like 120+ from a triple attack routine. That included several smites along with bard song. Not sure if that will be viable for the final version, depends on what is made into a bonus action. -Melee damage definitely got competitive as magic items started to be passed around. Any talk of magic items not being required is complete bullshit. The final boss, a demilich, was completely immune to nonmagical damage. Numerous enemies resisted (take half damage from) nonmagical weapons. And with the round-robin rules for loot distribution in Adventurers League (the new RPGA), everyone including melee will get their fair share. The difference this time around is a caster can't improve his spell damage through magic items (no "wand +1"), but melee/ranged do. When a melee guy gets a Flame Tongue (+2d6 fire damage every hit) it's a big deal. -AE is crucial to have in the party. Your potential sources for it are all spellcasters (cleric/druid included), yes. The entire party doesn't need it, but when swarms of enemies show up you need someone that can do it to take them down enemies before they (thanks to bounded accuracy) whittle away at the group. Our game had one group with AE and one without, and the difference was obvious. Both groups still managed to win their fights, but the non-AE group had a rough time in large battles. -A tank is crucial to have in the party. AC is important. Don't try to tank with a 14 or whatever. Along those same lines, having a 18+ AC goes a long way to ensuring survival. And if you can get disadvantage on incoming attacks (dodge and protection from evil are two easy sources), you are pretty much untouchable. -Save boosts were important too. Bless (+1d4) and the paladin aura (+CHA) go a long way to making sure everyone survives the giant piles of bullshit that get thrown at mid-level parties. Ok so I didn't actually talk about the content of Dead in Thay much. It was a boring, over-complicated, monotonous piece of poo poo with a few bright spots. There was a whole party of 'plot important' NPCs that were supposed to tag along - needless to say, I completely ignored that. I salvaged what I could and ran things right off the rails towards the end. There were some cool situations like the final battle taking place on the interior of a giant "D4", with separate gravity on each side. We also did a gigantic all-hands-on-deck battle near the beginning that was fun to run. But overall the module was a bust. Still had a good time running it. 5e is easy and fun to run, easier than 3e or 4e. Make poo poo up, no math fixes needed because the math is so hosed just leave it be, I could DM this poo poo drunk and it would still work out. I'll be running it again some time. 
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Jul 11, 2014 03:46
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Father Wendigo posted:Hey Chumbo, here's some Fun Facts you failed to mention: Try playing sober next time you might hit something.  And you lost the bet about the PHB thing.
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Jul 11, 2014 06:27
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Amethyst posted:Aren't time stop and call meteors both 9th level? I thought wizards only ever get one 9th level spell slot? They do. 
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Jul 11, 2014 06:31
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Your party had 2 clerics, and one died. 
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Jul 11, 2014 07:08
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Oh yeah and my Cheat Sheet is updated to the Basic rules for anyone that is actually going to play 5e. 1 page with all the actions and conditions and stuff. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7n5bpadgZz4WmRIdE1HeVBaeFk/ ritorix fucked around with this message at 07:40 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 07:15
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That's more words than the whole pbp game. I find it funny that the two goofy ironic 5e games I ran actually played to completion, that rarest of states for a play by post, while our serious game died on the vine like most games.
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Jul 11, 2014 08:20
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Cassa posted:Doesn't burning hands get outclassed almost straight away? At like level 3. There would still be reasons to want a dex save spell vs the con save on thunder wave. Depends on the targets.
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Jul 14, 2014 05:56
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dwarf74 posted:This may sound weird coming from a dude who's not that into 5e, but this is seriously the most negative +thread I've ever seen on SA and I can't tell if I'm in TG or DDRD when I read it. That is literally every Next thread we've ever had in TG.
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Jul 14, 2014 22:34
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4e didn't literally use a CR system, but it was an (un?)written rule that you weren't supposed to use creatures over 3 levels of the party so the math didn't get crazy. Or something like that I dont remember exactly, but the idea was the same: at some point the monsters got unhittable. Oh yeah and beta signups for the 5e character builder are open: http://trapdoortechnologies.com/beta/ (8:05:32 PM) king_com: why does it need my birthdate (8:05:46 PM) king_com: because of the rape useage on their front page? (8:05:48 PM) Ritorix: 30+ is proper grog age
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Jul 15, 2014 01:06
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The 5e XP system and CR basically have nothing to do with each other. XP is for the same encounter-building formulas based on party size and desired difficulty that 4e did. 5e CR means "a party of 4 should be able to defeat an equal-level CR (as a solo monster) without having casualties". If you put a party of 4 level 1s against a single ogre (CR2), he can outright kill a character. He hits for ~13 and crits for ~22, enough to KO a level 1 fighter with 16CON (13HP) and enough to outright kill almost anyone on a crit. Character HP nearly doubles at level 2 (the same fighter goes to 22), making the normal hits survivable and the crits merely knock you unconscious instead of outright dead. So while the XP system may say you can build a fair fight for a large party of level 1s with a few ogres, CR tells you that the ogres will probably be killing some characters. At least that is what it's supposed to do. We all know how well CR holds up in 3x.
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Jul 15, 2014 01:33
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5e monster level and CR are also two different things. Level is just their hit dice, so like an ogre is level 7. 7d10+21 is their listed hit dice (fighter hit dice, and 21 is their con bonus of 3 times level 7). 5.5*7+21 = 59.5, rounded down to 59 is their listed HP. The system does have a certain sense to it. The actual "this monster is going to murder your entire loving party" threshold is about +3 CR over the party level, about the same as 4e solos. In the starter set, the dragon is CR8 and the max party level is 5. So yeah that was on purpose.
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Jul 15, 2014 01:47
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MonsterEnvy posted:Anyway I am overall tired of this thread as well. I will post news and stuff here but until the players handbook comes out I won't be posting as much. It's kind of needed for us to fully judge the game anyway. Like a candle lit from both ends, you burned out too soon.
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Jul 16, 2014 01:24
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Oh yeah I got a starter set too today. I'm gonna read it but FRIST this bottle of wine needs to get finished. Its a preventative measure. Initial impressions: good art at least, 5e has to be the first cheesecake-free edition with actual armor and whatnot. And nice pregen sheets (paper quality) and...uh...yet another set of dice for my dice monster.
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Jul 16, 2014 01:38
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Jack the Lad posted:Nope, there is definitely a 267 page alpha PHB floating around (107 pages or 40% of which is spells). 8 out of 12 class are spellcasters. 10/12 if you count eldritch knight and the spell thief. We are gonna need some more spells!
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Jul 16, 2014 19:35
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There's no fewer than three 5e game recruits happening right now in the game room. The future is here.
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Jul 18, 2014 22:01
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The key to TOTM combat is to accept the DM rulings. If she says Burning Hands hits 2 enemies, don't argue that it should really hit 3. Once a table gets into arguments about how many critters are caught in a fireball or how safe it is for a rogue to dash through a melee and blah blah blah, the game is derailed. The DM has to rule on things, but also has to loosen up about specifics. If a dragon breath is described as a '30 foot cone', that has a specific meaning in grid play but in TOTM translates to 'a bigass cloud of gas'. You pick a few folks that are probably in the area to make saves and move on without agonizing over who is 5' away from the cone. 'IT'S LESS MECHANICAL, AND MORE THEATRICAL'. The young green has 136HP. For a level-appropriate group of characters (8th level) I can tell you that's basically a 2 round fight of rocket tag. It will get to breathe about once and die before that ever recharges. Speaking of dragons, as a DM, you can do some neat stuff with swooping attacks with the way 5e split movement works - the dragon could fly down, do its claw/claw/bite routine, then fly back up. Or use one of those claw attacks to grapple, then fly up and let go.
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Jul 19, 2014 18:23
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A Catastrophe posted:It's also less of a game. If the fights are defined by GM fiat, your game will become a carnival ride. If the players can't reliably take actions in combat, where can they take action? You can't challenge them if everything is down to your whim. Honestly I don't even know where you're coming from here. The entire concept of D&D is 'the GM takes you for a ride'. TOTM only has to do with combat - you already play the entire rest of the game that way. There are sound arguments about the rules properly supporting TOTM or not, or it being more or less efficient or time consuming than a grid, but saying it goes against the spirit of a make-believe game and somehow takes away player agency is way off the mark.
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Jul 20, 2014 01:38
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Well I suppose I'll just fundamentally disagree with you two on the nature of the GM in an RPG and sources of player agency. A bad GM absolutely breaks a game, whether or not it had a good system, and a good DM saves even bad game systems because their role as ride-maker is so vital. They are the busiest player at the table and have the most demanding and stressful role in the game. There's a reason most players consider it a chore and avoid GM duty. They would rather go on the ride than spend hours designing and refereeing one. That anecdote about a villain's close call and hostage shenanigans is both cool and could have come from literally any edition, with or without a grid. When it comes to 5e, the default assumption of the rules is combat as a conversation. The things a player can do in a fight are well-defined, and with a competent GM the greatest threat to 'player agency' is the roll of dice.
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Jul 20, 2014 03:56
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DalaranJ posted:Are you saying that the main mode of D&D is usually participationism because it is a badly designed, opaque game? That the most rational method for playing such a game would be to only fully expose one of the players (the DM) to its true problems? You have unlocked the deep, dark secret of D&D. Did you get a 5e Starter? Look how they handle the situation in the first page of Lost Mines. It's a product targeted at people who probably don't know what they are getting into, and it lays out the DM situation pretty honestly.
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Jul 20, 2014 06:17
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DalaranJ posted:It seems pretty good advice if you are running a game that is well designed. Be Fair seems pretty obvious: don't give your buddy all the magic items or let the chatty player take all the face time. Good advice anywhere. Be Consistent: I don't really agree with how they described it. GMs should have a consistent style for how they handle situations, sure. But if you find out that you ruled something wrong that error should be corrected or at least not repeated later. Errors will inevitably be made by a first time GM running Lost Mines, they should learn from that and improve. I've joined groups that ran the rules wrong for so long they thought they were doing it right.
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Jul 20, 2014 17:58
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MonsterEnvy posted:Anyway I am tired of this I doubt I will convince any of you and you guys won't convince me. I won't be back until August 8th. Like a candle lit from both ends, you burned out too soon.
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Jul 22, 2014 03:13
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DalaranJ posted:Ritorix opened my mind so I can see the matrix. And by the matrix I mean Next design philosophy. 010100N010010E101001101X00101001T01010 1101S10101U00010C1011001000K1001S01001 Resting was a huge point of grog contention during the playtest. Remember, 4e didn't exist, so they are coming from a game where you regain 1HP per day if lucky and frequently have to leave a dungeon to rest, and suddenly you can recover in 5 minutes and all your HP come back at night. What is this poo poo?! They had to rename healing surges to hit dice to sneak a 4e concept into the game in the disguise of something familiar. You should be happy that HP actually recovers overnight because that was probably the next thing to go. That's why HD only recover half per night of rest instead of all of them. So now, narratively speaking, the short rest is a lunch break. They are still going to happen at least 1/day because spending HD and using Arcane Recovery is still pretty important. The funny thing is they made it intentionally hard to interrupt a long rest, but easy to interrupt a short rest. It takes an entire hour of interruption for a long rest to fail. That's a lot of combats. kingcom posted:or the players are wrapping the wizard up in bandages and clogging his ears full of wax and covering his bag with a sack all to make sure nothing interrupts his full rest. That's a great idea, I'm going to write that one down. 
ritorix fucked around with this message at 10:37 on Jul 23, 2014 |
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Jul 23, 2014 10:34
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I guess you could attack, action point, cast a spell. Uh. Yeah that's a thing I guess. Best use of action points: casting spells.
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Jul 28, 2014 17:01
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drat it, I'll try to say something nice about the eldritch knight... Hmmm... They will have both full extra attack progression and cantrip damage progression. Could give then nice options for both ranged and melee. A dex/int knight would work. They can basically have protection from evil up on themselves nearly every fight and be very tanky.
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Jul 28, 2014 17:25
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The bard
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Jul 28, 2014 17:35
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I've done the all-wizard game, my next game here should be all bards. Taking the band on tour.
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Jul 28, 2014 22:03
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Good timing, I was already typing up this giant EK post. For the hell of it I'm going to compare an Eldritch Knight to just going fighter/mage. I'm going to do a 10 EK, and for the f/m multiclass enough mage levels to equal the EK's spellcasting ability and put the rest into fighter. You could do it different ways but I'm going apples-for-apples as much as possible, to try to make the same character. Exact same starting stats. 16 str, 16 int, 14 con. Same fighting style (defense), in plate mail with a glaive. Going for something tanky, but an amusing side note: you can't cast somatic component spells (almost all of them) without a hand free. So no sword+shield for these characters, using a glaive instead. Fighter 10 (Eldritch Knight) 20 str, 18 int, 14 con, rest don't matter. HP 84 HD 10D10 AC 19, disadvantage on attacks from evil undead/fiends/elementals/fey. AC 24 with Shield spell (5 rounds/day) Special abilities: Second wind (regain 1d10+10), Action surge, Extra attack, Indomitable, War Magic, Eldritch Strike, 3 ASIs spent on 4xStr, 2xInt Spells: 3 cantrips including fire bolt (+8 ranged attack, 2d10dmg), 5 spells of choice plus magic weapon and longstrider Slots: 4 1st, 3 2nd Spell DC 16, spell attacks at +8 Spellbook: Access to only abjuration and evocation schools, no rituals, evos are too low level to be relevant. Attack routine: Cast shocking grasp, +8 touch for 2d8 lightning, disables their reaction, advantage if target wearing metal armor. Move to glaive reach, bonus swing at +10 for 1d10+6 (+1 Magic Weapon). If this hits, target has disadvantage on their save against your next spell. Switch to a cantrip with a save next round if you hit. Strategies: Magic Weapon gives you a +1 weapon which you can bind to yourself to summon. The best spells at your disposal are protection from evil (cast once and forget) and Shield (your primary spell, save all other spell slots for this, +5AC for the whole round when cast as reaction). The EK 'war magic' ability to cast a cantrip+make a melee attack becomes obsolete at level 11 when they get 3 melee attacks per round. Better to swing that glaive three times than to cast a 3d8 shocking grasp + 1 swing of the glaive. Fighter 6 (Champion)/Wizard 4 (Abjurer) 20 str, 18 int, 14 con, rest don't matter. HP 78 HD 6d10, 4d6 AC 19, disadvantage on attacks from evil undead/fiends/elementals/fey AC 24 with Shield spell Special abilities: Second wind (regain 1d10+6), Action surge, Extra attack, weapons crit on 19-20, school of magic (Abjuration), arcane recovery, rituals, 1ASI from wiz4 (spent on 4 STR), 2ASI from ftr6 (spent on 2 INT) Spells: 4 cantrips including Fire Bolt for +8, 1d10 damage Slots: 4 1st, 3 2nd Spell DC 16, spell attacks at +8 Spellbook: Access to all wizard spells and rituals. Attack routine 1: Enlarge self. Two attacks while Large with glaive at +10 for 1d10+1d6+6 (+1 Magic Weapon). Crit on 19-20. Large size gives you greater coverage with your glaive for OAs. Cast Shield if really needed but mostly save spell slots for Enlarge. This isn't as much damage as it looks for level 10, so I'd stay tanky and go with option 2: Attack routine 2: Two attacks with glaive at +10 for 1d10+6 (+1 Magic Weapon). Crit on 19-20. Save spell slots for Shield, use as needed. Strategies: Arcane Ward from abjuration grants 8THP 1/day from your Protection vs Evil spell and 2THP whenever you cast Shield. You have the full range of low-level spells available to you, so at the risk of losing some character focus you can cast stuff like Hold Person and Invisibility and whatever. But you have to choose: if you are going to Shield a lot, you can't Enlarge every fight, and vice-versa. If you do decide to mostly stick with 1 or 2 spells, you can dump INT to 10, take wizard at 1, then fighter at 2, and put more into CON. ~ So the EK turns out to have a gimmick or two, and the F/W multi is more versatile and pretty much better. This gets crazier if you add polearm feats and whatnot, but I'll keep it simple and leave it at that. If you combined EK and Abjurer instead, you would count as a 6th-level mage for spell slots, gaining 2 extra level 3 slots but no level 3 spells (you can upgrade lower level spells). In exchange you would lose the crit bonus. Not really worth it, IMO.
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Jul 29, 2014 03:28
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I wrote up that EK as level 10, but at 11 it gets triple attacks. That pretty much blows away its low-level casting abilities. The best course of action really is to buff your melee and focus on that.
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Jul 30, 2014 02:15
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QuantumNinja posted:Does it bother anyone else that the wizard gets like eight different specializations while the other classes only get three each? Yes it's terrible how they had to water down the wizard by splitting their skills eight ways.
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Jul 30, 2014 21:59
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In 5e, like 8 out of 12 classes are spell casters. But at least they finally made Diviners useful.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:31
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QuantumNinja posted:The ones I've seen don't look watered down. If the specializations for wizards were all comparatively weaker, it would be cool, but I was being sarcastic but I'm pretty sure I saw the same post for reals on enworld.
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Jul 30, 2014 23:19
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Lord of Bore posted:The Adventurer's League Player Guide for Tyranny of Dragons is out and available here Well there's a few interesting bits. And it has a lot of bookkeeping and crap that any Living game has. -The 'alternate' human is legal for play, meaning you can start with a feat. A pretty big deal when feats like War Caster and Heavy Armor Master are technically available from level 1. -No stat rolling, point buy or standard array only. -Evil is cool, but only Lawful Evil. Should have banned the worst alignment, Chaotic Neutral. -Multiclassing and feats are ok, as long as they are in the PHB. -Free retraining of any and everything up until level 5. Starting then, you are stuck with your choices permanently. -Use of minis and the grid is optional, up to the DM. -If you die, you or the party can pay up the 1250gp required to revive you. Otherwise you stay dead. From level 1-4, your faction (NPCs) can revive you for free, but you lose all XP and stuff from that session. -"Lifestyle" is tied to background. Criminals start off as poors, but charlatans are 'comfortable'. Gotta do crime right. But begging must pay off since urchins have lifted themselves out of poverty. It also gives a list of the PHB backgrounds: pre:Background - Starting Lifestyle Acolyte Modest Charlatan Comfortable Criminal Poor Entertainer Modest Folk Hero Modest Guild Artisan Comfortable Hermit Poor Noble Wealthy Outlander Poor Sage Modest Sailor Modest Soldier Modest Urchin Modest
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Aug 1, 2014 12:50
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Oddly specific, and I can't think of them pictured that way with dart tips anywhere.
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Aug 1, 2014 13:35
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And now for my personal favorite, more wild mage time. Tides of Chaos!  We've seen this before, final version of the wild magic table. At 14 you get to roll twice and take whichever. 
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Aug 1, 2014 22:32
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You just struck nerd gold.
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Aug 3, 2014 07:18
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thespaceinvader posted:I wonder if CN:MS is going to be any good. Anyone beta testing? Beta hasn't opened yet, but they will be running it at Gencon so I'll see it there. The PHB and the 1-5 module Hoard of the Dragon Queen will both be on sale starting on the 8th, that's this friday. But only at the WPN stores. Gencon is the week after.
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Aug 3, 2014 17:08
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 11:18 |
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D&D isn't the lowest spot on the nerd totem pole. LARPing is.
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Aug 4, 2014 05:16
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