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I definitely agree Matt's been pulling his punches. I think he's a pretty good DM, but the dude seems real hesitant to slap his players for anything. Jester defacing the statue of a state-approved god was brought up, but the party also tried to scam the Gentleman repeatedly after doing a single job for him, lying to his face multiple times, and he let them off with little more than an implicit threat. I get that the Gentleman's a mafia boss, that he rules through fear and coercion rather than violence, but come on dude, they're trying to pull one over on you Day One. Break a finger or two, why don't you. The party's association with the Gentleman also kinda cheapens Beau's and Molly's anti-authoritarian inclinations. Beau hates I don't mind the slow drip of backstory, and I'm still enjoying the campaign as a whole, but I can see how certain players have grown frustrating to watch. Gaz-L posted:The problem with going to a bow for Molly is that it fucks over his main ability. The damage buff to weapons explicitly fades once a weapon leaves your hand/hits it's target if thrown/shot. It's like a rogue using a weapon that doesn't allow Sneak Attack. Sure, you CAN do it, but you're basically nerfing your character in a way that isn't even really that easy to justify from an RP sense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huh1wvA3Bgw&t=104s
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Jun 3, 2018 16:44
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It is a class that requires a decent pool of HP to make full use of it's poo poo, but I think the other thing is that he's not quite clicked that you can keep the swords lit for like 8 hours as long as you don't sheathe them. It's not like you need to take two lots of self-damage every combat if the group isn't resting. In fact, you can light them up BEFORE combat and they'll stay up.
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Jun 3, 2018 16:45
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Bad Seafood posted:I definitely agree Matt's been pulling his punches. I think he's a pretty good DM, but the dude seems real hesitant to slap his players for anything. See: the tenuous alliance with Raishan last campaign where Vax, Percy, and Keyleth were so audaciously antagonistic and disrespectful to her that it is a miracle Matt didn't have her break from the party and raze Whitestone in retaliation. In nearly every conversation they had, those three would insist on insulting her, threatening her, and just generally making asses of themselves in such a way that it began to reflect poorly on Raishan that she continued to put up with their bullshit, even if she did need them to kill Thordak. One time Percy even tried to shank her, hastily backpedaling when he ended up attacking her illusory double, and she let it go. Seriously by the time they fought Thordak I was rooting for Raishan because VM had just become so insufferable. Her defeating them after Thordak was one of the greatest episodes of the last campaign.
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Jun 3, 2018 17:04
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The only thing worse than Molly’s lack of combat ability is his accent.
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Jun 3, 2018 17:09
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Percy trying to stab Raishan wasn't intended as a direct double-cross, it was to force her hand and make her reveal herself. It was actually pretty clever. Either she rages out and attacks, but not only were the whole party there, so were a bunch of their bigger gun NPC allies to back them up. Or she's forced on to the back foot and has to deal with them from a position of greater honesty than she was prepared for. The illusion choice meant the second option played out. I suppose it depends on how you approach your players. I don't have an issue with them dying IF the dice fall that way, but I'd be very hesitant to make a decision that amounts to 'rocks fall everyone dies' so I can prove my awesome villain is much smarter than the players.
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Jun 3, 2018 17:31
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It's not an excuse to power trip or wipe the party, it's about how the world of the game, the story, reacts to player stimulus. It'd needn't be a villain, impressive or otherwise, nor does it need to amount to death, but there should be something. The empire only permits the worship of a select few gods, and in fact offers cash for turning in heretics - something Matt was upfront about and telegraphed clearly. Jester's faith makes her a target, but so long as she keeps it to herself she should be okay. Of course, Jester worships her god by performing acts of mischief, so she swaps books around, leaves pamphlets by the window sill, but that's all low-key enough that it shouldn't cause trouble. Then she approaches the temple of an honored god in the middle of the day and attempts to climb the central statue with the intent to deface it in public, and gets caught in the act. That's crossing a line past which the player is actively pushing up against the boundaries of the setting. Which is fine, players are allowed to do that, that's part of the game, but there needs to be an (appropriate) response or the fiction itself is undermined. And the fiction does matter since, again, we're telling a story here. Collectively. It's not "Just" a game when everyone involved is pouring hundreds of hours of their lives into it, including all the off-screen hours Matt spends prepping his little pocket universe. As with combat, there's no real tension without the possibility of losing something, even if that something is relatively minor. I'm not saying Matt shouldn't have given her an out - all things considered, giving her the chance to talk her way out was both fair and fitting - but he certainly gave her the easiest, mellowest clergyman possible to deal with, in a society where heathen faiths are actively hunted, in the middle of a temple where, if nowhere else, it can be assumed those present are fairly devout. Pretty lucky. On it's own, that'd be nothing - of course not every priest is going to be uptight, or vigilant, or whatever - but in light of other calls Matt's made, I can see the argument for him sparing the rod (and spoiling the child). If you walk up to a nobleman who is explicitly described as vain and pompous and splash your drink directly in his face, without even being subtle about it, I don't think it's the DM trying to flex his muscles when the nobleman orders his bodyguards to seize you.
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Jun 3, 2018 18:23
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Gaz-L posted:Percy trying to stab Raishan wasn't intended as a direct double-cross, it was to force her hand and make her reveal herself. It was actually pretty clever. No way. That's how Percy (read: Taliesin) tried to justify afterwards once he realized he'd hosed up. I remember the top half of the table especially calling him out for his transparent attempt to recontextaulize it as "Percy being a master manipulator"/"according to keikaku" bullshit. He was 100% going for the kill (or rather, maximum damage), which is why he specified he was taking all three attacks that he could rather than just one. Rewatching the scene now, you can see Taliesin seemingly run it by Marisha right before he does it and you can see from his panicked reaction when Matt begins to describe the illusion that Taliesin was not anticipating his attacks not landing and being exposed for nothing. It seems to me that Taliesin wanted to reveal J'mon but everyone was hesitant because of Raishan, so he decided to fight her right then and there because they had Allura and Gilmore with them, and he says something to that effect as the rest of party freak out when he announces the attack.
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Jun 3, 2018 18:54
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Bad Seafood posted:If you walk up to a nobleman who is explicitly described as vain and pompous and splash your drink directly in his face, without even being subtle about it, I don't think it's the DM trying to flex his muscles when the nobleman orders his bodyguards to seize you. Pretty much. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
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Jun 3, 2018 20:00
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The only thing that will fix Molly is character death. Like, does anyone really want to see 20 levels of goddamned Blood Hunter? It's a hideous conceptual and mechanical mess. Putting Matt's early homebrew on blast for the whole world is doing nobody any favors.
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Jun 3, 2018 20:13
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Was there a blood hunter NPC in campaign 1?
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Jun 3, 2018 20:17
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The guest character Tova was a Blood Hunter but she was there for like half an episode (or was it one and a half?) and was also a different subclass in a class where each sub is wildly different from the rest.
Nehru the Damaja fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Jun 3, 2018 |
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Jun 3, 2018 20:21
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I wonder if we'd be having similar conversations had we seen the first eight or so levels of the Vox Machina campaign.
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Jun 3, 2018 23:56
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Blockhouse posted:I wonder if we'd be having similar conversations had we seen the first eight or so levels of the Vox Machina campaign. Only if Percy was a Gunslinger that constantly got into melee
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Jun 4, 2018 00:02
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I think Liam mentioned that Percy didn't say jack poo poo about his backstory or anything about himself at all until it was revealed on the stream, and that was after like a year and a half of playing at home? So apparently yes, we would have been saying that because these guys are playing the long game whether we like it or not. Molly's class is still poo poo though.
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Jun 4, 2018 00:03
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Nehru the Damaja posted:The only thing that will fix Molly is character death. Like, does anyone really want to see 20 levels of goddamned Blood Hunter? It's a hideous conceptual and mechanical mess. Putting Matt's early homebrew on blast for the whole world is doing nobody any favors. Here's the thing, it's not an early homebrew. The class has been out for like 2 years and Matt's done several revisions on it, including one right before this campaign. Like it or not, this is the revised 'balanced' version. CuwiKhons posted:I think Liam mentioned that Percy didn't say jack poo poo about his backstory or anything about himself at all until it was revealed on the stream, and that was after like a year and a half of playing at home? So apparently yes, we would have been saying that because these guys are playing the long game whether we like it or not. Yeah, and for all people are moaning about Vax's backstory being dark, that was actually all stuff that happened during the stream. The 'chosen one' element was Matt throwing his friend a bone because he'd been having a lovely time IRL. Vex was actually the one with the darker backstory, with the whole background to how she found Trinket, and that barely came up. Otherwise their backstory was "bastard kids of an elven nobleman, lived with mom for a bit, went to live with dad but the other elves are racists, went back home oops mom's dead cuz a dragon ate her".
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Jun 4, 2018 00:42
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Gaz-L posted:Here's the thing, it's not an early homebrew. The class has been out for like 2 years and Matt's done several revisions on it, including one right before this campaign. Like it or not, this is the revised 'balanced' version. Okay so I never saw s1 and I'm only up to like episode 14 of s2 plus I genuinely don't know how many different system's Matt has played or if hes one of those D&D lifer types but the fundamental design of the Blood Hunter is flooded with the hallmarks of 'early homebrew'. Its built with a lot of conflicting design principles you genuinely don't know until you've played a game or played a game with similar mechanical decisions to the one you've been playing. They are mistakes you genuinely don't get until you've seen a game play out a bit and see how mechanics interact with each other, either here or in other similar systems that has these problems. A real big obviously one is the damage yourself to power abilities mechanic. That's a great fundamental concept but if the class is supposed to be getting stuck int melee then it really needs some way to compensate. See in D&D 5e you are fundamentally going to take damage in melee. The dice are going to fly your way and its going to burn your resources, in the case of a melee character your resource is health and it determines when you need to stop for a rest just like a wizard is tracking their spells per day.If your character self-harms on top then you are basically creating a class that double dips into your resources. The mechanical solution to this is basically one of two options in D&D 5e, either a) you can reliably heal yourself in some way or b) you have a huge health pool. Giving the class 1d12 for your hit dice might a quick fix, you're essentially doing what a barbarian does except you going in hurting yourself and you cant get a shield like a barbarian. So you end up getting hit more often and you're doing so with less health as a blood hunter and in return you get what, a tiny bit of bonus damage and some low level spells? This is a fix but it doesn't actually encourage you to stay in melee that long. The problem is the class is fragile for its role and you dont have any good reason to want to get stuck into it. They are essentially a striker class like a rogue but without the mechanics to survive and/or get out of combat. A better option to solve this would be a healing mechanic, maybe make the elemental damage you do to the enemy heal you on top. This solves a vast line of problems: 1) You now actively want to charge into melee and stay there 2) The 2 bonus actions needed to charge up multiple swords is genuinely a valuable opportunity cost as being able to heal from an extra attack is powerful 3) It makes the Blood Maledict self-damage stuff far more appealing as its essentially a temporary problem rather than a self-sabotaging problem 4) Gives you a class and role defining ability that this class is lacking in the form of the Transfusion Curse being something that turns you into a health battery funnelling damage from the enemy to you to the party much like the paladins super save aura. 5) Gives you far more flexibility designing class features allowing you to scrap the dumb limits on the Blood Maledict stuff and instead just have a constantly growing cost that resets on a short rest. Instead of 1 and done, you take damage equal to (Crimson Rite die)d(number of times) used since last short rest. So 0d4 on the first use then 1d4 on the second etc, 2d4 on the third etc. Amplify puts an extra die on top. So its really interesting watching so far and trying to get into Critical Role because its pretty clear to me Matt is a Writer GM. In my experience there are kinda 3 spectrum's a GM lands somewhere between: The Writer: GMs who really go all in on their setting and story and locations and just have lots of detail on their world building. The Actor: GM's who go for more of a cardboard cut out of their world and tend to lean entirely into improv and having their NPCs do the heavy lifting. The Engineer: GM's who trust/love the mechanics and depend upon them to build engagement, produce memorable moments or drive narratives. Obviously nobody is entirely 1 of the 3 and is always a bit of everything but usually people lean in the direction of 1 or 2. I had assumed Matt would be an Actor type who is all improv but he very clearly is a Writer GM. Now to be clear I want to say that like all GM's is doing a bit of everything but just that where he choose to focus his time and resources above the other two. The weakest of the three fields is very clearly the Engineer part of things but from what he's said he really wants to to focus and improve on that. Again I'm not sure what season 1 was like but I definitely see it in a lot of his encounters where there are a lot of systems hes trying to put into a fight (up to episode 14 so far) where they havn't quite been something the players have a way to interact with but is more something they've watched and then decided to just attack instead. The magic carpet fight seems like a good example of a clever mechanic that the players cant really engage with. It grabs people and if you attack the carpet it also hurts the player. The option to get it off someone isn't really efficient and theres nothing environmental to indicate a way to contain it. This is one of those mechanics you really need to telegraph at your players how to deal with especially if you've not experienced it before, it may seem odd but straight up telling a player what the enemy is about to do before the player takes their action gives them a whole extra turn to try something. Something like having the russian style carpets tied and hung on the walls like paintings and seeing loose ropes from a anchor point might be a good instruction that they can tie it up and pull it off. Either way its a small thing but its one of those kinda mechanics that isn't really the best to build player engagement and the fun and memorable part of that scene is that they thought it was a magical item and not a monster. I'll be interested to see how he does this and what he succeeds or fails at. D&D is one of those games that absolutely needs a grid to make interesting mechanics the players can interact with and due to the very swingy nature of the game its usually very hard to pull off in general. CuwiKhons posted:I think Liam mentioned that Percy didn't say jack poo poo about his backstory or anything about himself at all until it was revealed on the stream, and that was after like a year and a half of playing at home? So apparently yes, we would have been saying that because these guys are playing the long game whether we like it or not. I mean was s1 their first campaign ever? Their characters having any kind of backstory beyond the most simple of things is a loving miracle in and of itself and I assume thats a result of them all having acting experience and/or being told they are going on camera and seeing the reaction to other character's backstories. Honestly the only backstory stuff I've found super dumb so far was an NPC showing up who knew Molly and then Molly not engaging with it. Bad Seafood posted:I definitely agree Matt's been pulling his punches. I think he's a pretty good DM, but the dude seems real hesitant to slap his players for anything. Jester defacing the statue of a state-approved god was brought up, but the party also tried to scam the Gentleman repeatedly after doing a single job for him, lying to his face multiple times, and he let them off with little more than an implicit threat. I get that the Gentleman's a mafia boss, that he rules through fear and coercion rather than violence, but come on dude, they're trying to pull one over on you Day One. Break a finger or two, why don't you. I mean shutting someones dumb little quirks and habits down is a super lovely thing to do, who cares if its not realistic. I don't know if this got real bad in s1 or anything where it was over the top ridiculous but seriously if they are doing lighthearted or playful things just let it go and let the player have their fun. Honestly Beau is mostly frustrating because shes antagonistic towards basically everyone for no real reason and that gets boring fast. If they don't want to do any work redesigning the Blood Hunter or think its at a good place (I saw a video of Matt saying the redesigned Ranger was too powerful so lol maybe he thinks the Blood Hunter is in a good spot), they just need to give molly a one handed reach weapon that counts as finesse and leave it at that. kingcom fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Jun 4, 2018 |
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Jun 4, 2018 03:36
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Give him the glory kill system in doom, fill every encounter with minions.
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Jun 4, 2018 03:49
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Jun 4, 2018 04:02
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Sion posted:Give him the glory kill system in doom, fill every encounter with minions. Unironically really good design.
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Jun 4, 2018 04:07
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I dont know much about Doom but if that system means "kill things = get health" then Taliesin actually had something similiar last campaign. Every time he killed an enemy, he got a grit point back (grit being basically sorcery points for the gunslinger to let him do extra poo poo). It worked really well and it encouraged Percy to play clean up before unloading on a major baddie. Gunslinger was overall much more well done than Blood Hunter, but that may have been because it was just a subclass to Fighter rather than a full class that had to stand up on its own merits. Edit - also to your other point, Taliesin, Marisha, and Liam (and Matt of course) were the only ones who had played D&D prior to campaign 1 and Liam hadnt played since high school. Taliesin has said before that he was brought in as 'ringer' to get the party out of trouble when they couldn't figure out dumb puzzles for toddlers so he got in the habit of standing back and letting everyone else try something or speak up first. That was ages ago though. CuwiKhons fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Jun 4, 2018 |
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Jun 4, 2018 04:51
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CuwiKhons posted:I dont know much about Doom but if that system means "kill things = get health" then Taliesin actually had something similiar last campaign. Every time he killed an enemy, he got a grit point back (grit being basically sorcery points for the gunslinger to let him do extra poo poo). It worked really well and it encouraged Percy to play clean up before unloading on a major baddie. Doom 2016 is the most well designed FPS in history and basically nails the most important part of designing mechanics that encourage the behaviour you want to see. The game lets you carry all weapons but with limited ammo and you get health + ammo by smashing demons in the face so by design the game involves you charging in with your weapons at all times, constantly moving to melee kill targets and constantly switching between weapons as you run out of ammo -> switch weapon -> kill monster to get ammo for the gun you ran out of -> run out of ammo -> rinse and repeat. I'm guessing since they switched over from a pathfinder game that they were using the Gunslinger from but rather than building a whole class from scratch Matt bolted a new mechanic on. Sounds like that mechanic really helped give a guiding and unique role for a him so it worked perfectly. Also one thing to point out with Taliesin is he really did try to go in to melee early, both in the initial zombie fights and against the frog demon thing + mephits, its just every time he got clobbered by something big pretty hard and ever since has just been hanging far back. That might have been something hes got locked in his head and you have a couple more fights of not being able to hit while the Vicious Mockery is absolutely crushing your opponents is going to encourage your behaviour. Has anything actually charged him in melee and forced him into fighting like that?
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Jun 4, 2018 06:16
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Yes, Gunslinger was a 5e adaptation of the Pathfinder class (I'm not familiar with Pathfinder but I'm given to understand its kind of like 3.5, which I haven't played in ages). I can't say how faithful an adaptation it was, but it worked fine. Blood Hunter is based on the Witcher, as I understand it. Which obviously has no pre existing tabletop format and while Matt did get feedback on it from some tabletop forums, it clearly hasn't been extensively playtested and it shows. Even Tova last campaign was not actually useful, we were just dazzled by how cool a werebear was. And no, Matt hasn't forced Molly into melee yet. I don't know how Matt will let Molly be useless before he makes a suggestion, whether out of game or with a charging minotaur or something.
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Jun 4, 2018 07:27
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CuwiKhons posted:Yes, Gunslinger was a 5e adaptation of the Pathfinder class (I'm not familiar with Pathfinder but I'm given to understand its kind of like 3.5, which I haven't played in ages). I can't say how faithful an adaptation it was, but it worked fine. Blood Hunter is based on the Witcher, as I understand it. Which obviously has no pre existing tabletop format and while Matt did get feedback on it from some tabletop forums, it clearly hasn't been extensively playtested and it shows. Pathfinder is literally D&D3.5 with someones houserules put on top, it neigh identical functionally. I mean the Revised Ranger/Monster Slayer is a pretty drat close class/archetype for a Witcher to be honest, all it lacks is the mutagen system but in D&D world thats just potion usage and its open to everyone. Ironically this is probably the easiest problem to solve, I just suppose there is nothing else to really talk about with Molly so far, at least until I catch up so it sticks out a lot. Nott + Caleb continue to be the real stars of the show though I hope 'hiding what magic items do from people' isn't something that sticks around.
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Jun 4, 2018 07:32
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kingcom posted:
Campaign 1 was only the first for Sam and Marisha, I think, and they're both the ones who have the backgrounds that were hastily assembled out of pop culture references (Scanlan's past is literally the plot to Eight Mile and Keyleth is very clearly Avatar the Last Airbender influenced) Everyone else had brief little background bits, with Tallesin as the one with the in-depth background from the start. Dude also used to be a VTM LARPer so that's the least surprising thing ever.
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Jun 4, 2018 07:40
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Blockhouse posted:Campaign 1 was only the first for Sam and Marisha, I think, and they're both the ones who have the backgrounds that were hastily assembled out of pop culture references (Scanlan's past is literally the plot to Eight Mile and Keyleth is very clearly Avatar the Last Airbender influenced) I mean...that kinda fits with how he plays lol. Honestly just ripping off a story you enjoy for your character is a REALLY good idea. I cannot express how good that idea is because if you like it, theres probably something of value to that story and theres a decent chance other people don't know it or don't see it. It's probably designed and written by someone far more talented than you and has a clear follow through. Its a fantastic basis for a character and is honestly far better and more engaging that trying to spin off your own thing completely. Following an iconic archetype and trope is genuinely a great idea. I'm not seeing what people are complaining about backstory wise, I get a lot of people watch it because they really want to connect with those character but that's not something but if they're doing a 2-20 campaign, that stuff doesn't really rocket out if you're playing a tabletop game vs a podcast that happens to have a game in it, especially one that doesn't put mechanical hooks into your backstory or allow you to put hooks out. I have a pretty clear picture of who everyone is by episode 14 and what they are about personality wise (except Molly really) so unless nothing at all character wise happens in the next 10 episodes they've done a pretty good set up to be honest. Well actually Fjord hasn't really had much of a character moment outside a dream he didn't get to do anything in.
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Jun 4, 2018 07:51
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Blockhouse posted:Campaign 1 was only the first for Sam and Marisha, I think, and they're both the ones who have the backgrounds that were hastily assembled out of pop culture references (Scanlan's past is literally the plot to Eight Mile and Keyleth is very clearly Avatar the Last Airbender influenced) It was definitely Travis and Laura's first game, and Marisha had played a little before I think. Or at least I assume she had. She was dating Matt, it'd be hard to avoid.
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Jun 4, 2018 07:58
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kingcom posted:I mean shutting someones dumb little quirks and habits down is a super lovely thing to do Implementing consequence for player action isn't an all-or-nothing prospect, guys. You can let your players have fun and get up to shenanigans and still allow them to get burned when they play with matches. Matt's more or less fine when he's running fights, the problems there are more 5th edition's than anyone else's, but he's pretty protective of his players in social situations where maybe he oughtn't. That doesn't mean I want him to kill them. Despite using her as an example, I really like Jester and the contrast she brings, being cheerful and optimistic while her peers are busy being gloomy and antisocial - which I also don't mind, it's all balance.
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Jun 4, 2018 12:55
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I mean he did have Grog and Scanlan almost fight every guard in Vasselheim last campaign because of something remarkably stupid Grog did like ten sessions prior, had the deal with the Clasp fall through because Vax and Keyleth couldn't morally compromise even a little, and had the team temporarily stripped of their positions due to attacking visiting nobles and the unrepentant chainsawing of an unconscious old lady. I don't think Matt's afraid to hold them responsible for doing dumb poo poo in social situations.
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Jun 4, 2018 13:06
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If you say so. I mentioned way back when I first started posting in this thread I kinda fell off S1 early, only to settle in to S2 pretty easily, so that's informed most of my views. And I'd be happy to be proven wrong, should it come to pass, but so long as we were having this conversation anyway, I wanted to share my impressions thus far.
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Jun 4, 2018 13:35
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Just from my personal experience with running Blood Hunter for one of my players, that class is a lot better when played as a ranged attacker. Taliesin's got it half right, but chucking Vicious Mockery at a DC10 is not doing him any favors. He's already settled on being a Dex attacker, someone needs to just shove a longbow in his character's arms and lay down the hurt 60 feet away. I personally don't think it's a poo poo class, although the Mutant subclass or whatever it's called should have been left on the cutting room floor. The other trouble, though, is that every class kind-of has a "vanilla" subclass, like Champion Fighter, Hunter Ranger, or Open Hand Monk. Taliesin chose Ghostslayer, which is definitely just the vanilla Blood Hunter choice, and left him out of some of the more interesting character abilities. He didn't even have to, his character was like 16 Wis at level 3? He could have easily picked up the Profane Soul for some more reliable spellcasting than his dumb racial choices. It just really bothers me that he decided to basically make Charisma his dump stat for a character that was not only a grifter, but also had racial abilities he opted in to use. He literally chose an alternate Tiefling to give him Vicious Mockery and Enthrall, then did no favors on making those abilities worth using.
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Jun 4, 2018 14:38
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Yeah ranged blood hunter seems like a decent idea, self-harm from activating isn't as much of an issue if you're out of the fray and I'd think the weapon rites would work on ranged as well. I'd at least want to be two-handed so I'd just have to flip on one weapon. The more I think about it the less I take offense at class design, sure some can be better than others but ultimately everyone is chumped by high level casters anyway so what' the big deal. I also am feeling somewhat empowered by weakness since I have the worst stat rolls on my character in a campaign I just started (one 15 a 12, and the rest at 0, -1 or -2 mods) and the rest of the party rolled golden gods, so it's kind of fun to play someone who's so wholly incompetent. Of course, I wouldn't want to then watch that character constantly make ridiculous choices in every fight.
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Jun 4, 2018 16:50
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I caught up on season 2 and now I'm back working on season 1. I wonder if Travis's decision to play a half orc this time stemmed from the time way back in Vox Machina episode 17 that the half-orc in the arena pit battle only beat Grog thanks to the relentless endurance racial.
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Jun 4, 2018 21:42
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I noticed he described his relentless endurance almost the same way. Could be.
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Jun 4, 2018 22:17
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Didn't Travis also forget his racial in that case as well? (Stone's Endurance, which lets you reduce damage by a d10 plus your level, if I recall)
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Jun 4, 2018 23:28
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Gaz-L posted:Didn't Travis also forget his racial in that case as well? (Stone's Endurance, which lets you reduce damage by a d10 plus your level, if I recall) That didn't come up at all. Not sure I've ever noticed him use it in the 17 eps I've listened to on the podcast though I may have missed it.
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Jun 4, 2018 23:37
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Malpais Legate posted:Just from my personal experience with running Blood Hunter for one of my players, that class is a lot better when played as a ranged attacker. Taliesin's got it half right, but chucking Vicious Mockery at a DC10 is not doing him any favors. He's already settled on being a Dex attacker, someone needs to just shove a longbow in his character's arms and lay down the hurt 60 feet away. So these are all 5e problems causing this. First with the ranged weapon as the preferred combat style, its not actually clear if bows/xbows are actually allowed. The rite description describes thrown weapons as being a valid choice but it's not clear to me if ammunition launched from a weapon works or not. I would hope it would but I genuinely can't tell. So the other big problem is yeah of course Molly is going to have a garbage Charisma, the Blood Hunter class tells him to order his stats (Str/Dex) -> Wis -> Con. He needs his attack stat for doing his job and wisdom is the key stat for all his class abilities plus since hes likely to get stuck into melee and is burning a lot of health to get his weapons buffed hes also going to need a decent constitution. He simply doesn't have a good stat to put into charisma even if it would fit his character. It's a pretty age old D&D problem that if you want to be a shady grifter, you're better off being a paladin than a rogue.
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Jun 5, 2018 00:29
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bagrada posted:That didn't come up at all. Not sure I've ever noticed him use it in the 17 eps I've listened to on the podcast though I may have missed it. It's because he did in fact forget to use it. He would have won the fight if he'd remembered his Goliath racial. Ironically in the new campaign, Travis also went down to an attack really early in the show (I think from the devil toad) and he could have stayed standing if he'd remembered he was a half orc this go around. kingcom posted:So these are all 5e problems causing this. First with the ranged weapon as the preferred combat style, its not actually clear if bows/xbows are actually allowed. The rite description describes thrown weapons as being a valid choice but it's not clear to me if ammunition launched from a weapon works or not. I would hope it would but I genuinely can't tell. Matt has confirmed on Twitter at some point that ranged combat works fine with a Blood Hunter. Your rites effect the bolt/arrow/whatever, not the ranged weapon itself. I assume Taliesin didn't pick ranged fighter again because he was a Gunslinger last campaign, but unfortunately that's clearly the best way to play his new class too. Duel wielding Blood Hunter seems to be honestly the worst possibly way he could have gone. The only way he could have made his character more useless would be to have taken the Mutant subclass, which is hot garbage.
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Jun 5, 2018 01:31
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If he had better CHA, he could probably augment things by going into Bard for a few levels, grab the College of Blades specialty which still fits Molly's whole aesthetic.
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Jun 5, 2018 01:55
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kingcom posted:So these are all 5e problems causing this. You are talking about the language used in a homebrew class and blaming 5E for it.
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Jun 5, 2018 03:55
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Firstborn posted:You are talking about the language used in a homebrew class and blaming 5E for it. lol, the points im making are: 1) Natural Langauge makes it confusing to tell what it applies to 2) Molly is a shady grifter/charlatan but because of his class needing his stats, he's incredibly charismatic and bad at it Those are the things I'm blaming 5e for, we had this discussion in the 5e thread man, you were there reading it. I mean you want to disagree with me sure thats fine but yeah someone following the design layout of the game for their homebrew and it leading to confusion is something I can point at the game for. Gaz-L posted:If he had better CHA, he could probably augment things by going into Bard for a few levels, grab the College of Blades specialty which still fits Molly's whole aesthetic. Yeah Molly definitely acts like a Bard more than anything else, he wants to be a sword dude with some magic on it, just spin the college as his unexplained history/power background and you're done. CuwiKhons posted:Matt has confirmed on Twitter at some point that ranged combat works fine with a Blood Hunter. Your rites effect the bolt/arrow/whatever, not the ranged weapon itself. I assume Taliesin didn't pick ranged fighter again because he was a Gunslinger last campaign, but unfortunately that's clearly the best way to play his new class too. Oh nice yeah then the archer Blood Hunter is most definitely the way to play it as it removes one of the big downsides to just using your class abilities. So turns out I was misreading the Mutant subclass all along with how much of a bonus they gave and goddamn are those mutagens extremely worthless and highly restricted. kingcom fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Jun 5, 2018 |
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Jun 5, 2018 04:18
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