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Great, now I've got the idea of a Darkest Dungeon knockoff starring the ducks rattling around in my brain and I'm going to have to live with never seeing it come to life.
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Nov 17, 2020 19:58
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In time you will know the true extent of Yelm's failings.
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Nov 17, 2020 20:00
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Haystack posted:Great, now I've got the idea of a Darkest Dungeon knockoff starring the ducks rattling around in my brain and I'm going to have to live with never seeing it come to life. Darkwing Duckeon.
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Nov 17, 2020 20:03
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Nanomashoes posted:In time you will know the true extent of Yelm's failings. But I already do? Yelm himself assures me he's perfect all the drat time? 
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Nov 17, 2020 20:06
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Glorantha already has Chaos and undead and cannibalistic cults, the thing that edgelords cannot except is that the world has some good things in it.
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Nov 17, 2020 20:14
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Night10194 posted:Yeah Ducks spend a shitload of time swording dark wizards and fighting the undead, and a bunch of them are Humakti. Every Duck is Donald Duck - badasses who are kind of cursed.
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Nov 17, 2020 20:23
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Loxbourne posted:Ducks who are sacred to the death-god are a perfect injection of charm and alien-ness. Previously, I thought KotD Donald Duck ducks were the superior chioce, but the realistic duck veteran with the pipe looks all sorts of awesome. E: I learned about Glorantha via a /tg/ LP of KotD and I don't ever remember anyone making GBS threads up the thread with duck hate. Everyone agrees: DO NOT gently caress WITH THE DUCKS, which is great advice for both players and PCs. JcDent fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Nov 17, 2020 |
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Nov 17, 2020 21:42
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Haystack posted:Great, now I've got the idea of a Darkest Dungeon knockoff starring the ducks rattling around in my brain and I'm going to have to live with never seeing it come to life. Duckest Dungeon
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Nov 17, 2020 22:48
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Night10194 posted:But I already do? Yelm himself assures me he's perfect all the drat time? Yelm has an Other though. Khazkartoum is the opposite of perfect, and also part of Yelm.
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Nov 18, 2020 01:43
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Playing Assassin's Creed recently has reminded me that vikings are enormous drama-queens too.
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Nov 18, 2020 02:32
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Age of Sigmar Lore Chat: Cities of Sigmar A Tale of Two Cities   Hammerhal, the Twin-Tailed City, is by far the largest of the Free Cities outside Azyr and Sigmar's greatest beachhead outside his own realm. It is an immense urban project that croses between Aqshy and Ghyran, founded long ago when Sigmar first began his war on Chaos anew. It is centered on the Stormrift Realmgate, once controlled by a large group of orruk tribes that worshipped it as the manifestation of Mork's Maw. It took 30 Chambers of Stormcast to assault the gate from both sides, led by the Hammers of Sigmar. In honor of this, the Hammers were granted stewardship of Hammerhal once it was built, overseeing it from the massive fortress Perspicarium. The locals of Hammerhal are immensely proud of the Hammers, and are well known for striving to match them in both martial skill and honorable action. In practice, Hammerhal is two seperate settlements with a shared government. Hammerhal Aqsha serves as a fortified industrial center, while Hammerhal Ghyra produces food in its many manicured gardens. Their symbiotic tie to each other has kept them safe from many threats. Magma is channeled out of Aqshy to form a strong defensive perimeter around Hammerhal Ghyra, preventing the quickly-growing plant life around the city from reclaiming it and thus ensuring both cities maintain a strong food supply. The markets of the twin cities aren't just in food and metals, though - you can find just about anything, as Hammerhal's two cities are built in an ideal location for airship trade. A huge chasm runs through the center of the cities and their shared Realmgate, which provides safe passage for airships and the flying beetles of the Sylvaneth to dock and trade. The city population is immense, with all kinds of refugees seeking safety in the city. The Darkling Covens have made a home in the adrker alleys, while the Wanderer aelves guard Hammerhal Ghyra as if it were their old homeland. The Dispossessed are highly prized for their industrial skill, and many duardin make an excellent living in the forges and factories of Hammerhal Aqsha or leading architectural projects to grow the city. The constant push to expand means that city districts can grow vibrant and then stagnate with relatively little notice, and it's simply impossible to provide sufficient housing for the sheer number of people living in the city. While the noble quarters of neighborhoods like Goldpath or Sanctor Tulis are renowned for their beauty, many more of Hammerhal's residents live in tenement slums, and even the Hammers of Sigmar and their justiciars have trouble keeping crime under control. Cinderfall District and Blackwood Town are both notorious criminal havens, run by gangs and mobsters. Many escape the slums by signing on with the Freeguilds in pursuit of fame, glory and wealth. The Freeguild armies of the city are easily the largest and best-equipped of any of the Cities of Sigmar. The people of Hammerhal are a martial sort and take great pride in their stubborn refusal to quit. Their most famous units are the Goldjacket infantry, the core of the Freeguild forces who are said to never retreat, regardless of how terrifying the foe might be. There are seven Freeguilds in the city, each claiming lineage from one of the seven Sigmarite tribes that followed their god into Azyr before its gates were shut. They take great pride in this heritage, and each guild fiercely guards the ancient battle-standard of their tribe. These standards are immense and valuable artifacts, often woven of materials like Hyshian suncloth and hung with the bones of honored martyrs. The Goldjackets carry them onto the field for inspiration in battle and to keep their courage up. Each Freeguild makes it clear to all recruits - die before you let the colors fall. To lose one of the war-banners would be a disgrace that could never be recovered from, and it has only happened once in all of the city's history. The Griffon Spears, the Freeguild in question, decided to expunge their dishonor by performing a suicide charge against a greenskin force that outnumbered them eight to one. The Forlorn Charge, as it is known, is still the subject of song and story, seen as a tale of heroic pride in the face of death. Given the size of the city, Hammerhal can call on just about any force it needs from among the Free Peoples. Handgunners, steam tanks, swordsmen, aelven phoenix or dragon riders, the works. The Lord-Generals tailor their forces to the needs of the campaign, and that versatility serves them well, especially these days, when the city's armies must go out so often to deal with wild spells and rampaging ghosts. The generals of the city are also said to be the best in the entire Mortal Realms, thanks to the Academae Martial of Hammerhal Aqsha. This collection of schools is said to be the finest place anywhere to learn warfare and strategy. The colleges have sprawled over an entire district, turning it into a massive training ground and barracks for the study of warfare and tactical maneuvers. The greatest graduates go on to become the Dragoon-Generals of Hammerhal, elite heavy cavalry specialists mounted on powerful demigryphs. They are famous for their daring and aggression in the field, their flambouyant outfits and their impressive facial hair.  The Living City is a testament to the alliance between Sigmar and the reawakened Alarielle. Her armies of Sylvaneth, alongside the Ghyran Guard and Hallowed Knights Stormhosts, drove the skaven of Clan Morbidus out of the forests that would become the city's home, and Alarielle herself shaped the trees and stones of the city with her magic, raising Everspring Swathe into ramparts and walls of living wood and thorns. She offered sanctuary in the city to all of the Free Peoples as recognition for the aid Sigmar gave her, and she allowed them to build the Oakenspire at the heart of the city, Stormkeep of the Ghyran Guard. The Stormcast of the Ghyran Guard worship the Everqueen alongside Sigmar as near-equals, and they are joined by a minor Stormkeep of the Hallowed Knights, who serve as key military advisors. Besides the Stormcast, there are several Sylvaneth wargroves dedicated to the city's defense, primarily of the Oakenbrow Sylvaneth. More shockingly, Alarielle even allowed the Wanderers to come to the city, despite these aelves having abandonedh er in the Age of Chaos. However, the Sylvaneth do not forgive as easily, and the Wanderers are confined to the outer parts of the city because the Sylvaneth do not trust them. The Living City is the first of the three cities known as the Seeds of Hope, the great bastions of Order in the Realm of Life. It has seen some of the worst of the war against Chaos, and many battles have taken placei n the Everspring Swathe around it. Even now, Nurgle's forces have not been entirely driven out and remain in the Glott Marsh and the city of Plaguespire. The Living City has reclaimed the twin kingdoms Thyria and Verdia, however. All animals and plants in Thyria are male, all in Verdia are female, and they make seasonal migrations to their shared hunting and mating grounds. The Living City's trade relies a lot on hunting the beasts as they migrate, and the Everqueen tolerates this hunting as long as it is done with respect, without waste and without cruelty. Those who do not live up to this are hunted themselves by the Sylvaneth. The Swathe is under assault these days by ghosts and zombies, however, which have emerged from the deep forests and bogs following the Necroquake. Some have even claimed to see skeletal cities rise from the muck. The Living City requires constant care by the druidic Everspring Circle to protect it from pests. Nurgle's priests unleashed horrible infestations of bileworms and poxstingers on it, and the vermin would spread throughout the ironoaks if not kept under constant watch. Ironoak is by far the greatest export of the city and the material used to create the weapons and armor of its forces - a wood as strong as steel, but far more flexible. The Viridian Shield is the name used by the city's armed forces, which are primarily Wanderers, Freeguild and Sylvaneth. They train in the Swathe, learning to rely on ambush, fast repositioning and flanking attacks to defeat superior numbers. They are mostly led by the Nomad Princes of the Wanderer aelves, whose mastery of ambush is unrivaled. The Wild Riders head into battle atop stags, striking with their long spears and then vanishing into the woods, leading foes into a cage of glaive-wielding rangers and fiery arrows from the sorcerous Sisters of the Watch, who wield longbows of pure magic. In times of greatest need, the city can sound the horns they have made from the shells of slain wardroth beetles. At this call, the Sylvaneth of the Swathe will emerge en masse, striking without warning to destroy foes of the Living City. A few wargroves even belong to the Viridian Shield proper, traveling with their forces and obeying the Nomad Princes, if somewhat grudgingly. Next time: Greywater Fastness and the Phoenicium
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Nov 18, 2020 03:17
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The Smoking Ruin Part 4: the Backstory of the Smoking Ruin We now arrive at the first and biggest of the adventures in the book: The Smoking Ruin. The adventure itself opens with a 5 or 6 page GM section that explains the general outline of the adventure as well as the themes, which is neat. According to the book, the adventure primarily revolves around “the question of whether loyalty to family should outweigh one’s desire for their own life.” As a side note, before they even tell you the theme they dedicate a whole paragraph to explaining why so much of the descriptions involve the weather, so I guess they must have gotten an annoying amount of feedback about that (it’s to emphasize the scale of the mythic Yelm-Orlanth battle the players are caught up in). The GM section states that the adventure is intended for a party of 4-6 beginner adventurers, which is good to keep in mind. It wouldn't be a bad idea to run this right after running the free quickstart adventure to get all your players introduced to the setting. The book also pegs the adventure as taking around 5-8 sessions, which I think is a bit of an overestimate. I ran it in two and a half. I did only have 3 players rather than the recommended 4-6, which cut down on the table talk a bit, and they were all very focused on completing the adventure itself, keeping distractions to a minimum. I also only ran the content in the adventure itself, whereas I think the writers expect the GM to add some more encounters to it. I'll point out spots where I think you could add stuff when we come to them. If you want to hit that 5-8 session count and don't want to put in too much effort, there's more than enough room in the adventure to take some encounters from the Wild Temple chapter and slot them in here. The last thing the book makes us learn before running the adventure is the backstory of the Smoking Ruin itself. Unvarnished and fully detailed, unlike much of the stuff in the Wild Temple chapter. So what is the Smoking Ruin, really? Today most people know the Smoking Ruin as a cursed ruin atop a mesa in the southeastern Grazelands, a former human settlement that eternally emits great plumes of smoke that blot out the sun and sting the eyes. It’s quite dangerous, and the Grazelanders avoid it on principle, as the light of Yelm can barely make it through the smoke. Nobody knows the reason for the smoke, and the few who have entered reported it came from bodies, eternally ablaze. They also spoke of a dark presence in the ruins, but none who saw it returned to tell the tale. It wasn’t always this way, though nobody living knows the full history. The true history of the place is quite complex. Going way back to the Dawn, the site of the Smoking Ruin was the location of the marriage between Orlanth and Ernalda. This divine marriage charged the location with sacred energy, turning the mesa into a spirit place, a location in Glorantha that is particularly close to the spirit world. The Trolls noticed, and called the mesa the Hombadaka Boko, or Kyger Lytor Dancing Ground. Powerful troll shamans could resurrect the dead here, though the local trolls did not survive the Great Darkness. In the first age Korol Kandoros picked up on the mesa's sacred connection to Orlanth and Ernalda and built a settlement there, as well as a palace for himself. He called it Korolstead, and though it was quite sacred to the Orlanthi the mesa couldn’t support much life, only reaching a population of 1,000 at its height. It wound up getting razed during the Dragonkill, and lay empty for a hundred years or so.  Hombadaka Boko! In the first chapter, we established that during the interregnum between the second and third ages, the South Wilds were left to the Elder Races. The local Elves, Beastmen, and Dragonewts mostly lived peacefully until the arrival of three large troll groups. From Dagori Inkarth to the east came one band led by Kajak-Ab Braineater, a mistress race troll and priestess of Kyger Lytor. From Esrolia to the south came a warband led by Vamargic Eye-Necklace, an uncommonly intelligent great troll and chief warlord of the Only Old One. From the Stinking Forest to the north came the Boar Trolls, led by Karastrand Halftroll, who may have been a tusk rider. The three skirmished with each other, and Braineater and Eye-Necklace formed an alliance to crush Karastrand. Emboldened by their victory, they claimed rulership of the South Wilds, and began to eat everything and everyone around. The local Dragonewts formed an anti-troll alliance between themselves, the Elves, and the Beastmen; as well as Delecti the Necromancer who I guess joined up because he got sick of trolls visiting his marsh to eat delicious bugs and zombies. Kajak-Ab Braineater and Vamargic’s forces utterly crushed the armies of the Elves and Dragonewts in a battle called Uz Eat Dragonewts. The alliance between the trolls only lasted as long as their enemies did, and now that the Dragonewts were defeated, Kajak-Ab’s army surprised Braineater’s near the ruins of Korolstead and killed them to the last troll. That night they threw a victory feast and gorged themselves upon the corpses of all their foes, before passing out in a drunken stupor. Little did they know that the Dragonewts that they had killed were only illusions. The real Dragonewts had led King Ironhoof and his beastman army to the trolls afterparty, and with the cold light of day disorienting the already intoxicated trolls the Beastmen slaughtered Vamargic’s army with only 12 losses. They left a memorial to their dead, and departed, leaving the corpses of the troll armies to rot inside the walls of Korolstead. Then, the Dragonewts crept in and enacted a strange ritual that caused the bodies of the trolls to alight with a magic fire that would burn them and imprison their spirits in the ruins until Vamargic had atoned for the great evils that he committed. Vamargic managed to “escape” the ritual thanks to a strange and chaotic necklace that he took from a dead tusk rider, and I put escape in quotes because his fate is much worse. The spirits of the other trolls are separate from their bodies and therefore they don’t feel pain, although they cannot sense or affect the material world. Vamargic’s spirit on the other hand is fused with his eternally blazing corpse, causing him agonizing pain every waking second. The chaotic magic that saved him also pissed off his chief god, Zorak Zoran, who has now abandoned him. He’s trapped within the bounds of the Smoking Ruin for now, but still stalks them for looters and adventurers, whose eyes he rips out and adds to the gruesome, living fleshy mass that his eye necklace has become now, after the ritual. Should he collect enough, he may gain the power to escape the Ruins and wreak havoc on the world.  A view of the Smoking Ruin from beneath Next: Finally we’ve read enough backstory, let’s get to the adventure! But wait, who exactly would be foolhardy enough to leave their clans and investigate this place? Let's find out! Nanomashoes fucked around with this message at 08:59 on Dec 5, 2020 |
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Nov 18, 2020 05:12
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Tasha's Cauldron of Everything #1: Why are we doing this? It's been six whole years since 5th edition D&D came out, and in that time content has been real thin on the ground. We've had the occasional setting book (Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, Eberron Book, at least two Magic the Gathering books) but in those six years new rules for player characters have been real thin on the ground. It seriously took the D&D team five whole years to officially publish one new class (no, the lunch break Unearthed Arcana articles are not included). Various excuses have been bandied about such as how the books are being playtested for quality, not quantity or what have you, but the unfortunate truth is that D&D 5e is a deeply flawed game built on a hornet's nest of bad ideas. We should probably mention them, because a lot of them are interlinked and are going to affect our analysis of this book. 5e Failure Points Bounded Accuracy: This is the idea, core to 5e, that anything should be able to hit anything else to provide the dubious "benefit" that a random pack of peasants is a serious threat to Achilles. The practical effect is that any effect that creates minions (such as animate dead or animate objects) is obscenely overpowered because you can order trash skeletons to mass volley arrow fire ancient demons to death. This also manifests awkwardly in nearly every single temporary bonus (such as the bless spell) being rolled instead of constant (+1d4 to hit instead of +2, for instance). Unlike in say, 3.5 D&D, every minor +1 bonus you can cobble together actually has a significant impact on your character, which factors heavily into... Racial Determinism: Stat generation in 5e is extremely odd. You can roll the now-traditional 4d6 drop lowest, or you can point buy your attributes - but no attribute can be higher than 15. The game uses the D&D stat modifier system, so a 15 is a +2 bonus. The only way to exceed the cap of 15 is to get a racial ability score bonus - so a high elf can raise their intelligence from 15 to a 16, which gives them a +3 bonus for things like wizard spell attacks and a +1 save DC. The end result is that every race - except human - has a few classes it can actually compete up to par in, but making something like a dragonborn rogue or drow wizard is basically screwing yourself over long term. THIS leads us to... Feats and ASIs: Like in 4e and 3e, 5e characters get ability score increases every so often. Unlike 3e and 4e, you can choose either ability score increases OR feats as you level up, and your abilities are capped at 20. This feeds right back into the racial determinism issue, where our hypothetical high elf wizard with a +1 int can max out his intelligence at level 8, while our unfortunate dragonborn wizard can't get a 20 int until level 12. The elf is free to grab a feat at 12th level and start fortifying their Con saves or getting Elven Accuracy or what have you, while the dragonborn is devoting all his resources to being slightly behind the curve. This is worse if you're in a physical class, as now your damage is also behind too. "DM Empowerment": 5e is supposedly the result of Mike Mearls having the epiphany that they don't need to write real rules because there's a DM who can fix them. I'm only mildly exaggerating here, but much of the PHB is incomplete - I cannot tell you what the Athletics DC to scale a chain-link fence is, and there's 3 different but contradictory ways to forge a document - and the 5e designers wiffle as much as possible as to what abilities are allowed to actually do. If you go through the background section in the PHB most of the background abilities can be explicitly shut down by the DM for various reasons. The skill system is completely nonfunctional and doesn't actually provide output as to what characters are allowed to actually do, along with effects like charm. The designers like to claim that their game has three pillars, combat, social, and exploration, and then turn around and provide no rules for the latter two while running off with your fifty dollars. It boggles the mind! I could go on, but why bother? Yes, the "ability scores as saves" is stupid and empowers mages (who can hit every save with some incapacitating bullshit), yes, concentration is badly implemented and lets wizards wander around with buffstacks and undead armies while druids get hosed on all their damage over time effects, no, the fighter doesn't really get interesting things to do and it's not his fault, no, 5e doesn't fix any of the problems that have traditionally plagued D&D and was just designed as the edition to make money off licensed products. The point is that Tasha's Cauldron here is the second player options book in six entire years and it's coming into an extremely flawed game. Let's take a look and see if the 5e designers have in any way figured out what they're doing, shall we? Using This Book, or, gently caress You, We Won't Take Responsibility The book has a short two-page intro of how to use the book, and after a short synopsis leaves us with this little gem. Tasha's Cauldron of Everything posted:It's All Optional It then goes through a sidebar shilling Unearthed Arcana, and presents "Ten rules to remember" leading with "the DM adjudicates the rules". We get it. You're not capable of competent rules authoring so you're pushing it on the DM. We also get a sidebar from Tasha introducing herself so she can make vaguely Joss Whedon-esque comments throughout the book. I will be omitting them. Moving on! Chapter 1: Character Options This chapter is relatively short and includes some fairly big stuff. A LOT of the hype around this book centered around the new racial customization options and how they were finally letting people switch their racial bonuses and it was a big blow for equality (if you believe Wizard's marketing) and blah blah blah. The core of the system is that you can move racial bonuses around but only one per stat. We'll take dragonborn. Dragonborn have a +2 strength and a +1 charisma. Under this system, you can move the +2 from strength to wisdom and make a dragonborn cleric with a +3 wisdom modifer. You can also trade languages for other languages, skill proficiencies for other skill proficiencies (so your elf can trade their perception bonus for athletics), or you can change which weapons and armor you're proficient with. It's all fairly standard and they released it early for Adventurer's League, so I can't even complain about them charging real money for what should have been errata to the Player's Handbook. They immediately blow this all to hell in a sidebar. In addition to all of these fairly reasonable changes, they introduce a "custom lineage" race that gets a +2 bonus to any stat and a free feat at first level. Now, some of these feats give +1 to a stat, so you can make a character who starts out with 18 in their primary stat, breaking the soft cap of a +3 modifier previously set by the devs. Now, custom lineage can be literally any background you want it to be, but your type is locked at "humanoid" (so no warforged for you!) so if you just want to be "a tiefling, who's really smart" you can be an 18 int tiefling wizard and trade all the crap like fire resistance and spell-like abilities you will never use for a higher spell DC and the ability to take more feats later. Does this allow you to take the racial feats from Xanathars, so you can run around with an 18 dex and Elven Accuracy at level 1? I have no idea, the book doesn't say. Enjoy hours and hours of arguing with your DM quoting Mearls and Crawford on Twitter. For bonus points, these rules are explicitly "optional", so despite the D&D team parading around like they've struck a great blow for equality they're actually still kind of whiffling. The book even admits the racial bonuses were just there to "reinforce archetypes", so why the racial change rules are optional instead of just being baked into the PHB is completely beyond me. This book was heavily marketed as providing some kind of progress on race, but Wizards is unwilling to commit to saying "these are the rules, and in the base game of D&D you can give your tieflings Con bonuses". It's nuts! Moving on. The artificer class reappears here, and it's weird. They're an explicitly magical class that's supposed to use magic to fight, and they only get spellcasting up to level 5 spells, so they don't have level appropriate magic for endgame. There's a section on how the DM could maybe let them be proficient with firearms, but the class is explicitly magical "technology" instead of say, steampunk. They get some ribbon abilities that let them infuse magic into random items and summon tools, and the rogues expertise ability that only applies to tool use. Now, tools in 5e are a funny thing, as there's no hardcoded list of tools (the list in the PHB is explicitly examples of the most common types of tools) so this will inevitably end up with some smartass picking "Batman's utility belt" and having long explanations prepared as to why seducing the princess is easier while juggling batarangs. It's 5e skills, roll with it. You get abilities based around attuning more magic items and crafting them for less, and you get a small number of magic items you can just kind of instantly create while you're still alive via infusions. A second level artificer can have up to two magic items at a time, for example, so you can really just start building Tasha's Excellent Buffstack. There are four subclasses - the alchemist who can create potions with random effects and sucks, the armorer who can build their own iron man suit but also cast hypnotic pattern meaning he will never actually suck, the artillerist who conjures up lame cannons that do mediocre damage and healing as a bonus action while getting a spell list full of delayed evocations that don't do level appropriate damage, and the battle smith who gets a pet robot buddy which eats up your bonus action to attack. Meanwhile the necromancer in the corner is ordering the entire Skeleton Legion to open fire on a target with one bonus action, and they'll just keep shooting the target until it dies or they do. The robot gets your level in d8 hit dice and can block off space, but I suspect the real strength of the Battle Smith is as a three level dip to let you use your intelligence modifier for weapon attacks. I just want to highlight how bonkers the subclass balance is. The alchemist gets some moderate healing and damage boosts that you do not care about. The artillerist gets a pile of crap that desperately tries to bring their blasting up to par with a mage (like an extra 1d8 on all damage spells and the bonus action cannon, but can't compete with evoker wizards using overchannel or properly built sorcerers. The battle smith gets a lone summon that can take up space and impose disadvantage on attacks while doing mediocre melee damage. The armorer...gets to wear any armor regardless of proficiency or strength, gets more buffs from the artificer buffstack pile just for showing up, and the artificer buffstack pile is nuts. At 10th level you just get winged boots for free, meaning that in every combat you can just fly around and invalidate 99% of the monster manual by raining spells from the air. So any artificer can contribute by being a flying menace, but the armorer really stands out as an insane armored flying man crowd controlling swathes of enemies while stacking AC into the stratosphere and just dunking on the game. The artificer infusions let you add +2 AC to armor and shields (they don't work on magic items), so you end up with a crazy flying man with 26 AC who has wall of force and hypnotic pattern on his spell list (as you can duplicate cloaks and rings of protection). If that's not enough the armorer gets Mirror Image and you have plenty of infusions left to boost your saves. You can even give mirror image to other party members. This class is straight bonkers. Sure, your damage output is low, but you have actually good crowd control that comes online a bit late, and you're very hard to kill. It's glorious and it shits all over bounded accuracy! Great success! Pity about the first 8 levels, though. The rest of the chapter is filled with optional class features and subclasses. Many of these "optional" class features are straight powerups. The barbarian gets 2 more skill proficiencies and has to trade absolutely nothing for it, but they can also get a free move on raging. Enjoy hours of arguing with your dungeon master for free over whether your wizard deserves an expanded spell list just because he exists or whether clerics can use channel divinity to regain spell slots. Unfortunately, the deep dive is going to need to wait until next post. Next time: The joy of imbalanced and uncreative character options.
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Nov 18, 2020 06:50
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Bounded Accuracy: I actually like this one.
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Nov 18, 2020 07:04
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MonsterEnvy posted:I actually like this one. I’m not a D&D5 expert, but in my limited experience it is a good idea that really requires more of a design departure from D&D norms than the design team was willing to make.
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Nov 18, 2020 07:29
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MonsterEnvy posted:I actually like this one. Yeah, the problems that come from the AC treadmill are way worse than the ones that come from bounding. The fact that it makes summoning really strong is fair, but should probably be addressed from the summoning side instead. TheGreatEvilKing posted:I cannot tell you what the Athletics DC to scale a chain-link fence is I almost feel like the issue with skill DCs is almost too much useless guidance. Like... DC 5: Very Easy. An ordinary person could gently caress this up in a high-stress situation, but anyone competent never will DC 10: Moderate. An ordinary person would struggle with this, but could also totally succeed at it DC 15: Hard. An ordinary person would probably fail at this, but someone with training has decent odds at success. DC 20: Very Hard. A trained person would probably fail, but someone superhuman has decent odds of success. DC 25: Legendary. Someone superhuman would probably fail at this And, like, that's kind of all you need for everything? How hard is it to scale a chain-link fence? Well, I can imagine an ordinary person doing that, but I can also imagine them loving it up. DC 10. If there's barbed wire on top then DC 15. If they only have a few seconds to do it before the guard tower's spotlight notices them then DC 20. Trying to get into a rules-as-physics listed DCs for every possible action just muddies up what's actually pretty easy.
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Nov 18, 2020 08:00
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Tasha's Cauldron of Everything #1: Why are we doing this? These are all points that deeply bother me yet I've had a lot of trouble articulating them to folks who still play 5e. There's a pronounced population of D&D players who like that you can make characters who are worse at their job than others based on their race, but when you point this out they'll say that the problem is with you (you filthy power gamer/rules lawyer) and not with the game for forcing that situation in the first place.
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Nov 18, 2020 08:11
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Mors Rattus posted:Age of Sigmar Lore Chat: Cities of Sigmar Come on, the Twin-Tale of Two Cities was right there!
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Nov 18, 2020 08:16
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OtspIII posted:
I'm already having trouble with whether, using your guidelines, scaling a chain-link fence should be DC 5 or DC 10. In fact, I'd lean towards DC 5 and you put it down as an obvious DC 10, which I think indicates how hard stuff like this actually is: I can't agree with you using the rules you wrote!
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Nov 18, 2020 09:19
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Bounded Accuracy: This is the idea, core to 5e, that anything should be able to hit anything else to provide the dubious "benefit" that a random pack of peasants is a serious threat to Achilles. The practical effect is that any effect that creates minions (such as animate dead or animate objects) is obscenely overpowered because you can order trash skeletons to mass volley arrow fire ancient demons to death. This also manifests awkwardly in nearly every single temporary bonus (such as the bless spell) being rolled instead of constant (+1d4 to hit instead of +2, for instance). Unlike in say, 3.5 D&D, every minor +1 bonus you can cobble together actually has a significant impact on your character, which factors heavily into... I mean, I don't fundamentally dislike the idea that nothing is ever completely negligible as a threat, and that a sufficient army of motivated and willing mooks can be a threat to even the greatest of demigods, but I do dislike the idea of adding even more goddamn rolling.
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Nov 18, 2020 09:44
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I think my biggest problem with bounded accuracy is that the default state for a failed roll in D&D is "nothing happens", which is not only boring but really frustrating when it happens repeatedly.
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Nov 18, 2020 09:56
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senrath posted:I think my biggest problem with bounded accuracy is that the default state for a failed roll in D&D is "nothing happens", which is not only boring but really frustrating when it happens repeatedly. I think you're misreading it, in part because a better term for it would be "bounded defenses," that AC and DC numbers are generally intended to never get so high that a random roll won't be able to reach them. Not that I disagree that "nothing happens" is a lot worse than some form of fail forward.
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Nov 18, 2020 09:58
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LatwPIAT posted:I'm already having trouble with whether, using your guidelines, scaling a chain-link fence should be DC 5 or DC 10. In fact, I'd lean towards DC 5 and you put it down as an obvious DC 10, which I think indicates how hard stuff like this actually is: I can't agree with you using the rules you wrote! I guess it depends on what you're rolling to avoid--what are the consequences of failure? If a failure is a setback (your bag gets caught in the fence and you lose an item, you freeze for a bit and lose some time in a time sensitive situation, etc) then that's something I can imagine happening to a pretty normal person. If the consequence is "you fall off it and hurt your leg" or "you try and fail and give up" then, yeah, that's a DC 5. Which is still kind of my point--context changes DCs. Climbing a fence with no time pressure is a completely different difficulty than climbing it while rushed than climbing it with the hounds on your heels. Trying to give it an 'official' difficulty doesn't really help people make good calls, and also requires a bunch of RPG-book memorization. And, honestly, it's okay if people have different rulings on what falls into what category. As long as you're internally consistent, that's just what sets the tone of your campaign. The DCs in a Coen Brothers-style game are higher than the ones in a LotR-style one, even for the same actions. (Please don't run a Coen Brothers movie RPG in D&D--there are such better systems for it)
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Nov 18, 2020 10:10
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DnD 5th is pretty good at keeping numbers from inflating too much like they did in 4th ed., one of the few areas that I think 5th improved on 4th. I don't know why anyone would have a problem with this, high level characters are still much stronger than lower level characters but the ramp isn't as steep as before and fights between foes at different levels isn't as one-sided. The game has a lot of issues but this really isn't one of them. Saying that this is a problem because of summoning also doesn't track with me because summoning has so many much larger problems- like the fact that it's based off of monster CR or that you can summon monsters who are also spell casters - that this doesn't register as a complaint. Bounded accuracy is definitely one of the better changes. I also don't buy DM empowerment as one of the flaws either, but that's a longer discussion. Feats are better this time around too, but the ASI's and racial determination are definitely issues. I'd say the solution is an easy one (homogenize races or let players pick their ASI's), but for some reason DnD players are, in my experience, obtuse as a dry gently caress so no solution is an easy one in DnD despite 'DM empowerment'.
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Nov 18, 2020 10:53
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"DM empowerment" and the It's All Optional paragraph comprise another iteration of those lazy sidebars you see in older White Wolf games (or their reprints half the time). You're told that if you don't like the rules, you can just change them maaaan~. Just because you can change the rules, doesn't mean that you'll be good at it or that you should have to in the first place. You paid money for what might as well be an incomplete product! All of that is just an excuse to not actually stand by or follow through with the rules and guidelines. If the designers have so much confidence in the text they wrote, why do they feel the need to hedge like this?
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Nov 18, 2020 11:35
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Ithle01 posted:Feats are better this time around too, but the ASI's and racial determination are definitely issues. I'd say the solution is an easy one (homogenize races or let players pick their ASI's), but for some reason DnD players are, in my experience, obtuse as a dry gently caress so no solution is an easy one in DnD despite 'DM empowerment'. D&D feats have always been hot spicy dogshit and 5e's are the worst take on them so far. Like, there are NO FEATS that do anything interesting and evocative and open up interesting new options, as I recall them, it's all just minor bonuses which is why they're an optional, vestigial thing grafted on to it.
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Nov 18, 2020 12:43
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OtspIII posted:Please don't run <...> D&D--there are such better systems....)
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Nov 18, 2020 13:33
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Well, it depends. If we're sticking to PHB, stuff like this is useful https://5e.tools/feats.html#dual%20wielder_phb But also kind of a tax, because you get what, two light weapons in PHB? Then there's stuff like Actor or this https://5e.tools/feats.html#grappler_phb Choosing between a stat increase and feats sucks, because you can still get analysis paralysis by trying to choose from two boring things. Especially when the stupid DnD modifier system means that a stat increase that doesn't raise a modifier feels basically useless*. Though I'm usually somewhat weary for the arguments that say that a game breaks down at 8th or so level, or that a well optimized character can floor an unoptimized one, because that's not something you can bring up to most groups, especially not for new players. With most games petering out way before lvl 10, it's just not an issue. "Fighters suck" is a great argument, though, since to get Fun Stuff, they have to play a few levels to get battlemaster to gain abilities that are not just "I hit a dude - twice." E: *Hilariously enough, they seem to have realized that they hosed up on this, because when you filter feats by books in the tool above, you can see that most feats (9 out of 32) introduced in other books (mostly Tasha and Xanathar) raise a stat by one. Most of the ones that don't allow you to get some minor casting stuff. And of ofc, since this is DnD, one of the feats is still useless trash: https://5e.tools/feats.html#prodigy_xge JcDent fucked around with this message at 13:51 on Nov 18, 2020 |
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Nov 18, 2020 13:43
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JcDent posted:"Fighters suck" is a great argument, though, since to get Fun Stuff, they have to play a few levels to get battlemaster to gain abilities that are not just "I hit a dude - twice." The first two levels in 5e are basically busywork, and the latter half of the range almost never sees any actual use. Squishing the levels down to 10 (and even then overtly suggesting that you blow through 1st level as quick as possible; the sample adventure has you do it mid-session) is one of the smartest things 13th Age did. Various Folks posted:Stuff about bounded accuracy Bounded Accuracy isn't a problem in and of itself, but as TheGreatEvilKing points out it's not applied evenly. Scattered around throughout various places are straight-up bonuses to accuracy and AC. There aren't that many, but if the developers had wanted to make bounded accuracy a real thing they could have had zero such bonuses. The design philosophy is so vaguely understood even by the game's creators that they don't know what works and what doesn't. There are a lot of little things that appear to be clear design decisions, but even those break down under actual use. Stats maxing out at 20 so that folks who roll well and folks who choose sub-optimal class/race combinations will all come together in capability seems like a good idea, but it takes as many as 12 levels for that to actually happen. Getting rid of precise magic item values seems like it'll reduce crunch, but that just divorces item progression from experience progression even more than it was in previous editions. Warlocks get a small number of spells that refresh per short rest while full casters get a large number of spells that only refresh per long rest, but there's no established rhythm to when rests are supposed to happen so the actual balance varies wildly. So much is left to the DM to just figure out on their own, and it's not like the game gives you anything back in exchange for all the work you do fixing it for your table. You could just have played a game that was actually designed for a specific experience from the jump and saved a lot of heartache trying to salvage a slapped-together product.
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Nov 18, 2020 15:52
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Yeah, there's nothing wrong with "DM empowerment" in the abstract, and as the big dog when it comes to tabletop RPGs I think putting additional emphasis on giving support and providing a toolbox to DMs who want to put their own spin on things/tweak genre/run novel settings would be an admirable move for D&D. The problem (as others have noted) is that 5E pretty pointedly doesn't actually do that, and instead "DM empowerment" is simply used as an excuse for lazy/incomplete/contradictory rules. That this is true becomes pretty obvious when you evaluate 5E in terms of guidance offered to DMs, transparency/discussion of system math and/or mechanical considerations, availability of supplemental or supporting materials, etc.
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Nov 18, 2020 20:16
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It does the bit where every rule ends with "ask your DM," but not the bit where you provide guidance to the DM on how to answer any of those questions. "How does [skill] work?" "Ask your DM!" "I am the DM." [silence]
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Nov 18, 2020 20:26
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PurpleXVI posted:I think you're misreading it, in part because a better term for it would be "bounded defenses," that AC and DC numbers are generally intended to never get so high that a random roll won't be able to reach them. I'll admit I didn't end up playing all that much 5e, but my experience with it was that numbers never got all that high on either side of the equation, meaning that the giant random d20 was often the main deciding factor, which just felt bad when it decided you just sucked for turns in a row.
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Nov 18, 2020 20:29
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PurpleXVI posted:D&D feats have always been hot spicy dogshit and 5e's are the worst take on them so far. Like, there are NO FEATS that do anything interesting and evocative and open up interesting new options, as I recall them, it's all just minor bonuses which is why they're an optional, vestigial thing grafted on to it. As far as I'm concerned this is still an improvement over previous editions. I said feats were better, not good, there's a lot that could have done to make them more interesting.
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Nov 18, 2020 22:25
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Were feats a bigger thing in prior DnD editions?
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Nov 18, 2020 22:27
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Variable. In 3.X they ranged from "These are incredibly powerful/game mechanic redefining" (some fighter stuff, Metamagic feats) to "Nickle and dime bonuses but they're at least doing something useful", to "This is useless and you have literally wasted your pick, good job." and to an untrained eye it was very hard to pick the latter two categories apart. In 4e they were mostly limited to small bonuses or occasionally taking one or two moves from another class, but generally helped define what build you were doing. Edit: Note that when I say that fighter stuff goes in the powerful category, I mean "These were a tax you had to pay to make Fighters remotely interesting to play."
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Nov 18, 2020 22:33
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Josef bugman posted:Were feats a bigger thing in prior DnD editions? They didn't really exist in prior D&D editions except in AD&D 2e's Player's Option Skills & Powers supplement, where they sort-of existed and were largely massive. There were a few "this is just a bonus"-things, but some of them were intended to allow you to play completely unarmoured fighters, anti-magic warriors, to shuffle around what exact abilities the various hybrid classes got, etc. the "feats" there were less feats as 3e implemented them and more class customization options and while the execution wasn't perfect, the concept ruled.
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Nov 18, 2020 22:40
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Feats proper started out in 3e, where the big draw was that they would open up more character options because you got 7 over your adventuring career independent of your class. In practice this was not true because a lot of feats plugged directly into class features, and because some class features (hello fighter) were just about getting more feats from a curated list. Add to this that the design space of "what is a feat" was poorly defined, so you could have Toughness (+3 HP) and Leadership (get a minion at level - 2) in the same book. There was even a sentiment in those days that Feats Should Be Nice Not Necessary, a response to how some feats were so defining that the gap between the haves and have-nots was insurmountable. Natural Spell for druids, Adaptive Style for swordsages, etc. Finally, well...there were far too many feats. The final total was somewhere in the four digits. 4e kept feats around largely because it was an evolution of 3e but with some actual design work put in. The design space of what a feat meant was tightened up considerably, so while one character might be notably more powerful than another based on feats they could still participate side-by-side. Ironically even more feats were tailored to classes, but by the same token this was intentional and so the designers were more confident about using them as class extensions. As for the problems, well, there were still a lot of feats. And some of them were stealth math fixes that should have been folded into errata or something. AFAIK 5e has gone back to the 3e methods of "we'll just wing it" but more so because they're "optional" and you're choosing between them and ASIs. At least they haven't published a sourcebook's worth of feats yet.
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Nov 18, 2020 22:51
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Ultiville posted:I’m not a D&D5 expert, but in my limited experience it is a good idea that really requires more of a design departure from D&D norms than the design team was willing to make. Like, Warhammer Fantasy is right there! Percentile-based systems give you the full range of outcomes! But that would slaughter the sacred d20 cow in favor of better design, and that emphatically does not feel like D&D to Mearls and co.
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Nov 18, 2020 23:14
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Oddly, as the hams fantasy guy, I actually don't feel percentile has that much value over d20. I think they're about equivalent. Most things in percentile systems don't really go into the full 'less than 5% variance' granularity that you get from using percentile rather than d20. The problem with d20 is that d20 designers also don't often seem to think of it as '+1 is +5%', so to speak. I've had smart people I know well tell me stuff like 'Oh, your PC only needs to roll a 14 this check isn't so bad'. When you have a 35% chance there on the face, it's easier to intuit those aren't great odds. I don't think either is particularly better on the base than the other as far as design goes, though, since both give you very flat probabilities with simple modifiers. Which is its own virtue sometimes.
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Nov 18, 2020 23:23
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Yeah like, if I've learned anything from this thread it's that there are multiple games that already handle bounded accuracy / "a bunch of peasants are still a threat" better than 5e's pile of exclusions and half-measures. I don't think the d20 was particularly sacred before the 3E period.
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Nov 18, 2020 23:26
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