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P.d0t posted:I feel they could have probably brought back "INT mod gives you extra languages" from 3.5, without really breaking anything. *Passive here means "does not require not doing the thing you do with your primary ability score". Something like getting to reroll a specific number of attacks or saves per combat would count even though it's technically an active ability. e: that's just for illustrative purposes don't take it add an actual suggestion Splicer fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Jul 16, 2019 |
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Jul 16, 2019 23:11
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Anyone ever tried a house rule combining Str and Con in 5e (or just using the same number for each)? How did it change things? I'm thinking my idea of some synergy-over 14 Str add your Str mod to your Con stat-would help things without totally loving things up at the cost of being more complicated. It even makes a little bit of logical sense-gaining physical muscle strength usually leads to increased health/stamina, but super lean distance runner with chicken arms is not necessarily big and burly and strong. I think I'll give it a try sometime and see how it goes.
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Jul 17, 2019 00:17
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Splicer posted:Int and cha already have out of combat benefits due to their attached skills. A 12 won't make you the party face or the arcana point man but odds are your GM is going to have make investigation or history checks and the occasional bluff. Not as vital as a stealth or acrobatics check but still. What they really lack are passive* combat benefits. Wisdom lets you act in surprise rounds and protects you from wisdom save attacks. Con keeps you up and protects you from con targeting attacks. Dex makes you go sooner and can be used for opportunity attacks and protects you from dex and AC targeting attacks. Neither Int nor Cha generate actions, and they're both uncommon targets for saves. These are just idle thoughts, but what about something like: * Int lets you find weak points. Once per short rest, if you hit with a weapon attack, and the number you rolled on the d20 plus your Int modifier is greater than or equal to 20, you can double your damage bonus. (For example, if you would normally deal 1d8+4 damage, you deal 1d8+8.) * Cha lets you make yourself a less-attractive target. Once per short rest, if you are attacked with a weapon attack, you can reduce the attacker's roll to hit by your Charisma modifier. You can do this after you know whether the roll is a hit, but before your attacker rolls for damage. That second one weakens Cutting Words a bit, but it's what came to mind.
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Jul 17, 2019 00:43
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Sodomy Hussein posted:As a start, if Str/Con and arguably Int/Wis were combined, you would get to a more even keel on a lot of things. So what you're saying is, we should all play Shadow of the Demon Lord instead?
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Jul 17, 2019 00:49
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Sodomy Hussein posted:"Extra languages" are one of those "bonuses" D&D is so fond of that in normal play do not matter at all. Glad we agree
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Jul 17, 2019 00:52
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Splicer posted:It's like you're playing basketball and all the players are like "let's kick the ball instead of throwing it" and you say "we're playing basketball, the ball's not weighted for that you'll hurt your feet and also it'll be real hard to adjudicate travelling" and they're all "but we like kicking the ball" and you say "fine" and six months into the league half the players have sprained ankles and the referee has had to make some real weird calls to keep things moving and there's three competing systems for hitting the ball with different bits of your leg so that it hurts less including one that you realise is actually walking on your hands every few steps so you can redefine throwing as kicking and half the people you talk to can't seem to connect the dots between kicking a basketball and the weird hosed up bits and half the people blame the referee for not dealing with the hosed up bits better and half the people seem to get what you're saying on an intellectual level but keep responding with "but they like kicking the ball" so you say "OK so it really seems like you guys don't want to be playing basketball, have you considered playing soccer?" but nobody wants to play soccer because they want to play the game they saw on tv/want to finish the league we started/dont want to learn a whole new game/don't like that the soccer balls don't come in orange. One PC in a group gets a +1 magic weapon and nobody else has any. Is that kicking the basketball? Did you know that monster CRs aren't calibrated to include the system effects of magic items? Did you know that it is just barely possible that all the classes aren't perfectly balanced in terms of combat effectiveness? Is playing a Beastmaster Ranger kicking the ball, or just the equivalent of only taking 3-point shots from half-court? Is it possible that your analogy isn't especially apt? Having written that, you're completely right about Str/Dex/Con, Splicer, and it's vexing to me that the designers still haven't learned their lesson about what stats are good for what purposes, especially skill modifiers. Dexterity is especially frustrating because it's been the "good for everything stat" through multiple editions. I'm guessing that the current designers stuck to the six-stat model because changing it felt too much to them like kicking the basketball. DalaranJ posted:Hi, if you have familiarity with my posting habits you may know that sometimes I get intensely curious about a specific piece of D&Ds design. So, stop talking about that controversial design topic and start talking about this one! (I fully expect everyone will ignore me.) 1. Sorcerer L3. My group playtesting modular characters has 3 primary casters, one L9 with Warlock spells, one with Druid spells and smiting who I believe is L8 caster, and one with Cleric spells and smiting who is L8 caster. 2. Variable. The group tends to bite off more than we can chew, so if it's a "fight and flee" situation I usually am out of slots. If we're being more cautious, I typically have 1-2 spells left. The GM allows for cascading encounters, so if we pursue that goblin patrol we can run straight into two more encounters. The playtest group varies somewhat less. The Warlock is always out of spells after a fight. The Druid and Cleric usually save something in case of further encounters, although last week when they'd fully scouted out the lab they were exploring they correctly concluded that they were in the final encounter area and unloaded everything they had. Given that their foe dealt about 80 points of damage in a single round, that was a wise decision. 3. Neither campaign has a guarantee of safe resting and each allows for the possibility of an unexpected encounter, so saving slots means you're ready for the extra encounter if it happens. (The game I'm playing in has a family of half-ogres extorting people who want to cross the bridge back into town, so our route to a safe rest is itself dangerous until we're strong enough to wipe the whole family out.) My sorcerer usually has L1 slots reserved. The playtest group players will often save a spell slot at a specific level for a specific purpose (Revivify, Pass without Trace). 4. More spells would make L3 adventuring too easy--Sleep is very effective vs the goblins, xvarts, and giant rats who have been our main foes thus far. Fewer would be too few. But it's early days yet. For the playtest game I'm running, my players seem pretty happy with the challenge level, and that includes spells per day. I think the Warlock player is feeling a bit crunched on slots and could reasonably be given +1 or even +2 slots without breaking anything, but only because I'm making short-rests a limited resource through the design side of things. If they could short rest after every encounter, +2 slots would be too many, although I don't think +1 would be.
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Jul 17, 2019 01:05
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Sodomy Hussein posted:"Extra languages" are one of those "bonuses" D&D is so fond of that in normal play do not matter at all. You’re not wrong. Though the equivalent/alternative bonus in 5e — tool proficiencies, are about as equally worthless in normal play (in my experience, anyway). With the exception of thieves’ tools, I think languages and tools have gotten used about 2-3 times each over ~2 years of play in our campaign.
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Jul 17, 2019 02:41
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escalator dropdown posted:You’re not wrong. Though the equivalent/alternative bonus in 5e — tool proficiencies, are about as equally worthless in normal play (in my experience, anyway). With the exception of thieves’ tools, I think languages and tools have gotten used about 2-3 times each over ~2 years of play in our campaign. That's a DM issue, since they've issued several examples of how to use each tool proficiency in 5e
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Jul 17, 2019 04:54
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P.d0t posted:Glad we agree I disagree. Being the only guy that knows draconic or abyssal has helped me a couple times. People have gotten some use out of orcish as well.
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Jul 17, 2019 04:56
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Roll 3d6. Use that number for every stat.Open Marriage Night posted:I disagree. Being the only guy that knows draconic or abyssal has helped me a couple times. People have gotten some use out of orcish as well. Oh, you can definitely work in that draconic is important, but if none of the PCs speak it, the plot important dragon probably speaks English. I'd be really surprised if a major plot point was missed because no one speaks primordial.
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Jul 17, 2019 05:06
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Gharbad the Weak posted:Roll 3d6. Use that number for every stat. Eh, if the party ends up on an elemental plane and just starts killing poo poo, they might not realize that everyone was actually begging for their lives. Also I was going to defend the usefulness of tools, then realized I was thinking of kits instead.
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Jul 17, 2019 05:15
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It was some draconic writing. We could have tried to find an NPC or just ignored it, but I was able to read it, and it gave us some clues for the next puzzle. It’s fun when a DM throws a character a bone, and gives their bonus language some relevance.
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Jul 17, 2019 05:21
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Language on the whole is probably best to be ignored unless you can actually use it to set up a narrative, otherwise it's just a skill check. Did someone jot that down on their character sheet? Does a caster have the suitable spell? gently caress you I guess, then. On the flip, if it has the party going out to find a translator for it it could be interesting, but it also could just as easily be busy work and padding.
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Jul 17, 2019 05:31
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Open Marriage Night posted:It’s fun when a DM throws a character a bone, and gives [unique character trait] some relevance. That's something I agree with. If your character has something in their background, let it take the spotlight at some point. But if I were going to be spending a feat to learn more languages, that'd have to come with some mighty fine, persistent benefits. Or you could just kinda not mess with the feats and everything, and just have "Ok, my dude knows tons of languages" or "My dude was raised by orcs and knows their customs" or whatever, and then just run with it. UNLESS Gamerofthegame posted:On the flip, if it has the party going out to find a translator for it it could be interesting, but it also could just as easily be busy work and padding. But at that point, it's not just a yes/no feat thing, you're building story around not knowing the language. Which isn't bad, and can be good.
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Jul 17, 2019 06:29
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Wait hold on what's wrong with talking to animals as a power? Talking to animals is rad!!!
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Jul 17, 2019 06:46
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Typical goon doesn't see the value in talking to someone unless you can give them orders or mind control them.
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Jul 17, 2019 06:46
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Wait hold on what's wrong with talking to animals as a power? Talking to animals is rad!!! I have a Shepherd Druid/Hunter Ranger character I’ve been itching to play. Magic Initiate so I have a familiar, and I’ll be the beast whisperer.
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Jul 17, 2019 06:55
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After much delaying and such I'm actually NOW writing up my first adventure I'll be honest; I basically stole the idea for it from a Reddit post about Kua-Toa as I absolutely cannot NOT have a giant lighthouse monster wandering around wrecking boats at sea. So. The quest is essentially they got a report that the lighthouse went missing. The whole thing. They go investigate and try to find the lighthouse. The whole is a little unsettled because a merchants guild moved in a couple years back and built up a port around their once quiet little coastal town. Some want it to go back. There's gonna be a drunk guy that says his friend saw it walk off. The merchant guild leader has no clue, just woke up and it was gone. He suspects foul play from a group of original town members that have been growing more and more hostile with what they feel is an invasion of their town and wants to go back the way it was. The wharf master if pressed, bribed, or intimidated will admit the wizard paid him money for a boat, but paid even more to keep the info to himself. The warforged wizard is the real culprit, as he was conducting a lot of studies into opening up and maintaining links to the fire plane and with tons of new people around, he can't keep his work as private. So he found a Kua-Toa tribe living nearby that seemed fascinated by the lighthouse, and knowing they'd be a good distraction at the least in short term and maybe cause enough panic in the long term to get his quiet unsuspecting town back, he convinced them it was a god. And since Kua-Toa are what they are, it has become one. Of course, the wizard will just try to lie and say magic has been going crazy lately and he felt like something was going on North of here (the direction of the Kua-Toa clan) and hope the NPCs murder them, thus decreasing belief thus poofing the new god back out of existence. So that's essentially the quest. I want to plant some evidence in and around of this, but I need to do it in a not super obvious way. What would a wizard leave in the Kua-Toa lair? Or what might the wizard have laying around in his tower? And the larger hook is that in my world, the warforged have lost their ability to replicate. They can repair and do almost anything else, but they lost their ability to reproduce. So the wizard is trying to open a channel into the fire plane to contact the Azer and learn their secrets since they are made of metal and imbue their kin with part of themselves. This will eventually end badly and give the fire plane denizens an easy way into the prime material plane. That's bad. My cleric follows the god of the warforged. My ranger receives vague visions of stopping this threat from the warforged God, though he doesn't know it. As much as it wants the warforged to reproduce, this is just too high a price potentially. This might hopefully set up a little tension between the cleric and ranger as stopping this impending threat also means preventing the warforged from potentially finding a viable method of reproduction. How does this sound?
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Jul 17, 2019 07:04
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Kaal posted:That's a DM issue, since they've issued several examples of how to use each tool proficiency in 5e I mean, yes and no? They’ve certainly issued more on uses of tool proficiencies (e.g. in Xanathar’s) than on languages. But IMO they’re still pretty shallow as a game mechanic, and my impression is that they don’t really get used often (again, outside thieves tools, and maybe disguise/forgery kits in more social-focused campaigns). But that’s mostly an impression formed on internet discussions and could certainly be wildly off.
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Jul 17, 2019 07:17
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Tools all have the same problem as the Medicine skill usually does, which is that even low-level magic often does the same thing better, or with a lesser investment of time/money.
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Jul 17, 2019 09:03
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Narsham posted:One PC in a group gets a +1 magic weapon and nobody else has any. Is that kicking the basketball? Did you know that monster CRs aren't calibrated to include the system effects of magic items? Did you know that it is just barely possible that all the classes aren't perfectly balanced in terms of combat effectiveness? Is playing a Beastmaster Ranger kicking the ball, or just the equivalent of only taking 3-point shots from half-court? Is it possible that your analogy isn't especially apt? OK seriously what I mean is are you saying that the terrible balance elsewhere means one more terrible balance aspect is NBD or are you saying that the different balance problems compensate for each other? Because the first is belabouring the analogy and also silly nihilism and the latter is either patently untrue* or falls under my blame the referee category above. They also both distil back to "have you tried playing soccer?" *I'm now thinking of a D&D where you can only play a wizard if you roll crap for stats and rolling all 18s locks you into berserker barbarian and honestly it sounds doable. Narsham posted:Having written that, you're completely right about Str/Dex/Con, Splicer, and it's vexing to me that the designers still haven't learned their lesson about what stats are good for what purposes, especially skill modifiers. Dexterity is especially frustrating because it's been the "good for everything stat" through multiple editions. I'm guessing that the current designers stuck to the six-stat model because changing it felt too much to them like kicking the basketball. e: hey this post came across as kind of hostile on a reread, I can't think how to rephrase it. I bear no ill will toward you Splicer fucked around with this message at 10:05 on Jul 17, 2019 |
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Jul 17, 2019 09:22
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rolling stats makes every other problem in the system worse.
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Jul 17, 2019 10:00
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juggalo baby coffin posted:rolling stats makes every other problem in the system worse.
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Jul 17, 2019 10:07
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So, speaking about Berserker barbarian. Why is it actually considered so horrible? People talk about the exhaustion part a lot but you have to specifically go into a Frenzied Rage to cause that, and a single level of it isn't really that bad. Two can be, but it won't detriment the actual ability to hit things until 3 levels. In fact none of the other abilities for the Berserker is tied into Frenzy, kind of surprising really. I think the only thing that is actually bad design wise is the Level 10 Intimidating Presence using a DC made up from your Charisma of all things. Suppose I might even make it a radius rather than targeted and use Strength instead if I were to homebrew it. But yeah other than the risk involved in pushing for Frenzy too hard, Mindless Rage and Retaliation are pretty solid? Not better than Bear Totem for sheer tankiness obviously but I don't think that's what we'd be comparing here. For pure offense it might even be better than Zealot?
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Jul 17, 2019 10:17
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Splicer posted:*I'm now thinking of a D&D where you can only play a wizard if you roll crap for stats and rolling all 18s locks you into berserker barbarian and honestly it sounds doable. A game where your starting randomisation determines which narrow-ish range of stuff you're good at, or alternatively makes you someone who is inherently good at nothing but owns a spellbook which lets them be good at a limited number of things per adventure?
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Jul 17, 2019 10:22
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Arthil posted:So, speaking about Berserker barbarian. How 2 fix: Have all barbarians recover one level of exhaustion per short rest and all levels of exhaustion on a long rest. Or play a warforged lol.
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Jul 17, 2019 10:27
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:A game where your starting randomisation determines which narrow-ish range of stuff you're good at, or alternatively makes you someone who is inherently good at nothing but owns a spellbook which lets them be good at a limited number of things per adventure? What the good vs mediocre class abilities actually do could be pretty much anything (assuming you abide by good design principles) Splicer fucked around with this message at 10:43 on Jul 17, 2019 |
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Jul 17, 2019 10:40
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Splicer posted:A pseudo points system where you can only have the super good class abilities if you have bad stats and you can only have the super good stats if you have mediocre class abilities. This could be a roll system (cumulative total modifiers of +2? Full caster is on the table!) or points buy (I want to play a wizard so I have 10 points to spend/I want to play Buffcrobat McSmartsCharisma which leaves me with enough classpoints to buy beastmaster ranger) or even allow both at the same table since it all comes out even in the end. Well yeah that sounds real good!
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Jul 17, 2019 11:33
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Splicer posted:A long rest only reduces your exhaustion level by one. Using your class ability makes you suck for the rest of the day, and using it twice makes you suck for two days etc. Not only is this bad in isolation, but it comes at the opportunity cost of not getting one of the better, not-crap abilities of the other roles. Warforged don't suffer exhaustion due to lack of sleep, but still do from other sources. You still focused on the Level 3 ability. Which sure, a lot of play happens in the range where that is all you've got. It may be because of the environment I tend to play in, an AL-like community where every game is basically a fresh session even if you'd played at the table last time. Makes certain things not matter in the long run. Honestly I wonder if the long-term play in that environment is why a couple of people I know consider Exhaustion to be a too-little used mechanic, with a few of them tying it to custom magic items. I'm overall trying to break that with the games I run for players that return session to session. There's been a little bit of push-back, but no one has outright complained when I put my foot down about it. Really hard to properly run a dungeon crawl if the characters are never drained of resources.
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Jul 17, 2019 11:51
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Part of the problem is that exhaustion is not a well implemented mechanic to begin with. I'm a big fan of attrition mechanics and multiple death tracks (LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT WFRP3) so I'm very much in favour of exhaustion is a concept, but as implemented it leaves a lot to be desired.Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Well yeah that sounds real good! Cooking analogy: Barbecuing is fun. Everyone loves to barbeque. Don't barbeque a cake.
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Jul 17, 2019 12:31
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Conspiratiorist posted:Toll the Dead, Magic Missile, and Fireball are all the damage options a Wizard really needs (though casting Dragon's Breath on your Owl familiar is really fun).
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Jul 17, 2019 13:29
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The Dregs posted:This is brilliant. I want to make a guy based around this. This is what our wizard is doing with his flying monkey. It’s good until the familiar gets poofed in one hit because it drew attention.
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Jul 17, 2019 14:31
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change my name posted:This is what our wizard is doing with his flying monkey. It’s good until the familiar gets poofed in one hit because it drew attention. Sounds like D&D balance working correctly to me!
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Jul 17, 2019 14:43
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Gamerofthegame posted:Language on the whole is probably best to be ignored unless you can actually use it to set up a narrative, otherwise it's just a skill check. Did someone jot that down on their character sheet? Does a caster have the suitable spell? gently caress you I guess, then. On the same note, my character was recently able to negotiate past a deadly encounter with troglodytes by the simple fact that I was able to speak their language and say "we aren't here to fight!" Turns out that all the other humans just murder them automatically. They were even cool enough to guide us out of their caves that we would definitely have gotten lost in. But spoiler alert, I was a Great Old One Warlock so I could speak all languages automatically, and Troglodytes speak their own language, not one that's even in the PHB. So good design on languages paying off 
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Jul 17, 2019 14:58
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Splicer posted:*I'm now thinking of a D&D where you can only play a wizard if you roll crap for stats and rolling all 18s locks you into berserker barbarian and honestly it sounds doable.
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Jul 17, 2019 15:25
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Splicer posted:Cooking analogy: Barbecuing is fun. Everyone loves to barbeque. Don't barbeque a cake. ...I don't know how, but I'm so going to try this in our Sunday session this week.
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Jul 17, 2019 15:44
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:That's awesome! If I'm stuck I usually just mash this until it shits out something that sounds fun. Holy crap CONFIDENT GNOME DRUID FROM A SLAVE MARKET WHO HAS A DRINKING PROBLEM OBNOXIOUS HALF-ELF BARD FROM A DESTITUTE PLANTATION WHO HAS NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE
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Jul 17, 2019 16:45
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EAGER HUMAN CLERIC FROM THE SLAVE FIGHTING PITS WHO WAS RAISED BY GHOSTS
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Jul 17, 2019 16:57
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RAISED BY GHOSTS is one of those beautiful phrases that I'd never have written myself but drat. TFW your parents never teach you about doors.
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Jul 17, 2019 16:58
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:RAISED BY GHOSTS is one of those beautiful phrases that I'd never have written myself but drat. TFW your parents never teach you about doors. The Faraway Paladin is a really good novel.
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Jul 17, 2019 17:02
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