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Reflavor goblins as mountains, let the fighter cleave them.
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Aug 20, 2014 03:18
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Ferrinus posted:I assume it's because they want to steal back some of Pathfinder's market share.
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Aug 20, 2014 03:25
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QuantumNinja posted:Yeah, he's good buddies with my friend, GM Prep. I try to avoid hanging out with people associated with that rear end in a top hat GM Railroading.
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Aug 20, 2014 04:03
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Sir Kodiak posted:I try to avoid hanging out with people associated with that rear end in a top hat GM Railroading. I didn't know that planning a monster engagement and looking up the spells that monster may cast in advance is equivalent to railroading. Tell me more of the error of my way.
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Aug 20, 2014 04:27
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QuantumNinja posted:I didn't know that planning a monster engagement and looking up the spells that monster may cast in advance is equivalent to railroading. Tell me more of the error of my way. Regardless of what you think of prep, anything that makes it faster or less necessary seems like an unambiguous positive.
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Aug 20, 2014 04:33
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Falcon2001 posted:So to be clear, this isn't a loaded question for edition war time, but I just got the 5e player's manual, and this looks a LOT like 3.5. Are there any significant differences between the two systems? Web searches found me a lot of 3.5 v 4e which is a huge difference but 5e so far seems almost identical. I'd say the differences are pretty huge, most noticably the complete absence of any bonus stacking rules in 5e.
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Aug 20, 2014 04:34
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Falcon2001 posted:Alright so the thing that does kind of blow my mind is that in a world where Pathfinder exists and seems to be really goddamn popular, why would they drop all the good stuff in 4e and then do this? (martial classes being interesting, DM prep being tolerable, etc) it just seems like a good way to literally compete against two entrenched positions, one of which is your own goddamn product (3.5) Observation: Everyone I have talked to who has actually played the game and tried martials has been happy with how they work out in play. And what I've heard so far is that DM prep is pretty tolerable. Maybe not quite as thoroughly streamlined as 4e, but a heck of a lot better than 3e.
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Aug 20, 2014 04:37
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QuantumNinja posted:Yeah, he's good buddies with my friend, GM Prep. And you know what? Every time I talk to Prep he's preoccupied with NPCs' motives, what'll get the players engaged, how he can incorporate previous adventures into the current story, and how this current arc is going to pay off. It's almost like he doesn't have time for poorly written monsters' bullshit!
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Aug 20, 2014 04:37
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seebs posted:Everyone I have talked to who has actually played the game and tried martials has been happy with how they work out in play. You've been talking to MonsterEnvy, haven't you?
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Aug 20, 2014 04:38
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seebs posted:Observation: I have had the exact opposite experience.
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Aug 20, 2014 04:42
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Oh hey 5E thread in TradGames! Didn't know you were here. I want to talk about how this book is organized. It's not awful-level (that would be Fantasy Flight Warhammer) but not good, either. -Races are out of alphabetical order for no reason I can fathom. -Insofar as I can tell, the book never actually says what having a skill gives you (one must assume proficiency), nor what a skill really does (beyond one-line generalities). -There's a reference to passive Investigation and no slot for it on the official sheet. -The spell section is organized worse than 3E. The general list doesn't mention what school each spell is or feature a short description. The actual full descriptions don't mention which classes qualify for which spells. This is no-brainer level of bad and leads to you keeping open one portion of the manual while you explore another. -The game simply does not do a good job of explaining basic mechanics, and you're occasionally thumbing through 2-3 different sections to find corresponding rules. Even the index re-directs you too much. Good Stuff -Everything in the book is predicated on generalities wherever the designers deemed possible. The book has almost nothing to say about alignment (to the point where alignment seems even more blatantly pointless than usual), doesn't list what several items in the equipment section do, and doesn't really get into specifics with many spells. To a certain extent this is refreshing. You can just sit down and play the game and you are seemingly expected to eyeball stuff in a rules-lite manner. That's OK if it's the objective. At other times, the distinctions it does make between rules become meaningless and clash with this style. The game does not describe skills almost at all, and yet there's eighteen of them. -There's an honest attempt to instill flavor back into the game. Suggested reading, introductory fluff, lots of full-color art on almost every page (more so of the latter, in my estimation, than 4E), emphasis on backgrounds being an RP tool more than a sexy build option, and so on. -The systems for proficiency, advantage, and upward limit on ability scores are pretty elegant overall. There's much less "+1 this, +1 that" or round-to-round bonuses than in 4E. Name Change fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Aug 20, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 04:58
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QuantumNinja posted:I didn't know that planning a monster engagement and looking up the spells that monster may cast in advance is equivalent to railroading. Tell me more of the error of my way. I think there are three big reasons why dealing with spell prep is such an issue in 5e: firstly, spells are likely to be used every session multiple times. such a common game mechanic should be simple. basically, it's not prep work, it's prep tax. secondly, and this is the major one, other games, including the previous edition of this very same game, did it better. it's not surprising that it's hard for people to swallow a flat downgrade to the way a system works. lastly, it's just yet another chink in the armor of the game we know as 5e. sure, sure, an issue here or there happens, but it becomes harder to tolerate them the more that appear.
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Aug 20, 2014 04:59
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QuantumNinja posted:I didn't know that planning a monster engagement and looking up the spells that monster may cast in advance is equivalent to railroading. Tell me more of the error of my way. If you're typically able to plan monster engagements ahead of time then you're either limiting player freedom enough that they'll almost always end up at what you planned or you're prepping massively more than you need. Obviously sometimes there will be occasions where they tell you their plans far enough in advance, or a session break comes at the right time, and you reasonably know a fight is coming. But if it's happening often enough to be the typical case then one of the above two is happening. The first is railroading (though I don't want to get hung up on the semantics of that exact term) and the second is a bullshit solution. Sir Kodiak fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Aug 20, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 05:00
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:-Races are out of alphabetical order for no reason I can fathom. Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, and Elf are the "core" races while the others are unusual races. I think it's explained more somewhere else in the book--or maybe in the adventurer's league document. edit: and human not elf. I need more sleep. Rosalind fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Aug 20, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 05:08
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Sir Kodiak posted:If you're typically able to plan monster engagements ahead of time then you're either limiting player freedom enough that they'll almost always end up at what you planned or you're prepping massively more than you need. Obviously sometimes there will be occasions where they tell you their plans far enough in advance, or a session break comes at the right time, and you reasonably know a fight is coming. But if it's happening often enough to be the typical case then one of the above two is happening. The first is railroading and the second is a bullshit solution. I'm not entirely convinced those are the only two reasons that could be happening. Sometimes, as a DM, you know you really want to use a lich or a group of kobolds or whatever, and can improv when they show up. I don't think it's weird for a DM to see a monster or have an idea for a group encounter and go "man, that'd be fun to fight! I should work that in sometime next session."
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Aug 20, 2014 05:09
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Rosalind posted:Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, and Elf are the "core" races while the others are unusual races. I think it's explained more somewhere else in the book--or maybe in the adventurer's league document. This is still unfathomable.
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Aug 20, 2014 05:12
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dichloroisocyanuric posted:I'm not entirely convinced those are the only two reasons that could be happening. Sometimes, as a DM, you know you really want to use a lich or a group of kobolds or whatever, and can improv when they show up. I don't think it's weird for a DM to see a monster or have an idea for a group encounter and go "man, that'd be fun to fight! I should work that in sometime next session." I believe those are the only two reasons that could let pre-planning of fights be the typical solution. There are plenty of one-off cases, like what you mention, that could make it a perfectly fine periodic solution. But if all your fights are things you pre-planned and then improv'd into being relevant then you're not seriously engaging with the choices that the players are making.
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Aug 20, 2014 05:14
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Sir Kodiak posted:if all your fights are things you pre-planned and then improv'd into being relevant then you're not seriously engaging with the choices that the players are making. Why can't it be the other way around? Why can't completely improv fights be the atypical solution due to the party doing something totally unexpected, and pre-planned kobold/orc shamans and liches and otherwise cool things be something that you improv in because it makes sense in context? Part of having a world that feels alive means that you can usually (as the DM) guess what kind of inhabitants are going to be in a given area. Years and years ago, when I used to DM, I would randomly assemble encounters based on the setting in which the fight takes place (and also being careful to make sure that encounters added to the pacing of the game.) Basically I had a laundry list of things they could fight in a given area, so prep work for spells and whatnot would be done beforehand. Not that I'm arguing 5e's solution is good or anything, because I've always hated looking up spells.
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Aug 20, 2014 05:19
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Sir Kodiak posted:But if all your fights are things you pre-planned and then improv'd into being relevant then you're not seriously engaging with the choices that the players are making.
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Aug 20, 2014 05:20
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dichloroisocyanuric posted:Part of having a world that feels alive means that you can usually (as the DM) guess what kind of inhabitants are going to be in a given area. That actually strikes me as making the world very limited, if there's so little diversity in an area that you can list off all the inhabitants you might possibly use ahead of time. It can help, but I think it falls into the dilemma I suggested: either too much pre-planning is required where much of it ends up wasted or you're limiting options more than you should. Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Reskinning: Threat or menace? You decide, we judge. Reskinning is a great tool to have but one that is a mediocre fit to this problem. If there's not a good connection between the flavor of a monster and the mechanics of the monster it's a lovely monster. If the mechanics of the monster aren't responsive to the decisions the players are making you're not seriously engaging with their choices. Reskinning is a wonderful solution to the situation dichloroisocyanuric describes where you put together a neat encounter and want to improv it into things, or to provide yourself with more monster options. It's a lousy solution to the preplanning problem if you typically go into a session knowing the encounter the PCs are going to face and you just pick what hat it wears at the time it kicks off. Sir Kodiak fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Aug 20, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 05:28
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Sir Kodiak posted:That actually strikes me as making the world very limited, if there's so little diversity in an area that you can list off all the inhabitants you might possibly use ahead of time. It can help, but I think it falls into the dilemma I suggested: either too much pre-planning is required where much of it ends up wasted or you're limiting options more than you should. When you DM do you just roll on the random encounter table and look up the appropriate stats right there, in real time?
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Aug 20, 2014 05:32
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Sir Kodiak posted:That actually strikes me as making the world very limited, if there's so little diversity in an area that you can list off all the inhabitants you might possibly use ahead of time. It can help, but I think it falls into the dilemma I suggested: either too much pre-planning is required where much of it ends up wasted or you're limiting options more than you should. My lists were usually fairly large, and my group never actually managed to fight everything I had available. Do you actually just take a small break to flip through the book and create an encounter on the fly? Does that, on average, impact your game more positively than using a realistically generated encounter from pre-planned inhabitants of the area? I'm trying to imagine your alternative in a real-life game. I'm not really sure what you're trying to say the best solution here is, but I don't think it's disingenuous to the players to know ahead of time what kind of creepy crawlies adventurers are likely to run into in the shadow forest.
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Aug 20, 2014 05:42
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For reference, I moved a few months ago so am speaking as to how I ran things before the move.dichloroisocyanuric posted:Do you actually just take a small break to flip through the book and create an encounter on the fly? Does that, on average, impact your game more positively than using a realistically generated encounter from pre-planned inhabitants of the area? I'm trying to imagine your alternative in a real-life game. I'm not really sure what you're trying to say the best solution here is, but I don't think it's disingenuous to the players to know ahead of time what kind of creepy crawlies adventurers are likely to run into in the shadow forest. I try to run a fast game so I didn't necessarily even know ahead of time that the players will be in the Shadow Forest. They traveled a lot and they could start a session in their base town, have a random fight against some raiders in a desert wasteland, then encounter giant magical birds outside an enchanted castle, all in one session. And I didn't necessarily know they were going to go looking for the enchanted castle at the start of the session. It simply wasn't an option to have a sufficient number of pre-planned encounters to handle everything that could happen. So, yes, I built things on the fly and I'm very hesitant of a system that has taken a step backwards from 4e in terms of being able to rapidly put something reasonable together. QuantumNinja posted:When you DM do you just roll on the random encounter table and look up the appropriate stats right there, in real time? My gaming group has collectively produced, on a wiki, a set of one-sentence encounter prompts like "A rusted behemoth, red smoke belching from multiple exhausts, approaches the party from behind, its passengers hoarsely screaming in an unknown language." These are selected from among at random and then immediately put into play. As there are over a hundred, and they work the best when they're customized to the current context of the party, it doesn't make sense to prep them ahead of time. So, in a sense, yes. Of course, not everything is that random. But even something as simple as assaulting a fortress might have a dozen different encounters that could happen based on how they go in: do they sneak in through a sewer pipe, possibly facing a sewer monster; do they assault the front gate; do they hang-glide into the wizard's tower, etc. Having to prep for all of those, which is still all within one broader selection of assaulting the fortress, is simply impractical.
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Aug 20, 2014 05:50
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On the topic of improvisation: I once ran most of a long campaign with the following as my adventure prep: 1. They're underground. 2. What you search for twice exists. Basically, if people seem to really think that something ought to be there, and then they find it, the world feels realistic to them. But if you do it right away it's too obvious.
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Aug 20, 2014 05:55
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seebs posted:1. They're underground. That's good stuff. And good luck rolling out a reskinned pre-plan when they decide that all those scorched bones were produced by a league of diminutive firemancers riding beetles and go looking for their lair.
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Aug 20, 2014 05:57
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Sir Kodiak posted:So, in a sense, yes. Alright, so, that actually didn't end up too far off from the way my stuff worked. I basically had a lot of enemies tied to themes, and would pick and choose them to assemble a suitable encounter based on whatever they ended up doing. Cheating on the themes is part of the fun and is what makes things like weird magical castles feel interesting! It's the kind of thing where, like your method, having time spent with the system lead to having a list of personal resources I could pick from easily. And it's clear that 4e supports this stuff way better than my times with 3.5e or 5e or PF. I think this exemplifies the exact problem with that spell-look-up. It would be (and was) really annoying to improv a lich encounter in that style of monster design. edit: when I think about it, I basically reorganized all the enemies I used so that they didn't suck to build encounters with on the fly. why was I okay with that? opulent fountain fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Aug 20, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 06:04
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QuantumNinja posted:When you DM do you just roll on the random encounter table and look up the appropriate stats right there, in real time? So your argument against spells should be written out in the monster stat block because it saves everyone time is gently caress everyone else, I always have time to prep every encounter so it's not a problem for anyone?
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Aug 20, 2014 06:22
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Sometimes a better or more interesting situation emerges than what you had planned. It's nice when a game doesn't fight you on this.
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Aug 20, 2014 11:54
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Yeah, I DM'd in 4e, 3e and 3.5 and really enjoyed the ability to be more fluid and quick to respond. I guess I've never had the magical gaming group that follows the plot though, so I always had to at least somewhat mix things up. Also, even with fourth edition and a fairly streamlined process from my perspective, it still took me like at least two hours to prep per week. I can't imagine going back to the way I ran 3rd, which was either to handwave encounters a lot (you rolled 20? he died), or spend 4-5 hours making encounters that the players would inevitably ignore.
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Aug 20, 2014 12:39
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Haha... Conjure Woodland Beings +pixies... Forget skeletons.
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Aug 20, 2014 13:02
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I'm still holding out for being able to summon an army of ropers. Vagina dentata tree monsters vs. the world! Tonight is the first session of the new D&D Encounters with the new organized play rules they've put out. I'm debating going but I'm not sure if it's worth it. Would people be interested in a trip report if I do go? And what race/class should I play?
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Aug 20, 2014 13:07
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dwarf74 posted:Haha... Conjure Woodland Beings +pixies... Forget skeletons. It's strong, but it's 1 hour/concentration and you can only ever get 24 (with an 8th level slot) and their attacks don't seem like they would be very good. Skellingtons are 24/7. Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 13:13 on Aug 20, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 13:08
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Rosalind posted:I'm still holding out for being able to summon an army of ropers. Vagina dentata tree monsters vs. the world! I'd be interested. What level is it? Play Bard or Wizard depending. I'll tell you what spells to get.
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Aug 20, 2014 13:10
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Jack the Lad posted:I'd be interested. What level is it? Play Bard or Wizard depending. I'll tell you what spells to get. Level 1.
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Aug 20, 2014 13:11
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Rosalind posted:Level 1. Oh. Not really too much crazy OP stuff you can do at level 1, or any interesting enemies even. Unless you're going to go to multiple sessions and level up probably don't bother. That said, I'd go High Elf Wizard with Burning Hands, Mage Armor, Shield, Find Familiar, Silent Image, Detect Magic. Statswise go 15/14/14/12/8/8 Int/Dex/Con/Wis/Str/Cha so you end up 16/16 Int/Dex after racials. Use a longbow instead of cantrips to plink when you need to - it's 1d8+3 vs 1d10 and works out significantly better until you're doing 2d10 with Fire Bolt. Cast Find Familiar (as a ritual, getting an owl) and Mage Armor in the morning and then Burning Hands when you can catch 3+ guys. Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Aug 20, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 13:20
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seebs posted:Mostly, I think, what I don't understand is why there is such an absolute consensus to this effect here, while other threads I've seen have come to either the opposite conclusion or some kind of mixed conclusion like "casters can contribute more for a couple of fights, but not for more than two or three in a day". Look, the PHB has been out for multiple days now, so clearly everybody commenting has enough experience using at the table to know just how hosed Wizard's of the Crap's newest grod-tard wizard blowjob simulator is. The underlying math is just broken. Compare the equations for wizards and fighters, it couldn't be more obvious. God I miss 4e.
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Aug 20, 2014 13:24
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Ruckby posted:Look, the PHB has been out for multiple days now, so clearly everybody commenting has enough experience using at the table to know just how hosed Wizard's of the Crap's newest grod-tard wizard blowjob simulator is. The underlying math is just broken. Compare the equations for wizards and fighters, it couldn't be more obvious. God I miss 4e. Some of us have been playing for 18+ months dude. Fighters were repeatedly nerfed during the playtest, and they were nerfed again in the PHB. Look at superiority dice, indomitable etc.
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Aug 20, 2014 13:33
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Ironically, Mearls's refusal to replace "Dungeon Master" with "Grog-tard Wizard Blowjob Simulator" was the final straw for Monte Cook.
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Aug 20, 2014 13:56
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dwarf74 posted:Haha... Conjure Woodland Beings +pixies... Forget skeletons. Hey, you can have both. Army of skellies 24/7 and one single Concentration spell to unleash 24 Sleeps, 24 Polymorphs, and 24 Confusions if necessary. But man oh man, look at the Fighter. By the time you get to pull this off he's attacking three times per round. Yeah, don't you feel jealous now, Mr Wizard?
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Aug 20, 2014 13:58
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Jack the Lad posted:Fighters were repeatedly nerfed during the playtest, and they were nerfed again in the PHB. Look man, Fighters had the ability to swing a sword and miss their target, but still graze it for minor damage. That MMO bullshit could never happen in real life! Now when is WOTC bringing back the Permanency spell already?
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