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jigokuman posted:Changing the name of Melf's Acid Arrow to Schrödinger's Javelin. But then how do you define it? (Roll 1d20) 1-6: A melee weapon 7-12: A ranged weapon 13-18: A spell effect 19: Roll twice on this table ignoring 19s. 20: Dm's Choice
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Aug 21, 2014 10:08
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you ruin the result by observing it
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Aug 21, 2014 10:38
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Littlefinger posted:Ahahah, how is this even remotely "not unbalanced"? Well, a longbow is still always worse than a maul in terms of DPR (except that it's ranged which means you don't lose an unquantifiable number of rounds' attacks by not being in range). Once you get Sharpshooter, though, you do strictly more DPR than even a Great Weapon Mastery melee Fighter against enemies with ACs above a certain number, as we can see (in green) in the table below, and you can also shoot out to 600 feet and hit anything in less than total cover with no penalties.  That's with a longbow, though. If you're a Crossbow Expert as well as a Sharpshooter, using a heavy crossbow, ranged is basically always better:  Here's where things get really interesting. If you instead dual wield hand crossbows, you can take a -5 penalty to make an additional attack, which lets you get that sweet, sweet 10 static bonus damage from Sharpshooter an additional time. Let's see how that works out:  Basically, if you want to deal the highest damage possible as a Fighter in D&D 5e, dual wield hand crossbows and go full gun kata. Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 11:21 on Aug 21, 2014 |
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Aug 21, 2014 10:50
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Littlefinger posted:Ahahah, how is this even remotely "not unbalanced"? LOL nice one XD. I'm glad there are others out there who haven't swallowed WotC's grog-tarded poo poo stream.
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Aug 21, 2014 11:43
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I know, right? Being curious about what the charop friend meant by giving +2 to-hit to one fighter speciality not being unbalanced, when it modifies the binary resolution of did damage/didn't do anything? Is it because the to-hit math somehow does not differentiate between Fighter1 with Longsword +1 and Fighter2 with Longsword +3? Is it because interclass balance is already off when some classes can just declare what happens on the battlefield, so giving at least some fighters a +2 to play their silly to-hit roll games would, if anything, only help the balance? Or is it because other specialities are so much stronger that archers wasting less turns on failed attacks does not matter, i.e. fighters are balanced with each other? A question truly equivalent to some "LOLXD grog something something" shitposting.
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Aug 21, 2014 12:42
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Jack the Lad posted:Basically, if you want to deal the highest damage possible as a Fighter in D&D 5e, dual wield hand crossbows and go full gun kata.
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Aug 21, 2014 12:53
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Littlefinger posted:I know, right? Brother, I'm agreeing with you. Let's be gentlemen here, alright? Those of us who actually understand game theory need to stick together if we hope to ever get another decent edition.
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Aug 21, 2014 12:55
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Jack, do you have any of those spreadsheets on a Google or OneDrive document? Somewhere searchable on the Internet? They're pretty neat, but a pain to try and dig through hundreds of pages here, in the imp zone, and enworld to find something. I feel like if I had some monster-math-on-a-business-card level formulas (even if the actual books don't quite line up to them), it would make my inevitable DMing of 5th edition a lot more fun on my part. edit: i am a fifth level toilet lord
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Aug 21, 2014 14:34
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Is there distinction between Thrown and Ranged? (i.e. dagger vs. bow) If not I'd simply argue that it depends on what kind of attack you're making with it. Otherwise you could argue that making an improvised weapon attack with a bow by smashing it over someones head should benefit from +2 to-hit because it's using a "ranged weapon"Ruckby posted:LOL nice one XD. is this something we're doing now? XD @_@ ^.^ 
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Aug 21, 2014 14:52
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treeboy posted:Is there distinction between Thrown and Ranged? (i.e. dagger vs. bow) If not I'd simply argue that it depends on what kind of attack you're making with it. Otherwise you could argue that making an improvised weapon attack with a bow by smashing it over someones head should benefit from +2 to-hit because it's using a "ranged weapon" Someone asked Mearls about it on Twitter and I think he said that yeah, RAW a melee attack with a javelin or handaxe technically should get the +2 but he would rule otherwise. They could have fixed this by just changing it to 'ranged attacks with a weapon' to clarify, but  I guess
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Aug 21, 2014 15:05
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treeboy posted:Is there distinction between Thrown and Ranged? (i.e. dagger vs. bow) If not I'd simply argue that it depends on what kind of attack you're making with it. Otherwise you could argue that making an improvised weapon attack with a bow by smashing it over someones head should benefit from +2 to-hit because it's using a "ranged weapon" If there is a distinction, I can't find it. Thrown and Ammunition are both properties, but that doesn't seem to have any bearing on whether something is a Ranged weapon. The two relevant lines that I can see are the ones I quoted on the last page quote:A melee weapon is used to attack a target within 5 feet of you, whereas a ranged weapon is used to attack a target at a distance. I guess it could be argued that the intent behind the first part is to judge a weapon by how it's currently being used, but that's not what's actually written there - and the second part clearly states that any weapon with a listed range is a ranged weapon. It does say to treat an improvised weapon such as a table leg as a club. I guess that's what your bow would be treated as? A club has no range (ie, can't be thrown*) and is therefore a melee weapon. e: Lord of Bore posted:Someone asked Mearls about it on Twitter and I think he said that yeah, RAW a melee attack with a javelin or handaxe technically should get the +2 but he would rule otherwise.  *except by many actual historical warriors Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 15:12 on Aug 21, 2014 |
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Aug 21, 2014 15:08
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Ederick posted:Jack, do you have any of those spreadsheets on a Google or OneDrive document? Somewhere searchable on the Internet? They're pretty neat, but a pain to try and dig through hundreds of pages here, in the imp zone, and enworld to find something. I feel like if I had some monster-math-on-a-business-card level formulas (even if the actual books don't quite line up to them), it would make my inevitable DMing of 5th edition a lot more fun on my part. It includes:
Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Aug 21, 2014 |
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Aug 21, 2014 15:09
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Jack the Lad posted:My sheets are kinda disorganised, but I threw this together for you and anyone else who's interested: You should post these along with your analysis posts from this thread on a blog somewhere so they can be easily linked to non-goons.
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Aug 21, 2014 15:11
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AlphaDog posted:If there is a distinction, I can't find it. Thrown and Ammunition are both properties, but that doesn't seem to have any bearing on whether something is a Ranged weapon. The two relevant lines that I can see are the ones I quoted on the last page I would argue the wording of that block, though awful, is actually talking about what kind of attacks are being made. "whereas a ranged weapon is used to attack a target at a distance." (emphasis mine) suggests that a weapon not used to attack at range isn't ranged, whereas one that does is. A weapon that can be used to either make ranged or melee attacks like a dagger or handaxe depend on the method of their use. Yes they could've/should've just phrased it as ranged/melee attacks but
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Aug 21, 2014 15:17
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AlphaDog posted:But then how do you define it? No, no man. You're missing the point of 5e. You're missing the essence of what is truly D&D and the epitome of modern design. You've gotta like, not worry about the rules man. You don't need rules to shoot a ranged weapon. You just know. I mean, technically a sword could be a ranged weapon, man, because it extends your attack range farther than the reach of your arm and you could, like, throw it man. Technically a bow could be a melee weapon, dude, because you could like, hit people next to you with it. Like Legolas! Wheeeeeee! That's what like, all the kids like these days, right? Free yourself from the shackles of rules, brosephs, and revel in the first truly modern edition of D&D, where the rules are made up and balance doesn't matter. Because rules prevent you from like, exploring your mind and engaging in true role-playing and force you to roll-play am I right? *High-fives Mike Mearls and shares in the bonds of string cheese with him.
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Aug 21, 2014 15:19
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cbirdsong posted:You should post these along with your analysis posts from this thread on a blog somewhere so they can be easily linked to non-goons. Yeah, I was thinking that. What's the best/easiest blog site? Also, I edited a link to the sheet into the post you're quoting but here it is again.
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Aug 21, 2014 15:19
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ProfessorCirno posted:This is something that's been sticking out to me. Every pro-5e thing I've seen, every person hyped, every picture of people playing it, the average age has been older then 30. Eh. I have a friend back in Boston whose 12 year old daughter insisted on buying it with her own saved money so she could run it for friends. I have zero interest in 5e but I don't think there's an age gap.
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Aug 21, 2014 15:24
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You're doing good work, Jack the Lad.
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Aug 21, 2014 16:11
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Thanlis posted:Eh. I have a friend back in Boston whose 12 year old daughter insisted on buying it with her own saved money so she could run it for friends. I have zero interest in 5e but I don't think there's an age gap. I will say that a lot of the folks into it probably were into 3E and therefore are going to be around that age range though, so there's certainly at least a market there.
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Aug 21, 2014 16:28
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Littlefinger posted:I know, right? Basically, he did the maths and found that getting +2 to hit in melee with a thrown weapon was pretty balanced with the other specialities, because thrown weapons are pretty universally lovely. I doubt that will hold up once the inevitable enchantment that lets you throw your maul shows up though.
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Aug 21, 2014 16:39
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treeboy posted:is this something we're doing now? XD @_@ ^.^ Welcome to somethingawful 2.0 I guess.
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Aug 21, 2014 16:49
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Littlefinger posted:I know, right? Basically the Martial classes are all pretty close to each other all things considered, there's still some sore losers but nowhere close to some classes in 3.5. The major issue continues to be difference in power scope of martials vs. casters. However anyone suggesting that it's as bad as 3.x is overstating things in the extreme. They've done some things to reign in casters (limit 1 concentration) that could go a little further (make concentration checks more difficult) while ignoring other potential issues (spells that *should* be concentration, like Animate Dead) and common sense things that could've generally pulled caster scope back towards earth (add drawbacks to wizard school selection, lock out certain types of spells while enhancing others) 5e is 90% casters are too powerful, and 10% martials need (a little) love. People suggesting that Fighters should be just as reality defyingly powerful aren't suggesting actual mechanical solutions within the context of the game as it exists. They're suggesting a completely different game.
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Aug 21, 2014 16:52
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Thanlis posted:Eh. I have a friend back in Boston whose 12 year old daughter insisted on buying it with her own saved money so she could run it for friends. I have zero interest in 5e but I don't think there's an age gap.
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Aug 21, 2014 17:15
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treeboy posted:Basically the Martial classes are all pretty close to each other all things considered, there's still some sore losers but nowhere close to some classes in 3.5. The concentration thing nerfs casters a little, but it also nerfs martials, because it means that casters who want to maintain a concentration-type spell have to do so instead of buffing an ally. I don't at all miss the loss of school lockout from wizard school selection. It was needed in 3.x because the bonus spells were such a significant advantage. I note that Pathfinder's school specs are almost certainly an influence on 5e's, but 5e's school specs are significantly weaker, just from the lack of "a bonus spell of every level you can cast". Wizards are a ton weaker in 5e than in 3.x. I've never seen a caster in 3.x not have buffed-enough primary caster stat by level 17ish to get bonus spells at 9th level, so they were starting with at least two. At 20th level, no less than five, six if you had a specialty school. 5e? One. That's a gigantic nerf... And I think a pretty reasonable one. I think the reason animate dead isn't concentration is to allow for Evil Necromancers. I do agree it's clearly sort of buggy, although I think in most games I've seen, trying to actually maintain that extra power for long would end up consuming a ridiculous amount of time and attention.
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Aug 21, 2014 17:16
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Whelp, signed up for a friend-of-a-friend's game as a ranger. He's a little groggy, but it's worth a shot, and of the three people in so far, I'm apparently the closest thing to a caster in there. Will report back with a measurement of how many units of fun I can glean from being a bowshootingsman in Next.
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Aug 21, 2014 17:35
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Trip report: D&D Adventurer's League: Encounters- Tyranny of Dragons: Horde of the Dragon Queen Session 1 This is the first season of Encounters with the new D&D Adventurer's League rules. The Adventurer's League is an attempt by WotC to bring standardization and portability to D&D organized play. The thought being that if you use a character at GenCon you should be able to bring it and use it at your local Encounters game with the rewards and experience you earned previously. It makes sense on some levels. You want players to feel like they have continuity and that the rewards they get in various settings matter. Also allowing characters to grow over time captures more of the home game feeling rather than what encounters used to be which was usually levels 1 to 4 for 8-12 sessions starting over each time. However, a huge issue with this system is the inequality it causes. For instance, players who came to encounters last night from Gen Con brought characters that were level 3 and above. A level 3 character compared to a level 1 is a huge difference. It probably makes sessions really hard to balance for the DM because one of your players is slaughtering everything in sight like it's nothing while the other players can be dropped if a thug with a big enough club looks at them funny. I wasn't at a table with anyone who was higher level, but I just know that I wouldn't ever want to be. I showed up at the store early after hearing that Encounters there sold out the previous week. This store is huge for D&D Encounters. They run 7 tables of 6-7 players meaning that they plan on having about 45 players on any given Wednesday night. I'd imagine that this must be one of the largest Encounters programs around. Most other places I've seen run 1-3 tables. Because they run so many tables and players can switch from table to table each week (they're randomly assigned), the story has to be very regimented. If there are huge discrepancies at each table, then the overall story is going to be a mess. Anyway, I was seated with 3 people who were totally new to D&D and 2 people who were newer but had a bit of experience. I brought the character that Jack made for me, an optimized high elf wizard. The gulf between my character (level 1 wizard with a longbow and 16 dex) and their characters was kind of amazing. Even though they were all committed to fighting and doing their best to keep up, I still killed about 50% of the kobolds, cultists, and rats. I didn't even get hit once even though the DM started gunning for me thanks to Mage Armor giving me 16 AC for the entire session. I also chewed out a bunch of NPCs (because I was a jerk wizard) and thanks to some good persuasion rolls, I basically had everyone cowed. The TotM combat was awful. It wasted way more time than it saved because of arguments about positioning, how many characters would be hit by a spell, whether a gnome could see over and elf, etc. Particularly during this one encounter where we were standing single-file in a tight tunnel, everyone was completely confused about what was happening. I think a simple grid would have saved us time. If it's causing this much consternation at level 1, I can't imagine what it's like at higher levels. The story was a bit boring. Just kobolds and cultists attacking a village. It never really felt dangerous or epic in any real way. Apparently there was a dragon raging in the background that we didn't confront because we're level 1 and contrived reasons kept us fighting kobolds. I didn't even stick around to find out how much gold and XP I received because I knew by the end that I didn't want to come back. The entire session lasted about 3 and half hours. Oh and one of the players sexually harassed my character in game and the DM didn't say anything despite the new rules that explicitly forbid that sort of thing, so that was nice.
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Aug 21, 2014 17:36
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seebs posted:I think the reason animate dead isn't concentration is to allow for Evil Necromancers. I do agree it's clearly sort of buggy, although I think in most games I've seen, trying to actually maintain that extra power for long would end up consuming a ridiculous amount of time and attention. All you need to do for an Evil Necromancer monster is give them an ability saying that they don't require concentration or upkeep casts for animate dead. Not that concentration would be much of a nerf anyways as Jack's maths have shown
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Aug 21, 2014 17:36
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Rosalind posted:Trip report: D&D Adventurer's League: Encounters- Tyranny of Dragons: Horde of the Dragon Queen Session 1 Thanks for this. Kinda surprised the caster supremacy was evident at level 1.
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Aug 21, 2014 17:44
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Ixjuvin posted:All you need to do for an Evil Necromancer monster is give them an ability saying that they don't require concentration or upkeep casts for animate dead. Not that concentration would be much of a nerf anyways as Jack's maths have shown ... Wait, I'm maybe missing something. The premise of the necromancer power is their ability to have multiple spells' worth of skeletons at once. Concentration would cap them at exactly one spell's worth, and using no concentration-requiring spells while maintaining them. How would that not be much of a nerf?
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Aug 21, 2014 17:53
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Under their chosen model, there's no way to really do something like Lord Necropants' skeleton army without making that same spell available to PCs. This is just one of the reasons Goose-Gander equity is pants-making GBS threads stupid, but it was a frequent rallying point against 4e so now we have it.
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Aug 21, 2014 18:07
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Rosalind posted:Oh and one of the players sexually harassed my character in game and the DM didn't say anything despite the new rules that explicitly forbid that sort of thing, so that was nice.
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Aug 21, 2014 18:18
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Generic Octopus posted:Thanks for this. Kinda surprised the caster supremacy was evident at level 1. I think this was less of a caster supremacy issue and more of a min-maxed wizard sitting at a table with a bunch of people who'd never (or barely) played before. I'm guessing they were less than perfectly optimized. Also he was level 3, which does start to open things up a bit more.
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Aug 21, 2014 18:32
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OK so at my store we ran two tables, one a 4E table and one a 5E table. The 4E table was 5 PCs. The 5E table was 10 PCs (because we always get a huge spike at the beginning of a season). The 5E table went as fast as the 4E table, because there's so little to do on a 5E turn. Was playing a rock gnome wizard/sage. Made good use of Grease + Produce Flame from the druid sitting next to me to create a grease fire, an old school combo. Definitely 3E style where you need to have the PHB open to play a caster. Even people who are mostly positive about the game don't like that every spell arbitrarily uses one of several attack resolution systems. Found it remarkable that taking a five-foot step is now basically a standard action. There's not really a lot to the system, especially at 1st level, so there's not a lot to say. Being back to a fairly manageable character sheet is nice. Not needing a builder to make a character in efficient time is nice. New players being able to just instantly know wtf is nice (most of the table was people who had never played, or were doing their first 5E game. One person was that mythical creature who actually started with D&D for Dummies). Resolving a huge combat in about an hour was nice--leaves room for any real RPing, if that's what your group cares about. The 4E thing where you just feel like you are moving from setpiece to setpiece, with two minutes of boring poo poo in between, is done. Background serves as a springboard into your character, rather than being that thing you need to complete your powerbuild. Advantage is still elegant. Overall it's still a confused system, because they tried to make it more rules-lite than 3E but they didn't commit. Dungeon World still rules that side of things. Tactically of course it's a total mess, there are trap options aplenty. Witch Bolt is strictly far worse than any given attack cantrip, to name one of a hundred.
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Aug 21, 2014 18:34
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treeboy posted:I think this was less of a caster supremacy issue and more of a min-maxed wizard sitting at a table with a bunch of people who'd never (or barely) played before. I'm guessing they were less than perfectly optimized. I was level 1, but yes what you said was part of it.
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Aug 21, 2014 18:37
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treeboy posted:5e is 90% casters are too powerful, and 10% martials need (a little) love. People suggesting that Fighters should be just as reality defyingly powerful aren't suggesting actual mechanical solutions within the context of the game as it exists. They're suggesting a completely different game. Actually, they're suggesting a rework of martial classes to give them the same game shaping abilities as caster classes. It only doesn't exist because WotC decided that caster supremacy was a thing they wanted in 5e, not because it had to be that way or there was no other way to make the game. And yes, they are suggesting radical changes to martial classes like was seen in 4e or The Book of Nine Swords. It's not something that hasn't been done or that couldn't be done in the system, it's just something that the 5e design team specifically chose not to do. Caster Supremacy, like it or not, is a hard coded feature of 5e.
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Aug 21, 2014 18:38
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:OK so at my store we ran two tables, one a 4E table and one a 5E table. The 4E table was 5 PCs. The 5E table was 10 PCs (because we always get a huge spike at the beginning of a season). If I can ask, what exactly about 4E gives the setpiece feel? I've heard it a lot but from comparing my 3.5 and 4E books I don't really see much difference. Is it just a side effect of the combat taking too long?
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Aug 21, 2014 18:42
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I feel like if it's mostly boring poo poo between your set pieces (combats), that's got little to do with the version of D&D you're playing and more to do with the DM/players at the table.
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Aug 21, 2014 18:44
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The Bee posted:If I can ask, what exactly about 4E gives the setpiece feel? I've heard it a lot but from comparing my 3.5 and 4E books I don't really see much difference. Is it just a side effect of the combat taking too long? It's entirely combat taking too long. 90-95% of the game is combat, and it's slow combat where success is measured in how quickly and completely you shut down your enemies with marking and penalties. A 3-4 hour game is probably two encounters. If we had the same amount of 5E players we would have been going 2-3 times as fast.
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Aug 21, 2014 18:48
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TheAnomaly posted:Actually, they're suggesting a rework of martial classes to give them the same game shaping abilities as caster classes. It only doesn't exist because WotC decided that caster supremacy was a thing they wanted in 5e, not because it had to be that way or there was no other way to make the game. Which are completely different games. 4e didn't equalize classes by letting Fighters cleave mountains 'twain and jump over the moon, it put logical and mechanical restrictions on the scope of casters and making sure each role was effective no matter which class filled the role.
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Aug 21, 2014 18:50
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3E and 5E have their own problems, where the combat is fast because the casters are resolving it really quickly. Being faster =/= Better. There are many other systems that are fast and also better.
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Aug 21, 2014 18:50
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