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Sir Kodiak posted:That's fair. Mainly, I think that a discussion of modern wizard-expectations that gives multiple examples from Conan novels and doesn't mention Harry Potter is not exactly capturing modern pop culture. I just wanted to point out that in the world of Harry Potter, everyone with any kind of impact on the plot at all is a witch or wizard, or otherwise capable of performing magic, and muggles are only ever portrayed as clueless victims. It is caster supremacy taken to its logical conclusion.
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Aug 28, 2014 19:09
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But even then, the magic is almost always relatively limited and not particularly powerful. And, perhaps more to the point... in a game where everyone was wizards, there would be SIGNIFICANTLY less of a problem.
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Aug 28, 2014 19:14
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I'll admit I'll never understand why the discussion about how non-magic users being overshadowed by magic-users is bad thing, always seems to circle back to the suggestion that playing a non-magic users should just not be presented as an option.
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Aug 28, 2014 19:20
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My main issue with wizard characters is how they devolve into a boring "hunt for the best spells" character that has no coherent theme at all. Play one wizard and you might as well have played every wizard.
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Aug 28, 2014 19:20
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Gort posted:My main issue with wizard characters is how they devolve into a boring "hunt for the best spells" character that has no coherent theme at all. Play one wizard and you might as well have played every wizard. Amen. I played a 3.5 Wizard all the way up to level 19 or so and this is exactly what happened. Oh, I had some flavorful choices as well of course, but when the rubber hits the road you can either be flavorful or alive. I can't seriously play a hyper-intelligent character and also ignore all the spells that are manifestly better at keeping myself and my friends in good health.
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Aug 28, 2014 19:29
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Slashrat posted:I'll admit I'll never understand why the discussion about how non-magic users being overshadowed by magic-users is bad thing, always seems to circle back to the suggestion that playing a non-magic users should just not be presented as an option. Removing the things in the shadow is an OK solution, bringing the shaded things out of the shadow is a better one. I don't mind playing casters and caddies if the caddies are NPCs, but I'd prefer not to play casters and caddies at all.
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Aug 28, 2014 19:33
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In Harry Potter everyone gets more or less the same set of spells by adulthood if they want to. What makes people better at dueling is practicing dueling. What makes people better at using magic to make things is practice. Anyone can cast a spell in Harry Potter but that doesn't make you good at it. Spells do not "just work." In D&D terms you could say that spells are cast through the skill system, not as a way around it.
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Aug 28, 2014 19:33
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Jimbozig posted:In Harry Potter everyone gets more or less the same set of spells by adulthood if they want to. Well, if you're a spellcaster in the first place. Muggles can wave a wand around as much as they want and it isn't going to do poo poo. Of course, unlike D&D, non-spellcasters are mostly excluded from the story, even with Harry Potter wizards being generally much less powerful than D&D wizards.
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Aug 28, 2014 19:39
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Froghammer posted:Are Warlocks just jank? Because they look like really wonky spellcasters that don't get enough tricks to compensate for the crippling lack of spell slots. It took me a while to notice: Their spell slots are per short rest, not per long rest.
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Aug 28, 2014 19:40
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AlphaDog posted:I agree. Pathfinder gave it to a monk spec, as I recall. I dunno, though, it sounds like a Bad Design Choice to me, because having the option of not being able to play the character anymore, but you get a ton of power temporarily, sounds like trying to balance things by putting two unrelated things in opposition. It's similar to the error with 1e's "magic-users are by far the most powerful at everything, but that's okay because they suck at low levels".
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Aug 28, 2014 19:54
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Ruckby posted:No, fans of YOUR favorite edition are the babies!!! This is literally a conversation people are having. Does the act of conversation baffle you often?
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Aug 28, 2014 19:58
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Sir Kodiak posted:Well, if you're a spellcaster in the first place. Muggles can wave a wand around as much as they want and it isn't going to do poo poo. Of course, unlike D&D, non-spellcasters are mostly excluded from the story, even with Harry Potter wizards being generally much less powerful than D&D wizards. But if you're a muggle, you get access to technology that awes and frightens many wizards. The only wizards who want to reveal themselves to muggles are the the villains who believe they have the power to enslave them. Normal rational wizards want to hide from muggles. And as I've mentioned before, any muggle can accomplish the effects of the three unforgiveable curses with a handgun, some sharp implements, and some strong rope. Meanwhile, Voldemort ain't got poo poo on a simple fertilizer bomb.
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Aug 28, 2014 20:15
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PeterWeller posted:And as I've mentioned before, any muggle can accomplish the effects of the three unforgiveable curses with a handgun, some sharp implements, and some strong rope. Meanwhile, Voldemort ain't got poo poo on a simple fertilizer bomb. The Imperius curse is a stretch, and teleportation, invisibility, transforming into a rat, etc. aren't so easy to duplicate. Killing and torturing are, of course, entirely possible for the mundane, but as with D&D damage-dealing is the least-unbalanced thing that a wizard can do.
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Aug 28, 2014 20:23
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Sir Kodiak posted:The Imperius curse is a stretch, and teleportation, invisibility, transforming into a rat, etc. aren't so easy to duplicate. Killing and torturing are, of course, entirely possible for the mundane, but as with D&D damage-dealing is the least-unbalanced thing that a wizard can do. Next would be a lot more balanced if the fighter had access to modern technology and the wizard didn't.
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Aug 28, 2014 20:27
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Andrast posted:Next would be a lot more balanced if the fighter had access to modern technology and the wizard didn't. E.g., Shadowrun.
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Aug 28, 2014 20:27
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PeterWeller posted:Normal rational wizards want to hide from muggles. They make it a point to mention World War II, and the secret war between wizards that went on at the time; I wonder if they decided to further pull away from muggles after seeing the sheer level of destruction that went on during that time. It'd make sense, because there's more mundane humans than there are wizards, and any schmuck with minimal training can just pull a trigger and end a life. What self-respecting wizard would wanna mess with that poo poo?
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Aug 28, 2014 20:34
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So, I'm running Lost Mine of Phandelver at home, and we're having a pretty good time so far. The player who had the wizard, though, was having a hard time keeping track of his spells, and now that they've levelled up, even the fighter has an ability or two to keep track of. I spent some time fooling with a spreadsheet, NimbleText and nandeck, and wound up with a card generator. It spits out cards that look like this: They're poker-size, so I sleeved 'em with some cheap crappy playing cards behind them and it looks like they'll work pretty well. Here's a link to a Google doc with an example CSV and the NimbleText pattern, and you can find nandeck here. I didn't put much effort into making them pretty (other than a recent change, not really shown here, that allows you to use HTML in the spell/ability description). About the only effect there is changing the background color of the header on a cantrip. Is there anything someone can think of that would be useful to implement on these?
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Aug 28, 2014 21:30
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Sir Kodiak posted:The Imperius curse is a stretch, and teleportation, invisibility, transforming into a rat, etc. aren't so easy to duplicate. Killing and torturing are, of course, entirely possible for the mundane, but as with D&D damage-dealing is the least-unbalanced thing that a wizard can do. I put that gun to the head of the person you most love and I can Imperius curse the hell out of you. The other things you mention aren't dark arts. What the rest of the magic community has figured out to do with the stuff is truly marvelous. Meanwhile, dark wizards are figuring out new ways to do what any common criminal can accomplish with a few tools. That's, of course, part of the books' moral message.
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Aug 28, 2014 21:54
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PeterWeller posted:The other things you mention aren't dark arts. What the rest of the magic community has figured out to do with the stuff is truly marvelous. Meanwhile, dark wizards are figuring out new ways to do what any common criminal can accomplish with a few tools. That's, of course, part of the books' moral message. I'm not sure why them being dark arts or not is relevant to the discussion, considering that we got into this because I mentioned Dumbledore being more like a D&D wizard than the older fictional examples being presented.
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Aug 28, 2014 21:58
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PeterWeller posted:I put that gun to the head of the person you most love and I can Imperius curse the hell out of you. I don't think discussing the flaws and shortcomings of the Harry Potter magic system is really relevant to the conversation at hand. But while we're on the topic, Voldemort was very unlike a D&D wizard. Sure, he had a phylactery (or loving six), but his magic was grossly limited for a high-end D&D necromancer. Also, unlike necromancers, he never attempted to genocide the QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Aug 28, 2014 |
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Aug 28, 2014 22:03
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atholbrose posted:Spell cards Watch it there, dude. You're venturing dangerously close to 4e territory. Some more forceful, more adventurous personalities might suggest to you that if you're already making 'spell cards' or even 'ability cards' you might as well abandon the pretense of 5e and 'go back' to 4e.
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Aug 28, 2014 22:10
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No, see, this time cards are okay because
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Aug 28, 2014 22:14
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Those spell cards remind me of the loot cards I made for my last Savage Worlds campaign. It was pretty fun to not only tell a player they found cool loot, but actually hand them a physical thing with the item's stats and description on it. Sometimes I even threw on some flavor text, because I gotta amuse myself somehow.
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Aug 28, 2014 22:30
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Is there any good reason you guys can think of why the Incapacitated status effect still allows movement? It's clearly not an oversight, since Hypnotic Pattern inflicts Incapacitated and explicitly sets movement to 0.
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Aug 28, 2014 22:48
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Incapacitated prevents taking any kind of action, and I haven't yet see anything that allows movement without taking an action. Seems to me that effects that incapacitates are just being redundant by stating that the creature is also unable to move.
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Aug 28, 2014 23:07
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There are loads of effects that incapacitate but I haven't found any that still allows movement, save for Modify Memory during the reprogramming (but the creature is unaware of its surroundings so movement is still not a good option). But there could be, in theory, some in the MM or future products. Being incapacitated in 5e is like being dazed in 4e: you can still do some things, just not as much as normally.
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Aug 28, 2014 23:20
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Slashrat posted:I haven't yet see anything that allows movement without taking an action. Movements and actions are completely independent in 5ed. Regular movement isn't an action, it's just movement. The only time you use an action to move is if you use the Dash action. Sage Genesis posted:There are loads of effects that incapacitate but I haven't found any that still allows movement... But there could be, in theory, some in the MM or future products. Yeah, it just seemed weird to have design space for an incapacitated creature who can still run away or move around. Elmo Oxygen fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Aug 28, 2014 |
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Aug 28, 2014 23:31
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LuiCypher posted:Crap, read the Old Testament. Samson kills an entire army with a donkey's jawbone and tears down an entire evil temple (albeit at the cost of his life) with a quick prayer and awe-inspiring strength. In the Hamzanama a fighter, a thief, and an archer are just constantly wandering into sorcerer's tilisms (alternate universes customized by the sorcerer) and messing them up.
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Aug 28, 2014 23:48
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LuiCypher posted:Samson kills an entire army with a donkey's jawbone and tears down an entire evil temple (albeit at the cost of his life) with a quick prayer and awe-inspiring strength. Obviously a paladin.
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Aug 29, 2014 00:02
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LuiCypher posted:Some more forceful, more adventurous personalities might suggest to you that if you're already making 'spell cards' or even 'ability cards' you might as well abandon the pretense of 5e and 'go back' to 4e. To be fair, that's pretty good advice.
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Aug 29, 2014 00:17
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LuiCypher posted:Watch it there, dude. You're venturing dangerously close to 4e territory. Some more forceful, more adventurous personalities might suggest to you that if you're already making 'spell cards' or even 'ability cards' you might as well abandon the pretense of 5e and 'go back' to 4e. despite the fact that this is a lovely post, card style powers are something really cool about 4e and if they sold decks of cards for each class spell list, they'd probably make good money. can we talk a bit about the quality of the book? for those of you who actually own it, what do you think about it? does anyone else have blurry/faded text on some of their pages? is there an excuse for why the art varies between deviant art and professional work? I like the offwhite backgrounds for the pages though, and overall design and physical quality seems really tight.
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Aug 29, 2014 00:55
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dichloroisocyanuric posted:despite the fact that this is a lovely post, card style powers are something really cool about 4e and if they sold decks of cards for each class spell list, they'd probably make good money. poo poo, TSR did that ages ago. There's a copy of the Priest Deck at my LGS, left untouched and in near-mint condition. If anyone complains about MUH CARDS in D&D just point to poo poo like that and stare at them until they go away.
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Aug 29, 2014 00:59
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They actually are going to be selling spell cards, one deck for each class, except wizards, sorcerors and warlocks share a single deck http://www.gf9-dnd.com/gameAcc/tabid/87/entryid/87/Default.aspx
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Aug 29, 2014 01:21
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dichloroisocyanuric posted:can we talk a bit about the quality of the book? for those of you who actually own it, what do you think about it? does anyone else have blurry/faded text on some of their pages? is there an excuse for why the art varies between deviant art and professional work? I like the offwhite backgrounds for the pages though, and overall design and physical quality seems really tight. My book seems to have incomplete printing on some pages, where the press didn't manage to completely fill in the letters. It's weird and a little hard to read. That's the only quality control issue I've seen in any copy I picked up, but I have seen it in a few now.
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Aug 29, 2014 01:40
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Lord of Bore posted:They actually are going to be selling spell cards, one deck for each class, except wizards, sorcerors and warlocks share a single deck neat! gale force 9 makes good quality stuff in my past experiences. also I like that wiz/sorc/lock shares a deck because it doesn't feel like they're trying to gouge for money with it. maybe I'm too used to GW
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Aug 29, 2014 01:51
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Gort posted:My main issue with wizard characters is how they devolve into a boring "hunt for the best spells" character that has no coherent theme at all. Play one wizard and you might as well have played every wizard. Honestly it seems like you could easily split wizards up into 5-6 different classes each with there own class features and more thematic spell list. So instead of a single wizard class your would have necromancers, illusionists, envokers, conjurers, arcanists, ect. There's no real reason to have this vast array of different magical powers under "do magic" class other then tradition. Making each school of magic its own class would go a long way to fixing the magic batman problem where a wizard can do anything if they have 8 hours to prepare.
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Aug 29, 2014 01:54
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Vorpal Cat posted:Honestly it seems like you could easily split wizards up into 5-6 different classes each with there own class features and more thematic spell list. So instead of a single wizard class your would have necromancers, illusionists, envokers, conjurers, arcanists, ect. There's no real reason to have this vast array of different magical powers under "do magic" class other then tradition. Making each school of magic its own class would go a long way to fixing the magic batman problem where a wizard can do anything if they have 8 hours to prepare.
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Aug 29, 2014 01:58
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Vorpal Cat posted:Honestly it seems like you could easily split wizards up into 5-6 different classes each with there own class features and more thematic spell list. So instead of a single wizard class your would have necromancers, illusionists, envokers, conjurers, arcanists, ect. There's no real reason to have this vast array of different magical powers under "do magic" class other then tradition. Making each school of magic its own class would go a long way to fixing the magic batman problem where a wizard can do anything if they have 8 hours to prepare. basically, this is what wizard archetypes should have done instead, they just made an already top tier class even better at a specific thing
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Aug 29, 2014 02:10
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Just got my PHB. There's some things I really like (Advantage/Disadvantage, the Concentration system to limit buff stacking and some of the spellcasting excesses) and some things I really don't like (martial classes are a huge step back from 4e). But one thing that jumped out at me as hilarious is just how awful the Ranger Beastmaster is. How awful, you ask? Well, let's find out together! Assume a level 11 ranger Beastmaster, so that the pet has gotten all of it's core archetype feature buffs. You are limited to beasts of CR 1/4 or lower. Let's take a panther! This uber buff panther has 44 HP (4x Ranger level), an AC of 16, and +8 to hit. By sacrificing one of your two attacks, you can order your beast to attack twice (Note: it cannot move AND attack. It can move as a bonus action only if it doesn't attack that round - otherwise, it's one or the other. The text doesn't say whether it can take reactions, but let's assume it can at least take OAs.) Let's have it bite twice! It will do 2x 1d6+6 damage (1d6+2 base, +4 because you can add your proficiency bonus.) It can pounce to knock an enemy prone... except it can't because it can't move and attack on the same turn. Meanwhile, a level 11 druid has level 6 spells, which means it can cast Conjure Fey, which lets you summon a CR 6 beast. There are no CR 6 beasts in the Horde of the Dragon Queen supplement, but the wyvern is CR 6, so that should be in the same ballpark. The wyvern has 110 HP (nearly 3x the panther), an AC of 13, and +7 to hit. It attacks twice a round: once at either 2d6+4 or 2d8+4 (beak or claws), and once with its tail (2d6+4, save vs DC 15 CON or take 7d6 poison). This spell requires concentration, and broken concentration turns the wyvern hostile, which is definitely a drawback. On the other hand, it's ridiculously superior to the panther, and it it doesn't require any of your actions to act. So the druid can keep on casting other spells while the wyvern runs in and wrecks poo poo, at only the cost of one spell slot. But a sixth-level slot sounds awful pricy, and I'm scared of the wyvern turning against me, you say! Well, for just the cost of a fifth level slot, a druid can cast the third level spell Conjure Animals and get not one, but TWO CR 2 beasts. Again, no CR 2 beasts in the HotDQ doc, but a griffon is CR 2 and pretty beast-like, so let's use that. A griffon has AC 12 and 59 HP - notably easier to hit, but over 25% more HP. +6 to hit (not as good as our panther), two attacks for 1d8+4 and 2d6+4, notably higher than the panther. Unlike the wyvern, the griffon loves us and will never turn on us, even if we lose concentration. Like the wyvern, it acts on its own, so the druid doesn't have to use an action, and it can move and attack on the same turn. Oh, and once again, there are TWO OF THEM. And we're still a druid with tons of other spell slots. Beastmasters: the archetype whose core features are objectively outshined by a single mid-level druid spell.
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Aug 29, 2014 02:14
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Can a Tome Warlock cast the skeleton summoning spell? I'm wondering if you could play a simple necromancer by running a Tome warlock.
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Aug 29, 2014 02:47
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