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You could use bronze weapons. A macuahuitl would work too. Iron eating aside, the rust monster would devastate the 2 level 1 pc's it is supposed to be balanced for.
Babylon Astronaut fucked around with this message at 09:50 on Sep 17, 2014 |
# ? Sep 17, 2014 09:47 |
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# ? May 14, 2024 03:54 |
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Babylon Astronaut posted:You could use bronze weapons.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 09:56 |
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I don't think the design team thought this one through.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 10:03 |
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Shoulda been an elf and learned Ray of Frost, meatshields
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 10:11 |
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crime fighting hog posted:Serious post: how many of you ever encountered a rust monster while playing? I've been doing this poo poo since 2004 and never ever EVER dealt with a goddamn rust monster, as a player or as a DM in search of poo poo to throw at my players. Yes. Once back in the 90s, when we were young and new to the game and didn't know any better. Once in the game Kai Tave already mentioned (I'm in the same game). I used them once in an actual game as the DM. A camp of hobgoblins had organized a game where you're strapped with pieces of iron and have to ride a Rust Monster for five minutes. Whoever had the most intact pieces at the end of the runs was declared the winner. It's called the corrodeo.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 10:25 |
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This rust monster discussion brings up an interesting point, why aren't there more interesting non metal weapon choices. You know Obsidian glass daggers, Unicore horn spears, Ceramic Blades made from ground up dragon bones and sacred clay, fired in a volcanic kiln for a fortnight, then sharpened against a diamond tipped grinding wheel at midnight on a full moon. You know the fun stuff. Not that any of that would help at the levels your likely to encounter a rust monster but still it would be cool. The only non metal fantasy material I can think of in D&D is darkwood. But when I think fantasy magic wood, I don't think weighs half as much as normal wood. I think of wood as hard as steal, shaped while the tree is on is still alive by secret druid tree smiths, who can harvest a sword or a piece of armor like it was an apple.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 11:18 |
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So I've spent a bit more time on my own math wronger to add some features for other classes. A rogue using hand crossbows is about on par with a fighter doing to same, assuming they both always have advantage. Rogue wins out with without advantage/disadvantage assuming he has someone flanking to get his sneak attack. A 7 rogue/5 fighter blows either of their DPR out of the water though, assuming sneak attacks. It also has the bonus of being able to turn off Power attack against high AC's without losing much DPR(and in some cases raising it) whereas the fighter would end up halving his against the same target. It's not easy to read, I might spend some time making it pretty later. DPR scales better by going further into rogue from that point as well.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 12:20 |
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I've used Rust Monsters as DM in 4e. Sewers below a wizard's university campus town. The sewers were kept clean by a mix of rust monsters and multicoloured oozes. The PCs went in there twice - once forewarned (the fighter stripped down to hide armour and carrying an ironwood sword rather than his normal magic sword) and very carefully not fighting anything, and why would they? The second time because the crazy bastards wanted to steal some baby rust monsters, lock them in a wooden cage, carry it about 30 miles, and let the baby rust monsters loose in the armoury of the enemy castle. ("How are you keeping the cage closed." "With a padlock... Oh gently caress!"). They ultimately didn't make it to the armoury - but did manage to have one of their little blighters gorge itself on the gateroom with the portcullis and the drawbridge chains, and one at the ceremonial changing of the guard.NorgLyle posted:Yes, fighters used to be amazing. It's hard to even describe how thoroughly the 3rd edition changes (not just to wizards but to thieves as well) wrecked the... I won't call it balance but wrecked the way the game used to work. Being fair, thieves sucked both before and after. Mendrian posted:I think it's silly to assume Rust Monsters and the like exist to 'balance' Fighters. I know it's a commonly held belief that every rule that makes Fighters suck a little more was installed by the gently caress Fighters Wizards Rule Cabal, but that's not really the case. Most information from Gygax's table is anecdotal but it sounds like most monsters were either created whole-cloth from some weird fever dream the guy had or it was created in response to a boring, repetitive task one of his players had gotten into the habit of doing. Old Geezer has mentioned that it was created on the spur of the moment because the weird creature was rust coloured. The Wizards Rule Cabal was nothing like as promenant before 3.0 - and especially not in the original setting.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 12:49 |
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moths posted:Gelatinous Cubes were neigh-invisible to absorb the first person to walk into them. Remind me who's got point in marching order again? Depending on the edition, the smart move was a summoned monster, ideally from a wand of the weakest summon spell. Your sacrificial pawn will find traps like a champ. Life as a celestial badger is suffering.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 13:02 |
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In 3.5 you could take a feat to get an infinite supply of small summoned elementals, as long as you had a summoning spell prepared. Only one at a time, but that's plenty to check for traps!
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 13:07 |
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The smart move is always to use spells.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 13:36 |
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If you're a DM and you are using a Rust Monster - either as a puzzle boss or just a regular encounter - you gotta be prepared to give them a new weapon. A boring looking weapon that turns out to be the Badass Sword of Destiny, which the hero uses to slay the monster because it's immune to rust. To be fair, D&D Next let's this happen, since magic weapons aren't affected by the rust monsters rusting abilities. There's still problems with it though. It goes against the design philosophy of not needing magic weapons, and it relies on the DM not being a dick. If it were a function of the monster or something - "If the rust monster eats a weapon, a magic weapon of the same type appears in the rust monster's stockpile of half-eaten metallic items." - it would actually be kind of cool. But I guess that takes power away from the DM, and we don't want that.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 14:03 |
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I can remember meeting some rust monsters back in the pre-2e day. The smart move was always to toss them some iron spikes (of COURSE you had iron spikes in your backpack) and walk away while they were eating. Only a dick DM would actually have them attack the party.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 14:15 |
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More Mike Mearls answering questions http://community.wizards.com/forum/product-and-general-dd-discussions/threads/4142301 Only a couple "Up to your DM" answers.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 14:17 |
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It's compiled by his fanclub, of course they left those out.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 14:20 |
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Rust Monsters means it's the Monk's turn to shine!
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 14:26 |
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It oxidizes all the iron in your body. Fort save or die! That's what you get for playing an OP class like Monk.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 14:28 |
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Selachian posted:I can remember meeting some rust monsters back in the pre-2e day. The smart move was always to toss them some iron spikes (of COURSE you had iron spikes in your backpack) and walk away while they were eating. Only a dick DM would actually have them attack the party. That was a fun game. I swear half the encounters ended up with us recruiting or taming at least some of the enemies. Hell, probably more than half. Esser-Z fucked around with this message at 14:42 on Sep 17, 2014 |
# ? Sep 17, 2014 14:36 |
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Tactical Bonnet posted:It oxidizes all the iron in your body. Fort save or die!
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 14:47 |
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homullus posted:Almost all of its powers relate to ferrous metals, but Rust Metal corrodes ALL nonmagical metals that hit it. So, uhh, I guess it can hurt a wizard's wallet. If the wizard attempts to hurt the rust monster by pelting it with coins, anyway. Do Adamantine and Mithril count as ferrous? I don't really remember anything about those except that Adamantine is really hard and Mithril is really light.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 14:48 |
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The DC is 400. Hope you roll a 20 you power gaming schmuck. Mithril counts as silver, which is nonferrous. I don't know about adamantine.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 14:51 |
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homullus posted:Almost all of its powers relate to ferrous metals, but Rust Metal corrodes ALL nonmagical metals that hit it. So, uhh, I guess it can hurt a wizard's wallet. If the wizard attempts to hurt the rust monster by pelting it with coins, anyway. But... gold doesn't corrode! That's, like, one of the big reasons it's used for coins and other valuable things.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 14:52 |
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Gold doesn't oxidize*. You can definitely corrode it.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 14:55 |
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Tactical Bonnet posted:Gold doesn't oxidize*. You can definitely corrode it. Ugh. I hate rust monsters, even if they are utterly adorable. Well. The 4e one is okay. IIRC it caused temporary penalties. Or maybe it turned magic items into their value in residiuum, so you could just remake them? Something like that.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 14:57 |
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Tactical Bonnet posted:
The preview for the rust monster specifically mentions mithral among the ferrous metals ("ferrous metals such as . . .").
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 15:01 |
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homullus posted:The preview for the rust monster specifically mentions mithral among the ferrous metals ("ferrous metals such as . . .").
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 15:05 |
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Basically, it is to rust as Magneto is to magnetism.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 15:08 |
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There's probably some huge spergin' write up somewhere about how they're actually "Magical Corrosion" monsters who are only called "Rust Monsters" because of their coloring.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 15:15 |
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If you speed up any dungeon crawl and play yakety sax over it, the part where the guys wearing the most expensive equipment around go from being chasers to being the chased is when they find a rust monster.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 15:27 |
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I only saw a rust monster get deployed once, and it was probably a textbook case of DM revenge. Around 1999-2000 we were playing 2e and this one guy in the group was a pretty egregious munchkin and sometimes outright cheater. He did the "roll to attack and quickly snatch the die up before we can see it and announce it was 19 or 20" trick so much that our group--long since he stopped gaming with us--still refers to that maneuver by his first name when we jokingly accuse others of it. He was also a major cause for us to switch to using minis and grids a lot most strictly, as he exploited anything in the "theater of the mind" to his advantage ("But they can't shoot arrows at me, I'm taking cover behind a pillar while chopping up their cleric. You said there were pillars in the room"). Anyway, we were like 18-20 years old and still fairly new, he was about 7 years older than the rest of us that joined in as someone's coworker and at first we were excited because he had been playing for a lot longer than us. The GM was still new to handling situations like this, so that's why he got away with a lot of his crap. His largest achievement was pouring over source books until he found a path in the rules to acquiring some overpowered weapon, through liquidating some other items and a generous interpretation of how magical weapon affixes stacked up the price, he made his case that he can buy a +whatever vorpal longsword, over the counter, for a hefty sum that was yet somehow affordable for a level 4 PC. When you're young and new to DMing it's difficult to shut that sort of thing down when they come at you with it convinced that the rulebooks all but shout their support for getting this item, so he got his weapon. Coupled with his "oh yeah I totally rolled that 20" behavior it made a pretty big mess out of the campaign for the DM. So, being a DM inexperienced with handling players with a less-than-sporting attitude--and crude solution though it was--a few sessions after he got his weapon, we encountered a rust monster. A rust monster that bee-lined it straight for the munchkin, ignoring all else until that sword was gone. I'm 100% certain if we killed it before it ate the sword, another would have showed up immediately. Bhaal fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Sep 17, 2014 |
# ? Sep 17, 2014 17:02 |
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A more experienced DM would have thrown kobolds at him until he expended all the vorpal "charges" then trick him into blowing a Horn of Blasting while underground.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 19:40 |
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robziel posted:More Mike Mearls answering questions My favourite: "Why are all these lovely lame armours in the PHB?" "Well, they're not for the players, they're for NPCS." Well, fuckwit, why waste space in the PLAYERS' HANDBOOK on them, and not put them in the loving DMG? Also, apparently Crossbow Expert works with spells, whatever that means.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 19:53 |
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thespaceinvader posted:Also, apparently Crossbow Expert works with spells, whatever that means. It means you don't take disadvantage on your ranged spells that have attack rolls when you're right next to an enemy. Crossbow Expert posted:Being within 5 feet of a hostile creature doesn’t impose disadvantage on your ranged attack rolls.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 19:57 |
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quote:Mike Mearls @mikemearls · Sep 16 You know exactly where an invisible creature is, you just can't see it. Unless your DM decides otherwise. Hiding is entirely up to the DM's discretion. gently caress Player Agency Unless You're A Wizard. It's Up To Your DM Unless A Spell Says Otherwise.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 19:57 |
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Bassetking posted:Hiding is entirely up to the DM's discretion. Sorta. The rules for hiding specifically say that if you're invisible you can always attempt to Hide, because you can Hide as long as you're not seen, and if you're invisible they can't see you. It seems similar to 4e's stealth rules, just...not well explained. Still favors spellcasters with Invisibility/Greater Invis.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 20:05 |
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Generic Octopus posted:Sorta. The rules for hiding specifically say that if you're invisible you can always attempt to Hide, because you can Hide as long as you're not seen, and if you're invisible they can't see you. It seems similar to 4e's stealth rules, just...not well explained. Still favors spellcasters with Invisibility/Greater Invis. quote:Mike Mearls @mikemearls · Sep 16 Even if the rules say that you can ATTEMPT to hide, according to the design-lead of 5e, arbitration of actually SUCCEEDING is solely at the assessment of the DM. Unless you have two wizards in the party, and one turns themselves invisible, and the other concentrates on Silence. Then they're hidden. Because Spells Say So.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 20:20 |
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Idk, psure the tweet just means in cases like where the rogue is trying to hide behind a desk or something it's up to the DM. The hiding rules are pretty explicit:Hiding (PHB pg 177) posted:When you try to hide, make a Dexterity (Stealth) check. Until you are discovered or you stop hiding, that check’s total is contested by the Wisdom (Perception) check of any creature that actively searches for signs of your presence...An invisible creature can’t be seen, so it can always try to hide. So as far as the PHB is concerned, the DM isn't sole arbiter of whether invisible things can hide. It's also going to be a thing that gets ignored in favor of what the DM thinks makes sense, so meh.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 20:40 |
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I still love how an invisible creature (that cannot be seen) must try to hide (ie: not be seen).
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 20:46 |
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I mean, the distinction between "invisible" and "hidden" goes back to 4E, and I don't really think it's absurd or nonsensical. Being invisible makes it easy to ensure that no one knows where you are, but it's not the same as no one knowing where you are. For instance, an invisible you were to stab someone with a sword, that someone would immediately know where you were, even though you might continue being invisible.
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 21:09 |
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# ? May 14, 2024 03:54 |
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He seems to also be okay with dual wielding hand bows
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# ? Sep 17, 2014 21:12 |