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Cainer posted:It was pretty fun, I'm trying to remember if he had his own damage chart thing or if he just winged it. Replace "the force" with "magic" and you basically have D&D
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Sep 27, 2014 07:34
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It might seem like some of us completely hate the idea of freeform play. Let's say your group comes up to the last villains in the dungeon. They're out of Hit Dice and low on HP, and they don't think they can win a combat, but there's a princess about to be sacrificed or whatever so they don't feel like they can turn back either. They start asking questions like "Do we still have those cult robes?" and "Is there a giant statue of the evil god in the room?" and slowly, a plan takes shape. The DM gives them some simple rolls to pass, and eventually the Rogue manages to improvise his climber's kit to weaken the giant statue, the Fighter and Barbarian push it over onto the bad guys, and the Wizard teleports the princess to safety before she can be crushed too. That kind of stuff is awesome! Everyone always has a fantastic time and feels clever as hell when they succeed outside of the box. It's just that, gee, the group has these huge goddamn rule books that cost as much as a home theater, and they turned out to be sort of pointless. If you absolutely have to have a system, a box for your group to think outside of, you could get better value for money from literally anything else on the market. But maybe that's the kind of thing only an :iamafag: AUTISTIC BABBY!!!!! :iamafag: would worry about. (also like three-fourths of the 5e target audience would denounce that group as Bad Roleplayers playing Magical Tea Party with a Pampering Noob GM) Hwurmp fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Sep 27, 2014 |
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Sep 27, 2014 13:52
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MonsieurChoc posted:Dammit! I went with Way of the Open hand so that I wouldn't spend all my Ki points at once. To be fair, Open Hand is pretty legit. You'd probably end up dumping your Ki into Stunning Strikes regardless of your path.
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Sep 27, 2014 14:07
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Did anyone else get a Dungeonscape beta invite? I signed up ages back and mine's just come in; I'm tempted to go see how lovely it is (tomorrow afternoon most likely), anyone interested in a trip report?
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Oct 1, 2014 22:35
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thespaceinvader posted:I'm tempted to go see how lovely it is (tomorrow afternoon most likely), anyone interested in a trip report? Sure, not like there's much else going on in the thread.
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Oct 1, 2014 22:39
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It's pretty crappy. There's zero rules information (for example, all of the Fighting Styles texts are blank - all you get is the name of it until you get to the actual character sheet), the UI is not easy to navigate, and it's just kind of clunky. The variant human exists but feats don't. And everything but character creation is disabled. Maybe it'll be good someday? Probably not, though.
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Oct 1, 2014 22:47
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Sounds like it's not even good for a laugh right now. I hate it when they entirely meet my expectations on digital stuff. It should have been SO much better.
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Oct 1, 2014 22:51
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Wow that sounds like it sucks right now, hoping it gets better. And as far as I can tell I have not gotten an invitation yet. And I entered the same day it went up, then again thousands of people probably did too. EDIT: Just checked my emails again and well it looks like I just got in. Ryuujin fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Oct 1, 2014 22:52
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Wow, they don't even have an equivalent to the compendium? That would've mitigated a lot of the dumb book organization/usability problems, and it's just a searchable database of stuff, nothing complicated.
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Oct 1, 2014 23:01
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cbirdsong posted:Wow, they don't even have an equivalent to the compendium? That would've mitigated a lot of the dumb book organization/usability problems, and it's just a searchable database of stuff, nothing complicated. The only Compendium you need is what your DM says the book says. Like always, just as Gary intended.
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Oct 1, 2014 23:52
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In other news, I'm seeing lots of reports of PHBs jut falling apart now, and their latest adventure is being pushed back alongside the DMG. WotC's D&D crew is really good at their job, guys.
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Oct 2, 2014 00:57
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ProfessorCirno posted:In other news, I'm seeing lots of reports of PHBs jut falling apart now, and their latest adventure is being pushed back alongside the DMG.
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Oct 2, 2014 01:47
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MadScientistWorking posted:Isn't the latest adventure being pushed back because the quality was lackluster? The quality is lacklustre in so far as it wasn't amazing. Excepting the giant poop on Realmslore (seriously just use the loving Dragon Cults and make 1e fans happy), it's serviceable but not great so far.
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Oct 2, 2014 02:09
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Really Pants posted:(also like three-fourths of the 5e target audience would denounce that group as Bad Roleplayers playing Magical Tea Party with a Pampering Noob GM) Actually, only Frank Trollman's fans ever use the phrase Magical Tea Party in a serious way. And most of them hate 5th Edition, just like they hate all RPGs that Frank himself hasn't had a personal hand in designing.
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Oct 2, 2014 02:12
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The most magic tea party thing I have ever played was the 1e grey box Forgotten Realms, and it was pretty cool if you like high magic.
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Oct 2, 2014 02:37
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Babylon Astronaut posted:The most magic tea party thing I have ever played was the 1e grey box Forgotten Realms, and it was pretty cool if you like high magic. I don't - how do you get high magic out of the Old Grey Box? There's none to be found! The section on Halruaa was CUT!
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Oct 2, 2014 02:38
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MadScientistWorking posted:Isn't the latest adventure being pushed back because the quality was lackluster? Arivia posted:The quality is lacklustre in so far as it wasn't amazing. Excepting the giant poop on Realmslore (seriously just use the loving Dragon Cults and make 1e fans happy), it's serviceable but not great so far. Yep! Not like, the quality of the adventure but physical quality - as I understand they got if off the printer and found the actual physical quality was bad so they're running it through again.
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Oct 2, 2014 02:41
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ProfessorCirno posted:Yep! Not like, the quality of the adventure but physical quality - as I understand they got if off the printer and found the actual physical quality was bad so they're running it through again. That's kind of weird, but I wouldn't say that's actually WoTC's fault. Even if someone in WoTC failed to look over some earlier test printings or whatever, surely the printer has internal quality standards. Or am I expecting too much again?
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Oct 2, 2014 02:45
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Dungeonscape trip report: It was a lot of pages of clicking to generate a lot of pages of stuff which I guess you could use to play D&D if you were a masochist. Part the first: Getting to the character sheet screen 1: Where to click on the blank screen I'm shown after logon is slightly unclear. Is it the cog icon? Is it "character" down the bottom? Nope, it's "Choose a character" at the top, which doesn't look like a button, but a heading. 2: Race select screen lists size and speed, but not stat bonuses. 3: Class select screen is about what you'd expect, a pic of a dude and the blurb from the start ofthe class description. 4: "Roll ability scores" is the default screen. "Buy ability scores" is secondary. I mean OF COURSE you're not going to just click "roll" until you get a good set. The text box on the bottom left of the ability score screen DOES contain the racial ability score increase, and this is NOT reflected in the scores it shows me at the top of the screen, although the box does explicitly tell me this is the case in text that runs out of the bottom of the box. 5: Background has titles and descriptions, no mention of mechanics or indeed description of what I'm actually getting by selecting it. 6: Personality characteristics screen: It's possible to scroll off the top of the screen leaving the list blank. "Ideals" does contain the mechanical effect (ie, alignment). 7: Starting wealth/equipment screen. I get to see what gear I got from what I've selected 2 major screens ago with Backgrounds. Otherwise it seems fine. Or else I can "choose starting wealth", but it's not clear that it's an either/or proposition. Clicking "next" here gives me a "Choose one: Martial melee weapons" popup with no stats or information about any of the weapons. 8: Now I'm asked to describe my character... I can roll for height and weight and choose my alignment from a dropdown box. You can enter literally anything in the other boxes, even the one for age. The alignment dropdown appears to be an empty black box, but moving the cursor over it lights up the alignments line by line. 9: It's not clear what's going on on this screen. One the left side I'm asked to tick a box for Proficiency: <Smith's Tools, Brewer's Supplies, Mason's Tools> and the right side describes those tools and what a proficiency is. The tools come with a GP value and weight, but it's unclear if I'm getting them now or if I'll have to buy them later. 10: Now I can choose a fighting style with absolutely zero indication of what that is or does. It's literally just a list of fighting styles on the screen. There's a space to the right that's big and blank, as if there should be text there. There is no text there. 11: This screen looks the same but lists Skills instead of Fighting Styles. The big area on the right DOES have skill descriptions. However, I clicked "Next" on the previous screen without really looking at what I'd chosen and now the "Previous" button isn't doing anything, so I'm not sure what kind of fighter I am and I have no way to check. 12: Finally, a character sheet. Wait, this doesn't have much of the info I just entered... how do I page though it? I can either click the tiny tiny dots under the centre column or I can move my mouse or the side of the reddish area and an arrow appears. Groovy. I'll now go through this page by page. Part the Second: The Page 1: On the left, an illustration. It's OK, I guess. I'm not sure if I can upload my own or if I'm stuck with these. Briefly clicking around makes it seem like these are it. In the middle, my stats, level, and xp. Clicking on each stats brings up base and final values, although I'm not sure what that is. Clicking on my Con shows that there's a "user adjustment" of +4 although I'm now not sure where that came from. On the right, all the things I chose in part 8. I wrote "Eleventy One" in the "age" box, and it's parsed that to "0", so that's nice. Clicking on any of these things brings up a SUPER HELPFUL popup in the middle of the screen that says, for instance, "HAIR, The character's hair color. Cancel/Accept". I now realise that's what happens if I click on the word "hair", but if I click on what I wrote for that answer, there's a popup where I can change it. Page 2: On the left, Attacks and Proficiencies. The Attacks part seems fine. It's got he weapon name and then the to hit adjustment and the damage. Clicking on the weapon name brings up detailed info. including where the numbers come from. Clicking on the numbers themselves does nothing. I appear to have gained proficiency in all three trade tools, although I only selected Mason. In the middle, confusingly labelled "attributes", are my AC, speed, initiative, HP, etc. TO adjust my CURRENT HP, I'd have to click it to open a popup, enter the numer of damage/healing I've just taken in a box, click the +/- thing until correct, then hit Accept. It's clunky and would be super annoying during play. On the right, Saving Throws. Clicking on them lets me adjust them, but I'm not sure why. Page 3: On the left, Skills. These default to showing "All". There's a dropdown box so I can change that to "proficient", but the box is blacked out again like the Alignment one was. I can still use it, but eh. In the middle, Class Features. I chose Fighter. It shows I have a Second Wind and that my Fighting Style was Archery, which I'd forgotten about not remembering. I can't change it from here, but a helpful popup tells me what it does and that the +1 is "already included in calculations". It doesn't say WHICH calculations, although I guess it's pretty obvious. On the right, Racial traits. Helpful popups to describe them, but text from all of those would fit in the vast amount of blank space that is the red background of the character sheet (which takes up maybe a quarter of my screen... seriously, there's a lot of blank space here). Page 4: Spells. Slots on the left (I have none), a blank heading "spellcasting" in the middle, a list of ALL SPELLS (not actuall all spells) on the right. I guess this page does something if you did not CHOOSE POORLY way back on the class screen. Page 5: Equipment! All my gear on the left. Turns out I didn't get ANY tools. I got pitons though. Sweet. In the middle, a blank 3-slot list of attuned magic items. Clicking "Attune" does nothing. Clicking "add" eventually brings up a list of magic items, with a "view cart" button at the bottom. There is no mention of what this stuff actually DOES, but since most of it is "Longsword +1" it probably doesn't matter much. On the right, treasure. To adjust the number of coins you have, again you need to click the value, enter the new value into the popup, then click accept. Clunky but consistent with the other clunky stuff. Page 6: Background on the left. The poo poo I chose from the lists doesn't even fit in the boxes. There's a checkbox here for Inspiration. The rest of the page is blank, with a section to enter "Notes". I mean COME THE gently caress ON, the poo poo I picked FROM THE LISTS of personality traits doesn't fit in the goddamn box on the left and the WHOLE REST OF THE SCREEN might as well read "this space intentionally left blank". Conclusion Using this in a game would be a goddamn nightmare and I'm not even surprised. e: I could wait and see what the final version is like, but reading the feedback lists and developer responses gives me absolutely no hope that this will ever be presented in a sane usable format. I mean six loving pages, each of which uses about a third of the available real estate on the screen at 1920x1200. You could condense this to two loving pages with a little bit of effort, especially since you're happy cutting off text in boxes when there's still plenty of loving room available. Maybe it's designed for 800x600, but why? Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Oct 2, 2014 |
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Oct 2, 2014 02:49
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So yeah looking to level up a Warlock, and trying to figure out if the Chain Pact plus Voice of the Chain Master invocation means he can look through his imp's eyes without using an action/being blind, or if he would still follow the rules for Find Familiar where it takes an action and causes him to be blind during the use only with the expanded range of Voice of the Chain Master. Basically I wanted to cast Darkness and then cast spells, I could do this with either Devil's Sight, or possibly by looking through the Imp's eyes, since it has Devil's Sight. But wasn't sure if the second would work. So what does everyone think?
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Oct 2, 2014 02:50
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quote:4: "Roll ability scores" is the default screen. "Buy ability scores" is secondary. I mean OF COURSE you're not going to just click "roll" until you get a good set. The text box on the bottom left of the ability score screen DOES contain the racial ability score increase, and this is NOT reflected in the scores it shows me at the top of the screen, although the box does explicitly tell me this is the case in text that runs out of the bottom of the box. You can actually just click on each stat's empty box and enter a number directly. 
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Oct 2, 2014 03:45
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Daetrin posted:That's kind of weird, but I wouldn't say that's actually WoTC's fault. Even if someone in WoTC failed to look over some earlier test printings or whatever, surely the printer has internal quality standards. It's been happening with all their 5e books. My early copy of the MM has a few pages with the ink all blurred like the printer just missed. It's still readable but gives me a headache. My PHB and HODQ are fine, but there have been similar reports for the PHB.  Printed in the USA. 
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Oct 2, 2014 04:38
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RPZip posted:You can actually just click on each stat's empty box and enter a number directly. I remember when my DM let us roll a d12, d10 and d8 for our ability scores. Good times. Somehow wound up with a 30 in three stats. Weird.
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Oct 2, 2014 04:48
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ritorix posted:like the printer just missed. Thats what happens when you use bounded accuracy.
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Oct 2, 2014 04:57
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AlphaDog posted:Maybe it's designed for 800x600, but why? I leveled up my Bard. It forces you to roll HP every level, so gently caress you if you're using fixed HP per level. Actually, this isn't quite true. You need to roll first, then you can enter a fixed value, otherwise Next stays greyed out. You can enter any value you want, so now I have thousands of HP. This is fine, all told, though the normal interface for adjusting your total is... well, [you have to click and up/down arrow one by one]http://i.imgur.com/Qst027y.png[/IMG] so if you, say, accidentally gave yourself thousands of hit points it would actually be easier to rebuild your character. The Bard College selection gives me the fluffy description of each college, but no mechanical overview. The Bard bonus skills feature comes up with a list of all the skills, with no indication of which ones I'd already selected. I'm assuming if I select Deception again it'll just accept it as is, and I'll never be able to change it. Dungeonscape don't give a gently caress about stat limits. At level 4 it let me boost my Charisma to 25. Which is odd, since I should only have a Charisma of 19 from my rolled 17 and Tiefling bonus. On my spell list there's no way to change a spell to "Prepared." At the moment this isn't really a character builder, too much is broken or doesn't work right. It's nice that it'll often let you enter an arbitrary value, but it's odd that it only allows that in some places but not others. If I can add anything to my HP when I level up, why can't I just change my HP at any given time by typing it in? Right now it's a side grade to a digital character sheet, and in a lot of ways would be an improvement if it simply were a digital character sheet, if so much relies on the player looking crap up in the PHB anyway.
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Oct 2, 2014 05:09
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kingcom posted:Thats what happens when you use bounded accuracy. 
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Oct 2, 2014 05:15
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Arivia posted:I don't - how do you get high magic out of the Old Grey Box? There's none to be found! The section on Halruaa was CUT! But the 30-something pages of spell book descriptions sure loving weren't. 
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Oct 2, 2014 05:34
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After years of playing PC D&D games, I finally broke down and bought the 5e starter set. Now I need to find actual irl nerds to teach me how to do this poo poo.
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Oct 2, 2014 05:41
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spider wisdom posted:After years of playing PC D&D games, I finally broke down and bought the 5e starter set. Now I need to find actual irl nerds to teach me how to do this poo poo. Nah just run it for the nerds in question. It's surprisingly easy to learn how to run a game, and I'm sure most people here can give you some blanket advice to get you started.
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Oct 2, 2014 05:51
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spider wisdom posted:After years of playing PC D&D games, I finally broke down and bought the 5e starter set. Now I need to find actual irl nerds to teach me how to do this poo poo. This is basically what I did, except the nerds I found are running a 3.5 campaign. It's actually been a lot of fun so far. What I've read in this thread is pretty negative about all editions at different times, which might have scared me off if I had read it first. I guess just goes to show that you should invest time in finding nerds that find the same things fun that you do. If everyone finds the same kind of experience fun, the DM should be able to make things work.
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Oct 2, 2014 18:40
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DrOgreface posted:This is basically what I did, except the nerds I found are running a 3.5 campaign. It's actually been a lot of fun so far. What I've read in this thread is pretty negative about all editions at different times, which might have scared me off if I had read it first. I guess just goes to show that you should invest time in finding nerds that find the same things fun that you do. If everyone finds the same kind of experience fun, the DM should be able to make things work. Basically, a good group is more important than a good system. That's why a lot of people point out that "but I had fun" has no bearing on the merits of the system. That said if you have a good group, a good system will make things even better.
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Oct 2, 2014 21:18
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The android beta of Dungeonscape is up. Surprise! It's poo poo too.
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Oct 3, 2014 00:45
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Thinking of giving Warcaster as a free feat to all "gish" classes, notably Pact Blade Warlocks and melee bards.
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Oct 3, 2014 02:41
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ascendance posted:Thinking of giving Warcaster as a free feat to all "gish" classes, notably Pact Blade Warlocks and melee bards. Making Valor Bards even better. Hrm. Yes. A Good Idea.
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Oct 3, 2014 06:04
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Ok but making a weakness then creating a feat explicitly just to fix this weakness is the very definition of a feat tax.
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Oct 3, 2014 06:26
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My Warlock probably just hit level 3 from our last session. Unless I make a rash decision immediately before our next session, I'll be going with Pact of the Tome. My character is Fey pact warlock with performer (dancer) background who is very vain. Are there any particularly useful Cantrips I should grab vs just something flavorful? I already have Mage Hand. Also, I just glanced at feats for the first time, and Spell Sniper Feat + Eldritch Spear = 600ft range RAW. Silly.
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Oct 3, 2014 07:03
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Yeah but when have you ever needed to hit something 600ft away?
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Oct 3, 2014 09:40
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I always find super-long range on ranged characters to be useful mostly because it prevents stupid bitching about whether a thing is in range or not. If my range is 'I can attack something in the next town over without penalty', I don't need to measure or count squares or whatever. Saves time.
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Oct 3, 2014 10:00
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thespaceinvader posted:I always find super-long range on ranged characters to be useful mostly because it prevents stupid bitching about whether a thing is in range or not. If my range is 'I can attack something in the next town over without penalty', I don't need to measure or count squares or whatever. Saves time. We have a guy in my 4E group who plays ranger as "firing from off-map whenever possible" and he's done quite well never taking damage.
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Oct 3, 2014 10:48
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The monsters still deal the same amount of damage to the party. By being off-map you're effectively forcing them to focus fire.
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Oct 3, 2014 10:52
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