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Soggy Cereal posted:Why should the Fighter even be a defender role anyway? I've always felt like the casters having lower AC, hit points, etc. is a balance thing. It should be the wizard's responsibility to cower behind the fighter. If the DM wants to focus-fire the squishy people, why can't he? Usually because "sometimes you die in between your turns with no input" isn't super fun for the caster players. So then your options are vaguely: Make them tougher, give them defensive abilities, or let someone else defend them.
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Oct 13, 2014 20:52
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| # ? May 14, 2024 09:24 |
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And besides, if the Wizard feels compelled to hide behind the fighter, then the fighter is a defender by default regardless of whether or not he's good at it. Why not make him good at it?
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Oct 13, 2014 20:55
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ritorix posted:This is actually a thing, they even refer you back to the ability score chapter for resolution. 30.5 Days posted:You guys I've made the world's best RPG. *hands you post it note with "do whatever you want" written on it*
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Oct 13, 2014 20:59
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Oh come on, that's just saying "if your player wants to do something not covered in these actions, just use your head and have them make the appropriate roll" instead of making 50 pages of rules for every goddamned thing a character might maybe do once.
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Oct 13, 2014 21:02
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Peas and Rice posted:Oh come on, that's just saying "if your player wants to do something not covered in these actions, just use your head and have them make the appropriate roll" instead of making 50 pages of rules for every goddamned thing a character might maybe do once. Yes, but it isn't a license to ignore the existing combat rules.
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Oct 13, 2014 21:04
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I just hope the DMG will at least have some decent guidelines for nonstandard rolls, and not "roll three successes to glare at a guy."
Hwurmp fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Oct 13, 2014 |
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Oct 13, 2014 21:04
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Things a character will only ever want to do once: act like a fighter.
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Oct 13, 2014 21:06
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In 4e they basically had the same thing. 4e PHB: The list isn’t exhaustive—you can try to do anything you can imagine your character doing in the game world. The rules in this section cover the most common actions, and they can serve as a guide for figuring out what happens when you try something not in the rules. 4e DMG p42:  'Resolve wacky actions with an ability check.'
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Oct 13, 2014 21:11
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Peas and Rice posted:Oh come on, that's just saying "if your player wants to do something not covered in these actions, just use your head and have them make the appropriate roll" instead of making 50 pages of rules for every goddamned thing a character might maybe do once. There's a post somewhere in this thread where a guy DM'ed Next for the first time and he made the Rogue player roll DEX to grab onto a rope, roll DEX again to clamber on top of a cart, and roll DEX again to make a jumping attack on a Kobold. Sure, it's great the designers left that little sidebar open, but it's a crutch to just leave it up to the DM because it's not his fault if he doesn't understand probability well enough to know that three d20 skill checks are really biased against the Rogue, because frankly it's not his job.
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Oct 13, 2014 21:14
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Really Pants posted:The Fighter player probably isn't playing just to watch everything blow past him and focus on the characters that matter. Tell us on this doll where those mean ol' casters touched you. Or was it that they stole your boy/girl friend?
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Oct 13, 2014 21:21
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Talmonis posted:I'm a stupid grognard, hurr hurr
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Oct 13, 2014 21:24
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Talmonis posted:Tell us on this doll where those mean ol' casters touched you. Or was it that they stole your boy/girl friend? Haha jokes about child molestation, rofl my dude 
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Oct 13, 2014 21:24
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They gave me a brain tumor that stopped me from realizing magic spells are also an arbitrary mechanic
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Oct 13, 2014 21:25
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The rules already say that you can't literally move through an enemy, so the fighter-at-the-mountain-pass thing works just fine without any powers or DM woo, so long as you can set up in a position where the only choice is through the defender. The first enemy can try to shove the fighter back, but if that fails, the rest are going to be lining up behind it. A fighter standing in an open field can still have a bunch of people run around them if there's enough room, but 1, it's pretty stupid if this wasn't possible (and is still possible, given enough open space on a 4th edition map) and 2, even doing that, can still force an enemy into a place they'd rather not be. That's aside from the fact that the fighter can defend perfectly well standing right next to the ally he wants to defend. With the right fighting style (that is, the fighting style that anyone who actually wants to play a defender will take), the fighter can fend off attacks and ensure that anyone who does attack their ally is in prime position to be made into very tiny pieces. This is again, the sort of thing where being a fighter sucks if you play the fighter expecting the rules to work like a totally different game. Roles are not a thing, so the failure of a fighter to exactly replicate the way a role was implemented in a different game is not a problem in this game.
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Oct 13, 2014 21:27
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S.J. posted:Yes, but it isn't a license to ignore the existing combat rules. That's just poor GMing then. quote:There's a post somewhere in this thread where a guy DM'ed Next for the first time and he made the Rogue player roll DEX to grab onto a rope, roll DEX again to clamber on top of a cart, and roll DEX again to make a jumping attack on a Kobold. Why all three of those things aren't Acrobatics rolls, and if the third one fails the character is prone or something, is beyond me. That's how I'd run it in Next.
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Oct 13, 2014 21:27
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gradenko_2000 posted:There's a post somewhere in this thread where a guy DM'ed Next for the first time and he made the Rogue player roll DEX to grab onto a rope, roll DEX again to clamber on top of a cart, and roll DEX again to make a jumping attack on a Kobold. Wow, that's nearly as bad as a skill challenge.
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Oct 13, 2014 21:28
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Things I like about 5e vs 4e: - Each ability score is a save. There are downsides but I prefer it to the 4e "don't worry about dump stats" approach to saves - Saves are actually rolled again, hooray! Perhaps bad for balance and tactical wargaming, but a really fun mechanic that my players seem to enjoy. The girl getting hit by petrifying gaze should be the one rolling the save, not the medusa. 4e's half-baked "roll a d20 and hope for 10+" save mechanic never seemed as fun or interesting. I'm sure lots of people hate save or dies though, that's fine. - Less "marking" of enemy creatures. This isn't a big one but I found it tedious having to hang little counters on all the minis for the incidental +1 bonuses (Paladin mark, Ranger mark, etc.). No doubt this is coming to 5e though, I'm just waiting for the DMG and splat books. - Faster paced combat. This may not even be empirically true, but I recall 4e being more of a slog than the 3.5e I was familiar with. 4e had big bags of HP on the big bad monsters, and it was round after round of at-will abilities. No I didn't get into the MM3 or later books that allegedly fixed this. - Skill challenges in 4e were pretty bad out of the box, but that's a dead horse and I guess it was fixed later Attacks of Opportunity were always a bit cumbersome and tended to slow down the flow of combat... but I agree that they were a very important part of the fighter toolbox. It was weird tying it to the Dex modifier though, that mechanic needed changing in my opinion. A bunch of AoOs doesn't stop an ogre in it's tracks though, it's merely a disincentive. I don't live and breathe D&D, I'm just a light DM that runs a campaign every few years or when a new edition comes out. 
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Oct 13, 2014 21:31
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polisurgist posted:This is again, the sort of thing where being a fighter sucks if you play the fighter expecting the rules to work like a totally different game. It also sucks if you expected the rules to do anything new at all. Peas and Rice posted:Why all three of those things aren't Acrobatics rolls, and if the third one fails the character is prone or something, is beyond me. That's how I'd run it in Next. You'd seriously make a player roll three times for the privilege of attacking while also jumping? Hwurmp fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Oct 13, 2014 |
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Oct 13, 2014 21:32
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Malcolm posted:Things I like about 5e vs 4e: The problem with this is that you're not proficient in all your ability score saves, but everything making you save is proficient. This means that as you level, you're going to encounter more and more things you have next to no chance to save against. quote:- Saves are actually rolled again, hooray! Perhaps bad for balance and tactical wargaming, but a really fun mechanic that my players seem to enjoy. The girl getting hit by petrifying gaze should be the one rolling the save, not the medusa. 4e's half-baked "roll a d20 and hope for 10+" save mechanic never seemed as fun or interesting. I'm sure lots of people hate save or dies though, that's fine. The trouble with this is it works both ways. A lot of spells cast by the player characters make the monsters roll the save, so the player just says "I cast Sacred Flame" and doesn't get to roll, so we're really no better off. quote:Attacks of Opportunity were always a bit cumbersome and tended to slow down the flow of combat... but I agree that they were a very important part of the fighter toolbox. It was weird tying it to the Dex modifier though, that mechanic needed changing in my opinion. A bunch of AoOs doesn't stop an ogre in it's tracks though, it's merely a disincentive. One of the issues with Attacks of Opportunity (or "getting attacked for disengaging" as they are in this game) is that they get less and less good as you level up. If the expected damage output from a fighter relies on him doing three attacks a round, the one extra attack he gets for someone escaping from him is less and less relevant. I can see 5e falling completely to pieces as you gain levels. You should totally give 4e another shot with the MM3 monsters and stuff like this - you can see exactly how the maths worked to fix the issues you had (IE: Monsters hit harder, have fewer HP and lower defenses, and have fewer powers that completely disable characters).
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Oct 13, 2014 21:40
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Gort posted:The problem with this is that you're not proficient in all your ability score saves, but everything making you save is proficient. This means that as you level, you're going to encounter more and more things you have next to no chance to save against.
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Oct 13, 2014 21:42
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Speaking of action resolution, 4e's page 42 chart and 5e have lots of similarities.  The base DCs are the same at level 1. 4e made the distinction that something with a skill check is at +5DC, which matched the trained skill bonus and tended to ward off non-trained players from attempting things outside their skillset. Increases beyond level 1 in 4e scale with the +1 per even level advancement rate. 5e tossed that out in favor of static DCs. It also doesn't raise the DC for skill-based checks, which results in non-trained PCs attempting and succeeding at more things outside their skillset. Trained PCs in 5e add a bonus to their checks and will still succeed more often than the untrained, but the DC itself isn't raised. Did you know that 5e has 'fail forward' right there in the basic rules? 
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Oct 13, 2014 21:42
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Really Pants posted:You'd seriously make a player roll three times for the privilege of attacking while also jumping? Oh, was that all the same action? No that's crazy. I'd make him roll Acrobatics once for the whole thing, and if he failed, he'd just end up prone, unless it was a hilarious critical failure and then I might be a dick depending on who I was playing with.
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Oct 13, 2014 21:42
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ritorix posted:In 4e they basically had the same thing. Yes, it turns out rule 0 is a common feature in most roleplaying games. EDIT: If anyone wants to talk about how 4E players desperately cling to their ruleset, remember that 4E players generally ridicule "page 42" as a response to a rules question rather than holding it up as proof that their system handles every eventuality holy poo poo. Also never forget that this conversation started because some dude wanted to claim that houseruling AOO's back to the 4e version of them isn't houseruling because rule 0 so therefore 5E AOO's are fine. 30.5 Days fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Oct 13, 2014 |
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Oct 13, 2014 21:45
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Peas and Rice posted:5th ed feels like the version of d20 I didn't know I wanted. That was basically how I felt after playing 5e for a couple of sessions. Let's see if more goons come around to this sort of thinking. Some of 5e's mechanics also strike me as "looking bad on paper" but when put into practice, they actually all kind a mesh together and work.
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Oct 13, 2014 21:54
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30.5 Days posted:EDIT: If anyone wants to talk about how 4E players desperately cling to their ruleset, remember that 4E players generally ridicule "page 42" as a response to a rules question rather than holding it up as proof that their system handles every eventuality holy poo poo. And all this completely misses the point because we've still got a guy a few posts up who wants to make the rogue fall prone for describing the way he does his "move and attack" actions in a cool way. This is why martials can't have nice things.
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Oct 13, 2014 21:56
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Malcolm posted:Attacks of Opportunity were always a bit cumbersome and tended to slow down the flow of combat... but I agree that they were a very important part of the fighter toolbox. It was weird tying it to the Dex modifier though, that mechanic needed changing in my opinion. A bunch of AoOs doesn't stop an ogre in it's tracks though, it's merely a disincentive. So in 4E it wasn't tied to dex, and most defender classes had some fun abilities that buffed their AOO's into track-stopper territory. Having even more AOO's contributed to slowing down combat, though, so I'm going to take one step closer to my eventual fanboyism ban and say that Strike! fixes the problem by just having AOO's do flat damage with no roll + whatever goodies. The result is really fast without punishing the classes whose job it is to issue AOO's. EDIT: Also Strike!'s Team Conflict is way better than any iteration of Skill Challenges could ever hope to be hth.
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Oct 13, 2014 21:57
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Really Pants posted:It also sucks if you expected the rules to do anything new at all. Where "new" = "act just like the previous edition," apparently.
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Oct 13, 2014 21:58
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ascendance posted:This, I believe, is an intentional part of design. Which is why the really nasty save or sucks basically give you three chances to save. Lots of poo poo doesn't, though. Is that intentional too? In any case, if the intention is for nastier effects to give you more opportunities to save against them, it still wouldn't follow that your chance to save would tend toward zero for each roll but only in certain stats. It doesn't make sense for you to have a 40% chance to save against Wisdom effects cast by an equal-level opponent at level 1, but only a 20% chance at level 20, with no other difference in stats, simply because the attacker gets his proficiency bonus and the defender does not.
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Oct 13, 2014 21:59
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polisurgist posted:Where "new" = "act just like the previous edition," apparently. No, not really. It would've been cool if 5e trod any new ground whatsoever. It is in fact possible to be critical of 5e, and even contrast things 5e does badly with things 4e does well, without being one of those filthy 4rry gamists. People have posted how they think the 5e Fighter falls short to the Fighting-Man of the first two editions, does that make them fatbeard OSR grogs? Hwurmp fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Oct 13, 2014 |
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Oct 13, 2014 22:04
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Gort posted:Lots of poo poo doesn't, though. Is that intentional too? Also, rings and cloaks of protection. I'm pretty certain the "you can play this with no magic items" thing is a lie, or that they will talk about granting people special bonuses to fix the math if you choose to have no magic items.
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Oct 13, 2014 22:13
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ascendance posted:It kind of does, actually. Given how few HPs people have at low level, they need that 40% chance to save. At high levels, characters have a lot more powers and abilities to mitigate the effects of a nasty spell. But that doesn't really make sense either. If the idea is "your saves are generally less likely to succeed as you level because abilities and magic items make up for it", then why does it work that way for some of your saves? The ones you're proficient in keep up (and you're far more likely to be putting points in them since those stats will fit the strengths of your character), so you end up with a situation where if you get hit on a bad save you're hosed, and if you get hit on a good save you're OK, and the gap gets wider and wider as you level.
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Oct 13, 2014 22:21
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Really Pants posted:No, not really. It would've been cool if 5e trod any new ground whatsoever. It is in fact possible to be critical of 5e, and even contrast things 5e does badly with things 4e does well, without being one of those filthy 4rry gamists. People have posted how they think the 5e Fighter falls short to the Fighting-Man of the first two editions, does that make them fatbeard OSR grogs? I mean, it doesn't make them grogs, but that's independent of the fact that large numbers of people making that complaint are.
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Oct 13, 2014 22:42
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If you cast Faerie Fire as a third level spell into a Darkness, what happens? Can I see Detect Magic auras through Darkness?
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Oct 13, 2014 22:48
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Gort posted:But that doesn't really make sense either. If the idea is "your saves are generally less likely to succeed as you level because abilities and magic items make up for it", then why does it work that way for some of your saves? The ones you're proficient in keep up (and you're far more likely to be putting points in them since those stats will fit the strengths of your character), so you end up with a situation where if you get hit on a bad save you're hosed, and if you get hit on a good save you're OK, and the gap gets wider and wider as you level. There's a Resilience feat that seems key for tackling higher level content. I know I'm planning on taking it for at least Con.
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Oct 13, 2014 22:49
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Dahbadu posted:There's a Resilience feat that seems key for tackling higher level content. I know I'm planning on taking it for at least Con. You shouldn't really need to take a feat to patch up the games maths, though. That's a feat tax. Another issue is that many save types come up far more often than others, meaning that some classes get screwed on their save proficiencies and where their stats are assigned.
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Oct 13, 2014 22:53
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Gort posted:But that doesn't really make sense either. If the idea is "your saves are generally less likely to succeed as you level because abilities and magic items make up for it", then why does it work that way for some of your saves? The ones you're proficient in keep up (and you're far more likely to be putting points in them since those stats will fit the strengths of your character), so you end up with a situation where if you get hit on a bad save you're hosed, and if you get hit on a good save you're OK, and the gap gets wider and wider as you level. I'd hesitate to say that it's because magic items will make up for it. "You won't need magic items at all" isn't the marketing claim for this game, it's "you wont need magic items just to keep up." Magic items are a bonus that's good to have, but not a requirement and not something intrinsic to your character. The discrepancy in saves to me basically says that as you go up in level, you become more and more a paragon of your class. At the start, the wizard isn't that much different from a fighter in his saves; at high levels, there's a bigger difference between them. But in any case, it isn't an impassable difference. I don't think it's a mistake that the highest possible ability modifier is almost equal to the highest proficiency bonus, and what's the highest save DC in the Monster Manual, like 21?
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Oct 13, 2014 22:57
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ascendance posted:It kind of does, actually. Given how few HPs people have at low level, they need that 40% chance to save. At high levels, characters have a lot more powers and abilities to mitigate the effects of a nasty spell. "Spells." By "powers and abilities to mitigate the effects of a nasty spell," you mean "spells." Fighters and rogues have almost nothing at high levels- a rogue gains proficiency in Wisdom saves and that is it (pity it requires you to spend 15 levels dealing without proficiency in one of the most common save categories). Some barbarians can become immune to charm/fear while raging, and paladins have some decent defensive options including immunity auras, but the thing is that immunity isn't quite as strong as some might think. For example, let's take Mind Blank. PHB posted:Mind Blank Immunity to psychic damage, emotion/though reading, divination and charmed condition- sounds potent enough, right? Let's go take a look at the Intellect Devourer again. MM posted:Devour Intellect. The intellect devourer targets one creature it can see within 10 feet of it that has a brain. The creature must succeed on a DC 12 Intelligence saving throw against this magic or take 11 (2d10) psychic damage. Also on a failure, roll 3d6: If the total equals or exceeds the target's Intelligence score, that score is reduced to 0. The target is stunned until it regains at least one point of Intelligence. If you're under the effect of mind blank and fail a save against Devour Intellect, you will take 0 psychic damage but the devourer can still roll 3d6 and attempt to shut down your brain because unlike previous editions there doesn't seem to be a rule that taking no damage also prevents any secondary riders from activating. It's the most potent mental defense spell in the game and it isn't enough to protect to your brain. And this is a spell you will only have one or two castings of because it takes an 8th or 9th level spell slot from a wizard or bard (not sorcerers, clerics, or druids) and you only get one of each of those slots per day. You might think "well, this is the opportunity to use other buff spells" but that's why they introduced Concentration to stop you from loading up on them- the only way to get multiple party buffs is to have multiple casters in the party, casters who you must then protect so they don't drop their spells. You might want to load up on magic items, but the designers have made conscious moves to go away from making magic items common and allowing you to bundle up with them- magic items that boost AC, saves, and ability scores all require "attunement" to function, and you can only be attuned to a maximum of 3 items at once. So if you can somehow find a headband of intellect and cloak of protection +3, you've burned through two of your three attunement slots to protect yourself from one uncommon enemy. Dahbadu posted:There's a Resilience feat that seems key for tackling higher level content. I know I'm planning on taking it for at least Con. PHB posted:You can take each feat only once, unless the feat's description says otherwise. Guess what literally none of feat descriptions in the PHB say? You can only take Resilience once, putting you at 3/6 proficiencies (4/6 if you have a class that gives you a bonus proficiency, or 6/6 if you're a level 14 monk). Hope you like making tough choices.
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Oct 13, 2014 23:03
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LightWarden posted:Guess what literally none of feat descriptions in the PHB say? Literally none of the feat descriptions aside from Resilience, of course.
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Oct 13, 2014 23:05
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Peas and Rice posted:That's how I'd run it in Next. Mike Mearls spotted
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Oct 13, 2014 23:13
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In the grim dark future after the illithids take over, the only fighters with brains left will be gnomes.
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Oct 13, 2014 23:18
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