|
ascendance posted:How big a skeleton army? Bhaal posted:The ID, duh While I know this is a joke. It is impossible for them to win. Pit Fiends are literally too smart AlphaDog posted:From memory, the important factor here is whether or not all the skeletons are lined up in a 5' wide passage. That was with a Blue Dragon. Lets just assume the Skeletons are in a Hell Fortress that is large enough for the Pit Fiends easily and comfortably move around in. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Oct 15, 2014 |
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 00:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 09:07 |
|
|
Daetrin posted:If he dual-classes into bard he could be a Necrodancer. Bundalini's all-skeleton band!   Ain't no party like a Bundalini party 'cause a Bundalini party don't stop. Literally. The skeletons don't get tired or fatigued or bored. They just keep dancing.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 00:47
|
|
|
FMguru posted:Awwww yeahhh! Until the one who created them can no longer command them for some reason. Upon which they will try and kill everything near them before going back to doing some random thing they did in life (like dance.)
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 00:49
|
|
|
MonsterEnvy posted:Until the one who created them can no longer command them for some reason. Upon which they will try and kill everything near them before going back to doing some random thing they did in life (like dance.) But Bundalini won't lose control of his dancing skeletons unless he's an rear end in a top hat or a careless drunk. Hopefully nobody will start thinking he's an rear end in a top hat or a careless drunk, because he also loses control if he's locked in prison for everyone's safety when he needs to renew control. Adventure hook!
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 00:59
|
|
|
Remember when people joked about how many skeletons a fighter was worth to the party in terms of both DPR and tanking (the answers was about 2 spell slots worth at level 10 if I remember). And people started talking about how much cooler it would be to play as a group of skeletons then a fighter, and thus the idea of the skeleton hive mind class was born. All your powers were based on having an ever increasing number of skeletons as you level, so you could climb without a roll by making a ladder of skeletons, or restrain someone by making a cage of bones around them, protect your allies using a physical wall of skeletons around them then heal yourself using the bones of your enemies. I think part of the idea may have been to use the swarm rules for the skeletons so they didn't break the action economy but I love the idea. Its both incredibly silly and awesome at the same time.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 01:02
|
|
|
Vorpal Cat posted:Remember when people joked about how many skeletons a fighter was worth to the party in terms of both DPR and tanking (the answers was about 2 spell slots worth at level 10 if I remember). And people started talking about how much cooler it would be to play as a group of skeletons then a fighter, and thus the idea of the skeleton hive mind class was born. All your powers were based on having an ever increasing number of skeletons as you level, so you could climb without a roll by making a ladder of skeletons, or restrain someone by making a cage of bones around them, protect your allies using a physical wall of skeletons around them then heal yourself using the bones of your enemies. I think part of the idea may have been to use the swarm rules for the skeletons so they didn't break the action economy but I love the idea. Its both incredibly silly and awesome at the same time. Between this and the warham threads I am beyond done hearing about skeletons and assorted skeleton "jokes."
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 01:05
|
|
|
friendlyfire posted:"My all bard party that crawls everywhere couldn't handle a centaur. I can't fracking believe how broken this game is." Hey I'm kinda late to the party but for reference I was the GM of the centaur murder game. The party consists of two bards, warpriest cleric, wizard and ranger. Ranger won initiative, fired a longbow shot and did some damage. Centaur charged one of the two characters at the front (one of the bards was dual wielding swords and the cleric) and the bard got the hit. Boom dead. She was missing 4 hp and decided it wasnt worth blowing a heal just for that. That was enough for the centaur to just straight kill her, she was at -17. It was in a forest, nobody got a chance to go for cover or anything. Centaur patrolman spotted them. Figured he could take them and charged. RIP Bardy McBarderson. Also heres a fun list of stuff you should watch out for because they seriously screw over encounters above and beyond what their CR indicate! Im lazy so ill just quote myself. kingcom posted:Aarakoca are 1/4CR and enemies who will be constantly flying overhead hucking spears at whoever. They do 1 less damage than an orc (1/2) , are pretty sturdy themselves and are essentially screw over anyone who doesn't take ranged into account. This is unfortunately one of those 'everyone has to have a melee weapon and it screws specific classes and not others' which is hard to be tangible with but the point still stands they are half the value of an orc for a pretty game changing set of abilities. For reference I've played in and run a few games of NEXT. I prefer it over pathfinder because lol pathfinder. The big downside is no crazy world altering class combos but as a GM i still have to work as hard as before to make combat interesting and engaging and the CR is virtually useless to make a nice fight. My ultimate decision is if I want a combat oriented game I'll run 4e. If I want a narrative focused game I'm probably just going to go back to running the 40k rpgs. 40k rpgS are also games which dont try to give a combat rating beyond 'mook, elite, master'. It works super well, lets you know stuff is supposed to be of different power levels and how many should be showing up. I don't think the pack of hormagaunts should be on par with a pack of grots despite both of them being mooks. kingcom fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Oct 15, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 01:06
|
|
|
OneThousandMonkeys posted:Between this and the warham threads I am beyond done hearing about skeletons and assorted skeleton "jokes." How do you feel about lots and lots of bears? e: Disregarding that they have skeletons inside them.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 01:06
|
|
|
OneThousandMonkeys posted:Between this and the warham threads I am beyond done hearing about skeletons and assorted skeleton "jokes." rattle rattle rattle Vorpal Cat posted:Remember when people joked about how many skeletons a fighter was worth to the party in terms of both DPR and tanking (the answers was about 2 spell slots worth at level 10 if I remember). And people started talking about how much cooler it would be to play as a group of skeletons then a fighter, and thus the idea of the skeleton hive mind class was born. All your powers were based on having an ever increasing number of skeletons as you level, so you could climb without a roll by making a ladder of skeletons, or restrain someone by making a cage of bones around them, protect your allies using a physical wall of skeletons around them then heal yourself using the bones of your enemies. I think part of the idea may have been to use the swarm rules for the skeletons so they didn't break the action economy but I love the idea. Its both incredibly silly and awesome at the same time. My favourite is the skeletal hivemind class that was backed up by a druid so your whole army of skeletons were insanely stealthy and snuck up on and killed stuff.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 01:08
|
|
|
OneThousandMonkeys posted:Between this and the warham threads I am beyond done hearing about skeletons and assorted skeleton "jokes." I would avoid the last page of the PYF comics thread if I were you as well. And depending on how you feel about Nedroido and Achewood you might want to remove the "last page of" from the previous sentence.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 01:12
|
|
|
Vorpal Cat posted:Remember when people joked about how many skeletons a fighter was worth to the party in terms of both DPR and tanking (the answers was about 2 spell slots worth at level 10 if I remember). And people started talking about how much cooler it would be to play as a group of skeletons then a fighter, and thus the idea of the skeleton hive mind class was born. All your powers were based on having an ever increasing number of skeletons as you level, so you could climb without a roll by making a ladder of skeletons, or restrain someone by making a cage of bones around them, protect your allies using a physical wall of skeletons around them then heal yourself using the bones of your enemies. I think part of the idea may have been to use the swarm rules for the skeletons so they didn't break the action economy but I love the idea. Its both incredibly silly and awesome at the same time. For real, I'd like to see this idea applied to the game. A less-silly way to approach it would be that the PC class is the Sarge (or whatever) and he has a squad of grunts with him. He gets abilities that are effectively just him learning how to order his dudes to do various stuff. He can defend an area bigger than a 5' square, and has the ability to make an OA for every dude he has in the squad. He gets more dudes as he levels. Performing certain special abilities makes your dudes exhausted and you can only perform special abilities if you have the available Your dudes don't exactly die, but you can narrate that they died (instead of being exhausted) and were replaced by other dudes next time you got a long rest if you want. All your dudes are interchangeable grunts, so it doesn't matter mechanically, but you can roleplay the "Not Johnny, he had one day until retirement! Noooooooooooo!" if you like. edit: To keep in with the way Next works, you could write the mechanics so that at levels 1-3 this plays out like the three stooges trying to move a plank, while at higher levels it's more like being Jason and having a bunch of Argonauts with you at all times. edit 2: You could also fluff this as a pure summoner class (not a wizard, no spells!), a dude who builds magic robots, an intelligent swarm of special bees, whatever. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Oct 15, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 01:21
|
|
|
AlphaDog posted:For real, I'd like to see this idea applied to the game. So basically make Wonderful 101 in a tabletop game.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 01:22
|
|
|
djw175 posted:So basically make Wonderful 101 in a tabletop game. Let me tell you about why video games should never inspire tabletop games and how this is destroying the hobby...
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 01:24
|
|
|
I still have a page and a half to go, but as a guy who's sticking with 4e and has no plans to switch, drat if this thread doesn't almost make me want to run 5e out of spite. (Fortunately, all my gaming cash is tied up in the Feng Shui 2 kickstarter.  ) It's so lovely I am starting to disagree with arguments I used to agree with, so I hope it stops being lovely so I can go back to normal. Unless something has changed since then, friendlyfire, good job on not coming across like an rear end in a top hat.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 01:25
|
|
|
AlphaDog posted:For real, I'd like to see this idea applied to the game. That's a beautiful idea, and in a class-based system honestly one of the few paths I'd like to see a Fighter type take. Others I'd like are a weaponmaster who gets the most out of the tools in his arsenal, starting with "is really good at sword" and ending at "see that magic, revered family heirloom? this guy is why it's so great." And also a Beowulf-style physical paragon, so strong he can wrestle monsters into submission that normal weapons can't scratch, has muscles and skin harder than most armors, and is nearly immune to mental and physical ravages that plague most others.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 01:38
|
|
|
dwarf74 posted:I still have a page and a half to go, but as a guy who's sticking with 4e and has no plans to switch, drat if this thread doesn't almost make me want to run 5e out of spite. (Fortunately, all my gaming cash is tied up in the Feng Shui 2 kickstarter. Its probably worth running/playing it just to see if you like it or not. I mean the basic rules are free. Those are enough to see if you can enjoy it. For me if the job of the GM wasnt a huge pain in the rear end I could see myself running a proper long campaign but it just takes so much time to check and double check encounters. That plus I don't enjoy needing to constantly pull my punches or player the characters as retarded. Also fun fact the bard probably would have survived from the centaur charge as long as she didnt fail her death save since the cleric didnt have his go yet. Either way I dont think the centaur is exactly on par with an ogre.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 01:38
|
|
|
OneThousandMonkeys posted:Between this and the warham threads I am beyond done hearing about skeletons and assorted skeleton "jokes."  TheDeadlyShoe posted:Offhand, I can't think of any 5e critters with first turn only abilities. The bugbear in the starter adventure does +2d6 damage when it gets a surprise attack off, on top of its normal 2d8+2 damage. Given that the characters are going to still be level 1 when they get there, that one hit will kill the rogue or wizard outright on a hit using the average numbers, and that's if everyone is at full HP which they probably won't be.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 01:47
|
|
|
I often wonder if there could be an ultra-autistic way to gauge xp for encounters based on, like, a balanced level 10 party, with perfect rolls. Like, if that party, with perfect rolls, could kill monster x in 1 round, it's a CR 1. 10 rounds, CR 10. That's super reductive, I know, but I can't help but thinking there has got to be a mathematical way to work out a proper amount of xp, and because it's loving Dungeons & Dragons, can't believe SOMEONE hasn't already published a 600 page thesis about it in the last 40 years.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 02:04
|
|
|
RPZip posted:The bugbear in the starter adventure does +2d6 damage when it gets a surprise attack off, on top of its normal 2d8+2 damage. Given that the characters are going to still be level 1 when they get there, that one hit will kill the rogue or wizard outright on a hit using the average numbers, and that's if everyone is at full HP which they probably won't be. I think it's okay to have encounters where the monster can theoretically down a PC a turn, so long as that's knocking unconscious and not actually killing. It seems like the "three strikes" death save thing is an attempt to move things in the direction of death being more like Left 4 Dead, where people get dropped all the time but other PCs can save them so long as they aren't otherwise engaged. Which is why it is somewhat schizophrenic to also have a death from massive damage rule, which I assume is only included because there is a vocal group of people that use it as a talking point for their so-called "gritty" elfgames.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 02:05
|
|
|
friendlyfire posted:I think it's okay to have encounters where the monster can theoretically down a PC a turn, so long as that's knocking unconscious and not actually killing. It seems like the "three strikes" death save thing is an attempt to move things in the direction of death being more like Left 4 Dead, where people get dropped all the time but other PCs can save them so long as they aren't otherwise engaged. Which is why it is somewhat schizophrenic to also have a death from massive damage rule, which I assume is only included because there is a vocal group of people that use it as a talking point for their so-called "gritty" elfgames. Honestly I think if they made death a completely trivial thing to deal with, like they do in 3.5,pf and 5e and higher levels its not an issue. Its just the really lovely murder zone of level 1-5 where you cant bring people back that its a problem. Once you have a level 9+ cleric, death is just a temporary status effect. Which reinforces why its stupid that people look at D&D as a setting where you can die.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 02:08
|
|
|
friendlyfire posted:I think it's okay to have encounters where the monster can theoretically down a PC a turn, so long as that's knocking unconscious and not actually killing. It seems like the "three strikes" death save thing is an attempt to move things in the direction of death being more like Left 4 Dead, where people get dropped all the time but other PCs can save them so long as they aren't otherwise engaged. Which is why it is somewhat schizophrenic to also have a death from massive damage rule, which I assume is only included because there is a vocal group of people that use it as a talking point for their so-called "gritty" elfgames. To be fair to Next, it's actually pretty hard to kill people accidentally* **. The death threshold is "your entire HP bar, counting from 0, and it's not additive", and that needs to be in a single hit; otherwise it's just counted against one of your death saving throws. That compares pretty favorably to 3.5s "-10, which is a lot at level 1 and incredibly easy to overshoot later", or even 4es "Players never die and are invincible!!!!" negative bloodied value. It *is* pretty easy to take them out of the fight very, very fast, and that's something I think is a weakness of the system; stuns in 4e are one of the weaker game elements, and that just takes you out for a turn, not for the rest of the fight. I can accept that that's an issue of personal preference, but given how strong Surprise rounds already are and the fact that it feels like Next is inherently rocket-taggy enough monsters shouldn't pile on additional gently caress-yous on top of that. * Through HP damage. SoDs are still everywhere, get hosed. E: ** Outside of level 1, where it's pretty easy, because when level two is the massive HP boost over level one that it is then the math breaks down. Every time.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 02:18
|
|
|
Okay new campaign idea. So a fighters tragic backstory is that his lover was eaten by a Intellect Devourer but then when he finds it to kill it he realises that all their memories are saved and stored in the Intellect Devourer so he voluntarily lets his brain get eaten to live eternally with his lover. The Intellect Devourer having eaten the pure will of the fighter takes on his personality traits and tries to lead an Intellect Devourer uprising against their Mind Flayer overlords (because all the intellect devourers have been eating the lovely fighter brains nobody else wants). The Mind Flayers cant eat the intelllect devourers because they risk getting the hundreds of dead fighter personalities all overwhelming their own brain so they hire a team of adventurers to come in a wipe them out because thats what adventurers are for. This goes well until THAT party's fighter gets eaten by an intellect devourer and learns the truth and then the party is faced with the choice between helping the Mind Flayers and the Intellect Devourer revolution. On top of that the Intellect Devourers are genetically engineered by the Mind Flayers so they are finding out that without them they are starting to die like clockwork from genetic decay. So they ramp up their attacks on any Mind Flayer or Wizard they find in the hopes of find a cure for their species. So the Intellect Devourers are attacking innocent people in the hopes of getting to wizards to stave off their own species extinction. kingcom fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Oct 15, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 02:26
|
|
|
kingcom posted:Its probably worth running/playing it just to see if you like it or not.  . I ran the Murder in Baldur's gate playtest, which was also . I ran a session of the starter set adventure, and the adventure itself is quite good, but the rules were pretty . I own the PHB, but none of the others.Basically, there's a trade-off between combat length and tactical depth. My players and I think it veered waaay too much away from tactical combats. If we have a second session, we're using a battle map, but now that my kids are in all kinds of crazy poo poo like hockey on the weekends, I don't know when it'll happen. My Wednesday Night group is perfectly happy with 4e + interludes of other games, so that's what we'll continue doing. -=-=-=-=- On another note, I think the issue with CR is pretty clear, here. CR is, from all examples, based totally on the monster's easiest stats - hit I'll be impressed if there's damage baselines in the DMG for the monster building rules, but I'm not holding my breath. Monster creation is a lot more 3e-ish, now, in that it's "naturalistic." A bandit with a Greataxe will deal 1d12+Str damage, because that's what a PC would deal. A higher-level bandit might have higher Strength and a higher proficiency bonus, but he'll probably still be dealing 1d12+Str damage. Because, again, that's what a PC would deal. If that low-level bandit is wearing plate armor, well, he's harder to hit now, because a PC in plate armor would be and that's how you'd expect it to work. That's fine for what it's worth, but it's inevitably going to get really weird and swingy. I'm not a big fan of this kind of naturalistic enemy design, but it's crazy to suggest there's no rhyme or reason behind it. Special abilities get all kinds of wacky, too. Even RC D&D gave you little *'s by a monster's hit dice to warn you about crazy special abilities and award more XP accordingly. But when CR = XP, and you're keeping things "simple", well... You get bullshit, which is what we see. But even as a crazy-devoted 4e fan, it's not like 4e gives enough guidance on special abilities, either. I know how it works now because I've run it for years, but a newbie won't necessarily realize how strong a push+prone is, slide+immobilize, or whether or not it's fair to throw an at-will Stun onto a Level 3 brute. 4e's huge advantage here is that it gives you clear expected ranges for damage (taking AoE/multiattack into account), defenses, etc. My biggest concerns about 5e are that it includes a number of outright gameplay-related dealbreakers for me, like having spell lists in stat blocks. That's complete bullshit and I won't deal with it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 02:28
|
|
|
Quad posted:I often wonder if there could be an ultra-autistic way to gauge xp for encounters based on, like, a balanced level 10 party, with perfect rolls. Like, if that party, with perfect rolls, could kill monster x in 1 round, it's a CR 1. 10 rounds, CR 10. The old DC Heroes / Blood of Heroes had a system like this. The GM would run two rounds of test combat between the PCs and the adversaries, using the tactics the PCs typically adopted and assuming every roll came up 15. After those rounds, you toted up the number of unhurt, injured, and defeated heroes and adversaries, and the rules explained how much to buff or nerf the opposition based on those results. friendlyfire posted:I semi-followed the development process and it seemed like fighters just kept changing and what we have is just what happened to be in the docket when the deadline hit. At least with the monk, I'm sure gamers everywhere are enjoying the cottage industry of publishing monk fixes that has been booming since 2000. As a monk fan: publishing monk fixes was a booming industry from approximately 1979 through 2010. The 1E monk was the drizzling shits, the 2E monk was barely an afterthought, the 3E monk was a miserable heap of failure. And then the 4E monk came along and it was loving awesome, and got even more fuckinger awesomer with further supplements. So as you may guess, I am deeply, deeply thrilled that the 5E designers threw all that out and took the 3E monk as their starting point.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 02:40
|
|
|
dwarf74 posted:My biggest concerns about 5e are that it includes a number of outright gameplay-related dealbreakers for me, like having spell lists in stat blocks. That's complete bullshit and I won't deal with it. Yeah I unfortunately dont see me running it much after our initial game is over. Its too much work for the GM(i.e. me) to prepare for, its not a lot of fun for me to run as I groan inside every time I have to play the monsters super dumb to prevent the party being killed and its not rules light enough to let everyone jump in and go quickly. Higher level stuff seems hilariously all over the place and magic just seems to grow way too powerful like 3.5/pf. Not enough for me to ban classes or whatever but enough that i have to redesign and rethink encounters so the spellcaster can be both useful and not completely wipe it in a turn. Also for the record I don't blame people for going nuts in the thread every time someone threadshit drivebys. Yea its retarded but goons never not posting is not going to be stopped just because the same things have been said over and over. I mean I wish people would read the context of the thread a little more before posting responses cause its super frustrating for them to ignore whats going on.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 02:43
|
|
|
Selachian posted:As a monk fan: publishing monk fixes was a booming industry from approximately 1979 through 2010. The 1E monk was the drizzling shits, the 2E monk was barely an afterthought, the 3E monk was a miserable heap of failure. And then the 4E monk came along and it was loving awesome, and got even more fuckinger awesomer with further supplements. So as you may guess, I am deeply, deeply thrilled that the 5E designers threw all that out and took the 3E monk as their starting point. 5e monks are pretty alright though, spend your time on the fighter (start by looking at the playtest docs, then looking at the phb to see which classes got given the features they stripped from it).
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 02:44
|
|
|
I'm wondering how much better the fighter would be simply by adding things back to them that got taken away and expanding on them.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 02:54
|
|
|
The Bee posted:That's a beautiful idea, and in a class-based system honestly one of the few paths I'd like to see a Fighter type take. Here's a sketch of an attempt at fitting that idea into the existing Fighter class. Ideally I guess I'd try to make it a brand new class all of its own, but maybe this is a good starting point. I've tried to go for Adv/Dis instead of +/-, but that's probably going to make stuff better or worse than it really needs to be. Like I said, it's a sketch of the sorts of things I think would make a good leader/commander type class that isn't the 4e Warlord re-warmed. quote:Martial Archetype: The Leader edit: I'm well aware that the numbers this produces are not going to be OK. Like I said, it's a sketch of an idea, not a finalised houserule. e2: Read "a grunt" as "you or one of your grunts", if that makes sense. The idea is that your PC is you and your Grunts. (further edit: As a class, this should be clearer as you'd be "a bunch of grunts" not "a fighter and his grunts". e3: gently caress, I missed this, but "a grunt / one of your grunts" means a non-exhausted one. Exhausted ones don't do anything in combat and just kind of follow along out-of-combat. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Oct 15, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 02:55
|
|
|
kingcom posted:Yeah I unfortunately dont see me running it much after our initial game is over. Its too much work for the GM(i.e. me) to prepare for, its not a lot of fun for me to run as I groan inside every time I have to play the monsters super dumb to prevent the party being killed and its not rules light enough to let everyone jump in and go quickly. Higher level stuff seems hilariously all over the place and magic just seems to grow way too powerful like 3.5/pf. Not enough for me to ban classes or whatever but enough that i have to redesign and rethink encounters so the spellcaster can be both useful and not completely wipe it in a turn. I guess I'm just doing it wrong, but I've found it actually pretty easy to GM. I definitely won't be getting the MM because from my point of view it looks like dumb crap, so I've tested out a series of "templates" for monsters that I feel will be appropriate for the party to face, and then I don't have to play them as being mentally handicapped. Thus far it's working out pretty well, with the monsters I intended to be threatening coming across as such, and the shifty fodder enemies providing a decent tarpit for the bigger foes. I also put in minions, because they feel like they fit more with 5e than they ever did with 4e. I enjoy 5e from what I've played and run so far, but it's super dumb that I feel like I've thought up a better system for encounter building than the actual designers given only a couple sessions of playing.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 03:35
|
|
|
Glukeose posted:I enjoy 5e from what I've played and run so far, but it's super dumb that I feel like I've thought up a better system for encounter building than the actual designers given only a couple sessions of playing. This is too long for a thread title but yea.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 03:43
|
|
|
Selachian posted:As a monk fan: publishing monk fixes was a booming industry from approximately 1979 through 2010. The 1E monk was the drizzling shits, the 2E monk was barely an afterthought, the 3E monk was a miserable heap of failure. And then the 4E monk came along and it was loving awesome, and got even more fuckinger awesomer with further supplements. So as you may guess, I am deeply, deeply thrilled that the 5E designers threw all that out and took the 3E monk as their starting point. I didn't ever experience the 4e monk and I believe you that it's great, but people definitely still make fixes for it. Unrelated: I have always thought that playing a skeleton that has 18 Charisma would be particularly fantastic. He's always smiling.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 04:02
|
|
|
friendlyfire posted:I didn't ever experience the 4e monk and I believe you that it's great, but people definitely still make fixes for it. HO, HO, HO.  E: I forgot about this line. Make him a paladin. 
Daetrin fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Oct 15, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 04:05
|
|
|
kingcom posted:This is too long for a thread title but yea. D&D 5e: It's Super Dumb But yeah, the MM just seems like a huge waste of time and money. There's a list of spells already in the PHB if you have it, so your spellcasting monsters are taken care of on that front. For interesting abilities, just making poo poo up does the job just fine. For instance, my players were clearing out a mine infested with arachnid/goblin hybrids (so original, I know), and the baseline grunt for the "Eight Legs Clan" was as follows: HP: 12 AC: 14 STR +1 DEX +3 CON +2 WIS -1 INT +0 CHA +0 Abilities: Wrangle: target within 30 ft makes DC 13 DEX save or is ensnared. On subsequent turns, goblin may drag target 10ft toward himself as a standard action. Save ends Darkvision Paralytic Venom: On hit, target takes 1d4+2 damage and makes a DC12 CON save. 1 failure: target is slowed. 2 failures: target is paralyzed and takes 5 damage. They worked like a charm as grunts against a level 3 party and it took me literally three minutes to think of it. The venom also made them enemies against which the barbarian and fighter got to shine, who were able to harass the warlock and cleric.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 04:09
|
|
|
Glukeose posted:Making up monsters Yeah, that seems like the way to do it, honestly.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 04:17
|
|
|
Glukeose posted:D&D 5e: It's Super Dumb Right but my issue is I want to spend my time on writing a plot. Not making up monsters from scratch for ever increasing and more complex characters. This gets pretty difficult to do when your running with level 10+ players. Let me just pick some cool monsters from a list and ill reflavour them to whats appropriate i.e. the 4e method. kingcom fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Oct 15, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 04:18
|
|
|
What was the thing with shapechanging to be a better dragon than an actual dragon.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 04:24
|
|
|
kingcom posted:Right but my issue is I want to spend my time on writing a plot. Not making up monsters from scratch for ever increasing and more complex characters. This gets pretty difficult to do when your running with level 10+ players. Yes I can see how this might become an issue. As it stands for me the group is 4th level and we stick to "level up after completing important arcs / dungeons," so the problem is mitigated. When they jumped from 3rd to 4th I modified the "monster templates" a bit and was then able to spend time figuring out how the world and NPCs were going to react to the party's actions. It means the hp, ac, and attributes of a lot of the monsters I send at them are identical, with only the paint job and special snowflake abilities changed. This isn't meant to excuse the boneheaded encounter design rules of course, just my personal fix for the situation.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 04:26
|
|
|
Allstone posted:What was the thing with shapechanging to be a better dragon than an actual dragon. True Polymorph a level 20 wizard into a dragon. Dragon attributes, wizard spell levels, and when the dragon form dies you turn back into a wizard with fully refreshed everything or some stupid poo poo like that.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 04:28
|
|
|
Allstone posted:What was the thing with shapechanging to be a better dragon than an actual dragon. True Polymorph I believe let you turn into any creature of your level or lower. So you could turn into an adult red dragon but when you get to 0 hp you just revert back to being a normal adventurer again. Except your a wizard so you just go back to dragon mode again.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 04:28
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 09:07 |
|
|
Allstone posted:What was the thing with shapechanging to be a better dragon than an actual dragon.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2014 04:30
|
|
