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I'm about to start paying my first d&d game in almost 20 years. Combat flow is a little confusing to me. I get movement and action. How do reactions and opportunity attacks work? I'm planning to roll a Paladin with the Sentinel feat, so I should probably figure it out before my first session.
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Oct 27, 2014 00:11
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Gerdalti posted:I'm about to start paying my first d&d game in almost 20 years. Combat flow is a little confusing to me. I get movement and action. How do reactions and opportunity attacks work? I'm planning to roll a Paladin with the Sentinel feat, so I should probably figure it out before my first session. You may take up to 1 reaction per round, in between your turns. This is not something that happens every round - for many characters, taking a reaction will be a rare occurrence. You typically need a special feat or class ability to make use of reactions, such as the Sentinel feat you already mentioned. Exactly what these reactions do or what they're triggered by depends on the individual reaction in question. The only thing the various reactions have in common is that you can take only one per round. Not one per type, just one in total. Opportunity Attacks are probably the most common type of reaction. Anybody can use it without the need for a special feat. It's triggered when an enemy you see leaves your reach. Your reach is typically 5' although some creatures and weapons might have more. When this does happen, you get to make one melee attack against them. So basically, don't worry about opportunity attacks too much. When somebody walks up to you, nothing happens. When somebody walks around you, nothing happens. When somebody walks away from or past you, then you get to make an opportunity attack. Sage Genesis fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Oct 27, 2014 |
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Oct 27, 2014 00:44
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Sage Genesis posted:Opportunity Attacks are probably the most common type of reaction. Anybody can use it without the need for a special feat. It's triggered when an enemy you see leaves your reach. Wait, is that the exact wording? It's only when something leaves your reach, not squares within your reach?
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Oct 27, 2014 02:16
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Really Pants posted:Wait, is that the exact wording? It's only when something leaves your reach, not squares within your reach? No of course not. Theatre of the mind and all that.
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Oct 27, 2014 02:17
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Really Pants posted:Wait, is that the exact wording? It's only when something leaves your reach, not squares within your reach? What is these "squares" you speak of? No, as Rannos22 said, TotM means that it's only when they leave your reach. I do need to add one thing to that though: it doesn't count if they're forced out of your reach, such as by being knocked back by an explosion.
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Oct 27, 2014 02:44
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I played in my first 5E game tonight - I had played the beta. We were all level 3 dudes looking for a bad guy in a large city - half investigation/half combat. I was a ranger and we also had a warlock, barbarian, druid, and monk. Game seemed okay, but Colossus Slayer seemed like by far the best combat option for rangers, which I took. Real MVP was the druid with the moon reach spell though.
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Oct 27, 2014 06:44
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Really Pants posted:Wait, is that the exact wording? It's only when something leaves your reach, not squares within your reach? Yeah that was one of the major changes to OA's in 5E, that starting a move within a characters reach doesn't actually trigger an OA like it used to. It's not a bad change: - Narratively it makes sense because it is possible to circle around an opponent in a sword fight without opening your guard, I see it in movies all the time. - Tactically it's interesting because you can pin down an oponent with good positioning anyway, by venn diagramming your reaches on top of an opponent. - In the sense of stopping an opponent from threatening allies with OA's it doesn't really cut your options in any meaningful way. It's actually pretty great, especially compared to the one OA per round rule. It could probably be done better but I don't think it could be done better and also be as simple as it is. 30.5 Days fucked around with this message at 10:58 on Oct 27, 2014 |
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Oct 27, 2014 10:55
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Rannos22 posted:It's really disappointing that nobody has made a really professional virtual tabletop that will track all the little fiddly bits ttrpgs are rife with.
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Oct 27, 2014 14:15
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Didn't they make a really lovely game a few years ago that was loosely based on 4E?
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Oct 27, 2014 18:32
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crime fighting hog posted:Didn't they make a really lovely game a few years ago that was loosely based on 4E? They made that relatively awesome Facebook Neverwinter game.
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Oct 27, 2014 19:19
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crime fighting hog posted:Didn't they make a really lovely game a few years ago that was loosely based on 4E? Yeah, Daggervale. I generally buy any video game with the D&D brand but one look at that pile and I wrote it off instantly. It's a shame, I'm basically the exact target audience for 4e video games.
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Oct 27, 2014 19:23
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Jake Solomon and whatever engine powers XCOM Enemy Unknown/Within is so perfect for a 4E (or Strike!) video game adaptation that it hurts.
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Oct 27, 2014 19:41
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The Neverwinter MMO is based off 4 E as well. So our party is some what split on prefered systems. The DM and warlocks are loving 5E while myself, the fighter and the wizard prefer 4E. Both are fun but we miss strategic combat from 4E while the others prefer the spell system in this. We all agree that both options are improvements over 3.X. overall we are enjoying 5E but like it has been stated before the system seems to fall apart post level 10 in a bad way. Kortel fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Oct 27, 2014 |
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Oct 27, 2014 19:53
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System falling apart past lvl 10? Just part of the OSR.
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Oct 27, 2014 19:58
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Kortel posted:The Neverwinter MMO is based off 4 E as well. The neverwinter MMO is based on 4e only so far as the setting and ability names are concerned.
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Oct 27, 2014 20:38
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Just picked up the players handbook and the starter set. So lost already
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Oct 28, 2014 00:27
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Kortel posted:The Neverwinter MMO is based off 4 E as well.
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Oct 28, 2014 00:45
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vermeul posted:Just picked up the players handbook and the starter set. I just did this exact same thing because I am a bad person with no willpower. I'm slowwwwly working my way through the thread but how does the math look for 5E so far? I liked 4E a lot but the math (particularly in the earlier books, pre-essentials) had a lot of issues. Combat could easily take forever for a fight that was balanced (or even in the party's favor), skill challenges as presented in the DMG1 had absurd issues with difficulty plateauing at weird places, stealth as written in the PHB1 just outright didn't seem to work. Are there any big hangups like that in this edition so far? Also, why the hell isn't the DMG out already? Whose bright idea was that? (I apologize for how clueless these questions are, I would've popped them off over in the chat thread but it doesn't seem like TGD has one anymore...?)
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Oct 28, 2014 03:46
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Ryoshi posted:I just did this exact same thing because I am a bad person with no willpower.
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Oct 28, 2014 04:03
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There is no math - monster stat assignment is arbitrary, with the sole exception of "this size monster has this size hit dice" Stealth is worded ambiguously enough that it both works and doesn't work, depending on how you choose to interpret the RAW. The DMG isn't out yet because that's always how D&D did things (except when they didn't in 4E)
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Oct 28, 2014 04:23
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Ryoshi posted:I just did this exact same thing because I am a bad person with no willpower. It's a long thread with a lot of vitriol on both sides of the "is this worth it?" debate. The reason the DMG isn't out is because WotC is dumb and thinks they're building hype but really they're just pissing off the people that want to play 5e. Skill rolls and the advantage system are neat, and the system tries really hard to have "flatter math" or at least looking like it accomplishes that. Combat I've found is quick, but at higher levels might suffer from the same bloat as 4e. As far as big hangups: The system requires a lot of input on behalf of the GM to smooth out a lot of dumb poo poo that made it into the PHB. The tactical options for PCs in combat is significantly reduced compared to 4e. The CR system is back and sucks fat dick. Overall, I enjoy 5e. I like designing my own monsters and magic items for the system, and I like the more threatening feel that those monsters have compared to the 4e campaign that we recently ended. I like the advantage, inspiration, and background mechanics, and I like that the numbers aren't so bloated this time around. However, I think it's a lot to ask of your customer to hand them a product and go "okay now like 40% of this requires your fixes." I like fixing, and I like homebrewing, and I think if they put a bit more love into making sure all this game's constituent parts flowed together it would have been an amazing system instead of an okayish one.
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Oct 28, 2014 04:33
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gradenko_2000 posted:There is no math - monster stat assignment is arbitrary, with the sole exception of "this size monster has this size hit dice" This sounds terrible and for some reason I kind of am looking forward to it. I think reading RIFTS (C) sourcebooks broke my brain. quote:The DMG isn't out yet because that's always how D&D did things (except when they didn't in 4E) Ah, 4E was the only one that I got early enough to even notice. What in the hell. Are any of the adventures any good?
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Oct 28, 2014 05:14
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Glukeose posted:The reason the DMG isn't out is because WotC is dumb and thinks they're building hype but really they're just pissing off the people that want to play 5e. Nah, go with the simplest possible explanation. They just didn't finish it. That's why we joke about Mike Mearls not turning in his homework on time. They couldn't make deadline (August, Gencon+40th anniversary) even though everyone knew that date would be the date since 5e was announced. So instead we have this weird gap where the PHB and MM were ready on time (printed MMs were at gencon), but the DMG is behind while they continued to work on it for 2 more months. It went to printers on Oct 14, it'll be at WPN stores on black friday and amazon 2 weeks later.
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Oct 28, 2014 05:46
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ritorix posted:Nah, go with the simplest possible explanation. They just didn't finish it. That's why we joke about Mike Mearls not turning in his homework on time. They couldn't make deadline (August, Gencon+40th anniversary) even though everyone knew that date would be the date since 5e was announced. So instead we have this weird gap where the PHB and MM were ready on time (printed MMs were at gencon), but the DMG is behind while they continued to work on it for 2 more months. It went to printers on Oct 14, it'll be at WPN stores on black friday and amazon 2 weeks later. DMG got pushed back about a month ago - the release date is now the 9th of December.
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Oct 28, 2014 06:00
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My level 3 Warlock did 26 damage on a Witch Bolt crit tonight 
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Oct 28, 2014 07:10
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Yakse posted:DMG got pushed back about a month ago - the release date is now the 9th of December. While true, that doesn't change the accuracy of my last post. WPN stores get stuff earlier, the new date after the delay being black friday, which is <2 weeks before the 9th. ritorix fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Oct 28, 2014 |
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Oct 28, 2014 07:13
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Ryoshi posted:I just did this exact same thing because I am a bad person with no willpower. Ya just started the lost mine of phandelver with 4 friends tonight trying to learn how to use roll 20. My head hurts.
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Oct 28, 2014 07:58
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Ryoshi posted:Are any of the adventures any good? Of course not.
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Oct 28, 2014 14:19
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I'm just back from DMing my first game of 5th edition, for people who'd never played 5E. About half hadn't played D&D before. I've been following the discussions here about 5E, but I think the edition's biggest problem has been the biggest problem of every edition of this game: it is too complicated, and that complicatedness usually comes from meaningless distinctions. We spent two hours on character creation, and the resulting characters are a mess. These intelligent people got overwhelmed. Most of the players treated their proficiency list as their equipment. One of them got through the entire adventure with Armour Class: light. The same character has Languages: Disguise kit. And this person is meant to weigh up the virtues of a sickle versus a mace? Of dual-wielding versus going for a two-hander? Of which ability scores to put where, a decision which has a huge effect for the remaining twenty levels?! And speaking of ability scores, I'd forgotten how many different ways a newcomer can interpret “you get a +2 racial bonus to Strength” or how many different approaches they can take to calculating their modifier from their ability score. How does the “basic rules” of the game get away with being over a hundred pages long? How does the starter kit get away with a 32-page rulebook, and an adventure that is itself a wall of text for 32 pages (EDIT: 64 pages)? This isn't a particular criticism of the Starter Set, because by all accounts its one of the better introductory adventures that D&D has ever had. It's just that what we expect from any edition of D&D bears no resemblance to a fun tabletop game for ages 12+ you can play with your friends! The monster stat blocks suited my purposes, but only because I wrote down their AC, attacks and HP, and ignored the rest. I think it's great to have monsters with clever powers that create interesting tactical options and monsters with interesting powers that create interesting story options. Instead, I got a CR 0.5 monster that runs over 23 lines, including the amazing special power to make two attacks, each with a different weapon (but all its weapons have the same attack bonus and damage) (the lizardfolk). A complicated, simplistic monster is the worst of all possible worlds. We had a lot of fun, and a lot of laughs, but character generation needed to run about as long as a game of Dominion, not a game of Risk, and the culture of meaningless differentiation pollutes not only character creation, but the rest of the game as well. Rant over. Feel free to tell me I'm wrong.
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Oct 28, 2014 14:59
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Sanglorian posted:Rant over. Feel free to tell me I'm wrong. Not really. In fact, would you mind if I save this post so I can quote it if I happen to run into someone who tells me 5e is really super-easy to pick up?
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Oct 28, 2014 15:32
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That's kind of a problem with pretty much every tabletop game in existence. There's only a few games I've found where it wasn't fiddly somewhere down the line to the point of confusion. When it comes to most DnD games, the complications and confusion come from the ambiguity of how things are written, though. Rules should be written clearly and concisely and in an order that makes sense. It's not quite as bad in 5E, but that might just be because I'm already familiar with a lot of 3E's rules which 5E borrows heavily from. I remember it took me three years to learn all the fiddly bits and rules of 3E when it came out. When I bought it, neither myself nor my friends had ever played DnD before, and we got the books pretty much right off the shelves when they hit them. We weren't actually playing the game like we were supposed to for a long rear end time and didn't realise it until we started digging through the rulebooks and noticing rules were contradicting how we played. By then, 3.5 was coming out and I had to learn a whole bunch of poo poo that had changed practically right when I had finally thought I learned it all. Even 4E took me a few weeks to learn, but at least there the rules were presented in such a fashion that you COULD pick it up and learn it relatively quickly. But even then, 4E was fiddly and complicated, and a lot of it didn't become apparent until you actually applied the rules to a game session and played. DnD is a game that seems to be learned through just throwing yourself blindly at it and figuring it out as you go along. If you want to talk about horribly laid out rulebooks though and the pains of learning a new system using them, I don't think anyone who's played the previous edition of Shadowrun can deny that it was possibly one of the worst edited game books ever. As in, they must not have paid an editor to look for simple mistakes such as "This rule is explained on Page.XX" where the X's weren't numbers, but literal X's because they were placeholders for the actual page numbers which weren't known at the time that particular section was written. There were huge swaths of sections that referred you to the WRONG page numbers, too, and my personal favorite was how in one section it refers you to look up a set of rules that don't exist in the game.
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Oct 28, 2014 15:42
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Agent Boogeyman posted:That's kind of a problem with pretty much every tabletop game in existence. I would argue that this is due to the influence of D&D, which is unforgivably complex and the usual way for people to learn it is to have it patiently explained by people who have already played for years. It's clear that the rulebook assumes you already know how to play some previous edition of D&D in its inability to introduce basic concepts, combined with the archaic rules in general that are pointless and arbitrary and only exist because they have existed in previous versions of D&D. D&D was a force back in the day when there was nothing better, but it has failed to keep up with modern game design and fails to attract new players because it's byzantine as gently caress. It's a shame that it's the archetypal RPG that everyone thinks of when they think of RPGs, because it's a relic cobbled together from half-formed ideas and ad hoc band-aid fixes. The only reason anyone has to play D&D is because it's D&D, because they have nice memories of it from when they were teenagers getting together with their friends, and so they can forgive its myriad flaws based on fondness and nostalgia. It has nothing to recommend itself to new players besides its legacy.
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Oct 28, 2014 15:55
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Sanglorian posted:I'm just back from DMing my first game of 5th edition, for people who'd never played 5E. About half hadn't played D&D before. I've been following the discussions here about 5E, but I think the edition's biggest problem has been the biggest problem of every edition of this game: it is too complicated, and that complicatedness usually comes from meaningless distinctions. ya we had issues last night as well with the character creation. Seems like a lot of unnecessary complexities. It took all 4 of us about 2 hours before we were ready. However, we have never played before.
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Oct 28, 2014 15:57
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Only now do I realise that it's a tradition that's been passed down from even the very first DnD. You know, the one that doesn't function unless you already have a copy of the Chainmail rulebook on hand.
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Oct 28, 2014 16:01
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As mentioned in another post, I'm about to play my first game of D&D in about 18 years. We're going to use 5e. I've built a character, but wouldn't mind a once over by some of you more experienced people to see if I've made any terrible glaring mistakes. As a note: I've already cleared the character with the DM, he gave me a few suggestions that I've taken into account already. Sword and Board Oath of Vengeance Level 1 Paladin: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8kVRNcLOnTtaTRmZnpEcmtZUnM/view?usp=sharing I've pre-noted level 2 skills (and a level 4 feat) on the sheet as well.
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Oct 28, 2014 16:15
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Are templates still a thing? I hit level 3 and was looking at the paladin Spell list and decided to check out Find Steed: It says the horse is celestial and gains intelligence 6(if <=5) and understnads one language but I can't seem to find any details on what exactly Celestial does. I'm going to assume it just makes it look cool somehow?
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Oct 28, 2014 16:24
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Gerdalti posted:As mentioned in another post, I'm about to play my first game of D&D in about 18 years. We're going to use 5e. I've built a character, but wouldn't mind a once over by some of you more experienced people to see if I've made any terrible glaring mistakes. Your saving throws are wrong. You noted as being proficient in Con saves, but you're actually proficient in Wisdom and Charisma saves.
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Oct 28, 2014 16:29
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Tactical Bonnet posted:Are templates still a thing? I hit level 3 and was looking at the paladin Spell list and decided to check out Find Steed: There are a few templates, but Celestial is not one of them. It's a creature type, like beast or humanoid. It has very little game mechanical effect, although being a celestial instead of a beast means it's immune to things that exclusively target animals I suppose.
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Oct 28, 2014 16:30
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So instead of a "Large Beast" a celestial warhorse would be a "Large Celestial"?
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Oct 28, 2014 16:32
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Sage Genesis posted:Your saving throws are wrong. You noted as being proficient in Con saves, but you're actually proficient in Wisdom and Charisma saves. He took Resilient: Con as a Human.
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Oct 28, 2014 16:33
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