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kingcom posted:
 
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Feb 6, 2015 03:21
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I cant tell if your joking.
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Feb 6, 2015 03:29
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Glazius posted:My suggestion is to make like a dozen characters each, just random them all up. Keep them in a folder in a bookbag or something and every time you die just reach in and draw a new one. Yeah combat in this edition is really rocket taggy, so you'll probably go through a number of characters in a game with a bad DM. Unfortunately in a way that somehow manages to take quite a long time. Let me explain with an example, In a session i was playing in a while back (as a Cleric) we had a fight where we were fighting 4 Rhemorazes (I think we were like level...8-10, somewhere in there), basically they had super high HP so they weren't dying very fast, then they missed us a lot and didn't really hurt us, then in one round two of them hits me, the first hit hit me pretty hard (and i was already hurt slightly because when you hit them in melee you take damage), then the 2nd one crit me, and did enough damage to just straight up kill me from what I was at. The remainder of the battle the Rehmoraz (Rhamorazes? Rhemorazii?) never hit anyone and they slowly whittled them down and killed them. Not every battle in 5th edition are like this, but enough are.
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Feb 6, 2015 03:44
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Well after 10 years I might finally get to game in person. It is going to be 5e at 1st level and with rolled stats. Sounds like they are close to 2nd level though. It is a fairly large group at 8 people already and most classes are already represented. Sounds like they don't have a ranger or bard. That said they don't seem to be against doubling up. Rolled stats are 12, 13, 13, 14, 15, 16. Any suggestions?
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Feb 6, 2015 04:13
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ritorix posted:The pathguy character-builder website got a C&D. All D&D edition generators are gone. Dammit. His generators were slow and unwieldy, but they were free; had there been an official one for 5e, I'd have been paying for it. Definitely a good idea, WotC, to make it harder for people to get into your product! homullus fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 04:39
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Kitchner posted:Also can I just say I find the spell list really loving annoying. Why are they Al lumped together alphabetically instead of categorised (e.g. all illusion spells) and then organised alphabetically? It's annoying if you just want to say browse all the necromancer spells. ImpactVector posted:It's alphabetical because monsters are using the same list. Not to mention all the random references to it like it's a list of generic effects. You know I complained about the spell list ordering being terrible for players when the game first came out. Despite "It's not just for players, it's a list of generic effects" being so glaringly obvious it just never occurred to me. What a strange, strange way to design a game. ritorix posted:The pathguy character-builder website got a C&D. All D&D edition generators are gone. 
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Feb 6, 2015 04:49
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Kitchner posted:Also can I just say I find the spell list really loving annoying. Why are they Al lumped together alphabetically instead of categorised (e.g. all illusion spells) and then organised alphabetically? It's annoying if you just want to say browse all the necromancer spells.
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Feb 6, 2015 05:00
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Ryuujin posted:Well after 10 years I might finally get to game in person. It is going to be 5e at 1st level and with rolled stats. Sounds like they are close to 2nd level though. It is a fairly large group at 8 people already and most classes are already represented. Sounds like they don't have a ranger or bard. That said they don't seem to be against doubling up. Rolled stats are 12, 13, 13, 14, 15, 16. Any suggestions? If it's going to be a oneshot kind of deal I would heavily suggest going with a Bard because a Ranger will have nothing specifically Ranger-y to do at level 1 besides roleplaying. At least as a Bard you already have your Bardic Inspiration and some spells. 12 STR 16 DEX 14 CON 13 INT 13 WIS 15 CHA and then take Human to bump up the 15 and the 13s to the next modifier. If you're playing with Feats, the Human racial variant to get you a Feat is also an option: Magic Initiate, then the Cleric spell list, then the Guidance cantrip is a very Bard-y thing to cast.
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Feb 6, 2015 05:36
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gradenko_2000 posted:If it's going to be a oneshot kind of deal I would heavily suggest going with a Bard because a Ranger will have nothing specifically Ranger-y to do at level 1 besides roleplaying. At least as a Bard you already have your Bardic Inspiration and some spells. I was tempted to go Bard, if I go Lore and if the game goes on long enough I could maybe throw in some Cleric of Knowledge and some Rogue for a bunch of skills/expertise. Not sure how long they are going to be running it, it sounds like they have played two or three times so far, and are near 2nd level. If I went Half-Elf instead of Human I would miss out on the feat but would get one more skill and would have 12 STR 16 DEX 14 CON 13 INT 14 WIS 18 CHA for stats. Or switch the Dex and Cha maybe. I do want to try a skill monkey at some point but no idea how much focus on skills the game will have, or how long it will actually go.
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Feb 6, 2015 05:44
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The pathology guy is super  . I remember reading his page back in the late 90s when I had a small Planescape page of my own on Geocities.
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Feb 6, 2015 06:10
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As others have said, the spells are strictly in alphabetical order because they are literally the building blocks of D&D 5e. Almost every single ability is "like x spell." Spells are not "the wizard powers." Spells are literally the entire universe. Martial classes are basically defined by how fewer spells they gain access to.
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Feb 6, 2015 08:07
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Go all in on it. FIGHTER SPELL LIST: Weapon Attack Evocation Cantrip Casting Time: 1 action Range: Special Components: S, M(A Weapon) Duration: Instantaneous Make a weapon attack against a target in your weapon's range. On a success, you deal your weapon's damage plus your strength modifier. I removed all the other things fighters can do because stuff like Second Wind and Action Surge are not verisimilitudey enough.
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Feb 6, 2015 08:41
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NameHurtBrain posted:Go all in on it. Actually, I think this would go a long way to cleaning up some of the class disparity, and if you did it right you could leave Second Wind and Action Surge and stuff in there. If everything's a spell and there's a unified list of spells, you just need each class to have a list of which spells they can take (so, like wizards couldn't take "Slightly better weapon attack" and fighters couldn't take "fireball"). Even though some re-use and ovelap would happen (like, fighters and paladins both getting "swing sword (cantrip)" or wizards and sorcerers both shooting fire), the fact that spells can refresh as cantrips (ie, immediately) or on rests would give some variety, although it'd be better if you made it so different spells had Refresh <instant, short rest, long rest> to choose from - like "swing sword" obviously refreshes instantly, but "swing sword really hard" might mean you need a breather before you can do it again and "poo poo fire over 600 square feet" might mean you need to sleep afterwards. I'm pretty sure there was a game a while back that did something similar.
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Feb 6, 2015 11:08
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If you think this guy is making it up: http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/errata Go forth and despair.
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Feb 6, 2015 11:17
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Sage Genesis posted:If you think this guy is making it up: What's the story on this? I stopped following RPG development completely for about 6 years and this would have been right in the middle of that time. Edit: That's completely unclear - I mean that I was occasionally playing older RPGs in that time but I wasn't playing 3.x or paying any attention whatsoever to any new stuff happening in or out of D&D. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 11:27 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 11:24
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AlphaDog posted:Actually, I think this would go a long way to cleaning up some of the class disparity, and if you did it right you could leave Second Wind and Action Surge and stuff in there. If everything's a spell and there's a unified list of spells, you just need each class to have a list of which spells they can take (so, like wizards couldn't take "Slightly better weapon attack" and fighters couldn't take "fireball"). Even though some re-use and ovelap would happen (like, fighters and paladins both getting "swing sword (cantrip)" or wizards and sorcerers both shooting fire), the fact that spells can refresh as cantrips (ie, immediately) or on rests would give some variety, although it'd be better if you made it so different spells had Refresh <instant, short rest, long rest> to choose from - like "swing sword" obviously refreshes instantly, but "swing sword really hard" might mean you need a breather before you can do it again and "poo poo fire over 600 square feet" might mean you need to sleep afterwards. 4E reference I'm guessing? I kinda thought that after I posted it. (Wait...this looks familiar) Yeah, it was a joke that everything is a spell. Giving fighters fancy attacks on a vancian casting chart would be an improvement.(not using Vancian casting is also an improvement). That'd actually be a fun class if you matched the Wizards insanity, but with a sword. Ninth level Meteor Swarm for a Fighter would basically be Omnislash, D&D edition. gently caress it, instead of bringing the Wizards down, make everyone as loving insane as Wizards. Monk meditates, and alters reality for wish. Rogue smuggles everyone to the astral plane. Barbarian screams really hard and then things just die from him doing that. Gestalt all players with the Wizard class, and encourage them to come up with creative reasoning for how their main class is pulling this poo poo off.
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Feb 6, 2015 12:13
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AlphaDog posted:What's the story on this? I stopped following RPG development completely for about 6 years and this would have been right in the middle of that time. As far as I understand it the Tome of battle classes did... terrible things when combining their recharge mechanics with casters.
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Feb 6, 2015 12:23
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"Just make one huge spell list, give everyone spell slots, give everyone tailored spell lists, rephrase the spell descriptions so that they can be narratively interpreted in multiple ways" is a sensible approach that D&D slowly crept toward throughout 3.5, dove completely into in 4E and then was rolled back in 5E, but it keeps rearing its head as something that makes too much sense to ignore. Maneuvers already are spells and Superiority Dice already are spell slots! AlphaDog posted:What's the story on this? I stopped following RPG development completely for about 6 years and this would have been right in the middle of that time. As far as I can tell, whoever was writing the errata document goofed and ended up copy-pasting from the Complete Mage errata halfway through the Firesnake paragraph, and the cessation of support for 3.5E after 4E got started meant that the official errata document never got updated. It's just a very unfortunate coincidence that what was pasted on top was more Wizard stuff. If you google around you can find unofficial errata documents for TOB from official WOTC responses as compiled by fans, but it included ultra-lame-to-the-max things like Iron Heart Surge only dispelling sensible status effects.
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Feb 6, 2015 12:34
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gradenko_2000 posted:"Just make one huge spell list, give everyone spell slots, give everyone tailored spell lists, rephrase the spell descriptions so that they can be narratively interpreted in multiple ways" is a sensible approach that D&D slowly crept toward throughout 3.5, dove completely into in 4E and then was rolled back in 5E, but it keeps rearing its head as something that makes too much sense to ignore. What I was getting at is that if you have a unified list of combat effects instead of a list of Magic Spells and a different list of Fighter Moves and a different list of Rogue Tricks etc, you'd probably have quite a solid base for building balanced classes. Give them different kinds of access to different parts of the list (some overlap of one or both of those*), you wouldn't actually end up with 4e (which has a list of powers per class), but you might be able to approach the idea of "a unified list of powers/effects" in a way that didn't trigger a grog reflex. gradenko_2000 posted:As far as I can tell, whoever was writing the errata document goofed and ended up copy-pasting from the Complete Mage errata halfway through the Firesnake paragraph, and the cessation of support for 3.5E after 4E got started meant that the official errata document never got updated. It's just a very unfortunate coincidence that what was pasted on top was more Wizard stuff. Eh, not that interested in actual errata, just in how it got so hilariously hosed up.
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Feb 6, 2015 13:14
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AlphaDog posted:Eh, not that interested in actual errata, just in how it got so hilariously hosed up. ToB came out in 2006, 4e was announced in 2007. Most of the late-life 3.5 books were testbeds for new mechanics, and not all of them were playtested thoroughly. Hell the Truenamer barely functions as it is and it required errata for it to actually be able to cast 1/3rd of it's spells. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 15:34
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Stormgale posted:As far as I understand it the Tome of battle classes did... terrible things when combining their recharge mechanics with casters. Nope, like the previous poster said, it was a literal fuckup that was never fixed. You could combine ToB classes with casters and make a build that got both maneuvers and spells, but you can either melee things OR cast spells; action economy still exists. Frankly while it was a cool option, things like Persistent Divine Power existed in 3.5 so what was the point?
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Feb 6, 2015 16:32
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Kurieg posted:ToB came out in 2006, 4e was announced in 2007. Most of the late-life 3.5 books were testbeds for new mechanics, and not all of them were playtested thoroughly. Hell the Binder barely functions as it is and it required errata for it to actually be able to cast 1/3rd of it's spells. The binder worked pretty well. Are you thinking of the truenamer (which got less powerful as you levelled, thanks to dc scaling) or maybe shadowcaster?
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Feb 6, 2015 16:49
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 Yeah the Truenamer. Lexicon of the evolving map spells don't have DCs given in the main book.That's on top of the fact that the Truenamer as designed only functions if you coat it liberally in magic items.
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Feb 6, 2015 16:52
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Didn't the truenamer get actively weaker over the course of a fight?
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Feb 6, 2015 16:57
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goatface posted:Didn't the truenamer get actively weaker over the course of a fight? The DC increased every time you failed the check, so yes, it did. It was a cool concept with absolutely horrible mechanics that were broken from the get-go.
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Feb 6, 2015 16:59
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The DC for a specific utterance increased by 2 every time you succeeded on a check for that specific utterance over the course of a day. The problem is that assuming that you dumped every single increase into intelligence, had a +5 headband of intelligence, skill focus in Truespeech, and a +10 amulet of the silver tongue, you're baseline only succeeding 50% of the time, and you provoke attacks of opportunity for uttering. If you don't have the amulet then, well 
Kurieg fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 17:12
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goatface posted:Didn't the truenamer get actively weaker over the course of a fight? It actually got weaker over the course of the game. As you went up in level, it became increasingly harder to hit your DCs. You basically leveled in reverse.
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Feb 6, 2015 22:28
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They should do a new version. They won't, but it would be nice.
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Feb 6, 2015 22:33
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goatface posted:They should do a new version. They won't, but it would be nice. Of 5e? I agree.
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Feb 6, 2015 22:34
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IT BEGINS posted:Of 5e? I agree. I will start having "I'm too 6e for these rules" t-shirts printed up.
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Feb 6, 2015 22:36
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NameHurtBrain posted:Gestalt all players with the Wizard class, and encourage them to come up with creative reasoning for how their main class is pulling this poo poo off. One idea that keeps cropping up in my head was to just make Fighter, Rogue and (maybe) Barbarian function like a prestige class/paragon path that you layer over another class. You'd only get the archetype from the other (spellcasting, obvisously) class you picked; if you wanted to, you could be like Fighter/Rogue and get an archetype from either (both?)  It seems like if you mashed up Assassin with Champion you might actually get something halfway worthwhile.
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Feb 6, 2015 23:04
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P.d0t posted:One idea that keeps cropping up in my head was to just make Fighter, Rogue and (maybe) Barbarian function like a prestige class/paragon path that you layer over another class. My 2 cents on Rogue & Fighter is if you gave Arcane Trickster/Eldritch Knight spell progression that resembled the Warlock (probably recovering spells on long rest instead of short rest, maybe adjust spell slots per day a little to account for that) you'd have pretty alright archetypes for those classes that didn't overlap too much with other casters.
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Feb 6, 2015 23:16
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AlphaDog posted:What I was getting at is that if you have a unified list of combat effects instead of a list of Magic Spells and a different list of Fighter Moves and a different list of Rogue Tricks etc, you'd probably have quite a solid base for building balanced classes. This is also a good idea, IMHO. In 4e you ended up with a lot of powers with not a lot different about them than Class and/or Power Source. It might not be a bad way to streamline things, although I did like the presentation of "HERE'S YOUR CLASS" and all its powers were presented together.
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Feb 6, 2015 23:25
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P.d0t posted:One idea that keeps cropping up in my head was to just make Fighter, Rogue and (maybe) Barbarian function like a prestige class/paragon path that you layer over another class. Pretty sure that was a recommended way in 3.5 if you wanted a simple balance trick. Wizard/Sorcerer/Cleric/etc. took up both slots, while you could combine like Barbarian/Rogue, or in some cases 3 classes with Fighter/Expert/CW Samurai or whatever. I don't think even that combo would save those classes. You'd get a 15% chance to do insane damage in the first round at Level 17. If it fails it's save. Then you're still a mediocre attacker who happens to be the buffest master of disguise ever. Seriously, Champion is the worst archetype IMO. At least Assassin has cool non-combat things. Champions get improved criticals in a game where critical hits are pretty weak. Some minor regen at high levels. That's it.  Is it a worthy observation that their desire to make the rules universal for NPCs and PCs hurts the game? At some point in the playtest, crits were max die x2. They removed that, supposedly, due to complaints of being gibbed by kobolds. So it's just two weapon dice. Which still might roll poorly. Would it really be that complex to say, PCs are special, and get real good crits. NPCs are not special, they have to roll?
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Feb 6, 2015 23:30
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NameHurtBrain posted:Seriously, Champion is the worst archetype IMO. At least Assassin has cool non-combat things. Champions get improved criticals in a game where critical hits are pretty weak. Some minor regen at high levels. That's it. Fighter as a whole had much better features during playtest that can now be found in various forms on the Monk, Paladin, and Barbarian.
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Feb 6, 2015 23:37
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Not that it fixes the poor fighter but is anything lost by just baking the champion features into the core fighter?
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Feb 6, 2015 23:42
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P.d0t posted:This is also a good idea, IMHO. In 4e you ended up with a lot of powers with not a lot different about them than Class and/or Power Source. It might not be a bad way to streamline things, although I did like the presentation of "HERE'S YOUR CLASS" and all its powers were presented together. Why not both? After all, we're talking about a list of effects, not a list of in-fiction descriptions. "60' range, XdY damage, never misses" is Magic Missile, but it's also something a default Ranger can do with a bow once per short rest and an Assassin can do once per day after level 5. "All enemies within 5' in front of you take 1d4+level damage" is Burning Hands, but it also sounds a bit like Cleave and a bit like something a rogue could do with throwing knives or darts (or acid, or fire-powder, or...) You could present it like 4e, that would work. You could present it a bit like Next but with generic names for the effects and it would also work. You could use formatting and natural language to obfuscate it to the point where the Orc's Rage Attack is the same as the Fighter's Cleave is the same as the Wizard's Burning Hands is the same as the Mushroom Knight's Acid Spore Breath is the same as the Rogue's Fan Of Knives and probably nobody would notice but the balance aspect would still be there. Mendrian posted:Not that it fixes the poor fighter but is anything lost by just baking the champion features into the core fighter? The game would lose the very important "less effective class for people who don't actually want to play D&D" class. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 23:45
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You always know all manoeuvres. Instead of learning more at various levels, you are able to apply more than one effect to the same attack, but still only costing one dice. Disarming, Distracting, Precise Trip-attack hoooo
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Feb 6, 2015 23:52
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AlphaDog posted:You could present it a bit like Next but with generic names for the effects and it would also work. Naw, people would hate that and it would probably ruin their immersion or some poo poo.
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Feb 6, 2015 23:52
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P.d0t posted:Naw, people would hate that and it would probably ruin their immersion or some poo poo. I thought the next part of my post implied that I realise this and have a solution. e: My solution would also require up to 100 times more page space, so you could either EXTEND THE BOOK SO IT'S NOW JAM-PACKED WITH NEW AND UNIQUE Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Feb 7, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 23:56
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