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Traps are really weird in 5e anyway. If you go to the index of the PHB and look up "traps, finding" it refers you to Perception and Investigation elsewhere in the index. But if you follow that trail and thumb to page 178, neither Perception nor Investigation actually mention that they can be used to detect traps. In fact... I'm not sure the PHB anywhere teaches new players that traps are supposed to be a fairly prominent part of dungeoncrawling. But what makes this even stranger is that the PHB's index implies that both Perception and Investigation can be used to detect traps, but the DMG states that it's only Perception that can do this. (It also mentions the Arcana skill for magic traps, but again the PHB's description of the Arcana skill says nothing of the sort - and neither did its index.) But wait, hang on, the PHB does mention traps on page 178. Not under the skill descriptions but briefly in a sidebar. But they advice that skill checks aren't enough, you have to also specifically mention where you are looking in order for this to work. In other words, it's "pixelbitching", the passive-aggressive DM style where you make people investigate each spot and object separately. And they advice this. Were you looking for traps? Well, sorry, you didn't say you were looking at this one specific flagstone so the pressure plate is now activated. But we are still not done. Because the DMG states that a general Perception check is enough without saying you need to look at specific spots, and even that passive Perception can be sufficient to notice that trap in passing. Better yet, looking in a specific spot can automatically find the trap without the need for any skill check whatsoever. A fairly obvious and big contradiction of the PHB. I find myself once again awestruck by how incompetently these books were written. This is really, really basic stuff. This isn't some complex interaction between randomized treasure charts and specific spell list choices, it's "do I know how to resolve this basic D&D task and does my book say so?"
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Apr 14, 2015 13:02
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Oh god, that section of the DMG is just awful - where they distinguish a "secret door", which you find by searching, from a "concealed door" which you have to find by stating you're taking an action. The example they give is that a door that's hidden behind a curtain would not be found with a Perception or Investigation check (!) because you have to say you're moving the curtain. It also says that in addition to disarming a trap with a skill, you can "foil a trap" by just taking actions that invalidate it, such as avoiding a poison needle trap by pushing a chest open from a distance with a pole. That's fair enough, but has the implication that if you use the disarm skill, that's not what you did. In other words Mearls wants to bring back SOPs and pixelbitching for some reason. It's a miracle he didn't reintroduce the Identify Dance as well.
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Apr 14, 2015 13:13
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Nah it's fine if you just don't use traps. e: Obviously don't tell your players you're not using traps though.
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Apr 14, 2015 13:26
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MonsterEnvy posted:Shank someone for a ton of damage from stealth or if an ally is near. Being able to move around much faster, bail from combat without being punished for it and the ability to hide in the same turn you revealed yourself using Cunning action. Being able to halve damage against yourself using your reaction. Avoiding half or all the damage from area of effect attacks. Always being able to take a 10 on your ability checks. Being able ignore advantage. Being able to hit or succeed when you fail. Did you literally just read the rogue abilities off in order? Sneak Attack sucks, its unreliable and doesn't really give you much more damage. Due to limited reactions and the way attack of ops work, its pretty drat easy to move around in combat. If you want to eat your reaction to reduce 1 attacks damage go nuts, everything in this game has multiple attacks even as early as level 5. Evasion is the one nice thing a Rogue really gets and given the way aoes tend to work, it usually means everyone stops to heal anyway. Also its not aoes its dex based aoe checks and damage is the least valueable thing to worry about anyway since there are abundant save vs suck spells in the game. Taking 10 comes at level 11. At that point a bard can add d10s to dice rolls Also they have expertise on the check given they have 4 expertise skills by level 10. They dont even need to add the dice until after they roll. Plus whatever spell buffs they feel like casting without worry. They also have greater invisiblity opened up by this point. Stuff like charm/dominate person, disguise self, compulsion, invisibility and plenty of spell slots at this point to go nuts with whatever you need and have plenty big spells left over. Also they can just start taking spells off other class lists anyway so if they really want to be experts at skills stuff. They take guidance so every check gets an additional d4 to every single check they ever make without cost. So in the end you get your base check 13(is max at this point) with a minimum of 23 with the rogue, max 33. The Bard is getting minimum 15, average 22, and max of 27. This is purely going off using guidance and your inspiration that you can shoot out like candy by level 11. Again, bards have plenty of space to top up their skills with spells which can be from any spell list by level 11 Elsuive is at 18 to ignore advantage. Level 18. A bard can cast Power Word Kill at level 15. Kills anything currently with 100hp or lower no save. Or Power Word Stun, anything with a 150hp or lower is stunned, save at the end of their turn. Your level 20 capstone is to to get an auto hit or 20 on a check once per rest. lol. To be fair the Bard capstone isn't really great either because again, inspiration back every short rest by level 5 so who cares
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Apr 14, 2015 13:29
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http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/my-new-d20-modern-campaign I know it would increase the amount of stuff you'd have to track, but I almost feel as if those ideas for base non-magical armor granting resistances to things should have been in the base game for 5E and not just a feat in terms of Heavy Armor Mastery. I mean, it's already pretty easy for less-armored classes to get more AC, making certain types of armor more useful would have been a good idea.
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Apr 14, 2015 16:08
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3.5 Unearthed Arcana did something like that:pre:Normal AC Bonus Alternate AC Bonus Alternate DR Light Armor Padded 1 1 None Leather 2 1 1/- Studded Leather 3 2 1/- Chain Shirt 4 2 2/- Medium Armor Hide 3 2 1/- Scale Mail 4 2 2/- Chainmail 5 3 2/- Breastplate 5 3 2/- Heavy Armor Splint Mail 6 3 3/- Banded Mail 6 3 3/- Half-Plate 7 4 4/- Full Plate 8 4 4/-
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Apr 14, 2015 16:27
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Damage output accelerating through lots of attacks rather than single-big-damage would make it somewhat viable. DR 4/5 would neuter a lot of the chaff, which is possibly a good thing. The Fighter in their full plate can just ignore the scrubs and deflect, parry or dodge their attacks without even thinking about it. Ruins it when too many people get heavy armour though.
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Apr 14, 2015 16:48
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AlphaDog posted:Nah it's fine if you just don't use traps. I haven't actually seen traps done particularly well in any pen-and-paper RPG. The early ones often have, "You didn't find the trap, you're dead", while the more recent ones tend to have, "You didn't find the trap, but the cleric heals you back up and you're OK again". What RPGs have the best rules for traps? I'd like to see things like the classic room-filling-up-with-water or ceiling-crusher-with-spikes, or the rolling boulder from Indiana Jones, and traps should be pretty much as dangerous and given as much rules focus and support as combat - it sucks when anything is "You didn't make the roll, now you're dead".
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Apr 14, 2015 18:58
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Traps should be statted out as encounters, because reducing them to skill checks is boring.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:15
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The best use of traps I've seen is in 4e, because they are neutral hazards that populate the encounter and add uncertainty, danger, and excitement to fights. It's a crummy adventure in a lot of ways but Thunderspire Labyrinth has some really inspired trap setups to dog the players with.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:20
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What is the point of the trap? Something like a water trap or the walls closing in is interesting because it puts a time limit on doing something. Running away from a giant boulder adds to the difficulty of the scene. Fate could be pretty good at dealing with this. Something like a dart trap which if you miss it it does some damage and you move on is boring unless it is part of another encounter to add an extra source of peril, especially if the NPCs know about the traps and can bait you into accidentally triggering them through clever positioning, but you can do the same with forced movement was a mainstay in 4e. As far as a trap that will just flat out kill you if you don't notice it, doesn't feel like it has a place in heroic fantasy. It could work in a high mortality campaign, but but what is the use of a binary trap like that to forward the story?
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Apr 14, 2015 19:24
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Gort posted:I haven't actually seen traps done particularly well in any pen-and-paper RPG. The early ones often have, "You didn't find the trap, you're dead", while the more recent ones tend to have, "You didn't find the trap, but the cleric heals you back up and you're OK again". The best rules for traps that I've ever seen are in the late 3.5 supplement Dungeonscape. They'red called "encounter traps" and the idea is exactly like the room filling up with water/ceiling with spikes bit. The general idea is that encounter traps require multiple actions to deal with/resolve, and they are built to involve multiple PC's instead of just the rogue. They are usually obvious instead of hidden. If you squint, you can see that 4E was trying to incorporate the same idea in its traps, but I don't think 4E did a very good job getting the point across.
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Apr 14, 2015 20:01
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The best traps are ones that just set off noise and alert enemies to your presence . The second best are magic ones that go off if you bypass all the other traps with magic, resulting in instakills with no save. Yes, this happened to one of my favorite characters. Other than that, damage traps are fine because you either have to pull back to heal or risk death of you keep taking damage. And the priest healing means less utility spells. All this is irrelevant if it's an empty dungeon and theres no plot time pressure. mastershakeman fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Apr 14, 2015 |
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Apr 14, 2015 20:08
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Grandicap posted:What is the point of the trap? Something like a water trap or the walls closing in is interesting because it puts a time limit on doing something. Running away from a giant boulder adds to the difficulty of the scene. Fate could be pretty good at dealing with this. Epic LFR had some great trap encounters. The one where you're trapped on a huge pyramid up which mud is inevitably and unstoppably washing, drowning all in its path, the one which you surf down a river of acid in a collapsing tunnel on rapidly-disintegrating boats, the one where you descend through a web-filled room on domino-collapsing pillars etc etc etc. Traps are great when done right. Traps are poo poo when they're 'make an X check or take Y damage, then continue if alive'.
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Apr 14, 2015 23:50
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Yeah traps-as-wandering-damage-table is dull.
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Apr 15, 2015 00:02
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Probably the best "traps" I've seen were in some homebrew 4e stuff where they were essentially dangerous terrain. Like, you're fighting, and if anyone gets within x squares of the thing, it shoots spikes / immobilise you / sets a 4x4 area on fire / drags you into the pit / whatever, so the fight becomes about who can shove who into things the best. We did one fight in a closing-walls trap room where the sides of the battle map moved in one square each round. That was goddamn tense. Equal to that, my brother's always liked to play the thief/sneak/rogue type guy and has never been happy with traps. First time he played Dungeon World, the GM told him he found a trap, he asked what it was, and the GM's response was "You're the trap expert, you tell me". So he got to make up a fiendishly cunning trap and then get around it. He was as happy with that as I've ever seen him during an RPG. e: Some of the oldschool dungeon crawls had traps that simply blocked your escape or moved you elsewhere in the dungeon without doing damage. Knowing that you can't just easily backtrack and exit the dungeon is loving terrifying in BECMI. e2: And yeah, in BECMI and AD&D the best traps were the ones that caused wandering monster rolls or "summon all enemies from rooms 5a, 5b, and 6" or whatever. They were genuinely scary because most dungeons were set up so that you weren't expected to just fight every monster and doing that was usually a bad idea. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Apr 15, 2015 |
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Apr 15, 2015 00:41
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Traps in the middle of a battle could be fun, especially if you can lure an enemy into one or have the rogue modify it to hit them or something.
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Apr 15, 2015 01:22
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Hey! I'm looking for a great white board app. My friends and I have just started playing D&D, but some of us are Skyping in to do so. It would be great if there was essentially a "doodle chat" we could all be in so the DM could draw maps or upload maps and draw on those. iPad support is necessary. Anyone know of anything like this? Or a better solution? Anyone have experience with D&D with some people not physically being there? Any tips?
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Apr 15, 2015 01:27
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AlphaDog posted:Nah it's fine if you just don't use traps. "Welcome to the foyer. *suddenly you fall into a pit filled with spikes and green slime*" "Who the gently caress built this place?" Sure for something explicitly made to be a giant trap by a well-known insane person maybe (Undermountain or whatever) but otherwise.. no.
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Apr 15, 2015 02:17
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Where did the idea of poison needle traps come from anyway? Is it a purely D&D thing?
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Apr 15, 2015 02:43
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Adventure serials/pulp magazines?
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Apr 15, 2015 02:57
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xiw posted:Where did the idea of poison needle traps come from anyway? Is it a purely D&D thing? Indiana Jones and the british adventure serials its basing itself off. Entering Egyptian tombs was basically all about avoiding death traps.
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Apr 15, 2015 02:59
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Let's talk about Two-Weapon Fighting. Assuming you start with a 16 in the given ability score, with 3 ASIs you can get:
One of these things is not like the others.. P.d0t fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Apr 15, 2015 |
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Apr 15, 2015 04:12
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P.d0t posted:Let's talk about Two-Weapon Fighting. Maybe ~flat math~ evens things out so gaining 2 AC is worth a feat and lower damage? Haha who are we kidding, this is tummyfeels as hell.
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Apr 15, 2015 04:29
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P.d0t posted:Let's talk about Two-Weapon Fighting. If you're playing a game where you can choose between taking one of a list of powers and just directly increasing stat bonuses, I think it is already obvious that the game is 'ivory tower' as hell.
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Apr 15, 2015 04:56
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P.d0t posted:Let's talk about Two-Weapon Fighting.
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Apr 15, 2015 05:08
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Nihilarian posted:Why is the first one wielding shortswords? Bad editting on my part. The thing I was getting at was the glaring discrepancy in GP cost for not a lot of difference.
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Apr 15, 2015 05:22
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P.d0t posted:Bad editting on my part.
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Apr 15, 2015 05:44
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Nihilarian posted:Yeah, a feat and 655 gp does seem like a bad trade for +1 AC. It's not like there's anything else to spend money on. 655 gp is pocket change by 6th level or so. Spending a feat for +1 AC is boring, but seems in line with boring core feats from editions past. 5e isn't exactly rolling in strong feats the way 3e and 4e ended up.
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Apr 15, 2015 09:02
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Dire Wombat posted:5e isn't exactly rolling in strong feats the way 3e and 4e ended up. Pffffffft WHAT? Did we even play the same 3E? Even by the very end of 3E's lifecycle, browsing through like fifty supplements, I was always pressured for finding any feats that weren't just "get +1 to a thing" or "get +2 to a thing... in narrow circumstances." 3E never loving got feats right and is about the worst example of it so far. I'd say that while the 5E feats aren't perfect? They are least get a lot closer to being interesting than 3E's feats ever were, for me. Though maybe I just missed the one or two supplements that had feats which weren't snoozeworthy as gently caress.
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Apr 15, 2015 11:48
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PurpleXVI posted:Pffffffft WHAT? Did we even play the same 3E? Even by the very end of 3E's lifecycle, browsing through like fifty supplements, I was always pressured for finding any feats that weren't just "get +1 to a thing" or "get +2 to a thing... in narrow circumstances." 3E never loving got feats right and is about the worst example of it so far. I think he meant strong as in lol powerful. Like metamagics.
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Apr 15, 2015 11:58
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PurpleXVI posted:Pffffffft WHAT? Did we even play the same 3E? Even by the very end of 3E's lifecycle, browsing through like fifty supplements, I was always pressured for finding any feats that weren't just "get +1 to a thing" or "get +2 to a thing... in narrow circumstances." 3E never loving got feats right and is about the worst example of it so far. E: There was this one feat that let you use a supernatural ability of something you could turn into, which was absolutely broken because you could just grab free wishes and stuff like that, which was again mostly a thing you had to be a druid for. is that good fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Apr 15, 2015 |
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Apr 15, 2015 15:20
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xiw posted:Where did the idea of poison needle traps come from anyway? Is it a purely D&D thing?
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Apr 15, 2015 17:18
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rear end Catchcum posted:Hey! I'm looking for a great white board app. My friends and I have just started playing D&D, but some of us are Skyping in to do so. It would be great if there was essentially a "doodle chat" we could all be in so the DM could draw maps or upload maps and draw on those. iPad support is necessary. I'll plug Roll20 again. You can totally whiteboard on it, and it has built in voice chat (...whose efficacy I haven't tested) and iPad/android apps.
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Apr 15, 2015 18:29
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Daetrin posted:I'll plug Roll20 again. You can totally whiteboard on it, and it has built in voice chat (...whose efficacy I haven't tested) and iPad/android apps. I wouldn't go with the roll20 voice chat unless you absolutely had to.
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Apr 15, 2015 19:19
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kingcom posted:I think he meant strong as in lol powerful. Like metamagics. Oh, yeah. But like, in that case it was kind of good to not have feats as "strong" as in 3E. Because there was a bit of gamebreaking poo poo you could do with some of those dull number boosters.
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Apr 15, 2015 22:06
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Well, Forbes just had an interview with Nathan Stewart. The things I noticed that weren't things they've said before is that they're only planning on releasing things that fit their adventure paths and they're all in on Forgotten Realms until they run out of Forgotten Realms things to do. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Apr 16, 2015 |
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Apr 16, 2015 00:09
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PurpleXVI posted:Oh, yeah. But like, in that case it was kind of good to not have feats as "strong" as in 3E. Because there was a bit of gamebreaking poo poo you could do with some of those dull number boosters. Right I don't think the arguement was that those feats were good. Just that in 5e theres gently caress all reason to get more than or two feats because the rest mostly suck so who cares.
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Apr 16, 2015 00:14
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kingcom posted:Right I don't think the arguement was that those feats were good. Just that in 5e theres gently caress all reason to get more than or two feats because the rest mostly suck so who cares. There is literally one book out with any feats in it holy poo poo relax.
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Apr 16, 2015 00:52
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my back pages posted:There is literally one book out with any feats in it holy poo poo relax. I'm not sure what your talking about?
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Apr 16, 2015 00:58
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