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Our home group is still playing through Hoard of the Dragon Queen, just hit level 6. After about 5 we really felt the ramp-up in power, and 6 just added to it. We've got... -A shield barbarian that is the tankiest thing I've ever seen. Our new tactic is to send him in and just drop a fireball on his head after the monsters rush him. He takes 0 damage (shield feat and advantage on dex saves) while everything around him dies. -My shadow monk now has at-will teleport.  Only between shadows or dim light areas, but he can also cast Darkness on a rock and throw it. This guy has been a glass cannon, high damage but with a 16 AC and no real way to stay alive unless I ki dodge in advance of attacks. At least half of his ki spending all-time has been on dodge.-We've got an assassin rogue that walks on ceilings with some spider climbing boots. He does less damage than the monk, but is more survivable thanks to uncanny dodge. -A wild sorcerer that does the typical 'drop a fireball on things'. Twice so far the group has eaten a fireball thanks to wild surges. Also she can't do all the typical wizard rituals out of combat, so I guess the lesson is just play a wizard. The best sorcerer-specific thing has been Twin Spelled Haste on the monk and barbarian. While it was cool for those characters, it would probably have been better to just cast another fireball. -A life cleric that is a 'group character'. No one wanted to play a healer.
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May 24, 2015 16:15
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It's such bullshit that parties can't get by without a healer character nobody wants to play.
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May 24, 2015 17:26
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My party doesn't have any dedicated healer, and we've been doing fine. We do have a lot of control and damage instead. We've got two Wizards, three ranged martial characters (two of which are Sharpshooter archers), and a vengeance Paladin with Sentinel. The problem is that playing anything that needs to get into melee range is generally a terrible idea, because you could be just as (or sometimes more) effective at a distance without putting yourself at risk.
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May 24, 2015 17:40
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It's just another knock-on effect of the hosed-up monster math and the slim HP margins that the game has. As far as I can tell you can get away without having a healer in 4e, especially with a DM that consciously keeps party composition in mind when designing encounters, but it's very difficult to duplicate that effect when a Barbarian has 12 HP max. Even when you get out of the shitfarmer phase, it's still hobbled by the fact that by-the-book monsters deal too much damage to allow for the multiple fights per day that is assumed, especially when their DPR values include whatever the players can get from Hit Dice Healing.
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May 24, 2015 17:44
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Do you find a dedicated healer is worthwhile? The healing mechanics so far doesn't seem to really help that much. If I'm low on health there's usually no reliable way to heal me enough to survive more than one extra hit, and if I'm going to have a cleric cast a spell to give me one extra round of survival I might as well try to get him to give the enemy disadvantage instead or give me more AC or some other helpful effect that will last the rest of the fight.
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May 24, 2015 17:45
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I think the idea is that people are taking too much damage over the long-term for hit-dice healing from short rests to be enough. The Cleric is vastly better off casting Command every round than ever using an action to heal someone who isn't making death saves.
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May 24, 2015 17:51
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Mecha Gojira posted:Then again, your DM might have just been confused because the description of the Rust Monster's antennae attack is written in the same stupid "naturalistic" language that throws me off. Thats not "naturalistic language" as a problem, thats just poor writing. The venerable 1e managed a more complicated set of Rust Monster Rules in the Most Honorable Mnster Manual original.  Of course the OG rust monster wasnt all wussified like the new one.  
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May 24, 2015 17:58
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gradenko_2000 posted:It's just another knock-on effect of the hosed-up monster math and the slim HP margins that the game has. As far as I can tell you can get away without having a healer in 4e, especially with a DM that consciously keeps party composition in mind when designing encounters, but it's very difficult to duplicate that effect when a Barbarian has 12 HP max. Even when you get out of the shitfarmer phase, it's still hobbled by the fact that by-the-book monsters deal too much damage to allow for the multiple fights per day that is assumed, especially when their DPR values include whatever the players can get from Hit Dice Healing. Double or triple starting HP. Maximize HP gains every level. Toughness feat for free? Its the same poo poo I did in 3.x which doesn't surprise me as much as disappoint.
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May 24, 2015 18:11
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Vanguard Warden posted:The problem is that playing anything that needs to get into melee range is generally a terrible idea, because you could be just as (or sometimes more) effective at a distance without putting yourself at risk. This is a big problem I'm noticing with 5e. The decision to gate Charge into a feat was pretty dumb. Like, back in 4e I figured out that hey, move+move+attack covers about the same distance as "stand still and fire a bow" but apparently the goddamned designers of both editions were completely oblivious to this.
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May 24, 2015 18:19
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Strength of Many posted:Double or triple starting HP. Maximize HP gains every level. Toughness feat for free? Yeah there's multiple approaches. The one I personally like is "+max HP equal to CON score", which I picked up from a 3.x third-party supplement called Trailblazer that tried to fix a lot these problems back in the day.
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May 24, 2015 18:21
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P.d0t posted:This is a big problem I'm noticing with 5e. The decision to gate Charge into a feat was pretty dumb. There are niche builds that have a lot of mobility, but yeah, its loving criminal in 5e. In 4e non-charge build or Monk melee might have had ways around it; powers that pull enemies toward them, powers to push and prone and immobilize and re-position their targets, Leader powers to make them zip up the battlefield out of turn and lay the heat down, which made up for some of the slower race/class combos. Naturally, 5e abandoned all of this! gradenko_2000 posted:Yeah there's multiple approaches. The one I personally like is "+max HP equal to CON score", which I picked up from a 3.x third-party supplement called Trailblazer that tried to fix a lot these problems back in the day. That is probably what I'll end up doing. I made the mistake of starting a Hoard of the Dragon Queen game with brand new level one characters and players. It was a complete shitfest even with clever ploys and lots of scouting on their part.
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May 24, 2015 18:27
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Strength of Many posted:Double or triple starting HP. Maximize HP gains every level. Toughness feat for free? Free "Durable" feat might help with Hit Dice being so lovely; alternately, if you houseruled to be like, "any time you roll Hit Dice (either to refresh your HP or when you gain a level) roll twice and take the higher result, or use the static number if you rolled lovely twice." Basically this is why 4e giving you static HP every level and flat Healing Surge values was nice; it gave some measure of reliability. That's not just good for players to not feel gimped, but also allows the DM a firmer baseline to build encounters around, even if we're talking about the 3rd+ encounter of the day.
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May 24, 2015 18:29
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On a semi-related note, I have been playing around with some ideas for new traits and powers on monsters to get away from the 'I am a pile of passive resistances, bonuses, HP, AC and damage'. Any thoughts?Lycanthrope Powers posted:Throat Rend. If it reminds you of 4e that is good because it should... P.d0t posted:Free "Durable" feat might help with Hit Dice being so lovely; alternately, if you houseruled to be like, "any time you roll Hit Dice (either to refresh your HP or when you gain a level) roll twice and take the higher result, or use the static number if you rolled lovely twice." P.d0t posted:This is a big problem I'm noticing with 5e. The decision to gate Charge into a feat was pretty dumb. gradenko_2000 posted:Yeah there's multiple approaches. The one I personally like is "+max HP equal to CON score", which I picked up from a 3.x third-party supplement called Trailblazer that tried to fix a lot these problems back in the day. I'm adding this to the collective of house rules i'm smashing together. God knows why, but if i'm gonna play this, I might as well make a hobby out of tinkering with it.
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May 24, 2015 19:19
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xiw posted:Look at all the proposed solutions here that end up being kneecapped by multiclassing. Coming back to this, I'm just sort of coming into this idea, but what if there was a "Multi-class Martial progression" table? Like, for MC spellcasting, they have a table for figuring out how many spell slots you have; what if you turned that around, and added up your Rogue/Fighter/Barbarian/Monk(?) levels to pick up free feats along the way? It might also need the caveat of "if you take a non-martial class, you never get any free feats, ever" but basically I want to patch fighters by way of feats, without making them even more of a dip class. 
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May 24, 2015 19:39
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Gorefluff posted:Do you find a dedicated healer is worthwhile? The healing mechanics so far doesn't seem to really help that much. If I'm low on health there's usually no reliable way to heal me enough to survive more than one extra hit, and if I'm going to have a cleric cast a spell to give me one extra round of survival I might as well try to get him to give the enemy disadvantage instead or give me more AC or some other helpful effect that will last the rest of the fight. Most of the heals in my group happen out of combat to top everyone off before the next fight. Combat heals tend to be either healing word, or prayer of healing if everyone gets AoE'd. Healing the barbarian also tends to be twice as efficient, since he takes half damage from everything. Damage also drops relative to your total hit points at higher levels. At level 1 you will just go from full to 0 from a single hit, but that doesn't happen at level 5/6 where my group is. Monsters might hit for 10-20 damage, but you have 40ish hit points when full. Our barb has 50ish which is basically 100hp when raging.
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May 24, 2015 19:43
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ritorix posted:Most of the heals in my group happen out of combat to top everyone off before the next fight. Combat heals tend to be either healing word, or prayer of healing if everyone gets AoE'd. Healing the barbarian also tends to be twice as efficient, since he takes half damage from everything. Have you considered fusing the Assassin and the Cleric into a Celestial Bureaucrat of Life and Death to skip over the 'I can make a really good costume, guys!' goose egg? Maybe give the poor sap a little more to do?
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May 24, 2015 19:50
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gradenko_2000 posted:Yeah there's multiple approaches. The one I personally like is "+max HP equal to CON score", which I picked up from a 3.x third-party supplement called Trailblazer that tried to fix a lot these problems back in the day.
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May 24, 2015 19:57
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Splicer posted:So the solution to a 5E problem is to use 4E. I try to use this argument every chance I get with my DM. He rolls his eyes at me and thinks I'm arguing in bad faith. But I'm dead serious.
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May 24, 2015 19:59
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Mecha Gojira posted:I try to use this argument every chance I get with my DM. He rolls his eyes at me and thinks I'm arguing in bad faith. I'm happy enough with 5e that I actively try and get the grogs I'm acquainted with into it and off of 3.5 and PF; anyone I run into who wants to get into D&D (such as the newbies in our HotDQ game) who have only ever played videogame RPGs, I just tell them "4e is what you think D&D is/should be." I'm sure I've said it before, but if they took the chargen/core mechanics of 5e and stapled it onto 4e powers instead of 3.5 spells, I'd be happy. Likewise, I think if they took the 4e basics (like how they handle HP and surges and basic class math) and stapled that onto the 3.5 spell list, a lot of grogs would be happy with it.
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May 24, 2015 20:08
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FRINGE posted:Thats not "naturalistic language" as a problem, thats just poor writing. Yeah, supersized version of the og one. We managed to ignore the warnings/telegraphs about it and strolled in over confidently.
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May 24, 2015 20:22
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DMing a 5E Dark Sun game, but still trying to get some rules ironed out. Any resources online for 5E content? I saw a pdf of some homebrew that looked ridiculously unbalanced. Specifically looking for input regarding: -Psionics. I feel bad running a Dark Sun game without psionics. Is there a system out there that would be easy to port? Or should I do what the Monster Manual did with Thri-Kreen and just use a subset of existing spells and do the normal spells/day? -Non-metal weapon and armor materials. This feels really unfun to do anything but handwave. The 2E Dark Sun did stuff like flat damage reduction, right? Was that system okay or just a pain? -Defiling. Planning on using a tweaked 4E rule. Choose to defile after doing damage. If you do, re-roll damage and do unresistable necrotic damage to allies. Got anything better?
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May 25, 2015 00:04
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SmellOfPetroleum posted:-Non-metal weapon and armor materials. This feels really unfun to do anything but handwave. The 2E Dark Sun did stuff like flat damage reduction, right? Was that system okay or just a pain? I didn't like the 4e solution for this much, and 2e didn't handle it well either - just fiddly. I quite like baseline non-metal weapons in conjunction with 'steel weapons are functionally +1 or better'
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May 25, 2015 00:13
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Weapons and armour should probably just be left. You don't have the metal edges, but you don't have the metal plates either. If they DO find a metal weapon. you can make it "magically" sharp/hard or whatever. I haven't seen any good psionics. I think there's a set of 3.0 edition badly ported somewhere out there.
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May 25, 2015 00:16
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goatface posted:Weapons and armour should probably just be left. You don't have the metal edges, but you don't have the metal plates either. If they DO find a metal weapon. you can make it "magically" sharp/hard or whatever. This. Unless you're going Spelljammer and really need an answer to "what if it all gets mixed together?!" then it doesn't matter; it's window dressing on a pile of math, not math representing the physical properties of real materials.
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May 25, 2015 03:59
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SmellOfPetroleum posted:DMing a 5E Dark Sun game, but still trying to get some rules ironed out. Any resources online for 5E content? I saw a pdf of some homebrew that looked ridiculously unbalanced. Specifically looking for input regarding: On the other hand, the 4e defiling rules were less fun. In 2e, Defilers were just wizards on a favorable XP track; that might work. For 5e, I have several ideas, but the "only hurts your buddies and plants" bit never sat quite right with me. So instead of damage, make it give disadvantage to people within some radius, maybe? Or just a -2 penalty to d20 rolls or something. For psionics, I'd just reskin a standard caster. Working up a class is rough enough. Working up a balanced subsystem is crazy. As an idea, just make Sorcerers psions.
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May 25, 2015 04:14
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Thanks! Metal weapons as a perk is a good idea. So is disadvantage from allies using defiling. I'll use tweaked spells for psionics as down the other roads lie madness. Yeah 4e weapon breakage made a lot of sense. It's fail forward, the player's choice, and reduces the number of tedious 'nothing happens' rounds. For those who don't know, the rule lets a player change a roll of '1' into a normal hit if they chose to let the weapon break. Now to go through the Dark Sun creature catalog and find appropriate 5E Monster Manual monsters to reskin. Bleh. e: spelling SmellOfPetroleum fucked around with this message at 17:41 on May 25, 2015 |
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May 25, 2015 06:58
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I've only ever played Dark Sun in 3.5 so I can't help there, but I do know that Pathfinder has rules for Fragile weapons
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May 25, 2015 07:20
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dwarf74 posted:On the other hand, the 4e defiling rules were less fun. In 2e, Defilers were just wizards on a favorable XP track; that might work. Whatever else might or might not work, a favourable XP track is an awful idea; anything which results in anyone levelling faster than anyone else is a bad idea.
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May 25, 2015 09:34
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I came across this homebrew of class archetypes. My first instinct was to compare the Fighter to the Wizard:quote:Power Surge quote:Timewalker It's not that I want to come down hard on these folks for coming up with something so droll when you're working within a 3.5e/5e mindset, but my gosh, loving with causality vs one round of double damage.
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May 26, 2015 10:03
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gradenko_2000 posted:I came across this homebrew of class archetypes. My first instinct was to compare the Fighter to the Wizard:
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May 26, 2015 11:41
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gradenko_2000 posted:I came across this homebrew of class archetypes. My first instinct was to compare the Fighter to the Wizard: Double damage? Ha, good joke. At level 15 it will give a +5 damage bonus. Even a schmuck with a non-magical greatsword can effortlessly do 2d6+5 per hit damage by that level. But the accuracy bonus is nice for offsetting the -5 from the Great Weapon Master feat so that the real damage can kick in.
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May 26, 2015 11:56
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On the flipside, here is a PDF full of martial options while still being in keeping with 5e as it is. Mostly being the second half of it having martial dice put back in.
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May 27, 2015 08:50
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In other news, the April Survey Results are out, and the new survey is asking about which spells you might find are too strong/overpowered.bewilderment posted:On the flipside, here is a PDF full of martial options while still being in keeping with 5e as it is. Mostly being the second half of it having martial dice put back in. Hey this is actually fairly interesting as far as getting the system out of the "I regular attack x100" doldrums. Thanks.
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May 27, 2015 09:58
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What can you actually do with that timewalker thing except use it as a short range teleport, though? It ends if you do anything cool. And the way it's written about affecting creatures other than you makes it seem like it's meant for stacking buffs on yourself, but it's 5E so you can't do that either.
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May 27, 2015 10:49
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thespaceinvader posted:Whatever else might or might not work, a favourable XP track is an awful idea; anything which results in anyone levelling faster than anyone else is a bad idea. This is right. Ignore that stupid poo poo I said about XP tracks.
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May 27, 2015 13:25
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Boing posted:What can you actually do with that timewalker thing except use it as a short range teleport, though? It ends if you do anything cool. And the way it's written about affecting creatures other than you makes it seem like it's meant for stacking buffs on yourself, but it's 5E so you can't do that either. Delayed Blast Fireball?
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May 27, 2015 16:20
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That, or I guess you could go around opening/closing a bunch of doors (or if the DM says opening a door is a standard action, you can open 2 doors)
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May 27, 2015 16:39
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Mike Mearls in the survey discussion posted:Regarding races, we saw a definite trend that the smaller races (halflings, gnomes) are seen as the weakest options by the community. It’s dangerous for us to delve into why that is at this point, but it is an overall trend that we will examine in the future. Seriously, how would it be dangerous to discuss that?
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May 27, 2015 18:04
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Because they might see other flaws they've been ignoring which are connected to it.
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May 27, 2015 18:06
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Shouldn't small races be better because it's less likely they're used as martial characters?
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May 27, 2015 18:11
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