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gradenko_2000 posted:So there's a new Unearthed Arcana out, this time, covering variant rules: I liked this story more when it was the plot to the movie Major League.
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Jun 8, 2015 20:07
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Judgement posted:Is there a way to make a ranger that is anything approaching decent at all, then? I had assumed they were simply Uninteresting rather than being Actually Bad. One of the other players in my game chose a dual wielding ranger, and he's brand new to D&D in general so now I feel kind of bad for him if he managed to stumble his way into something that isn't going to be any fun to play. No, not really. The only real thing that Rangers are contributing to 5e as a whole right now is a spell that bards can steal to become better archers. Everything else they bring to the table can be done better by fighters, paladins, or druids. And the animal companion rules suck because they haven't figured out how to balance "an extra body on the table" with the action economy.
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Jun 8, 2015 20:15
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^^ Just give them an animal up to something reasonable and give it full actions. Casters will be summoning all sorts of bullshit by about level 5 anyway. A lazy, broken attempt at a diceless DM conversion. loving awful health recalculation bullshit. Babby's first introduction to "strict alignments are dumb" They pay someone to write this? goatface fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Jun 8, 2015 |
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Jun 8, 2015 20:17
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goatface posted:A lazy, broken attempt at a diceless DM conversion. If only they took the 5 minutes to check their math, they would have just been lazy for copying over the Players Roll All the Dice rule from 3.5's Unearthed Arcana Instead, they're also incompetent.
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Jun 8, 2015 20:22
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goatface posted:They pay someone to write this? Probably not much, and I don't think they pay anyone at all to edit it, let alone actually playtest it. Hell, at this point I'd be surprised if any of these rules have even seen a table before.
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Jun 8, 2015 20:39
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goatface posted:They pay someone to write this?
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Jun 8, 2015 20:55
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So what happens if you have a negative con mod and your GM uses vitality? Do you just slowly die every night and then slip into an irreversible coma, or what?
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Jun 8, 2015 21:19
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Pulsedragon posted:So what happens if you have a negative con mod and your GM uses vitality? Do you just slowly die every night and then slip into an irreversible coma, or what? Con mod doesn't factor into Vitality, you just use Vitality instead of your Con score to determine your Con mod as it affects your max hp.
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Jun 8, 2015 21:33
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Pulsedragon posted:So what happens if you have a negative con mod and your GM uses vitality? Do you just slowly die every night and then slip into an irreversible coma, or what? Only the halest and heartiest babies make it 4 days past childbirth because of the hefty penalty being a child inflicts on your con score. Generic Octopus posted:Con mod doesn't factor into Vitality, you just use Vitality instead of your Con score to determine your Con mod as it affects your max hp. Each long rest you restore 1+Con Mod vitality. If you have a negative con mod you can never regain vitality. if you have a sufficiently negative con mod you should start losing it.
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Jun 8, 2015 21:37
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Generic Octopus posted:Con mod doesn't factor into Vitality, you just use Vitality instead of your Con score to determine your Con mod as it affects your max hp. Unearthed Arcana posted:Completing a long rest increases a character’s Now, if we exert a bit of critical thinking we can manually insert "(minimum of 0)" after "character's Constitution modifier" but the way that it is written means that a character with a -1 restores [1 + -1 =] 0 Vitality every long rest, and a character with a -2 restores [1 + -2 =] -1 vitality every long rest, and thus every night slowly wastes away a little more, unless healing magic is pumped into them.
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Jun 8, 2015 21:39
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Kurieg posted:Each long rest you restore 1+Con Mod vitality. If you have a negative con mod you can never regain vitality. if you have a sufficiently negative con mod you should start losing it. It doesn't change your Con mod outright, though. It's explicitly for the purpose of (re)calculating max hp.
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Jun 8, 2015 21:40
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Generic Octopus posted:It doesn't change your Con mod outright, though. It's explicitly for the purpose of (re)calculating max hp. OK, but what if you have 8 CON to begin with?
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Jun 8, 2015 21:42
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Prism posted:OK, but what if you have 8 CON to begin with? Or 6 or 7 because you had to roll stats.
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Jun 8, 2015 21:44
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And even if we account for that. all it means is that now it takes [damage mage has taken]/10 days to get the part back up into fighting shape, as opposed to 2 days no matter what. I guess it makes wizards nice and squishy but it sounds like all it does is make 5e Rocket Tag combat even more grindy in the long term. "Well we had our one combat for the day, time to go to sleep because I'm within 'can be killed by a stiff breeze" territory now."
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Jun 8, 2015 21:44
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djw175 posted:Or 6 or 7 because you had to roll stats. Little steps. I was actually going to say 'what if your CON got drained to like 6' but I couldn't remember if 5E had stat damage.
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Jun 8, 2015 21:45
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Are there any creatures with a con below 8? Or are they already extinct?
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Jun 8, 2015 21:48
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Also, once you got above level 10, any damage you take would decrease your maximum hit points faster than your actual hit point total. a 13th level character who takes 20 damage would lose 26 MHP. In what farcical world is this better than using hit points by themselves?
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Jun 8, 2015 21:51
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Prism posted:Little steps. I think only to STR and INT so far? Definitely those two at least.
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Jun 8, 2015 21:52
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goatface posted:Are there any creatures with a con below 8? Or are they already extinct? All the monsters in Castle Wobegon are above average.
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Jun 8, 2015 21:53
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goatface posted:Are there any creatures with a con below 8? Or are they already extinct? I was really hoping the intellect devourer was for jokes but it turns out it only has a strength below 10. Disappointing.
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Jun 8, 2015 21:55
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Maybe the vitality rules are written so at the party's first long rest after a grueling set of encounters, a dm can look at the guy who dumped Con and go: "Heh, scrub."
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Jun 8, 2015 22:02
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Kurieg posted:Also, once you got above level 10, any damage you take would decrease your maximum hit points faster than your actual hit point total. a 13th level character who takes 20 damage would lose 26 MHP. Literally the only function it serves is that spending all day taking 6 damage from Kobolds won't cause Vitality drain. But their example: Mike Mearls (probably) posted:A fighter Though even then it's not clear if the problem is "Fighters can survive 100' falls" or "high level characters can take 100' falls but are still vulnerable to minor, un-cinematic threats."
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Jun 8, 2015 22:46
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LFK posted:Literally the only function it serves is that spending all day taking 6 damage from Kobolds won't cause Vitality drain. I find it funny that they made a system with bounded accuracy and are now complaining about the thing that bounded accuracy does.
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Jun 8, 2015 22:49
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I think this has done it. I think this is the worst Unearthed Arcana they have put out yet. Didn't find any use in the mass combat rules, but I assume some might. But this seems to be actively worse at what it is supposed to do than what is already there.
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Jun 9, 2015 00:44
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Ryuujin posted:I think this has done it. I think this is the worst Unearthed Arcana they have put out yet. Didn't find any use in the mass combat rules, but I assume some might. But this seems to be actively worse at what it is supposed to do than what is already there. There's always more.
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Jun 9, 2015 02:49
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So yeah on another matter I once more looked at the Yakk talent Fighter. Sadly doesn't seem to have been updated this year, and no idea if there is more of it anywhere. But now I am curious what this thread could come up with for the other sections of it.code:quote:At each level you either learn a new Talent, or upgrade a low level one. When you reach level 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18, you pick a talent of your highest level, and learn it at the next level up. I really like this idea, sadly Yakk never revealed what any of the other talents would do in this thread, and I couldn't find any other references to what the other talents would do. quote:Because I think pure combat attributes are a bad idea -- we should instead grant the character awesome abilities that can be used in combat, which would grant both combat utility *and* non-combat utility -- here is an attempt at a list: So there is a list of possible other talents, I am curious what the thread would come up for those talents, using the three fleshed out ones above as examples.
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Jun 9, 2015 03:05
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Judgement posted:Is there a way to make a ranger that is anything approaching decent at all, then? I had assumed they were simply Uninteresting rather than being Actually Bad. One of the other players in my game chose a dual wielding ranger, and he's brand new to D&D in general so now I feel kind of bad for him if he managed to stumble his way into something that isn't going to be any fun to play. I'd appreciate advice people might have on this score. I am DMing for the first time, and one of my inexperienced players made a Ranger. I have a few ideas for how to avert any potential problems, if anyone has better suggestions, the options I'm considering are: 1) Let her just take both archetypes. This feels like the worst option, since the real issue is that the beast will still suck. 2) Let her take any beast up to Large and CR 1, not 1/4. Scale its HP up more as it levels to stay in line with player characters. 3) Make up a magical mind-link or something, so on her turn she controls the beast and herself, she does not have to choose whether to command it or take an action. Right now I'm leaning towards 2 and 3. Thoughts?
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Jun 9, 2015 03:11
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Keshik posted:I'd appreciate advice people might have on this score. I am DMing for the first time, and one of my inexperienced players made a Ranger. I have a few ideas for how to avert any potential problems, if anyone has better suggestions, the options I'm considering are: I'd say if you had a beast that was like, I don't know, 3-4 levels behind the party or something that can't really die and consumes a bonus action to command you might be on to something.
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Jun 9, 2015 05:38
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Ryuujin posted:I think this has done it. I think this is the worst Unearthed Arcana they have put out yet. Didn't find any use in the mass combat rules, but I assume some might. But this seems to be actively worse at what it is supposed to do than what is already there. One of our DM's put us through a mass combat scenario. It was the absolute worst.
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Jun 9, 2015 06:07
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I don't think Beastmaster is that bad, at least no more so than other martial classes. At level 11 you effectively have three attacks, like a Fighter, you just have to use the companion for two of them. The low defenses on the companion are garbage though. There are ways to work around it, but someone shouldn't be able to quickly knock all of your class features unconscious. Animal companions definitely need a new HP formula. You could just let them keep their normal hit dice size, but give them a number equal to Ranger level. Then determine max HP the same way a player would. Barding can already fix up AC. It'd be a pretty quick fix to add the ranger's proficiency bonus to all of the companion's saving throws, as well as the DC of all of the companions abilities. A character that makes three attacks per attack action, two of which have Pack Tactics and induce a DC 13-17 Strength save to avoid going prone (Wolf), seems alright.
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Jun 9, 2015 06:39
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DarkHorse posted:if the wolf pups are a problem for you, why not tell your players and ask them how you as a group should solve it? Quit thinking of the game as a way to arbitrate problems, it's only there to resolve "this is possible to do but this [DC] difficult, can they do it?" questions, not questions of whether it should be done. No, that's our solution as a group, me killing the pups when nobodys looking. We're all friends who grew up together and all our games usually end up spending way more time sidetracked with stupid poo poo like this than the main campaign. But my main point there was we tend mostly to play RAW and handle animal doesn't help with handling wild animals. We also play with no coup-de-grace/auto-hitting bound and unconscious targets because it's not explicitly in the rules, so there have been many hilarious blundered executions.
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Jun 9, 2015 06:53
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I started thinking after our last session--as a Fighter/Wizard, Shield is a fuckin' baller-rear end spell that's saved me from dying in probably more than half the fights we've been in. Which makes me wonder: how in the hell do non-Eldritch Knight/non-multiclass Fighters even survive without it? They have pretty much gently caress-all for damage mitigation or avoidance on their own, other than a Fighting Style (+1 whole AC) that several other classes can also use, and a maneuver that only works for Dex Fighters and might not even help all that much anyway if you roll lovely.
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Jun 9, 2015 08:14
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There's the Defensive Duelist feat, I guess..?
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Jun 9, 2015 08:55
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When people say that fighters are better at taking damage than casters, they don't actually mean resisting or withstanding it.
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Jun 9, 2015 12:18
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The idea is that they've got the best armor and health. Wizards aren't going to get that much magical protection due to concentration anyway, although they can be further away from the action.
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Jun 9, 2015 12:22
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Solid Jake posted:I started thinking after our last session--as a Fighter/Wizard, Shield is a fuckin' baller-rear end spell that's saved me from dying in probably more than half the fights we've been in. You're not really that much better at not getting hit - it's just that you can afford to be hit more often than the Wizard can.
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Jun 9, 2015 12:38
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There's that heavily armoured feat that gives you DR3 against bludgeoning and slashing, and piercing if you're like me and really can't be arsed to keep track. One of my players took it, it's pretty good for wading into mooks at low levels. I'm thinking of making it scale. 1+proficiency? Keeps you no-selling the scrubs for a bit longer.
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Jun 9, 2015 12:44
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Solid Jake posted:I started thinking after our last session--as a Fighter/Wizard, Shield is a fuckin' baller-rear end spell that's saved me from dying in probably more than half the fights we've been in. In one of the games I played, the answer was "your frontliners all took the protection fighting style and cover each other".
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Jun 9, 2015 13:32
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Really Pants posted:When people say that fighters are better at taking damage than casters, they don't actually mean resisting or withstanding it. Unless you have multiple people in melee soaking up hits, the fighter will go down just as fast as anyone else. They can stack their ac to the sky, but bounded accuracy and monster multi attack progression means it doesn't really matter. That was how I died more times than not, my paladin rushed nobly into battle followed by precisely zero of the additional melee. Six attacks later I was on the ground sucking dirt while the casters kited the monster around in a circle, or continued the nova round my cooling corpse allowed them to set up.
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Jun 9, 2015 13:56
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Wizards and such get the Shield spell because they're supposed to have generally low AC, with Shield bringing them up to the standard in emergencies at the cost of a (cheap) resource and a reaction. This isn't always the case though, as a Wizard can multiclass into a single level of Fighter and gain the ability to cast spells without penalty while wearing half-plate armor and a shield, as well as getting the Protection fighting style, giving them a base AC of 20 before magic items come into consideration. With Shield up, they'd have 25 AC (same as the Tarrasque has) as early as level 2.
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Jun 9, 2015 16:31
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