D&D NEXT: Infinite Posts of the Abyss

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > D&D NEXT: Infinite Posts of the Abyss

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

I don't think that suggesting engaging with the rules with a different mindset justifies being called an idiot, but hey no worries.

# ? Jun 28, 2015 17:40

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# ? May 14, 2024 05:48

IT BEGINS: Jan 15, 2009; I don't know how to make analogies

mastershakeman posted:

In your situation I'd just get spiteful
1) Create a character that monopolizes table time.
2) Minmax and abuse the rules.
3) Dominate the whole party.

I mean you pretty much suggested being a straight up rear end in a top hat to a group of friends.

On-topic, I don't think it takes a game being incredibly lovely before you really would rather not play it. For example: Catan isn't a horrible game, but after playing it for years on end, most of my group is really, really tired of it. Even if it's 'badness' is overstated, we'd still rather play something better.

IT BEGINS fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Jun 28, 2015

# ? Jun 28, 2015 17:46

Harrow: Jun 30, 2012

gradenko_2000 posted:

On a somewhat related note, 13th Age's concept of a "10-session campaign" where the players all level up after 1 session, culminating in a campaign-ending battle as they reach the game's peak of level 10 I thought was nice as far as it puts a definite length on how long it takes to get to the next level, puts a definite length on how long it takes for the players to get access to their high-level toys, and generally gives the whole table a good metric for wrapping up everything rather than a series of campaigns that never get past the first half dozen levels or one that just drags on forever.

I like campaigns that last a long time--I like letting the players get attached to their characters and sort of organically develop a story for them--but I also like taking breaks. What I tend to do with long-term campaigns is have a lighthearted side-campaign, maybe with a different system, that we do a session or two of every time a story arc wraps up in the main campaign.

# ? Jun 28, 2015 17:52

Kai Tave: Jul 2, 2012; Fallen Rib

IT BEGINS posted:

I mean you pretty much suggested being a straight up rear end in a top hat to a group of friends.

On-topic, I don't think it takes a game being incredibly lovely before you really would rather not play it. For example: Catan isn't a horrible game, but after playing it for years on end, most of my group is really, really tired of it. Even if it's 'badness' is overstated, we'd still rather play something better.

I feel like this is a pretty salient point with regard to Next. It's not like Next's "badness" is legendary among RPGs, but the problems it has are the same sorts of problems that if you were tired of them in prior editions of D&D then Next isn't going to make you less tired of them just because it's new.

# ? Jun 28, 2015 18:34

Gort: Aug 18, 2003; Good day what ho cup of tea

I think the infuriating thing is that Next's designers looked at 4e and instead of trying to fix the flaws in 4e, they rolled back to 3e and tried to fix its problems, which included reinstating a bunch of 3e problems which 4e had already fixed.

It's like if the 4e designers had reinstated THACO and dumped Fort/Ref/Will saves in favour of saving throw vs wands/polymorph/breath weapon.

# ? Jun 28, 2015 19:43

hyphz: Aug 5, 2003; Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.; Unlockable Ben

Darwinism posted:

Yeah, this all makes sense - I guess I just really dislike the weight that, "We're used to it," has.

Yea, exactly. I totally understand social inertia but 5e starts to look like the authors just said "eh, social inertia will hold us in place forever" and figured they didn't need to fix any problems. And given that, any social inertia connected to 5e just looks like going with the baddies' plan.

# ? Jun 28, 2015 20:19

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Gort posted:

I think the infuriating thing is that Next's designers looked at 4e and instead of trying to fix the flaws in 4e, they rolled back to 3e and tried to fix its problems, which included reinstating a bunch of 3e problems which 4e had already fixed.

It's like if the 4e designers had reinstated THACO and dumped Fort/Ref/Will saves in favour of saving throw vs wands/polymorph/breath weapon.

They DID dump F/R/W and reinstate saving throws...

Just inexpertly, so they wound up with functionally F/R/W defences, in the form of CON/DEX/WIS saves, the alternates being barely used at all, but with all the added bagges 3 extra minimally used saves bring in explaining and possible dicking over when that INT save DOES come up and you haven't got anything invested in it and an intellect devourer eats your brain, not to mention the imbalance of no longer having each save be the better of two stats, and thus screwing everyone without CON/DEX/WIS more than the others.

That is to say, they regressively ignored the advances 4e made, rolled back past 3.5 and then made it worse.

# ? Jun 28, 2015 20:19

Darwinism: Jan 6, 2008

Gort posted:

I think the infuriating thing is that Next's designers looked at 4e and instead of trying to fix the flaws in 4e, they rolled back to 3e and tried to fix its problems, which included reinstating a bunch of 3e problems which 4e had already fixed.

It's like if the 4e designers had reinstated THACO and dumped Fort/Ref/Will saves in favour of saving throw vs wands/polymorph/breath weapon.

Honestly, the most infuriating thing is they released a game that really doesn't do anything new. It tries to work on older ideas, with really mixed successes, but that's where the really limited innovation just dead-ends. I mean, Christ, it just copy-pastes (or nearly copy-pastes) parts from older books like that's a respectable, professional thing to do.

And people are fine with that. :psyduck:

# ? Jun 28, 2015 20:29

Solid Jake: Oct 18, 2012

4e received more scathing criticism for being good than Next does for being a garbage fire.

I keep saying it: D&D Next is exactly the game D&D fans deserve.

# ? Jun 28, 2015 20:59

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

P.d0t posted:

The learning curve seemed to be on par with D&D (which is/was a chore)

Well, I fully get not wanting to learn a new crunch-heavy system, and you're not entirely wrong about the level of crunch. That said, there's less overall to learn than any D&D system bar potentially Basic, and the real shining beacon of the system is how little a player needs to know about how things work. It's really easy for a GM to turn a player with limited system knowledge saying "I want to do this" into game actions that are actually worth doing.

P.d0t posted:

but, having it explained to me, it sounded like the system was basically "any time you do anything, roll dem bones and narrate how you hosed up." Personally, I think that's alright for Skill Challenge Time�, but I don't want combat to bog down in that sort of thing. This also makes me leery of *World systems.

Ehhh, it's basically a success based system. More successes mean better results. The (really good) gimmick is that there's a secondary track of "good or bad stuff unrelated to success or failure of the main task" going on. In combat it's super, super smooth. Mechanically you've a fairly short list of things boons/banes can result in for each action*, with a couple of additional options based on equipment and abilities. How much you narrate the bane/boon track is down to the players, you can go full "A hit! I fan my shots to drive him towards Griknar's sights!" through to "Five damage, and +1 die up for grabs to whoever goes next", whichever. The advantage is that if you want to go the former route you've a lot more inspiration to build off than most resolution systems, but you can go full number literalism as easily as with D&D.

*obviously you can make up new ones.

Ironically enough, it's Skill Challenge Time�'s less well defined results that can lead to a bit of "Ummm uh hmmm"ing, but if that happens there's always the "gain/lose stress" option to default to.

Seriously, if anyone's looking for a good game with decent crunch, easy free-form, and TotM combat that actually works, check out the FFG:SW games. They even have beginner boxes!

Splicer fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Jun 28, 2015

# ? Jun 28, 2015 21:00

My Lovely Horse: Aug 21, 2010

I mean, you can enjoy playing D&D Next or not, but let's not pretend its design process was not fueled by market research that found that old edition holdouts were a larger target group than 4E fans, underlined by hiring first Monte Cook, one of the most prominent 3.5 designers, then Mike Mearls, who had spent the last few years on a personal mission to model 4E back to the old design paradigms wherever possible.

# ? Jun 28, 2015 21:01

Darwinism: Jan 6, 2008

My Lovely Horse posted:

I mean, you can enjoy playing D&D Next or not, but let's not pretend its design process was not fueled by market research that found that old edition holdouts were a larger target group than 4E fans, underlined by hiring first Monte Cook, one of the most prominent 3.5 designers, then Mike Mearls, who had spent the last few years on a personal mission to model 4E back to the old design paradigms wherever possible.

You know, I would have been perfectly fine with a revamp of 3E if it had actually fixed the problems that 3E had. Then again, a lot of them are features to the target audience.

# ? Jun 28, 2015 21:05

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Kai Tave posted:

Except nobody here is advocating doing that, that's some weird strawman FRINGE made up so he could yell at it which is par for the course for his posting.

Full disclosure, whenever we spend more than 15 minutes of arguing about whether this kobold or that kobold was the kobold the rogue attacked and therefore does the other rogue get sneak attack and how far away were the other two or was it three kobolds again I have a tendency to throw my hands up in the air and announce "Theater of the mind, everybody!". However I don't actually recommend this course of action and my GM has otherwise been pleasantly surprised by how much I don't piss on the system while actually playing it.

I'm really trying to make it fun for the martials. I keep hucking the warrior on top of monsters _{whether he wants me to or not}

# ? Jun 28, 2015 21:13

Xelkelvos: Dec 19, 2012

If I wanted a crunch heavy Fantasy system, that's what FantasyCraft is for.

# ? Jun 28, 2015 22:27

Vanguard Warden: Apr 5, 2009; I am holding a live frag grenade.

Through a series of both in and out of game circumstances, none of the primary spellcasters were able to join the party for an investigation at my last game, leaving just the Ranger and the Rogue. God, that was a poo poo-show. Whenever they came across anything the slightest bit magic they had to throw up their hands.

Then the Bard showed up and read everyone's minds.

# ? Jun 28, 2015 22:31

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Vanguard Warden posted:

Through a series of both in and out of game circumstances, none of the primary spellcasters were able to join the party for an investigation at my last game, leaving just the Ranger and the Rogue. God, that was a poo poo-show. Whenever they came across anything the slightest bit magic they had to throw up their hands.

Then the Bard showed up and read everyone's minds.

Wow. If anything, ranger and rogue are the two non-magical classes you'd think would be all over an investigation.

# ? Jun 28, 2015 23:14

Darwinism: Jan 6, 2008

Selachian posted:

Wow. If anything, ranger and rogue are the two non-magical classes you'd think would be all over an investigation.

Binary pass/fail skill checks are still a thing, and still penalize skill-focused characters heavily, is my bet.

# ? Jun 29, 2015 00:13

hyphz: Aug 5, 2003; Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.; Unlockable Ben

Selachian posted:

Wow. If anything, ranger and rogue are the two non-magical classes you'd think would be all over an investigation.

Yea, but you saw his other point. Find anything magic and you need Detect Magic or Arcana skill which neither is likely to have. Rogue is worst of all; their entire class role is shut down by the 1st level Alarm spell.

# ? Jun 29, 2015 00:47

Vanguard Warden: Apr 5, 2009; I am holding a live frag grenade.

Darwinism posted:

Binary pass/fail skill checks are still a thing, and still penalize skill-focused characters heavily, is my bet.

Yeah, there was a good bit of this. There tends to be a point where everyone rolls terribly enough at the same time for things to dead end. Usually someone has to cast a spell to get things back on track, otherwise the party is left standing around with no leads remaining to pursue unless the DM hands them one out of nowhere.

# ? Jun 29, 2015 01:02

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

I've received some positive feedback on the use of the Improved Monster Stats table I did about 4 months ago, so in the interest of "let's make 5e easier/better to play with if we absolutely have to", I'm reposting it here for anyone running the game:

quote:

The final improved Monster Quick Stats Table, if you want to skip the rest of the math and reasoning behind it.

How to use:

You should get a "Medium" difficulty fight if you create as many monsters as there are player-characters, of the same level. If you have three level 4 players, create three level 4 monsters. For easier fights, make the monsters outnumbered. For harder fights, make the players outnumbered.

To make the difficulty steps more granular, use lower-level monsters, or "Minion"-type monsters that go down in one hit no matter what and deal half the damage of the "base" monster. Stats can also be adjusted by 25% up or down.

For bosses, a solo boss monster would still have the AC, attack bonus and saving throws of a same-level monster, but multiply the HP against the number of players. If you have four players, the boss should have 4x the HP, or ~120 HP for a level 2 monster. The idea is that it's going to absorb the attacks of the entire party, so it has to have the hit points to match.

For DPR, it should in theory also be multiplied by the number of players, but the full damage cannot be dealt against individual players, or else it's going to one-shot them. Use minions (MMO "boss adds") to virtually spread out the damage, use telegraphed attacks that the players can avoid, such as novas and line-attacks with warnings, use AOEs, use spells and abilities that can be countered/interrupted, and so on and so forth.

Background:

The basic idea for 5E's CR system is: A single monster of CR x should be an appropriate challenge for 4 player-characters of level x

I thought "if that's the baseline, then shouldn't it be possible to restructure their stats so that a single monster of CR x-4 will be an appropriate challenge for a single player-character of level x?" This would have the advantage of greatly simplifying encounter building: If you have three characters at level 5, then a Medium encounter would simply be three monsters at level 5

To build on the idea, I was already able to previously figure out that 5E still uses the same "players have a 60% chance to hit a same-level monster, while monsters have a 40% chance to hit a same-level player" paradigm that existed in 4th Edition (and possibly 3rd, though I didn't check that far back).

Step 1: Hit Points

The conclusion I came to was that if 5E had already inherited all those other design decisions, then we could try applying the "4 hits to kill" ratio to avoid the 5E DMG's pitfall of DMG-created monsters being big boring bags of HP.

So I began with a few baselines for a "standard" character:

* A Fighter
* with their primary stat set to 15 STR using the standard array
* 15 STR becomes 16 STR due to being a human, for a +3 modifier
* 16 STR increases to 18 STR by level 4, for a +4 modifier
* 18 STR increases to 20 STR by level 8, for a +5 modifier
* It is assumed that all other Ability Score Improvements are used to either buy better stats elsewhere, or to buy additional feats, in keeping with the 3rd Edition idea that a Fighter is entitled to more of those instead of actual abilities
* a 1d8 weapon is being used as the best one-handed martial weapon - if the Fighter chooses to dual-wield or use a two-handed weapon, then their damage goes up, so the monster dies quicker, which is good and to be expected since they made a conscious choice to want to deal more damage. Otherwise, they could use a shield, which trades away the better damage of dual-wielding/two-handed weapons for increased AC
* The Fighter earns his extra attacks at levels 5, 11, 16, 20, and this is factored into his Damage-per-Round

Monster HP is therefore set at [Damage-per-Round * 4]

The big, big assumption I am making here is that the Extra Attacks of a Fighter are roughly equivalent to all other class abilities. That's basically what a Champion already is, so I don't think it's too out there

That gives us the following table:

So far so good - we've accomplished the goal of creating monsters with significantly less HP than what the DMG recommends, and while there are some levels that have exactly the same HP levels because our standard character hasn't increased his baseline performance, that can be smoothed out like so:

Step 2: Armor Class

For AC, the DMG's suggested stats already give us a good baseline:

Being more precise about a 60% chance-to-hit would require a +1 bump to AC across the board. There's a few places where it looks like the table is off by 2 AC or more, but it's just because of a mismatch in exactly when a player is supposed to increase their primary stat modifier, since we're still only off by 1 at level 20.

Step 3: Attack Bonus

For a monster's attack bonus, it becomes much trickier: The problem is that proficiency does not apply to player AC, and the player has no means of increasing their AC outside of class abilities, which leaves us with three main options:

1. Halt monster attack progression at +5 by level 4, giving monsters a 40% chance to hit against AC 18
2. Take the DMG's recommended monster attack progression, and assume that the DM will hand out a total of +5 AC from magic items over the course of the game such that players will top-out at AC 23
3. Take the DMG's recommended monster attack progression, but do not hand out additional AC from items, and simply assume that players will be able to deal with the increased monster hit chance. A level 20 monster would have a 65% chance to hit a player with AC 18

I chose to simply keep the DMG's attack progression, with notes on when a player would be "owed" additional AC if the DM wants to play it that way.

Step 4: Damage (per round)

This requires that we establish some more assumptions for our baseline character

* CON stat set to 14 using the standard array
* 14 becomes 15 due to being human, for a +2 modifier
* 15 becomes 17 by level 12, for a +3 modifier
* 17 becomes 19 by level 16, for a +4 modifier
* 19 becomes 20 by level 20, for a +5 modifier
* Maximum HP at level 1 is [10 + CON modifier], with subsequent levels giving an additional [6 + CON modifier] HP
* Healing from Hit Dice is [6 + CON modifier], with 1 Hit Die at level 1, and 1 additional Hit Dice being gained per level

This gives us the following chart:

But watch what happens if I take the Damage-Per-Round numbers from the DMG, and divide it against the player's total HP reserves:

This is a problem. The damage numbers are still roughly calibrated with an assumption that a monster can kill a player in 4 hits, but without 4th Edition's healing surges, there is no way that that model is going to work - since the damage numbers are including the healing you can get from hit dice, the players are going to be tapped out after one fight no matter what. They can probably stretch it out to 2 or 3 fights if they kill monsters before they ever get their 4 licks in, but certainly not the 6 to 8 encounters recommended by the rules.

Instead, I would recommend recalibrating the DPR numbers against a player's maximum HP only, disregarding their Hit Dice healing:

Step 5: Saving Throws

The best saving throw that a target can come up with would be if it's against their primary attribute AND they're proficient at it, which would give them a 65% chance to save and this would keep pace exactly with a spellcaster's spellcasting attribute and proficiency bonus (basically roll an 8 or better to save).

At the same time, the proficiency bonus of a spell comprises somewhere between 40-50% of the total saving throw bonus.

Instead of trying to come up with a way to capture the 12 different ways that a saving throw could go, my idea for abbreviating the process would be to have a Best / Good / Bad system: the best would be the primary stat+proficiency as I had mentioned, a Good saving throw that's 66% of Best to represent either a tertiary stat with proficiency or a high stat without proficiency, and a Bad saving throw that's 33% of best to represent no proficiency and a non-primary stat. It should be familiar to veterans of the Fort/Ref/Will save, and is quick-and-dirty enough that you can make your mind up on the spot for what the save is going to be as the Wizard casts their spell.

That leaves us with this final table:

I also threw in a Minion / rough CR 1/8 equivalent in there. The DPR margin against a level 1's HP is so low that that should actually be 1 DPR.

Final Rule Zero note: These figures are by no means intended to be set in stone, because player skill is a factor, campaign tone is a factor, and party composition is a factor. But, at the very minimum, the approach I'm proposing should:

A. allow you to produce monsters and encounters faster than RAW
B. allow you to produce monsters and encounters that will require less tinkering and roll-fudging than RAW

To the last point I would add:

1. This model means you don't need to gently caress around with the "experience-budget" encounter building guidelines

2. You're effectively implementing a houserule that eases up on the deadliness of the early levels, but doing it all on the DM side so that your players will not have to fundamentally change their understanding of the rules

3. You're avoiding the pitfall of a single boss monster getting overwhelmed by an action economy advantage

Finally, while I would encourage you to "flavor" the monsters to set them apart from one another (Kobolds can Disengage as a Bonus Action), doing so wouldn't require you to mess around with the stats/level/CR of the monster like it would doing it by the DMG's RAW monster construction rules.

There's still the issue of martial class design, and vis-a-vis caster class design and spell selection, but we also have p.d0t, Ryuujin and other posters with their own sets of houserules to improve on those.

# ? Jun 29, 2015 12:24

moths: Aug 25, 2004; I would also still appreciate some danger.

The ENnie popularity contest nominations were announced - it's going to be interesting to see whether Next or Pathfinder steamrollers more over better products.

# ? Jun 29, 2015 14:16

ProfessorCirno: Feb 17, 2011; The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!

moths posted:

The ENnie popularity contest nominations were announced - it's going to be interesting to see whether Next or Pathfinder steamrollers more over better products.

If it's run by ENWorld, it's probably gonna be 5e.

# ? Jun 29, 2015 16:17

DJ Dizzy: Feb 11, 2009; Real men don't use bolters.

5th Edition warlock. Give me the lowdown. What do?

# ? Jun 29, 2015 17:58

Mendrian: Jan 6, 2013

DJ Dizzy posted:

5th Edition warlock. Give me the lowdown. What do?

Like the Battlemaster, how good they are depends entirely on how often your DM lets you take a short rest, or how they define short rests to begin with. If it is often, Warlocks are amazing. If it is not often, they are sub par casters with a potentially very effective (if boring) at-will.

# ? Jun 29, 2015 19:29

Trihugger: Jun 28, 2008; hello

DJ Dizzy posted:

5th Edition warlock. Give me the lowdown. What do?

Take Devil's Sight invocation and only ever travel at night with no light. Start every fight 120 ft away possibly with surprise and out of enemy los. Doesn't matter if no one else in the party has dark vision. Having a surprise round and 2+ rounds of movement between you and any enemies is silly.

If you can't start a fight in those conditions just play it like any normal spellcaster. How often your party short rests vs. long rests will determine how much better or worse your spell slot mechanic is compared to more traditional casters. The fact that all your spells are all considered the max spell level you can cast is kinda nice.

Invocations are basically extra feats. Most are just nice extra utility. The only one that is game-changing is Devil's Sight so other than that, pick whatever you like.

Pact Blade path isn't any stronger than a ranged Warlock with added downside of needing to be in melee a lot, needing two primary stats and "taxing" more invocations. In this regard, it is a trap option, but you'll still be just as effective or better than any other melee class in the game. So if you really enjoy the flavor go for it.

# ? Jun 29, 2015 19:47

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Trihugger posted:

Pact Blade path isn't any stronger than a ranged Warlock with added downside of needing to be in melee a lot, needing two primary stats and "taxing" more invocations. In this regard, it is a trap option, but you'll still be just as effective or better than any other melee class in the game. So if you really enjoy the flavor go for it.

Unless I'm badly misreading the class, blade pact is actually really bad. You get two attacks that add both Charisma and Strength at the cost of two different invocations. Virtually every other melee class is more effective, particularly the paladin.

# ? Jun 29, 2015 19:59

odinson: Mar 17, 2009

I was browsing around randomly yesterday and found this guide for a human or dragon born blade lock. Seems like a good starting point and could be fun in the right situation.

http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/49851/optimal-dragonborn-warlock-for-dpr-ac-with-blade-pact-and-fiend-patron

# ? Jun 29, 2015 20:10

Soylent Pudding: Jun 22, 2007; We've got people!

fool_of_sound posted:

Unless I'm badly misreading the class, blade pact is actually really bad. You get two attacks that add both Charisma and Strength at the cost of two different invocations. Virtually every other melee class is more effective, particularly the paladin.

Combine with casting darkness and whatever lets you see in darkness and it can be pretty fun. Still very situational though.

# ? Jun 29, 2015 20:13

DJ Dizzy: Feb 11, 2009; Real men don't use bolters.

Im going for a ranged lock, maybe Great Old One pact.

# ? Jun 29, 2015 20:30

Trihugger: Jun 28, 2008; hello

fool_of_sound posted:

Unless I'm badly misreading the class, blade pact is actually really bad. You get two attacks that add both Charisma and Strength at the cost of two different invocations. Virtually every other melee class is more effective, particularly the paladin.

I guess it's more to do with warlock spells than anything inherently good about blade pact. Temp HP, damage with fire on reaction, war caster feat to drop other spells on reaction, dropping darkness on yourself with devil sight, high level spells instead of a gimped spell level progression.

Take 2 levels of fighter and you'll be hitting just as often, just as hard, have access to a non-lovely spell list and cast more often than an eldritch knight.

Take a level of sorcerer for Shield if you want.

I mean, everything about blade pact when compared to the other two pacts is worse, but it's still better than a fighter or rogue.

Trihugger fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Jun 29, 2015

# ? Jun 29, 2015 20:53

alg: Mar 14, 2007; A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of chance caused him to run with the watch-dogs.

moths posted:

The ENnie popularity contest nominations were announced - it's going to be interesting to see whether Next or Pathfinder steamrollers more over better products.

no FFG games at all, even art categories. wow.

# ? Jun 29, 2015 20:54

moths: Aug 25, 2004; I would also still appreciate some danger.

Yeah, FFG finally figured out that the ENnies are literally a scam. A nominee must submit hundreds of dollars of product to be "evaluated" by judges, but it doesn't matter because nothing wins if there's a 3x or PF title in your category (or Next, I guess.)

There was a big thing a few years back where a judge walked off with a ton of "review" stuff and didn't even go through the pantomime of judging it. I forget how that turned out.

# ? Jun 29, 2015 21:17

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Trihugger posted:

I guess it's more to do with warlock spells than anything inherently good about blade pact. Temp HP, damage with fire on reaction, war caster feat to drop other spells on reaction, dropping darkness on yourself with devil sight, high level spells instead of a gimped spell level progression.

Take 2 levels of fighter and you'll be hitting just as often, just as hard, have access to a non-lovely spell list and cast more often than an eldritch knight.

Take a level of sorcerer for Shield if you want.

I mean, everything about blade pact when compared to the other two pacts is worse, but it's still better than a fighter or rogue.

Oh yeah, the class on the whole is absolutely better than fighter, rogue, or ranger. The blade pact by itself is kinda bad though.

# ? Jun 29, 2015 22:37

langurmonkey: Oct 29, 2011; Getting healthy by posting on the Internet

I am enjoying playing a Tome pact warlock with eldritch spear and agonising blast. We are doing a lot of cruising around outside so the ability to waste people 300 feet away is pretty cool. Then if they jump me then it's Armour of Agathys and a Shillelagh to the face. I rarely get below max hit points with dark ones blessing.
We also have two short rests per long rest so the spell recovery is about as per design.

# ? Jun 29, 2015 22:54

ritorix: Jul 22, 2007; Vancian Roulette

If you aren't concerned about DPS, you can make a very tanky warlock with a single level of fighter (or anything else with armor+shield). I tried one in a pbp on here, with lots of sources of THP (false life) and AOE spells + breath weapon. Pretty versatile and effective. It's not the best tank (that's a barbarian), but it will survive longer than anything else and be able to contribute good aoe damage via spells, and decent single-target with eldritch blast.

# ? Jun 29, 2015 23:27

FRINGE: May 23, 2003; title stolen for lf posting

Kai Tave posted:

Except nobody here is advocating doing that, that's some weird strawman FRINGE made up so he could yell at it which is par for the course for his posting.

Throw some more poo poo on the walls while complaining about the smell.

# ? Jun 30, 2015 02:16

bewilderment: Nov 22, 2007; man what

The one advantage of Blade Pact warlock is that they can function well enough in antimagic or magic-immune conditions.

# ? Jun 30, 2015 04:45

CaPensiPraxis: Feb 7, 2013; When in france...

No they don't? Antimagic fields cause summoned objects (that are otherwise real) to temporarily "wink out" inside the field.

# ? Jun 30, 2015 15:45

Prism: Dec 22, 2007; yospos

CaPensiPraxis posted:

No they don't? Antimagic fields cause summoned objects (that are otherwise real) to temporarily "wink out" inside the field.

If you're high enough level to be running into antimagic fields, you have probably started to use the 'put a magic weapon in an extradimensional space and summon it' option, and that shouldn't go away any more than things you have just taken out of a bag of holding vanish. (Though I guess it would make it impossible to actually summon, so you'd better have it out first, and it wouldn't be a magic weapon in there.)

# ? Jun 30, 2015 15:48

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# ? May 14, 2024 05:48

Boing: Jul 12, 2005; trapped in custom title factory, send help

I've been arguing with my D&D group about class balance for a while and they really weren't getting it, so I decided to put my money where my mouth is and start houseruling up Fighter Spells:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Xe4DnrhdP_SGbzdoIDEdtTyywJGDLaVcqTyJjG4Xjxk/edit

The exploits are inspired by various posts in this thread (by AlphaDog, gradenko2000, etc.) as well as various other sources like myths & legends, 4e, dungeon world (shoutout to gnome7's playbooks), and so on. People have slapped together a few loose ideas like this but I thought I'd try my hand at incorporating it fully into the 5e system. I know you can't fix it properly but I genuinely want to make the game better by letting martials have as much fun as spellcasters. Please give more ideas/feedback!

Current feedback from my group is "well sometimes I just want to play a gritty adventure with people that are close to real life, you know?". Nevermind that we're trying to stop the ascension of a god or anything

Boing fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Jun 30, 2015

# ? Jun 30, 2015 15:59

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