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FRINGE posted:This isnt relevant to your main point, but just for trivia: professional combatants actually do have substantially different tissues than 'normal' people after a while. (Bones, muscles, tendons, fascia...) So the theoretical ogre-wrestler probably would have a better chance jumping to his/her feet after a 50 foot fall than the book-wielding wizard. On top of that: * Getting "hurt" in D&D never makes it harder to do anything. If you're alive you're operating at 100% capability. * There's no permanent injury in D&D. You don't need to worry about recovering from an injury or even shifting your weapon to your undamaged off-hand. * Even if you're seriously hosed up (<0hp), your cleric is probably only seconds away from praying you into full recovery, if not of hp then at least of combat capability. * There's no need for pain relief, and you can't go into shock. Presumably a cleric healing your massive injury within 30 seconds or so renders this moot anyway. * When you eventually manage to loving die, there are plenty of ways to come back. But falling damage not always killing everyone? By my immersion, this will not stand! Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Jul 21, 2015 |
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Jul 21, 2015 03:35
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The issue with the summoning thing is that it shifts the narrative focus of the spell, and the game, away from the player. It's no longer "i want to do cool thing" it's "Am I allowed to do cool thing, or would that break the story you have planned out." The next sage advice column will probably change cleric spells to be granted by the gods (read: The DM) only if they actually want the character to cast that spell. "No you can't use your channel divinity power, the Gods want to hear this guy finish his motive speech, and so should you, cause I spent 2 hours writing it."
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Jul 21, 2015 04:54
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AlphaDog posted:On top of that: The problem isn't falling damage not always killing people, it's that it never kills people once a certain base hp level is met. If it was just a natural 20 means you live no matter what people probably wouldn't care. Also critical effects used to be a thing that would last forever, and if they were caused by negative energy they couldn't even be restored iirc. As to summoning, it's a bit weird, but in 2e the priest summoning/conjuring animal spells were always at DM's discretion on what was available, which never seemed to cause any problems. Also, for what its worth, stuff like 'conjure fire elemental' was: 65% a 12 hd elemental appears, 20% chance 16 hd, 9% 2-4 fire salamaders, 4% efreeti , 2% 21-24 hd elemental. So if you really wanted an elemental, too bad, sometimes you got an efreeti! That being said those rules suck compared to just comparing things to a zany chart for wacky effects. mastershakeman fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Jul 21, 2015 |
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Jul 21, 2015 04:55
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mastershakeman posted:The problem isn't falling damage not always killing people, it's that it never kills people once a certain base hp level is met. If it was just a natural 20 means you live no matter what people probably wouldn't care. Why is it bad that you don't have a random chance of death if you fall (but only at a certain, pretty high level)?
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Jul 21, 2015 05:26
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Why is it such a problem that a high level badass warrior is tough and lucky enough to survive any fall once between full heals? What about if it was phrased like "you can cast feather fall at the cost of XdY hit points"?
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Jul 21, 2015 05:28
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AlphaDog posted:Why is it such a problem that a high level badass warrior is tough and lucky enough to survive any fall once between full heals? I've had multiple games where a high level trait for major villains or heroes is 'never takes fall or drowning damage, because if you knock a guy off a cliff into the ocean and don't find the body he's probably fine.'
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Jul 21, 2015 05:36
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Darwinism posted:Why is it bad that you don't have a random chance of death if you fall (but only at a certain, pretty high level)? Because characters should have lots of ways to die, even at high level. It's usually interesting plus a strong likelihood the death won't be permanent, but it could be. Also I'm a firm believer in that npcs should be operating in the same world as the players, so getting to knock enemies off cliffs to their deaths is a good thing mastershakeman fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Jul 21, 2015 |
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Jul 21, 2015 05:37
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AlphaDog posted:* There's no permanent injury in D&D. You don't need to worry about recovering from an injury   Mormon Star Wars posted:Let's say you are a brand new GM and you see this summoning spell with that type of guideline. There's no section of GM advice on how to handle these summoning spells, so ... They really should use some of the "known names" and do some 30 minute video examples ~slash~ explanatory essays on how to handle some things on the fly. Get nerdist/wheaton/hardwick to play some short but complicated GM moments on youtube or something and then chat about why they did/did not do things immediately after. mastershakeman posted:Because characters should have lots of ways to die, even at high level. It's usually interesting plus a strong likelihood the death won't be permanent, but it could be. I used those sometimes for tension, never for "oops youre dead" though.
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Jul 21, 2015 05:41
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Night10194 posted:I've had multiple games where a high level trait for major villains or heroes is 'never takes fall or drowning damage, because if you knock a guy off a cliff into the ocean and don't find the body he's probably fine.' mastershakeman posted:Also I'm a firm believer in that npcs should be operating in the same world as the players, so getting to knock enemies off cliffs to their deaths is a good thing Of course the bad guy comes back from getting knocked off a 300 foot cliff onto jagged rocks in icy water. Probably more powerful than before. Probably with extra minions. In any RPG I've ever played in, "...and he was actually dead and the kingdom was saved forever" would be a bizarre twist ending. I guess this is an expectations thing.
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Jul 21, 2015 05:59
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FRINGE posted:The best part of the fantasy. 3.5 also has that. Over 50 hp damage in one attack requires you to pass a 15 DC fort check or die. Of course that ends up penalizing the fighter since he has the most hit points and is supposed to be the meat shield soaking up large amounts of damage as opposed to the wizard who is invisible and engages at a distance. Probably should have been just been percentage of your max.
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Jul 21, 2015 06:01
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why would you even waste time and energy responding to mastershakeman Characters past like level 3 should be functionally immune to most falling damage unless it would be extremely dramatic or deadly. jumping onto and off of things is pretty much the greatest and should be encouraged as much as possible
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Jul 21, 2015 06:23
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You should need to make a dexterity check to balance to start your jump and then a strength check to see if you jump far enough and then another dexterity check to see if you balance properly when you land and then another dexterity check to grab on to the rope and 1 more strength check per 10 feet you slide down it with disadvantage after the first 30 feet because your hands hurt now and even if you trained super hard for 20 years and had been doing this poo poo non stop in that time and were tough enough to be stabbed 150 times and not die, there's a chance you might not make it so that has to be modeled. Also there needs to be a minor chance that the rope breaks or wears through or that the bolt, piton, tree or whatever comes unstuck (maybe a table for each type of anchor?) which would need to be re-checked for every character using the rope and Or just cast Feather Fall if you're not a loving scrub.
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Jul 21, 2015 06:36
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gradenko_2000 posted:Page 4 of the 3.5 PHB says: "The game assumes the use of miniatures and a battle grid, and the rules are written from this perspective." Thanks, that's really helpful.
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Jul 21, 2015 12:17
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Ixjuvin posted:why would you even waste time and energy responding to mastershakeman Why would this statement not apply to all damage?
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Jul 21, 2015 13:46
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Hog Inspector posted:3.5 also has that. Over 50 hp damage in one attack requires you to pass a 15 DC fort check or die. 5e also has that as a variant rule in the DMG This optional rule makes it easier for a creature to be felled by massive damage. When a creature takes damage from a single source equal to or greater than half its hit point maximum, it must succeed on a DC 15 Constitution saving throw or suffer a random effect determined by a roll on the System Shock table. For example, a creature that has a hit point maximum of 30 must make that Constitution save if it takes 15 damage or more from a single source. System Shock (roll d10) 1: The creature drops to 0 hit points. 2-3: The creature drops to 0 hit points but is stable. 4-5: The creature is stunned until the end of its next turn . 6-7: The creature can't take reactions and has disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks until the end of its next turn. 8-10: The creature can't take reactions until the end of its next turn.
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Jul 21, 2015 13:57
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I think falling damage is pretty drat fine - if you're a low-level scrub and you fall off the airship, you're probably dead, barring crazy heroic circumstances. If you're a a powerful hero who fights dragons on the regular, you won't die if you fall from the cliff when you're still fresh - but after a long day of fighting demons and climbing mountains on the Plane of Scary Mountains, a huge fall could probably kill you. What's so unreasonable about that?
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Jul 21, 2015 14:13
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gradenko_2000 posted:5e also has that as a variant rule in the DMG How often does any damage source deal 50% of anything's max HP, and how often is that not enough to just drop the target outright?
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Jul 21, 2015 14:16
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Really Pants posted:How often does any damage source deal 50% of anything's max HP, and how often is that not enough to just drop the target outright? Low levels is my first guess.
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Jul 21, 2015 14:18
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Feather fall is a first level spell. Entire classes are already basically immune to falling damage as early as level 1. Just not the martial classes.
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Jul 21, 2015 14:24
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quote:Why would this statement [characters past level 3 should be functionally immune to falling damage] not apply to all damage? Allowing players to ignore falling damage after a certain level represents a tonal shift. If you're already fighting theater-wide threats, there should be a change in the scope of what can kill you just as there is a change in the scope of what you're killing and how you're killing them.
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Jul 21, 2015 14:31
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Mecha Gojira posted:Feather fall is a first level spell. Entire classes are already basically immune to falling damage as early as level 1. It is very important that non-magic things work realistically. Nobody has ever survived a very large fall, and furthermore I spent all morning failing to flip my mouse back into my hand.
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Jul 21, 2015 15:06
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How cool would it be though if fighters just didn't take fall damage and could jump super high Oh look the wizard is casting feather fall and jump, how cute. Anyway I'm gonna leap 30 feet in the air and cleave a dragon's wing off mid flight
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Jul 21, 2015 15:33
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Esser-Z posted:So spellcasters have to play DM May I too, now? That's... one way of closing the divide, I guess! Some other forum posted:It's a clarification, the rule was always there. The druid can ask for 4 wolves, but that doesn't mean you get them, you might get 4 muscly looking mountain goats instead.
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Jul 21, 2015 15:39
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gradenko_2000 posted:I think this errata has single-handedly fixed D&D! Just have the caster take an Arcana check whenever they cast a spell to determine if the explicitly declared effect of their spell actually does what it says per the rulebook. The amount of self inflicted brain damage people are subjecting themselves to to try and accept 5e as "THE REAL AND TRUE D&D" is frankly terrifying. Pretty much every memorable/enjoyable experience I've had in a game was because a player did something the DM didn't expect. Turning D&D into a game of DM May I is a giant step backwards.
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Jul 21, 2015 15:46
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gradenko_2000 posted:Allowing players to ignore falling damage after a certain level represents a tonal shift. If you're already fighting theater-wide threats, there should be a change in the scope of what can kill you just as there is a change in the scope of what you're killing and how you're killing them. Yeah, if you want to say that at level 10 martials don't take falling damage and also can't be hurt by level 1 creatures (goblins etc) go for it. But that should also mean if you're level 1 and a npc leveled fighter starts poo poo with you, too bad. That's a different game and there's nothing wrong with it.
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Jul 21, 2015 16:39
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NPCs don't need levels, NPCs need challenge ratings. Death to the NPC-as-PC. Death to ability scores.
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Jul 21, 2015 16:47
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For the most part I agree that it's a two-way street. If I don't have to worry about falling damage by the time I'm a fourth as powerful as Orcus (because, you know, the other 3 party members combine), it also makes sense that as a newbie shitfarmer there's not even going to be a roll if I decide to bodily assault an Adult Red Dragon.
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Jul 21, 2015 17:10
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Falling damage talk makes me recall the Peasant Rail-Gun Problem. For the uninitiated: The peasant railgun problem points out an issue in pretty much any Initiative system that allows consecutive readied actions. The idea goes that if Joe can pass an item to Donna on his turn, and Donna can pass an item to Steve on her turn, then you can set up a chain of peasants of whatever number long to pass a stone along the chain until it reached sufficient velocity (since we know exactly how long a round is, remember) to constitute a 'railgun'. The problem is interesting because it points out the danger of letting your rules dictate your fiction. Initiative is just an abstraction, after all, an ease-of-use rule that isn't really meant to cover edge cases. I feel like when people are confronted with this problem or similar problems, they fork in one of two directions. Either they agree that yes, of course its an abstraction, and see what other kinds of abstractions they can embrace to make their game run even more smoothly; or they see it as a flaw in the rules-physics of the game world and seek to come up with increasingly complex rules to prevent that kind of abuse. Falling damage is similar; it's not really meant to cover terminal velocity out of an airplane, it's meant to cover falls down a 10 by 10 trap door in a dungeon. If it isn't clear I'm firmly in the camp that thinks just taking abstractions as abstractions is a better idea than going down the rabbit hole of fixing the game physics.
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Jul 21, 2015 17:58
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gradenko_2000 posted:it also makes sense that as a newbie shitfarmer there's not even going to be a roll if I decide to bodily assault an Adult Red Dragon. "You think to yourself that you want to commit suicide by dragon, but your body is already running away and shaking uncontrollably."
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Jul 21, 2015 17:59
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I just realized that both the Warlock and Monk also have a knockback power, but only the Fighter's knockback power is limited by the size of your target.
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Jul 21, 2015 18:14
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goatface posted:NPCs don't need levels, NPCs need challenge ratings. What happens when your party comes to blows? Pc vs pc? What about if the dm controls a pc?
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Jul 21, 2015 19:02
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mastershakeman posted:What happens when your party comes to blows? Pc vs pc? What about if the dm controls a pc? Then you play a system that supports pvp well instead of DnD.
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Jul 21, 2015 19:04
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Then they are already PCs? If your question is "What if the DM's Mary-Sue pseudo-NPC who is fifteen levels higher than the party gets into a fight with them?" then the answer is don't play with those people.
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Jul 21, 2015 19:06
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What happens is it's perfectly fine because the combatants are already statted out for you. "Death to the NPC-as-PC" is referring to the practice of having to assemble monsters using the same rules as with PCs which is poo poo that no one wants to do because those monsters are going to be dead in 2 rounds anyway.
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Jul 21, 2015 19:08
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gradenko_2000 posted:What happens is it's perfectly fine because the combatants are already statted out for you. Monsters and players are also built around completely different assumptions, having different damage and accuracy expressions due to the fact that Team Monster only needs to last for X amount of rounds while team player has to balance resources around an adventuring day. This isn't even going into the fact that different classes have different roles which are meant to compliment each other as opposed to being used against one another. Player vs. Player is a Bad Idea in Dungeons and Dragons full stop period because the system does not support it.
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Jul 21, 2015 19:16
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goatface posted:Then they are already PCs? That's fine, except killing the DMs npc is the greatest joy of d&d. Maybe a dark souls reference works here: in addition to falling damage killing you, it has a good monster vs levelled npc comparison. Invaders are the leveled npcs that fight in the same context as you, normal enemies are the non statted out guys.
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Jul 21, 2015 19:56
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mastershakeman posted:That's fine, except killing the DMs npc is the greatest joy of d&d. Anyone who has invaded is following one of two possibilities. They may be using their PvE character for a once off invasion with a consumable item that is limited in use. Or they're using a PvP character with one of the covenant invasion items, and they are planning to reuse this character over many fights. Neither real-life situation is analogous to the real-life D&D scenario where the DM has to produce a throwaway NPC built using PC rules for one, two, or maybe even half a dozen fights. Even if the in-universe idea of "this enemy has YOUR SKILLS" is analogous the disparity in effort to payoff suggests that shortcuts in the creation process are appropriate. In regards to falling damage, Dark Souls character don't go from mechanically absorbing their starting HP damage to absorbing 10x their starting HP in damage. I don't think the game has much to offer in theme, mechanics, or flavor to a high-level D&D campaign.
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Jul 21, 2015 20:35
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Sage Genesis posted:And? Just because you can't get an rear end in a top hat-proof game doesn't mean that you have to hand the rear end in a top hat the keys to the kingdom either. If the spell had just said, "this spell summons one critter from options X, Y, Z" then it would've been both quick to resolve and wouldn't let an rear end in a top hat DM give you a single chipmunk when you really wanted a single bear. Giving the rear end in a top hat DM this kind of choice is to provide them with an opportunity for being a jerk that's not necessary. The response that you can't rear end in a top hat-proof a game is missing point and excluding the middle.
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Jul 21, 2015 20:57
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Splicer posted:You're right but also very wrong. Nothing can stop an rear end in a top hat GM, but a bad system can teach people to be rear end in a top hat GMs. That is pretty much what I'm saying. A better worded Conjure Creature X spell wouldn't teach/provoke/invite DMs to be assholes about it.
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Jul 21, 2015 21:30
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Maybe try: Player "tries for" (creature #2 on list of X) via (some roll). If player succeeds they get their preference. If player fails they get random entry via 1dX (2e style summoning, x is the number of entries on the list, even if this gets them the thing they wanted to begin with). DM can limit certain things by environment (summoning water creatures on the plane of fire, or demons in heaven, or dwarves in an elf tree  ). They either fail (silly wizard) or something "appropriate" comes though, possibly not restrained by the usual summoning mojo (silly wizard).
FRINGE fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Jul 21, 2015 |
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Jul 21, 2015 21:56
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