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For real fun, look at the Improved Divine Smite feature, that adds 1d8 radiant damage when you hit with a melee weapon. Throwing spears around works fine for that!
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Sep 8, 2015 07:55
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ActusRhesus posted:Playing the party's rogue. Habitually roll 1's to the point of absurdity. Looking at either lucky feat or dungeon delver to help ameliorate this. Thoughts? If you've got the INT for it, take two levels of Wizard and pick Diviner as your subclass.
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Sep 8, 2015 08:49
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Vanguard Warden posted:For real fun, look at the Improved Divine Smite feature, that adds 1d8 radiant damage when you hit with a melee weapon. Throwing spears around works fine for that! Original working as intended, then?
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Sep 8, 2015 08:49
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Once again I'll note that 5E is a broken mess that does almost nothing that wouldn't be better served by choosing almost any other version of D&D(including Pathinder and other Clones), which sucks cause as books they are some of the best looking ones that D&D has ever had(along with Essentials as another example of iffy as an actual game, but beautiful as an actual book), and there's lot's of little ideas and aspects to it that I like, but if I were to use it I'd have to do so much modding that it pretty much would be a massive waste of my time compared to using almost any other system
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Sep 8, 2015 11:51
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jng2058 posted:If you've got the INT for it, take two levels of Wizard and pick Diviner as your subclass. "Take levels of wizard" basically solves all your problems, because 5e is 3.x derived.
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Sep 8, 2015 12:29
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Kurieg posted:I remember back in 3.5 when you'd look at D&D.com and every day there'd be an article, whether they were previewing a new book that was coming out (with actual excerpts from the book) metacommentary about the game itself, and new ideas and options for both DMs and Players to use.
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Sep 8, 2015 13:09
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Power Player posted:Yeah. Fourth edition had updates nearly every day of the week on the main site, from mini-modules to DMing advice. Updates including actual answers to rules questions, not an endless stream of "up to the GM"!
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Sep 8, 2015 13:19
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WotC should just sell WWDMD bracelets.
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Sep 8, 2015 13:23
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Power Player posted:updates nearly every day of the week on the main site  Just like World Of Warcraft
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Sep 8, 2015 13:34
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I decided to use 5e as my first online game in months if only because I figured I was sure to get a bunch of players, plus I'd been PbP-ing so much I wasn't actually sure if I could "do it live" anymore. I didn't use a battlemap, just TOTM'd it straight. The only significant houserule that I threw in was using my own monster stats table and maybe playing fast-and-loose with skill checks (roll Religion to have Hestia divinely whisper the next clue in your ear). As much as I make fun of it, it's not aggressively bad, but with how straightforward the game went I could've played B/X or Dungeon World and achieved much the same effect.
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Sep 8, 2015 13:46
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This isn't grog, but it is a repost here because it completely sums up 5e. quote:This has come up several times in our campaign, and I'm wondering whether our DM is handling it right: quote:It's arbitrary. 
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Sep 8, 2015 20:58
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For gently caress's sake. There is nothing more boring in D&D than climbing around on a goddam rope. f
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Sep 8, 2015 21:10
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Sounds like it could use a three dimensional battle mat and checks made for every 5', along with a correlation table of character strength / constitute vs. equipment weight to determine the DC penalties given due to exhaustion. Also if the rope could somehow make checks too that would be cool too. Wizard casts feather fall and just hovers down.
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Sep 8, 2015 21:16
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EDIT: ^Well, hell.^ Personally, as a DM I make my players make a DC 5 Athletics check to avoid tripping over their feet for every 10 feet they walk. Dashing increases this difficulty check to DC 7, and furtherm- I doubt the wizards have to make Arcana checks every 10 feet they fly.
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Sep 8, 2015 21:17
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So complicated when you could use the Dark Eye method of having players roll whether their characters are too afraid to climb down.
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Sep 8, 2015 21:30
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gradenko_2000 posted:I decided to use 5e as my first online game in months if only because I figured I was sure to get a bunch of players, plus I'd been PbP-ing so much I wasn't actually sure if I could "do it live" anymore. Really the issue with 5E isn't that it's outright awful or anything, it's just aggressively mediocre, and in many respects that's a way worse thing for an RPG to be cause instead of giving up on it like people usually would with a really bad system, they instead choose to either defend the system, or put so much work into trying to fix it that they might as well just write a whole new game, same issue occurred with 3.5, except that version had so much official content released that it actually isn't all that hard to make it into something serviceable with the right sort of trimming and selectiveness with what rules & content you're using and allowing, while 5E has so little content(and doesn't look like it'll be receiving any real content in the future either) that to get it to really function either requires a ton of hand waving from the DM or a ton of houserules
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Sep 8, 2015 21:32
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The maybe non obvious bit is that a low level character with an 18 strength has less than a 60% chance to make all those checks. A wizard (or rogue!) would have in the low single digits, and a better than even chance of immediate death from 5d10 damage. A rope climb - something real people do all the time without dying - is suddenly deadlier than a group of orcs with swords.
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Sep 8, 2015 21:36
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dwarf74 posted:This isn't grog, but it is a repost here because it completely sums up 5e. 1) The actual climbing rule is just climb = 1/2 movement (pg. 182). You only need to make athletics checks to climb if the surface is slippery or has few handholds. A rope is nothing but handholds. It's why climbers use them. 2) At the table that ruling would be a terrible cluster gently caress of 20 or 25 rolls, even more if you start doing falling damage rolls. And you will since 3) .8*.8*.8*.55*.55=.154 . That is, using his DCs, an average person with a bonus of 0 will manage to climb down a 50 foot rope less than 1/6th of the time. (This problem of multiple rolls spelling probabilistic doom was one of the things 4e fixed that is apparently being tossed into the memory hole.)
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Sep 8, 2015 21:45
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It's not even the climb back up!
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Sep 8, 2015 21:47
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This infernal engine is powered by raw gutfeels.
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Sep 8, 2015 21:53
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dwarf74 posted:The maybe non obvious bit is that a low level character with an 18 strength has less than a 60% chance to make all those checks. A wizard (or rogue!) would have in the low single digits, and a better than even chance of immediate death from 5d10 damage. Falling damage in 5e is only 1d6 per 10 feet, capping out at 20d6. A 50 foot drop is less deadly than a 2nd level scorching ray. Someone with more than 120 HP can't die from falling any distance. It's actually a little unfortunate. Pushing something over a railing is way more fun than beating it to death, but it barely does anything.
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Sep 8, 2015 22:05
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Rules for climbing simple rope: 1. Okay, what do you do now that you've all successfully climbed the rope?
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Sep 8, 2015 22:31
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Pfox posted:This infernal engine is powered by raw gutfeels. Which is why 5E sucks
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Sep 8, 2015 22:33
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Climb a knotted rope was on the sample DC chart. It's a 5, and that's climbing not descending.
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Sep 8, 2015 22:35
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Was it a different edition or house rule or something that made every ten foot increment inflict its own damage, so: 10 foot drop = (1d6) = 1d6 damage 20 foot drop = (1d6 + 2d6) = 3d6 damage 30 foot drop = (1d6 + 2d6 + 3d6) = 6d6 damage etc. I guess it was Gygax's own rules, according to http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2014/04/on-falling-damage.html Could be too much effort for some people, but if you're looking for things to die when they get shoved off a tower or cliff this is a pretty good way to handle it.
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Sep 8, 2015 22:48
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Good lord, people are so goddamn bad at probability. "seriously, don't break up a single task into multiple rolls against the same DC over and over" is the sort of thing that should be in a DMG as actual advice for actual DMs.
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Sep 8, 2015 23:00
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gradenko_2000 posted:Good lord, people are so goddamn bad at probability. We can shorten this rule to: As it ought to be posted:Hey stupid, is this ruling fun?
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Sep 8, 2015 23:06
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Stanley Goodspeed posted:Was it a different edition or house rule or something that made every ten foot increment inflict its own damage, so: This system got published in the Dragon by Frank Mentzer with the explanation that this was how falling damage had always been intended to be. My experience is that most tables just shrugged and went on with 1d6 per 10', which was easier to calculate and not as lethal.
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Sep 8, 2015 23:11
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No I think that needs to be spelled out specifically because we know people fall into the trap of thinking that five 50/50 rolls are the same as one 50/50 roll, just more detailed. Yes, people are bad at probability. I was rereading WHFRP 1E a while back, and there's an example of skill use - our hero steals a wagon, but has to make a ride check, a jump check, and a climb check. All three are like 25% chance of success - but naturally the example has the player succeed at all three, so the fact that there was actually a tiny chance of this actually working is obscured, and you walk away thinking this is a good approach.
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Sep 8, 2015 23:11
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I've got some feedback on gradenko's monster math if anyone wants to hear it. I used it for the first time last night and it worked pretty well. Due to a combination of miscalculation and sheer recklessness on my part, the encounter was about CR3 (six "level 2" dudes) against a party of four level 1 PCs. They only *just* survived after blowing all their dailies, two PCs going down, etc, but I didn't have to pull any punches. So the overall challenge of the monsters seems to be spot on. My only concern is that the fight went on for a long time, probably about as long as our 4E fights used to go for. This was fine in this instance because it was a white-knuckle battle and, to be honest, my monsters were cool as poo poo. However there was a lot of "I hit him, you hit him" especially at the end of the fight. This could get boring after a while, and the long fights was the #1 reason I wanted to move to 5th ed in the first place. I think it's probably a mistake to port all the math assumptions of 4e to 5e because you will end up with the same length of combats, but way more boring because the PCs don't have a lot of interesting powers to play with. I think I will try to fiddle with the math and trade off some HP for damage, to bring it more in line with the monsters from the MM.
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Sep 8, 2015 23:35
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Thanks! I'm glad that worked out for you. I think you could probably just drop monster HP flat-out without any compensation in damage because damage still a bit on the high side thanks to a combination of me basing the damage numbers against a d10 hit dice class and the whole Hit Dice Healing mechanic not actually being all that great for enforcing any kind of longevity across an adventuring day.
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Sep 8, 2015 23:50
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My experience has been that rules-as-written 5e combat doesn't resolve much faster than (mm3) 4e. I seem to be playing more rounds per combat, so I guess it's "faster" in the sense of each round being shorter, but as long as people are casting spells, activating abilities, and making use of movement and terrain, the actual combats take maybe 5% less time at best. I haven't convinced anyone to use Gradenko's math, and I'm still not DMing this loving thing, so I can't compare the two.
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Sep 9, 2015 00:30
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I gimp monster HP pools all the time because I'm bored of them.
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Sep 9, 2015 00:44
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goatface posted:I gimp monster HP pools all the time because I'm bored of them. I've nearly always done something to prevent foregone conclusions dragging out over the next hour. Narrating "you easily finish off the last few wounded orcs" or whatever is better than everyone rolling attack/damage for 30 minutes. Exceptions are hexcrawl AD&D (because resource management) and most mm3 4e combats which actually ran pretty well most of hte time.
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Sep 9, 2015 00:53
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In 4e I felt like each player's turn went by at about the same speed. Taking maybe 1 to 3 minutes depending on the level, power, and player. In 5e there is much larger variation in turn lengths. Mostly turns seem to be fairly quick, until someone has to look up a spell and everything comes to a complete stop. This really changes the subjective experience of fights even when the entire fight takes the same length of time. My paladin's turn takes all of 30 seconds, followed by 5 and 1/2 minutes of the other two player's turns. For me, a fight is mostly waiting around for the other guys to do stuff, but for them turns just zip by.
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Sep 9, 2015 02:02
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wallawallawingwang posted:In 4e I felt like each player's turn went by at about the same speed. Taking maybe 1 to 3 minutes depending on the level, power, and player.
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Sep 9, 2015 04:27
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AlphaDog posted:I seem to be playing more rounds per combat, so I guess it's "faster" in the sense of each round being shorter I mean that's not nothing, if people feel like they're more involved in the combat- wallawallawingwang posted:My paladin's turn takes all of 30 seconds, followed by 5 and 1/2 minutes of the other two player's turns. For me, a fight is mostly waiting around for the other guys to do stuff, but for them turns just zip by. Oh, right.
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Sep 9, 2015 04:45
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bio347 posted:I want to live in your world where turns happen that fast. 1-3 minutes was my experience as well but it requires a lot of agreements by the table such as always rolling attack and damage together, bonuses if you are/shame if you aren't ready by the time the table comes around to you, etc. It didn't really improve the enjoyment of play AT ALL because the amount of pressure to rush through this tactical combat game that's supposed to be the fun part of D&D really sapped the enjoyment out of it.
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Sep 9, 2015 04:47
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bio347 posted:I want to live in your world where turns happen that fast. If a player turn takes 3 minutes, a DM turn takes 5, and there are 5 players + DM, you get 3 rounds per hour. We were going faster than that most of the time in 4e, at least after a couple of people got a handle on the rules.
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Sep 9, 2015 04:49
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I used gradenko's table for two encounters last weekend, and it worked out great. It seemed more fun than the DMG's encounter math. The idea that you can trade survivability for damage on a creature seems highly flawed, and being able to quickly adjust to differences in player count is very useful. One fight against some spiders seemed a little underwhelming; I need to find out what poison damage from a failed save after an attack hits is worth, because it definitely isn't worth its full value. The fight after that against helmed horrors and animated armors was a lot more interesting. The players felt genuinely threatened, even while the assassin one-shot one of the armors in the first round. I've been dealing with stuff having lower or higher AC or attack bonuses by scaling the damage and hit points; When my level 6 helmed horrors had 18 AC instead of 15, I multiplied the base hit point total by the difference in the player's estimated chance to hit (45%/60%, so 75% base HP). Same thing for attacks, but assuming a base chance to hit of 40%. My group is pretty combat-minded and we don't have time for many encounters, so I run around 1.5x the number of players in equal-level monsters. I've been halving or doubling the damage and HP of creatures in exchange for them taking up half or double their normal player count, when I want fodder or bosses. The only thing I've been using the DMG's math for anymore is to see how how much effective HP or DPR a trait is worth. Even the monster manual has been a bit rough; Most of the monsters I look up around the CRs appropriate to the players just make weapon attacks every round. Without heavy modification, my players can just stack AC and stack up for cover to become invulnerable, and the only creatures that affect an area seem to be spellcasters and dragons.
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Sep 9, 2015 05:20
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