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IT BEGINS posted:2. The [max die + con bonus + con score] level 1 HP rule is good but less important once you hit around level 3/4. I really like the idea of bumping up hit points at 1st level and any changes to the way hit points are calculated should result in characters who can survive 1st level but who don't gain hit points at an exponential rate. I've spoken about this before, but D&D has a really weird difficulty curve where 1st level is actually the most difficult because not only do you only have a handful of hit points you also don't have all that many resources to deal with encounters, and once you level up you not only gain more hit points but more spells and whatnot to deal with encounters. Personally, the ideal would be that characters would start with a lot of hit points (like, maybe Con Score and a class base based on their hit die) and then subsequent levels would give you fewer hit points, such as instead of adding the con modifier to subsequent hit dice it'd only be the base roll, or a weighted average. I think Hackmaster's latest iteration does it like this: your base HP is equal to your Constitution Score, then every odd level (including level 1) you roll your class hit die and add that to your base HP, but at even levels instead of getting another hit die you get to reroll your last hit die and if you happen to roll lower you just use your last level's roll. It means that hit point increase isn't quite as linear as in, for the sake of comparison, 3e, but the higher starting amount of hit points means that the first few levels are more easy to survive but once you get a few levels under your belt you won't see an exponential increase in HP. It's been a while since I've run any iteration of D&D, but if I ever run B/X again I'll be using this rule.
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Jan 5, 2016 11:44
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Another variation of a theme I read about once was having the player roll 3 hit dice at level 1, such as 3d6, and that'd be your HP. At level 2, you'd still roll 3d6 again. If it's higher, you keep it. If it's not, you gain 1 HP. At level 3, you'd still roll 3d6 again. If it's higher, you keep it. If it's not, you gain 1 HP. Only at level 4 onwards would you actually start gaining more hit dice to roll, but even then you'd always roll all your hit dice, rather than just the additional one, taking the new result if it's higher, and then adding 1 HP otherwise Ratpick posted:subsequent levels would give you fewer hit points, such as instead of adding the con modifier to subsequent hit dice it'd only be the base roll, or a weighted average. OSR D&D did this, of course! A level 9 Expert set Fighter would have 9d8 HP, but upon hitting level 10 would just gain a flat 2 HP, period, no CON modifier.
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Jan 5, 2016 11:56
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Ratpick posted:I've spoken about this before, but D&D has a really weird difficulty curve where 1st level is actually the most difficult because not only do you only have a handful of hit points you also don't have all that many resources to deal with encounters, and once you level up you not only gain more hit points but more spells and whatnot to deal with encounters. It's so that you ~earn~ your later powers.
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Jan 5, 2016 12:26
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gradenko_2000 posted:OSR D&D did this, of course! A level 9 Expert set Fighter would have 9d8 HP, but upon hitting level 10 would just gain a flat 2 HP, period, no CON modifier. There are a bunch of OSR "D&D":s. Or did you mean the old TSR B/X sets?
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Jan 5, 2016 12:26
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roll 127d6 hit dice, drop the 98 lowest, arrange the rest in an array and choose according to date, time, prevailing winds, and planetary alignment
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Jan 5, 2016 12:31
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Comrade Koba posted:There are a bunch of OSR "D&D":s. Or did you mean the old TSR B/X sets? I just say "OSR D&D" as a catch-all term for anything pre-WOTC/pre-3rd Edition, but specific to the example I was citing yes I was referring to the B/X sets. Also, peep this passage from page 18 of the DM section of the Mentzer Red Box: quote:Hit Points
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Jan 5, 2016 12:55
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Really Pants posted:roll 127d6 hit dice, drop the 98 lowest, arrange the rest in an array and choose according to date, time, prevailing winds, and planetary alignment ... and few enough people manage to do it correctly that nobody ever notices that it's supposed to always work out to 20 + con mod.
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Jan 5, 2016 13:06
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Sage Genesis posted:They can also "kill" a guy and then basically let them live but dominate them for several minutes, with a saving throw DC of up to 31. You can hijack an angel or demon prince, force them give up all their magic and secrets for you, and then finally make them commit suicide before the duration runs out. I didn't notice that one before. Okay, that's kinda stupid. Also I like how it's a bard showing off their "combat prowess" and that's especially intimidating but something like a barbarian being able to cave a dragon's head in with a single blow isn't very intimidating.
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Jan 5, 2016 21:30
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'Tumbling Fool' from the College of Satire seems kinda cool, for the Dash+Climb Speed aspects.
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Jan 6, 2016 00:58
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Did somebody here in TG write a Fighter With Followers kind of thing for 5e? A fighty-type with a bunch of minions who could do stuff? I swear I remember reading one in one of the Next threads.
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Jan 6, 2016 01:07
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With credit to AlphaDog:quote:When you choose this archetype at third level, gain a number of grunts equal to your proficiency bonus. This number increases with your Proficiency bonus. See "Grunts", below.
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Jan 6, 2016 01:14
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Thank you, gradenko and AlphaDog.
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Jan 6, 2016 01:22
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Ratpick posted:your base HP is equal to your Constitution Score They should let you use Charisma -- the luck component of 'luckmeat'
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Jan 6, 2016 06:41
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P.d0t posted:They should let you use Charisma -- the luck component of 'luckmeat' Add both cha and con, together. This has the side effect of making paladins near-indestructable.
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Jan 6, 2016 09:07
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I may be losing my mind. I made a post today on reddit about something that had been upsetting me for a while. Every so often, I'm made a thread or read a thread about D&D horror stories - lets be honest, we all enjoy reading about grognards from time to time. Invariably, someone (usually but not always female) would post a story about their how a game session would involve a rape, sometimes of their own character. I made a post today talking about that was unambiguously hosed up and how DMs and players should realize that all players have different comfort levels and take steps to ensure their tables are safe places for people. I mentioned that players or DMs should make efforts to speak up if its evident that this kind of harassment is happening. I even conceded that some groups may be okay with touching up quite mature themes, including sexual violence...I may not ever want to touch that subject with a 10 foot pole in my games, or game with people who'd ever be into that, but what a bunch of consensual adults get up to in their own time isn't worth getting angry about, as long as they don't impose that poo poo on others who have not signed up for an orc gang rape. I got so much pushback it was ridiculous. On the plus side, the most upvoted comments echoed my sentiments, but a disturbing percentage involve comments by incredulous men explaining that if you could kill people in d&d, why was raping them such a big deal? What are you, a tumblrina? Jesus gently caress. I hate this fanbase sometimes. Radio Talmudist fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Jan 7, 2016 |
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Jan 7, 2016 01:06
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Radio Talmudist posted:I may be losing my mind. a) Reddit is poo poo, and has actively defended pedophiles before. b) Dnd is poo poo and has involved discussions on foetal aoe attacks before. Avoid these things on the internet if you are looking for any kind of basic human levels of self awareness of decency. Hth.
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Jan 7, 2016 01:10
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Radio Talmudist posted:What are you, a tumblrina? Thanks for naming the SJW tumbling bard I want to roll.
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Jan 7, 2016 01:26
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Radio Talmudist posted:What are you, a tumblrina? I think what scares me the most about the modern incarnation of this hobby is not so much that it is a terrible place full of jerks; that has pretty much always been true. No, I weep for the future because of the terrible vocabulary they've accumulated to ejaculate their weirdness all over the internet. Seriously I can't wade into any non-SA discussion group about stuff like that without somebody flying off the handle about spectral anti-rape tumblr people. Which is hilarious because tumblr is by and large a bunch of solitary soap boxes where people can be upset about whatever they want in the privacy of their own blogs.
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Jan 7, 2016 01:42
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Mendrian posted:I think what scares me the most about the modern incarnation of this hobby is not so much that it is a terrible place full of jerks; that has pretty much always been true. No, I weep for the future because of the terrible vocabulary they've accumulated to ejaculate their weirdness all over the internet. It's really remarkable. And while sometimes there is oversensitivity in those niche parts of the internet, the kind of people who spend all day fuming about how someone out there thinks their favorite show is mildly racist are just as likely if not more likely to fly off the handle as the people they're deriding.
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Jan 7, 2016 01:43
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There's a reason why people would say "reddit is cheating" back when we still had grognards.txt To be the littlest amount of fair, there are people who will agree with you on best practices for being a cool and good TG player, but goddamn will ever be a tide of awful poo poo to go along with it. Beyond the larger sociological context of people who view rights and respectful treatment as a zero-sum game and have turned reactionary as a result, there's a LOT of people in this hobby who don't know jack about respectful treatment to begin with. Perhaps I'm lucky that I've never quite run into them in a game before.
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Jan 7, 2016 02:00
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The problem is that assholes, like a shrieker fungus, squack loudly, attracting the attention of other fungus, until the chain reaction renders a small dimly-lit cellar is the site of an incredible uproar utterly disproportionate to their numbers. SA, with a population of 100% trolls, myself included, has embraced MAD as a solution, allowing for civil conversations most of the time, unless someone pushes the button and the thread turns into a nuclear vortex of backbiting goonfuckery. Tunicate fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Jan 7, 2016 |
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Jan 7, 2016 02:07
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aegof posted:Thank you, gradenko and AlphaDog. The archetype quoted is based on the idea that the PC is a bunch of normal people as a single character, not "a fighter with an entourage". To do the fighter-with-entourage thing you'd probably need to re-think some stuff. It's only phrased like it is because I was trying to shoehorn it into 5e's format and language. The archetype quoted (and the similar stuff I've been working on) pretty much requires you to be comfortable with abstracting guys who fall in combat as "exhausted", or with the oldschool but cheesy idea that your grunts/hirelings are an expendable, replenishable resource like arrows or rations rather than full-blown protagonist PCs. To repeat myself, the "PC" in the original archetype was envisioned as a squad of interchangable infantrymen, not as an important hero and his best-friend sidekicks. I kinda liked the idea of 3 players being big drat heroes and 1 player being everyone else involved, playing into both the Jason & the Argonauts kinda story and into D&D's Chainmail origins where "a fighting man" was analogous to an infantry squad and "a magic-user" was like an artillery piece. I have ideas that shift the concept further in the squad direction and further in the hero+sidekick direction. I'll post them in the next few days when I'm not exhausted from walking up mountains and camping/drinking. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 02:24 on Jan 7, 2016 |
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Jan 7, 2016 02:22
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Trying to have a discussion about sex with autistic millennial virgins is never going to work out well regardless of the overarching topic. It could be "sex and fly-fishing" and it would still turn lovely. Or fishy. Or fishshitty.
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Jan 7, 2016 02:57
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Before Reddit became popular, all those idiots were here. Reddit's popularity, effectively non-existent moderation, and anonymity creates all the ingredients needed to form large groups of idiots. It's a good repository to learn what Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump said or did within the last 30 seconds. Other than some esoteric, hidden-away boards it's a pretty useless community.
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Jan 7, 2016 03:28
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Sounds like most social media.
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Jan 7, 2016 03:43
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:Before Reddit became popular, all those idiots were here. Reddit's popularity, effectively non-existent moderation, and anonymity creates all the ingredients needed to form large groups of idiots. It's a good repository to learn what Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump said or did within the last 30 seconds. Other than some esoteric, hidden-away boards it's a pretty useless community. I go back and forth. For all the lovely comments I got for my post, many, if not most posters agreed with me. And r/dnd has generally been a really useful and supportive subreddit. But instances like this show the dark underbelly of that community. At least most of them got downvoted.
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Jan 7, 2016 03:49
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:Before Reddit became popular, all those idiots were here. Reddit's popularity, effectively non-existent moderation, and anonymity creates all the ingredients needed to form large groups of idiots. It's a good repository to learn what Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump said or did within the last 30 seconds. Other than some esoteric, hidden-away boards it's a pretty useless community. Reddit literally became the place to flock to for people too lovely for 4chan. It's more or less become the shithole of the internet. And this is a hobby that already has always had a high number of shitheads in it. ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Jan 7, 2016 |
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Jan 7, 2016 04:09
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kingcom posted:a) Reddit is poo poo, and has actively defended pedophiles before. There is no sex in dnd and definitely no gross infants
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Jan 7, 2016 04:11
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Which is then also the place that WOTC entrusts will continue healthy discussion of their games!
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Jan 7, 2016 04:13
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I mean the ACTUAL problem is that the too cool to care south park libertarian edgelords of the 2000's and a bit of the late 90's are now too old to be cool anymore, and the internet has grown too wide for them to claim it as their private echo chamber, and they're super angry about that and have spent their whole life being taught that their opinion is the most important thing in the world, so now they're lashing out in a mix of rage and desperation. Reddit is simply the place that tolerates them the most; most left SA and 4chan when the overall culture of those websites slowly changed and they became a parody of themselves. There's also the fact that Reddit's actual mechanics - namely the anonymous voting system - strongly encourages lovely behavior, mobbing, and creating echo chambers. This connects with D&D because, well, most of those dumb edgelords are also big fuckin' nerds, and ended up either in tabletop gaming or within arms length. Same reason this poo poo is going down so hard in video games and comic books.
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Jan 7, 2016 04:20
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Radio Talmudist posted:r/dnd has generally been a really useful and supportive subreddit. I wish I'd had the same experience. I removed it from my subreddit list because on 5E's launch it was the biggest cesspool of grogs and infants I'd yet seen from the DnD community. Civilized discussion was thoroughly unproductive (on top of reddit's comment system actively discouraging good discussion with multiple participants).
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Jan 7, 2016 05:46
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IT BEGINS posted:I wish I'd had the same experience. I removed it from my subreddit list because on 5E's launch it was the biggest cesspool of grogs and infants I'd yet seen from the DnD community. Civilized discussion was thoroughly unproductive (on top of reddit's comment system actively discouraging good discussion with multiple participants). I thought they love 5th edition? I mean, the "Choosing an Edition" page mentions "oh, there's a low power cap" as 5e's only downside. The "4e is WOW for tabletop" and "you can't roleplay in 4e" jerk is pretty strong, too. I had a guy argue with me that 4e is worse than 5e because players were just doing the same action every round, for example rangers just Twin Striking every round, as opposed to 5e where players were more likely to swing on chandeliers or some poo poo.
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Jan 7, 2016 13:28
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Interesting player created inventions/improvised tools. GO!
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Jan 7, 2016 14:15
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ActusRhesus posted:Interesting player created inventions/improvised tools. GO! A duckflute. A flute that plays songs for ducks.
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Jan 7, 2016 15:03
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ActusRhesus posted:Interesting player created inventions/improvised tools. GO! (Mild HotDQ spoilers) We tricked Cyanwrath to climb up a secret trap door only to dump a few dozen scimitars on him that our dwarf had been carrying in a barrel, (his plan was to eventually load them in a catapult or build some kind of custom scimitar ballista for them, but we convinced him this was better.) This allowed us to easily finish him off in a round without taking any damage. This made reddit a bunch of sourpusses when our DM shared it on r/dndnext because we were not playing realistically enough and our dwarf should not have been able to carry about 130 pounds anywhere. Bluedeanie fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Jan 7, 2016 |
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Jan 7, 2016 15:42
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Bluedeanie posted:This made reddit a bunch of sourpusses when our DM shared it on r/dndnext because we were not playing realistically enough and our dwarf should not have been able to carry about 130 pounds anywhere. For a game that put the roleplaying back in RPG after 4e, there sure are a lot of stick-in-the-mud players. Content: I had a Ranger player and a Rogue player combine their bear traps and arrows to fashion a stairway/ladder up a sheer cliff on short notice.
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Jan 7, 2016 15:56
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I've never understood the appeal of 'realistic' campaigns like that, where you try to make the PCs feel more like cavemen than heroes. I had a guy in my group DM like that once. He mandated that anyone with 10 or less intelligence (except spellcasters) was illiterate, and no one was allowed to play a female character because medieval sexism was "an important part of my campaign setting".
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Jan 7, 2016 16:01
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Vanguard Warden posted:I've never understood the appeal of 'realistic' campaigns like that, where you try to make the PCs feel more like cavemen than heroes. The punchline is that a "dump a bunch of scimitars on 'em" trick would have been just fine if it was via a well-timed Tenser's Floating Disk dismissal.
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Jan 7, 2016 16:04
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gradenko_2000 posted:The punchline is that a "dump a bunch of scimitars on 'em" trick would have been just fine if it was via a well-timed Tenser's Floating Disk dismissal. This is what really gets me about 5e discussions. It's the big chandelier-swinging roleplay improv empowerment game, apparently, but as soon as someone tries to actually swing from that chandelier they always, always are being badwrong. Except if they cast Mordenkainen's Helpful Light Fixture because in that case they're being creative and possibly even overpowered.
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Jan 7, 2016 16:09
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Pretty much every improvised solution I've had that didn't involve magic was knock an enemy into a hole/prevent it from coming out and then just pour oil on it and burn it til the monster stops moving. Tried and true
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Jan 7, 2016 16:12
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