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Random nitty-gritty question: anybody know if any monsters have saving throws that don't correspond to the proficiency-by-challenge-rating rule? What about monsters with skills that aren't the proficiency bonus or double the proficiency bonus?
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Jan 16, 2016 01:02
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Kurieg posted:What one of his dungeons required you to stone-to-flesh a door and hack through it? I played in a Hackmaster game where we were discussing doing this to a door, but it turned out the door had some kind of anti-magic field around it, so we did it on the wall next to the door instead. It might have been one of the adapted modules, but gently caress if I remember which one.
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Jan 16, 2016 01:02
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AlphaDog posted:AD&D has paragraphs and paragraphs of "think carefully about the ecology of the dungeon, making a realistic and believable dungeon is really important". 
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Jan 16, 2016 01:22
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Kurieg posted:What one of his dungeons required you to stone-to-flesh a door and hack through it? Maybe you're thinking of the Mithril Doors in the Tomb of Horrors? If the PCs scratch them, they start gushing blood, eventually filling the room and drowning the PCs. (Oh, and exposing the blood to fire produces a poisonous gas that kills you with -- sing it with me -- no save.)
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Jan 16, 2016 01:52
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Selachian posted:Maybe you're thinking of the Mithril Doors in the Tomb of Horrors? If the PCs scratch them, they start gushing blood, eventually filling the room and drowning the PCs. (Oh, and exposing the blood to fire produces a poisonous gas that kills you with -- sing it with me -- no save.) Man, I really need to read the original ToH. They left that out of the (fairly soft) 4e port I ran.
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Jan 16, 2016 01:55
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Tomb of Horrors is basically the shittiest dungeon ever conceived for a module.
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Jan 16, 2016 01:59
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Roadie posted:Random nitty-gritty question: anybody know if any monsters have saving throws that don't correspond to the proficiency-by-challenge-rating rule? What about monsters with skills that aren't the proficiency bonus or double the proficiency bonus? I can only find monsters that A. do not have a separate "Saving Throw" line in their statblock, so I assume that creature's saving throws would just be d20+attribute modifier, like your Wolf example; this is actually new to me since I didn't know you were supposed to be able to do that - does giving Prof+attribute saving throws cost something in a creature's budget? B. have a separate "Saving Throw" line in their statblock, and it shows a list of their attributes with the final saving throw bonus listed, and the number is always attribute modifier+Prof. The only exception I could find was the Kraken, whose numbers were 1 off, but I'm pretty sure that's been errata'd. Radio Talmudist posted:Anyone read this: http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Imagination-Gygax-Dungeons-Dragons/dp/1632862794 ? I'd consider Designers & Dragons by Appelcline to be the better work.
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Jan 16, 2016 02:26
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:Tomb of Horrors is basically the shittiest dungeon ever conceived for a module.
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Jan 16, 2016 03:03
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MonsterEnvy posted:Did everyone have fun? Because honestly that sounds really fun to me. Rise of Tiamat has been pretty random. There's a string of different dungeons and lairs loosely connected by the plot. You do get to fight a bunch of dragons though. This week we did probably the coolest thing so far in the 2-book module: negotiated with a group of good dragons to bring them into our growing army. It was a full RP session and pretty neat, everyone got into it. The module had motivations for each of 5 dragons, who all confer with the party one at a time. It was interesting and seemed well written, which is probably the first time I can say that about HODQ/RoT.
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Jan 16, 2016 03:06
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:Tomb of Horrors is basically the shittiest dungeon ever conceived for a module.
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Jan 16, 2016 05:46
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Illvillainy posted:I think it had competition from the World's Largest Dungeon or whatever from the d20 flood. I really want to like the World's Largest Dungeon, but it's so big, and those big hallways are full of nothing for the most part.
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Jan 16, 2016 06:49
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:Tomb of Horrors is basically the shittiest dungeon ever conceived for a module. Unless you're running it for people who are playing through it for precisely that reason, yes. I found it fascinating because of exactly how much it seemed designed to gently caress with and frustrate players. It's almost worth playing just from a "see, this is why you DON'T do things this way usually" perspective, along with some great moments of baiting player psychology that seemed to work as well on my party in 201X as it must have in the 1980's.
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Jan 17, 2016 00:19
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gradenko_2000 posted:I guess this means Sanglorian can vastly expand his Microlite5e project. You read my mind! And the irony of vastly expanding a project designed to be tiny is not lost on me ... -- In terms of different approaches to copyright, culture and scarcity, this news [EDIT: the 5E SRD] is pretty exciting to me. Whatever you think of 3E and the OGL boom and bust, that period serves as powerful evidence that culture can be created and paid for free from many of the copyright restrictions that are taken for granted. And that they'd go with the same licence - when even D&D fans often called for a much more restricted licence - is a vindication of that model. Sanglorian fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Jan 17, 2016 |
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Jan 17, 2016 00:38
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Hubis posted:Unless you're running it for people who are playing through it for precisely that reason, yes. Certainly I think it'd be amusing to read through, but even if you did something like "wow that would have killed you, tick the counter again" I feel like the novelty would wear off by the dozenth death, even if you were playing it up for laughs.
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Jan 17, 2016 00:48
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gradenko_2000 posted:Certainly I think it'd be amusing to read through, but even if you did something like "wow that would have killed you, tick the counter again" I feel like the novelty would wear off by the dozenth death, even if you were playing it up for laughs. As far as I understand things, modules like Tomb of Horrors were never really intended to be completed in the sense of "...and then we killed the final boss and saved the kingdom". I don't mean that they were supposed to be completely impossible, but rather that they were intended for competitive play at conventions/tournaments - your group would win a prize if you got further in than any other group, or extracted the most treasure, or whatever other thing measured success. I recall hearing stories of booby prizes for "most party members killed by falling" and stuff too. Based on this thinking, I'd really really like to see a game that starts off even more basic than Basic, and then you unlock classes, races, spells, abilities, etc by completing objectives in a style similar to computer game achievements. Like, Feather Fall doesn't exist as a spell until it's unlocked by someone falling in a pit and dying. Nobody can create a Rogue until the party has been ambushed at least once. Etc.
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Jan 17, 2016 01:54
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http://www.5esrd.com/ is a thing now, made by the same guy who does the Pathfinder SRD site. Right now though it's just flat HTML, and it's a straight copy of WOTC's material (as it should be I guess) so all of the flaws about making references to things that aren't there because it's a C/P of corebook sections is there.
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Jan 17, 2016 02:39
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Ravenloft being announced Monday.
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Jan 17, 2016 09:28
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I can't wait to see how they gently caress this up.
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Jan 18, 2016 03:01
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MonsterEnvy posted:Ravenloft being announced Monday. Are you just saying that or do you know that from somewhere? One of my friends is a big Ravenloft guy.
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Jan 18, 2016 03:17
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Covok posted:Are you just saying that or do you know that from somewhere? One of my friends is a big Ravenloft guy. MonsterEnvy is Mike Mearls; this is thread-canon.
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Jan 18, 2016 03:19
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Notorious GW apologists BoLS had a write-up on it today.
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Jan 18, 2016 03:27
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Our regional Adventurers League guy told us about it this week. Ravenloft confirmed.
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Jan 18, 2016 04:14
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Castle Ravenloft and House of Strahd were both good modules, so it'll be interesting to see how this goes. Since (at least in my mind) "you get trapped in the demiplane of dread" is pretty central to Ravenloft, I'm not sure what that bit in the linked article about "it might be set in forgotten realms and not the actual demiplane" is all about.
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Jan 18, 2016 05:08
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Ravenloft had some really good modules that flew under the radar. Feast of Goblyns was very good, and book of crypts, the collection of one shots, was incredibly useful for when the players wander off the beaten path. I got an entire year long campaign out of the Nightmare Lands box set too.
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Jan 18, 2016 05:34
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I don't care about what you mouthbreathers say about it - but I'm loving pumped for Ravenloft 5e. The Nightmare Lands box set was awesome and I still use Book of Crypts when I'm in a blind. Abyss was seriously kind of meh though - that's money I'm not seeing back. Especially since I live in a country where not many people play D&D (might have to sell it on eBay).
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Jan 18, 2016 15:52
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So who is writing Ravenloft? Is it actually in-house or is it contracted out like the other stuff has been lately. If it's in-house, I think we can expect a lot of copy-pasting from earlier edition versions.
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Jan 18, 2016 16:44
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I'm sure Ravenloft is going to have a bunch of game-able material and some nice art. It's the mechanical parts, and the possibility of having Ravenloft crowbar'd into the Forgotten Realms, that I'm not looking forward to.
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Jan 18, 2016 16:49
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Jimbozig posted:So who is writing Ravenloft? Is it actually in-house or is it contracted out like the other stuff has been lately. Apparently it's Perkins and Crawford.
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Jan 18, 2016 17:41
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And here it is http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/news/return-ravenloft Written in collaboration with Tracy and Laura Hickman, the authors of the original Ravenloft adventure published in 1983, Curse of Strahd pits players against the vampire Strahd von Zarovich. Curse of Strahd will be available to everyone on March 15, 2016. ritorix fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Jan 18, 2016 |
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Jan 18, 2016 18:07
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gradenko_2000 posted:It's the mechanical parts, and the possibility of having Ravenloft crowbar'd into the Forgotten Realms, that I'm not looking forward to. quote:Heroes from the Forgotten Realms and other D&D worlds can easily be drawn into Strahd’s cursed land. Once there, they must contend with the horrors of Barovia. Its people are melancholy, misshapen and grotesque, living in fear of the wolves and other creatures that serve Strahd’s evil will. The only hope for the trapped adventurers is to heed the warnings of a mysterious fortune-teller named Madam Eva. Drawing random cards from her tarroka deck, she directs adventurers to search Strahd’s domain for artifacts and allies to help the master of Castle Ravenloft. That is, before he orchestrates your demise for his amusement and feasts on your terror.
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Jan 18, 2016 18:18
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Well, at least there's Symphony of the Night for everyone's campaign scripting. I mean, look at the cover, that just screams "What is a man, but a miserable pile of secrets!"
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Jan 18, 2016 19:27
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I am looking forward to this. I was going to run a conversion of the original Ravenloft. But this negates the need to do that.
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Jan 18, 2016 19:28
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Commissar Kip posted:I don't care about what you mouthbreathers say about it - but I'm loving pumped for Ravenloft 5e. What country?
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Jan 18, 2016 21:18
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It's me. I'm the one who never much liked Ravenloft. 
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Jan 18, 2016 22:58
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dwarf74 posted:It's me. Same, D&D is incredibly poo poo at running  adventurers.
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Jan 18, 2016 23:15
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I never understood D&D as a system to run a legitimate horror game, though Ravenloft is great for a more Castlevania approach to it. Castlevania isn't scary--it's about beating the poo poo out of spooky scary classic monsters. D&D can pull that off, I think.
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Jan 18, 2016 23:22
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Having not been there when it happened, it feels like the ... reverence people have for Ravenloft comes more from the fact that it happened at all and it was so different from the adventures / modules that had come before, rather than from well it actually fit into the gameplay.
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Jan 18, 2016 23:33
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Part of the 'horror' of Ravenloft was the denial of some of the assumed power and security of D&D characters. They were taken from wherever you call home and sent to basically a prison plane. Spells and undead turning didn't work as expected, diseases were worse, "dark powers" were watching you, etc.
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Jan 18, 2016 23:39
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Harrow posted:I never understood D&D as a system to run a legitimate horror game, though Ravenloft is great for a more Castlevania approach to it. Castlevania isn't scary--it's about beating the poo poo out of spooky scary classic monsters. D&D can pull that off, I think. It's like with Cthulhu Mythos stuff. If you put a Shoggoth in your D&D game it's so the characters can fight a Shoggoth, not so they go insane and die.
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Jan 18, 2016 23:52
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Horror is pretty hard to do in almost any system, honestly. Vulnerability and surprise just don't translate well to a world where paranoid players try like hell to avoid being surprised by anything. Ravenloft was just sort of cool and gothic in an era where you choices were Generic Fantasy or Generic Fantasy (with dragons). In a post-White-Wolf world yeah I'm not really sure I understand the appeal beyond punching skeletons inside out. I think it appeals a.) to Castlevania enthusiasts, b.) to 'mature' roleplayers, and c.) to people sick of orcs. EDIT: I should probably add that I think punching skeletons inside out using gauntlets cut from the plane of Elemental Gravestone during a black lightning storm to the sound of power metal is cool and rad and the best way to use Ravenloft.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:02
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