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Drone posted:Quite a feat since 3.5 has only been out for just over ten years. I don't see any problem with that, the logical conclusion then is that fifth edition is made for no currently living person.
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Mar 4, 2016 16:35
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bawbzilla posted:I was thinking about some gimmicky things I would also like to hear if anyone has stupid gimmicks I can use in 5e, not to be really powerful but just very specifically useful.
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Mar 4, 2016 16:37
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I feel like everyone is kinda coming at me from an angle of I'm being forced into this and don't know what to do. I'm not. I am totally inexperienced with DnD itself but not RPGs in general. Someone made an off handed comment about losing their DM, I volunteered to step in as long as they were willing to let me stumble through the first few sessions so I could learn. There was unanimous agreement. We're all good friends. I've always wanted to learn both DnD and DMing, so I figured this was the perfect opportunity and I took it. Sure, probably better if one of them were the DM for the first session and I was a player, but that's not what they (or I) really want to do. I was just seeing if anyone had a general suggestion for campaign, that's all. I went and looked through the official campaigns -- Out of the Abyss looks really fun, but I read several reviews that say it's really, really bad for new DMs. So I've been flipping through Hoard of the Dragon Queen instead and this looks a lot easier to grasp, so I'll probably start with this unless someone has a better suggestion. Been reading the advice here, and it mirrors a lot of what you guys mentioned: level 1 loving sucks and they will die to everything. I'll probably just toss them level 2 early on, as a few people there mention, or nerf the encounters a bit.
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Mar 4, 2016 16:38
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Drone posted:Come on now, the majority of players in any game have always preferred not to GM. The shittiest thing about D&D, any D&D, is that one player gets saddled with 90% of the work. There actually are games out there where this isn't the case.
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Mar 4, 2016 16:39
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AbrahamLincolnLog posted:I feel like everyone is kinda coming at me from an angle of I'm being forced into this and don't know what to do. I'm not. I am totally inexperienced with DnD itself but not RPGs in general. Someone made an off handed comment about losing their DM, I volunteered to step in as long as they were willing to let me stumble through the first few sessions so I could learn. There was unanimous agreement. We're all good friends. Hoard of the Dragon Queen is infamous for being really boring. But yeah, there's not really anything currently published first-party that's good for new DM's. I've heard some good things about some Goodman Games stuff though, so maybe try there, or check out reviews of them before buying.
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Mar 4, 2016 16:40
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Drone posted:Hoard of the Dragon Queen is infamous for being really boring. Is it? Strange, I'm finding the opposite everywhere I look. In fact I got the idea to run it from posts on reddit and /tg/ who specifically praised it for being engaging and fairly easy for a new DM. But then I come along and read reviews like this and your post who say the opposite and specifically say don't run it as a new DM. So now you see my confusion, there's a shitload of opposing information for every campaign I look at. Everything I've looked at has both said "this is good for newbies" and then the next page I find says "don't run this as a newbie". Thanks for the suggestion, though, I'll check their stuff out.
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Mar 4, 2016 16:45
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A lot of people will say "it's good for newbies" when they mean "it's what I'm used to." That's what I mean when I say it's made for people who played only 3.5 forever. For what it's worth, I tried Horde of the Dragon Queen once and it was three hours of nothing but "I attack the kobold."
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Mar 4, 2016 16:54
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There might be different definitions of newbie at play here.
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Mar 4, 2016 16:56
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Also, if this is your first time GMing, you will want to read this: http://slyflourish.com/lazydm/ It will teach you techniques on how to avoid excessive prep and make your sessions fun for everyone.
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Mar 4, 2016 16:57
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Really Pants posted:The shittiest thing about D&D, any D&D, is that one player gets saddled with 90% of the work. I was blown away by how much easier it was to GM 4e, coming from 3.5. You mean, I can just turn to the goblins page and I've got a sneaky goblin, a shooty goblin, a goblin spellcaster, a tanky goblin, all statted up with different gimmicks baked-in? I don't have to start with a basic goblin and then restat him five times? Spellcasting monsters aren't as complex to run as a player wizard? If I want a player-race adversary I don't have to run through all of character-generation (including buying all their goddamn magic items) and still get a kind-of-poo poo result? Suddenly I could spend my prep time on the story instead of the mechanics (since if I ever needed a fight it was a simple matter to put one together from pre-made monsters) and it made for a better story plus I actually wanted to GM more. I wonder if a lot of those "GM-only" enhancements that 4e did to the general D&D formula were lost on players who never GMed.
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Mar 4, 2016 16:59
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The first time I ever GM'd, I didn't have a "campaign" in mind. My notes were: * The character will escort a caravan of civilians from point A to point B * At some point during the night, bandits will attack * The caravan master is in cahoots with the bandits * The bandit cave is in a forest halfway between point A and point B I've run this scenario across three different groups, and have had three different reactions to it each time. One group fended off the bandit attack, investigated the caravan master and apprehended him, but completed the escort to Point B (which I usually lay down as "the Imperial Capital") before heading for the bandit cave, so that they could take their sweet time smoking out and SWATing the poo poo out of the bandits. Another group let themselves be "sidetracked" by pursuing the bandits completely. And the third group had a series of mishaps in detecting the first bandit attack, such that the whole rest of the trip to Point B became a running fight. Kibner posted:Gradenko has posted a normalized monster math formula to make the physical attacks and defenses of monsters work in parallel with player progression. I don't have the link to that post handy, though. Thanks for the plug! It can be found here.
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Mar 4, 2016 18:23
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Gort posted:I wonder if a lot of those "GM-only" enhancements that 4e did to the general D&D formula were lost on players who never GMed. Yeah, 4th ed was great at making the monster/encounter/npc aspect of writing an adventure faster and less difficult. It'd be easy to miss that if you weren't interested in DMing, if you just skimmed through the books, or if you held the "I already know how to run D&D, 12 kobolds sounds about right for this room" attitude that made playing with strangers such a crapshoot when it was released. The transition from 2nd to 3rd was actually worse for that.
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Mar 5, 2016 02:48
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AlphaDog posted:The transition from 2nd to 3rd was actually worse for that. "Are you a Fighter/Mage? Just split your levels clean down the middle!" 3e's "Conversion Guide" might be the best evidence that they sincerely didn't understand the game they had made.
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Mar 5, 2016 03:25
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Nah I'm talking about people not reading/understanding the new books and then proceeding with their idea of how things have always been done. My memory is pretty hazy at this point, but stuff that still sticks out from the 2/3 transition (like, within a few months of the new game coming out) included a group that misunderstood multiclassing so that 2 sessions went by with a 1st level fighter/wizard. they also did 60' movement per round, with half movement for gnomes, dwarves, and halflings, which hosed up a hilarious amount of stuff. (e: I remember a group ignoring 5-foot steps, that might have been this group too) In another group (using pre gen characters) there was some hand-wavey fuckery about to-hit and armor class (and several other things) just making me steadily more and more confused until I straight up asked if anyone had even read the books. No other players had, and the DM admitted that he'd kinda skimmed the rules half an hour before the game but it wasn't that different from 2nd ed so there shouldn't be any problems. Another group rolled 1d10 for initiative and I still can't figure that one out since "everything's a d20 now" was a big deal at the time. It wasn't until well after 3.5 came out that I actually played with a group that had read and udnerstood most of the rules. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Mar 5, 2016 |
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Mar 5, 2016 03:47
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ProfessorCirno posted:"Are you a Fighter/Mage? Just split your levels clean down the middle!" Good news! DTRPG has officially re-released that document for free! I think I might have found something new to hate-review. AlphaDog posted:Nah I'm talking about people not reading/understanding the new books and then proceeding with their idea of how things have always been done. In the Demo Adventure for 3rd Edition, in the first page of text, just as the players are entering combat:  I mean, I get that this probably was only how a pittance of players actually got introduced to the game, but the capacity for "I don't need to read this poo poo, I already know how to play D&D!" is pretty astounding.
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Mar 5, 2016 04:02
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ProfessorCirno posted:"Are you a Fighter/Mage? Just split your levels clean down the middle!" To be fair, a Mage 6/Fighter 6 vs a mage 8 seems ok.
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Mar 5, 2016 04:04
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gradenko_2000 posted:I mean, I get that this probably was only how a pittance of players actually got introduced to the game, but the capacity for "I don't need to read this poo poo, I already know how to play D&D!" is pretty astounding. Yeah the whole thing was  for me. 4th ed was too, on release. So far everyone who's run 5th ed for me has actually made the effort, probably because I'm not playing public games.
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Mar 5, 2016 04:12
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Tunicate posted:To be fair, a Mage 6/Fighter 6 vs a mage 8 seems ok. Yeah, now try going from Fighter/Mage 8/8 to Fighter 4 / Mage 4 in 3e.
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Mar 5, 2016 04:20
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gradenko_2000 posted:Good news! DTRPG has officially re-released that document for free! Why the gently caress do those skeletons get a +5 to their initiative? I guess when you don't have pesky flesh and muscle to slow you down, you can be pretty speedy! 
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Mar 5, 2016 08:10
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It's true.
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Mar 5, 2016 08:25
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Dick Burglar posted:Why the gently caress do those skeletons get a +5 to their initiative? I guess when you don't have pesky flesh and muscle to slow you down, you can be pretty speedy! Probably improved initiative and a +1 dex modifier. Monsters in the MM always had pretty random feats, but Improved Initiative showed up every so often IIRC.
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Mar 5, 2016 08:28
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3.5 skeletons gain Improved initiative as a bonus feat as a part of their templating.
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Mar 5, 2016 08:29
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Beaten, but yes, it's because the skeletons have the Improved Initiative feat.
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Mar 5, 2016 08:58
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thefakenews posted:I haven't actually converted anything from 5E to 4E (I have converted Pathfinder to 4E, and I suspect some of the same issues arise), but my impression is that you would need to rework most of the encounters. That likely includes cutting, or combining encounters. 5E stuff seems to hew closer to the 3.x encounter design philosophy of having more trash fights and using a lot of monsters that are the same. 4E works better if all the encounters are meaningful and there is a nice mix of monster roles. Yep that makes sense. Experience workflow I can do and encounter design I can look up to get hints. Thanks very much.
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Mar 5, 2016 09:31
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Kibner posted:Also, if this is your first time GMing, you will want to read this: http://slyflourish.com/lazydm/ It will teach you techniques on how to avoid excessive prep and make your sessions fun for everyone. I'm actually reading this now, and it's solid advice. Totally worth a purchase.
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Mar 5, 2016 13:45
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Dick Burglar posted:Why the gently caress do those skeletons get a +5 to their initiative? I guess when you don't have pesky flesh and muscle to slow you down, you can be pretty speedy! Because Ray Harryhausen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF_Fi7x93PY
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Mar 5, 2016 19:42
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Dick Burglar posted:Why the gently caress do those skeletons get a +5 to their initiative? I guess when you don't have pesky flesh and muscle to slow you down, you can be pretty speedy! What, you thought skeleton superiority was something actually new to 5e?
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Mar 5, 2016 20:19
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Novum posted:I would also like to hear if anyone has stupid gimmicks I can use in 5e, not to be really powerful but just very specifically useful. There has to be a lot of room for it but I've seen so little cheese and it is disappointing, because I'm not nearly creative enough to come up with a quarter of the things I've seen for editions in the past. If nothing else, I think I'm on to a little something with regards to restraint having an overly large impact only on anything that needs to make an attack roll. There's got to be a way to cheese it, but maybe webs and slinging magic missiles and lightning bolts from within your horrid cocoon isn't the way. Another kind of chintzy thing I know of is the totem spirit of the bear for barbarians at level 3. You could wear heavy armor and get resistance to all damage (except psychic) too while raging. The wording for rage is "You gain the following benefits if you aren't wearing heavy armor:" and goes on to mention the usual rage benefits, it doesn't mention restrictions to anything else, and the bear totem spirit doesn't restrict by what armor you wear either. Combine this with heavy armor mastery for a -3 to damage from slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning attacks. That 3 is subtracted before halving for your resistances. At least level up to this point with barb for a fun multiclass goodness.
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Mar 5, 2016 23:06
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The standard sage advice trend has been to ban any part of 5e from interacting with any other part of 5e. There are some edge cases that are stronger than regular builds, but no real cheesy builds - outside of play a spellcaster, cast spells. I liked being a Barbarian Moon Druid, who had stupidly high amounts of health early on and got free advantage through rage on multiattack grapples. It wasn't really super powerful though.
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Mar 5, 2016 23:45
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Novum posted:I would also like to hear if anyone has stupid gimmicks I can use in 5e, not to be really powerful but just very specifically useful. Necromancer Wizard, make skeletons.
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Mar 5, 2016 23:47
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That heavy armor bear barbarian thing relies heavily on selective reading. Most DMs probably wouldn't follow that interpretation. Some interesting "combos" Rogue 11 with 20 Strength and Expertise in Athletics. +13 Athletics, cannot roll below a 23 on Athletics checks. Grapple. Throw in some Barbarian for rage and you can get advantage on those rolls, or uh just get to a really high Swashbuckler level where you can spend a Bonus Action to grant yourself Advantage on your next Athletics check. Maybe grab 5 levels of Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin or Ranger for Extra Attack. This would allow you to spend one attack on grappling and the other on either push to knock prone or attack. Once you have them grappled and prone they cannot stand from prone unless they break the grapple, and it would be exceedingly hard for most things to make a DC 23 Athletics or Acrobatics check. If you get to 15th level, say with some barbarian levels for Rage and advantage on Athletics, you would have a +15 Athletics. There are VERY few things in the game that can make a DC 25 Athletics check, and that is your MINIMUM roll on Athletics. Oh yeah while the target is prone, and well if you have a minimum of 25 on Athletics they aren't breaking your grapple, you get advantage on your attacks and thus Sneak Attack. Another combo is Deep Gnome Abjuration Wizard with the feat available to Deep Gnomes. This feat gives you an at will 3rd level Abjuration spell with which to charge your Arcane Ward. Moon Druid Barbarian is interesting of course for Rage while in a Beast Form before you get Elemental Forms. Especially if you go Bear Barbarian 3 for Resistance to all but Psychic while raging. If you get a form with real good Con and Dex, not sure there really is one, you can have better AC than the forms usually have. Though a Monk Moon Druid with a high Dex form gets better AC. There is the Sorcerer Warlock combo, get Eldritch Blast and the Agonizing Blast invocation, spend Sorcery points on quicken Eldritch Blast. Throw in some Hex for extra damage on each hit, but well Hex and Quicken both draw upon the Bonus Action so there is some action economy issues there. Rogue with 3 levels of Champion Fighter for the slightly expanded crit range, or throw 3 levels of Champion Fighter onto a Barbarian or a Paladin, because the Fighter is one of the least useful classes to have an expanded crit range on. 2 levels of Warlock on just about any class for 2 invocations. Including Devil's Sight which is just better than Darkvision, at will Mage Armor for classes that don't wear medium or heavy armor and don't already have an unarmored feature, at will detect magic, at will read any languages, etc. Or just to grab Eldritch Blast and Agonizing Blast for a cantrip that scales at fighter levels, as in eventually gets 4 hits for 1d10+5, assuming you have the Charisma. 2 levels of Warlock on a Shadow Monk 6. The ability to see through magical darkness, numerous uses of Darkness, and the ability to teleport through dimness and darkness. Rogue could also benefit from Darkness and Devil's Sight. Heck a whole party with 2 levels of Warlock could make great use of throwing out Darkness and seeing through it while their enemies don't. A Rogue, particularly Swashbuckler Rogue, with either a level of Warlock or the Magical Adept feat to grab the new Greenflame Blade cantrip, and Hex either 1/day or with Warlock slots. Rogues don't generally make a bunch of attacks, and don't have Extra Attack. Greenflame Blade adds some magical fire damage to their one attack, at 5th level onwards, and a little magical fire damage to another nearby target. A Swashbuckler Rogue who gets 20 Cha and 20 Dex, then grabs the Alert feat has +15 Initiative, if you grab a few levels of Bard you can add half their proficiency bonus to that as well.
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Mar 6, 2016 00:20
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I don't play 5e myself and just follow this thread out of curiosity but the fact that Disadvantage doesn't stack has to be useful for some kind of shenanigans.
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Mar 6, 2016 00:23
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Lucky with Disadvantage will let you roll three dice and pick any one to use as your roll. This should work even in cases of self-caused/self-imposed Disadvantage.
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Mar 6, 2016 00:30
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Animate Dead, especially with Necromancy school on a wizard, is probably the most broken thing. Break the action economy over your knee with hundreds of skeletons. Apart from that, Moon Druids are pretty insane at particular levels (the 'peaks' every 3 levels when you get new forms), especially early on. At level 2 you get to be a grizzly bear with 100hp and can outfight the rest of your entire party.
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Mar 6, 2016 00:37
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That is a pretty HUGE exaggeration for the Moon Druid. At 2nd level, and only as a Moon Druid, you can turn into a brown bear which has 34 hit points, which is admittedly really good for 2nd level. It also has 11 AC so it will almost always get hit. It does get 2 attacks quicker than the fighters and such. And it has a lot of hit points, but it is constantly getting hit and in my experience the forms often get ripped apart rather quickly. At 3rd level it evens out a bit more, by 4th or 5th it has grown weaker. Especially at 5th level when Fighters and such get their Extra Attack, their Proficiency would have gone up as well making them likely more accurate than the Brown Bear. Then it has a, slight, increase at 6th level when the Polar Bear comes on line. The Polar Bear is stronger, and thus more accurate, but a +7 is probably no more than 1 point higher than a fighter would have, if that. Actually since a Fighter would have two ASIs the Fighter might have a 20 Strength and +3 Proficiency for a +8 to attack. The Polar Bear would have 42 hit points, a definite increase over the Brown Bear. But yeah when the Moon Druid gets new forms is when they get their hills, in between they get their valleys. The next increase is at level 9. There are only 3 options at CR 3. One is only large and has 3 attacks as part of its multiattack, but it is also one of the least accurate forms. 1st level characters should be more accurate than the Giant Scorpion. The Killer Whale only works in water, has a whopping 90 hit points, the first to be anywhere near 100. And a not all that accurate attack, though better than the Giant Scorpion or Brown Bear. This attack does damage comparable to a rogue of that level. If you are in water of course. Ankylosaurus is something of a tank, with one of the highest Beast Form ACs at 15, 68 hit points which is an increase over the Polar Bear at 6th level, and uh 1 attack. This attack deals less that the whale, and is about as accurate as the Polar Bears. So none of these forms are a clear improvement on the Polar Bear at 6th level. And now at 10th level they get Elemental Forms. These break the CR curve, since they are CR 5 when the Moon Druid should only have CR 3 available, they also cost both Wild Shapes per Short Rest. Each gets Resistance comparable to what a Barbarian has while raging. They tend to have a few immunities, some movement abilities, and are generally all around pretty good. Not sure a Druid would pick anything other than an Elemental after this level. At 12th level CR 4 opens up. There is a single CR 4 form. The elephant. Low AC, decent hit points but lower than the whale, but generally inferior to the elementals in most ways. Not surprising since the elementals are actually CR 5. At 15th level other CR 5 options open up. There are a few interesting options, including the giant crocodile for grappling/restraining a target it bites then drowning them in a river. But generally they are inferior to the elemental forms available at level 10. At 18th level we finally get CR 6. One option, an upgrade of the elephant with the mammoth. It is fairly strong, and actually has 126 hit points so there we are breaking the 100 hit points, 16 levels after 2nd, and well... not really an upgrade over the elementals at 10th level. So there really has been no increase in power since 10th level. And hey finally you made it to 20th level. At Will Wild Shape. This is pretty dang awesome. And all those utility forms you mostly ignored? Now you can actually make use of them. And be an elemental whenever you fight. Well at 18th or 20th level you also gained the ability to cast spells while wild shaped. Which uh... kind of removes the downside of wild shape. Of course that takes 18 or 20 levels, same for the at will wild shape. And with at will wild shape you are pretty hard to take out, with hit point damage if that still matters at this point. I still wish there was an option that gave up ALL spellcasting in exchange for focusing more on the wild shape. At will transformations, perhaps without using the forms hit points? Or faster CR progress? Adding proficiency to your AC and attacks? Something to focus more on the wild shape. Or maybe a Barbarian Archetype that gives up Rage and the normal Archetype abilities for Druid Wildshape with the Moon Druid stuff.
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Mar 6, 2016 01:50
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I think "100 HP" is referring to how Wild Shape effectively gives you a full heal whenever you use it.
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Mar 6, 2016 01:55
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Yep. You get 34*2+(your health, probably something like 16) for a grand total of 84 hp, assuming you never spend spell slots to heal. 84 hp is something on the ordeer of five times what any given member of your party has, and assuming a standard party of 4-5 adventurers it means you suddenly have health equivalent to the entire rest of your party put together. None of the forms are... super strong, all of the cheese for wildshaping is in the base ability's tank factor.
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Mar 6, 2016 02:53
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This is all putting aside the fact that also, a Moon Druid does not lose the fact that they're a perfectly capable full spellcaster. If you wanted to be tankier, be a barkskinned bear. If not, you can throw on some other Concentration spell and then bear it up. If you pick up Con save proficiency bears have pretty good Con, too. If you lose your bear HP, you can go ahead and go right back to being a spellcaster.
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Mar 6, 2016 08:39
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From experience playing alongside a Moon Druid in Lost Mine, they're horrible. Just... it's really annoying when the combats are basically all about the dude who turns into a bear, and keeping him up so he can turn into a bear again after he's tanked everything for most of the fight anyway. Apart from the one combat where 'I cast shatter' was my entire contribution, and killed like 3/4 of the fight with basically not strategy on my part other than choosing the best area damage spell at that level.
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Mar 6, 2016 11:18
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In a game I DM where the world has to deal with a moon druid, I've tried to arrange some encounters such that the melee-only wild shape forms can't get to every enemy. I'll either include flying enemies or geography that separates a squad of enemy archers from the rest of the fight. The only time I've even knocked the druid out of wild shape was because he forgot brown bears have better stats than black bears and was using the CR 1/2 creature. In a game where I play alongside a moon druid, the DM throws a combination of mundane-immune enemies at the party (which won't work anymore since we just hit level 6) or just has them ignore the druid until the rest of us begin to drop in order to force her to drop beast mode to start healing people. Neither approach has proven all that effective for restoring tension to combat. For anyone thinking about addressing it with a house rule, one of the playtests had a more reasonably balanced (possibly even underpowered) version of Wild Shape: One use per short rest until level 8, and the forms available at level 2 had less than 30 HP and no multiattack.
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Mar 6, 2016 21:08
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