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General Maximus posted:Pathfinder has its flaws but at least it doesn't pretend to be something it isn't like 5e does. Well it pretends to be good.
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Mar 24, 2016 01:28
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Didn't it try to pretend that it fixed 3.5's problems?
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Mar 24, 2016 01:34
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Andrast posted:I'd probably rather play 3.5/PF than 5e but that's only because I kind of enjoy the character building/optimization aspect of 3.5. Yeah I can have some fun playing 3.5/PF with the character minigame while 5e optimizing is entirely boiled down to 'always take 1 level of a full plate class and 1 level of wizard or full bard'
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Mar 24, 2016 01:41
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I'd take late 3.5e over both PF and 5e due to it having more interesting classes, if I absolutely had to choose between the 3 poo poo sandwiches.
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Mar 24, 2016 03:09
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So is War Cleric any good? Well, it's got 9 levels of spellcasting so of course it is but I mean is it comparable to a Paladin at the role of being heavily armored while using Divine Magic and slicing people? I've pretty much committed to being The Cleric next campaign and I'm fine with that but I just wanted to make sure I didn't accidentally pick the shittiest one.
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Mar 24, 2016 03:30
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Solid Jake posted:So is War Cleric any good? Well, it's got 9 levels of spellcasting so of course it is but I mean is it comparable to a Paladin at the role of being heavily armored while using Divine Magic and slicing people? I don't think a War Cleric is going to get the same damage spikes as a Paladin but you'll have stronger spell slots so it's still in your favor. I'm always a big fan of the Tempest. My Dwarf cleric of Poseidon was one of my favorite, "What do you mean god of the seas? I worship the god of Earthquakes  "For rebalancing chat, one thing I'm looking at doing is moving the Champion's expanded critical range to Barbarian and then folding the rest of Champion into the base fighter class. Possibly by expanding the hit range by one for each level of Brutal Critical. It's a start towards giving Fighters a boost and making Barbarians devastating critical hitters seems more in tune with the class style. Soylent Pudding fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Mar 24, 2016 |
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Mar 24, 2016 03:48
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Soylent Pudding posted:For rebalancing chat, one thing I'm looking at doing is moving the Champion's expanded critical range to Barbarian and then folding the rest of Champion into the base fighter class. Possibly by expanding the hit range by one for each level of Brutal Critical. It's a start towards giving Fighters a boost and making Barbarians devastating critical hitters seems more in tune with the class style. Remarkable Athlete is still pretty laughable; like really, it should be changed to something more closely resembling Expertise to be worth half a poo poo (i.e. lower level and letting you double-prof)
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Mar 24, 2016 04:02
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For what it's worth, I currently running a campaign of, and do largely prefer, 3.5e over 5e, but for a variety of reasons I wouldn't call it a direct alternative. There's a clear direction to suggest Dungeon World over 5e, or 4e over 5e, or BECMI over 5e, but while I consider 3.PF the lesser evil in that matchup, it comes with its own baggage. The main thing with 3.PF is that it doesn't suffer from the rules paucity and bad grammar of 5e, nor the content paucity, and they're all old enough games that their problems mostly have known solutions, but you do need to do your homework because "jumping in with the three corebooks" is probably going to deliver as much of a long-term unsatisfying experience as doing the same with 5e if you don't research what to do and not to do. That's a lot of words of 3.5e apologia, but what can I say, I run with a great group and I've seen the bright side of the system
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Mar 24, 2016 04:37
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Yeah, the thing about 3.x is there's so much content you can hew out a balanced game just by picking the pieces you want.
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Mar 24, 2016 04:40
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CaPensiPraxis posted:EDIT: You see, we have magic and magic. Casting Dispel Magic dispels magic, but doesn't dispel magic. It depends on if the magic you're trying to dispel is magic or if it's magic. That other kind of magic that isn't magic for the purposes of Dispel Magic. I'm glad I was able to clarify that for you. Soylent Pudding posted:My Dwarf cleric of Poseidon was one of my favorite, "What do you mean god of the seas? I worship the god of Earthquakes
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Mar 24, 2016 04:41
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Babylon Astronaut posted:Ok, who has the quote about the difference between a spell scroll and a scroll with a spell on it or whatever jargon they came up with to keep people from writing things into their spellbook? Which is correct in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, the rule for scrolls or the rule for a spell scroll? They’re both correct. The rule for scrolls (p. 139) is for scrolls in general, including a scroll of protection, and it allows you to try to activate a spell if you’re literate. The rule for a spell scroll is specific to that type of scroll and introduces an additional requirement: the spell on the scroll must be on your class’s spell list for you to read the scroll. A spell scroll can be named in a variety of ways: spell scroll, scroll of X (where X is the name of a spell), or spell scroll of X (where X, again, is the name of a spell). No matter how its name appears, a spell scroll follows the same rule. For you to meet a spell scroll’s requirement, the spell on the scroll needs to be on whatever spell list is used by your class. Here are two examples. If you’re a cleric, the spell must be on the cleric spell list, and if you’re a fighter with the Eldritch Knight archetype, the spell must be on the wizard spell list, because that is the spell list used by your class.
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Mar 24, 2016 04:46
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Tunicate posted:Yeah, the thing about 3.x is there's so much content you can hew out a balanced game just by picking the pieces you want. Almost like how 5e is great because you can ignore all the rules you don't like 
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Mar 24, 2016 04:50
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gradenko_2000 posted:Which is correct in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, the rule for scrolls or the rule for a spell scroll? Do unarmed melee weapon-attacks count as magical if you have a crumpled up spell scroll in your fist? Do they count as finesse weapons?
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Mar 24, 2016 04:54
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Novum posted:We're all baby level 2 players and my wizard appears to suck terribly at this point. When am I supposed to come alive and actually help the barbarian and monk in fights? I felt like things started to get better around 5 or 6 then by double digits I was regularly shutting down large portions of encounters without worrying as much about spell slots. Some spells like sleep own at low level and can win fights easily. Don't feel like you need to out-damage those other players. Crowd control and splitting up encounters is the winning ticket until you can bend reality to your will. Anecdote about caster supremacy / agency: We're mid-teens level range now. Our rogue is still asking the DM if there's any cover in the cave to hide behind but I'm reversing gravity in the whole chamber to instagib half the room and trap the boss against the ceiling. E: vvv do this and get "lucky" as well Kaysette fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Mar 24, 2016 |
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Mar 24, 2016 05:05
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Novum posted:My friends and I are playing 5e and we're having plenty of fun. I've never played a D&D or anything like that but it seems okay. We're all baby level 2 players and my wizard appears to suck terribly at this point. When am I supposed to come alive and actually help the barbarian and monk in fights? Are you a Divination wizard? Play a Divination wizard and take it to its absurd conclusions.
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Mar 24, 2016 05:13
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P.d0t posted:Almost like how 5e is great because you can ignore all the rules you don't like The difference is that you're either adding completely written material, or dropping completely written ones, such as replacing the Fighter with the Warblade or replacing the Wizard with the Warmage, or saying yes or no to specific spells and feats and items. 4e is the same way: all the things you need to make it work well: Inherent Bonuses, free feat taxes and MM3 math are all already done for you, and then the bad parts are just an outright ban on Essentials and Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium. With 5e, I have to either trawl through this thread for a new Fighter (don't get me wrong, they're okay, but I don't catalog the thread) or make one up myself. And maybe that's just going to be heavily based on the Tome of Battle or the 4e Fighter, at which point I'm just kidding myself by doing all these rewrites.
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Mar 24, 2016 05:20
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gradenko_2000 posted:Which is correct in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, the rule for scrolls or the rule for a spell scroll? or you could just make scrolls useable by anyone who's literate CaPensiPraxis posted:That, and they've repeatedly moved to make their game integrated with itself as little as possible. You can't do as many wicked gimmicks both because there is less material overall and because the material is mutually exclusive half the time. Even when they trip up on the natural language and it sounds like you should be able to do things.
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Mar 24, 2016 05:26
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gradenko_2000 posted:The difference is that you're either adding completely written material, or dropping completely written ones, such as replacing the Fighter with the Warblade or replacing the Wizard with the Warmage, or saying yes or no to specific spells and feats and items. or just... don't.. have ..fighters in 5e? Like, ok, so they made 5 different classes of Fighters and published them in glossy books for 3.5 and one of them turned out adequately? Well I am overwhelmed.
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Mar 24, 2016 05:30
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Pathfinder has the benefit of not being made by some of the shittiest people in the industry
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Mar 24, 2016 05:33
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ProfessorCirno posted:Pathfinder has the benefit of not being made by some of the shittiest people in the industry 
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Mar 24, 2016 05:42
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"some of"
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Mar 24, 2016 05:46
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ProfessorCirno posted:Pathfinder has the benefit of not being made by some of the shittiest people in the industry I thought Wick wrote for them.
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Mar 24, 2016 05:52
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Someone told me they made Dr. Rudolph van Richten yet another loving wizard in Curse of Strahd, as if there weren't enough wizard iconics running around. He was fine as a rogue, god dammit.
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Mar 24, 2016 05:54
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gradenko_2000 posted:Which is correct in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, the rule for scrolls or the rule for a spell scroll? Don't forget that a Scroll of Protection, despite sounding like a Spell Scroll due to using the "Scroll of X" naming scheme is not actually a Spell Scroll but is, instead, a Scroll.
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Mar 24, 2016 05:56
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SunAndSpring posted:Someone told me they made Dr. Rudolph van Richten yet another loving wizard in Curse of Strahd, as if there weren't enough wizard iconics running around. He was fine as a rogue, god dammit. LFK posted:Don't forget that a Scroll of Protection, despite sounding like a Spell Scroll due to using the "Scroll of X" naming scheme is not actually a Spell Scroll but is, instead, a Scroll. Intuitive! 
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Mar 24, 2016 06:04
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gradenko_2000 posted:He's actually a Cleric. He should still be a rogue 
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Mar 24, 2016 06:15
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Shadow of the Demon Lord doesn't get talked about much here but if you kind of like the simplicity that some of 5e seems to be going for and wish it wasn't bogged down by sacred cows it's well worth a look. It's covered in a layer of Warhammer paint/gore but it's a perfectly serviceable fantasy system with clear 4e/5e trappings and if you homebrewed your own setting and cut out the Insanity/Corruption rules you'd never know it wasn't a generic fantasy game. bewilderment fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Mar 24, 2016 |
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Mar 24, 2016 06:17
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Tunicate posted:I thought Wick wrote for them. You mean John Wick? Not to my knowledge, no. He did write third-party material for Pathfinder, but that's rather distant given that there's literally 100+ self-publishers out there for the system.
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Mar 24, 2016 06:26
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SunAndSpring posted:He should still be a rogue I made him a cleric rogue. Ether way Van Richten is cool.  (Not pictured his pet monkey Piccolo and his pet sabertooth tiger in half plate.) MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Mar 24, 2016 |
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Mar 24, 2016 06:33
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Libertad! posted:You mean John Wick? Not to my knowledge, no. He worked on the official Paizo NPC Guide and Guide To the River Kingdoms apparently.
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Mar 24, 2016 06:40
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bewilderment posted:Shadow of the Demon Lord doesn't get talked about much here but if you kind of like the simplicity that some of 5e seems to be going for and wish it wasn't bogged down by sacred cows it's well worth a look. I keep hearing Shadow of the Demon Lord getting talked up, and I'm inclined to believe those claims because Robert J Schwalb has done some good design work AFAIK, but I've never been able to find a satisfying breakdown of its mechanics and a gameplay pitch.
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Mar 24, 2016 06:58
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Elfgames posted:or you could just make scrolls useable by anyone who's literate You're right, some kind of system where effects were keyed off words. What could we call that? Yeah, that particular bit of sage advice isn't a headscratcher, but the question only needed to be asked because of misguided design. gradenko_2000 posted:The difference is that you're either adding completely written material, or dropping completely written ones, such as replacing the Fighter with the Warblade or replacing the Wizard with the Warmage, or saying yes or no to specific spells and feats and items. It's the difference between making a castle (or w/e) with legos and making it with sand on the beach. With the legos, you have more than you'll possibly need for any kind of reasonable edifice, and some of the pieces should be avoided because they make your blocks stick together or don't fit the other pieces. It's fine, you put those back in the bin. You have enough interesting parts and solid blocks to make all kinds of different things. It sucks that it takes work to find the pieces that fit well together or to dig that one part you know you want out of the pile, but that's what it is. With sand, you have more freedom... but you also have no frills. If you want to add a flag, or people, or decorations, or what ever... you have to bring those, or make them from scratch on the spot. Not to mention that you can give the lego castle a decent kick and if you've put it together solidly it'll go flying but stay in more or less one piece. You also really can't have a very complex three-dimensional structure - you can't have swooping arches or thin towers etc. No such luck with the sand castle, which just falls right apart when anything too exciting happens - or when the waves of muddled sage advice wash in and make all the edges soggy. Both are fun, both have merits and drawbacks. My problem is that tgs are ostensibly a paying hobby. People pay for legos. People do not pay for the sand on the beach. If part of value provided is "You make up half the game" I'd like to pay half the price, thanks. I never got that impression from previous editions.
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Mar 24, 2016 07:05
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Can someone give me an idea of what spell scrolls should cost? I'm playing a wizard in Hoard of the Dragon Queen and it's been kinda stingy on the worthwhile loot and I'm trying to find a use for the thousands of gold this campaign throws at you.
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Mar 24, 2016 07:06
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Let your players purchase elephants.
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Mar 24, 2016 07:08
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gradenko_2000 posted:I keep hearing Shadow of the Demon Lord getting talked up, and I'm inclined to believe those claims because Robert J Schwalb has done some good design work AFAIK, but I've never been able to find a satisfying breakdown of its mechanics and a gameplay pitch. This thread is as good as any since there isn't a SotDL or 'generic fantasy games' thread besides the TG chat thread: SotDL has four main stats - Strength (which also maps to Health), Agility (which also maps to unarmored defense), Intellect (which also maps to Perception and some magic) and Will (which also maps to Insanity and some magic). Your scores generally for level 0-1 characters are in the 10-12 range because your modifier is literally score-10 (so a score of 11 is a +1 modifier, a score of 9 is a -1 modifier). The target number is literally either 10, or an enemy defense. If there are extenuating circumstances you get Boons or Banes which are like Advantage/Disadvantage, except they can stack and they cancel each other out one for one. A boon is +1d6, and if you roll multiple, you take the highest (so your highest total roll is d20 + d6 = 26). Banes work the same way except banes subtract rather than add. There's not really any kind of skill system per se - you have 'professions' but the guidelines for them are basically that the GM should let a player either auto-succeed if they have an appropriate profession, or give them a boon. Combat uses side initiative, players go first then enemies. BUT. You have fast turns and slow turns. You declare at the start of the round which type you're using. Taking a slow turn means moving and using a standard action, taking a fast turn means you're only doing one of the two. Charging is possible but imposes a bane on the attack roll (there are other special maneuvers that anyone can do - they all basically impose a bane or two, stuff like disarming and shoving and tripping). The main cool draw for a lot of people is the class system. You start as a level 0 nobody of your 'ancestry' (a term the game uses instead of race, which I like much better). At level 1 you pick Warrior, Rogue, Mage or Cleric (which each give you additional bonuses as you level). At level 3 you get to pick an Expert class out of 12, and there are literally no restrictions into what you pick as your expert class besides what makes sense for your character, so you can be a Mage-Ranger or a Warrior-Wizard. Again, these give you extra bonuses as you level, DnD-style. At level 7 you get to pick a Master path out of 64, and again, no restrictions. Warrior-Artificer-Shapeshifter is just as permitted (if it makes sense for your character and build) as Mage-Ranger-Beastmaster. The more martial classes don't actually get that much interesting stuff in terms of variety but make up for it by just being really good at what they do. Only Warriors and Rogues can crit, and when a rogue crits they don't do extra damage, instead they take another turn. Warriors have one free boon to every attack they make, so they're either hitting much more often than the other classes or are spending it to offset the bane for trips and shoves and charges. Rogues get one free boon to any d20 roll, once per round. Also some of the martial Master Paths have cool poo poo. The very first one in the book, the Acrobat, at 7th level (so, as soon as they become an acrobat) has:
Basically if you see the glimmers of cool stuff in 5e and its playtests, it seems a lot of it also made its way into SotDL.
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Mar 24, 2016 09:27
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P.d0t posted:I'm leaning this direction, too. That said, SotDL sounds pretty good. Never heard of it before. How is it for Stuff?(powers, weapons etc)
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Mar 24, 2016 13:44
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So my group just finished our first adventure (Lost mines of phandelver) and started the next one (Out of the Abyss). I am playing a wizard and the first thing that happens is that we are captured and all of our gear is taken. We've managed to escape and find our backpacks but my spellbook and component pouch is gone as well as all our magic items and we've basically been told that we are not getting them back (We were forced to jump down a waterfall out of where we were kept prisoner and we're not going to be allowed to return). I'm pretty much hosed right? I have spells prepared but most have material components so I can't use them anyway. If I find a new spellbook I can copy down the ones I have prepared(assuming I'm given the time to do so, plus our gold is gone as well) but all the other ones are lost, correct? I also had some scrolls (which are now also gone) that I had been planning to copy into my spellbook and was going to make a secondary spellbook for safekeeping but we weren't given any time between adventures so I wasn't able to. The other characters in the party are an unarmed monk, a ranger, and a war domain cleric so it's mostly me that got really screwed over. I feel like my game just got incredibly less fun for no particular reason and I don't really know how to proceed in character either.
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Mar 24, 2016 16:40
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Sounds like your DM is trying to nip you in the bud before you ruin his fun.
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Mar 24, 2016 16:47
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Thelonius Van Funk posted:So my group just finished our first adventure (Lost mines of phandelver) and started the next one (Out of the Abyss). I am playing a wizard and the first thing that happens is that we are captured and all of our gear is taken. We've managed to escape and find our backpacks but my spellbook and component pouch is gone as well as all our magic items and we've basically been told that we are not getting them back (We were forced to jump down a waterfall out of where we were kept prisoner and we're not going to be allowed to return). I'm pretty much hosed right? I have spells prepared but most have material components so I can't use them anyway. If I find a new spellbook I can copy down the ones I have prepared(assuming I'm given the time to do so, plus our gold is gone as well) but all the other ones are lost, correct? I also had some scrolls (which are now also gone) that I had been planning to copy into my spellbook and was going to make a secondary spellbook for safekeeping but we weren't given any time between adventures so I wasn't able to. The other characters in the party are an unarmed monk, a ranger, and a war domain cleric so it's mostly me that got really screwed over. I feel like my game just got incredibly less fun for no particular reason and I don't really know how to proceed in character either. I haven't read OotA yet, but they had to see that coming and have written in a spell book to find right? Or your DM saw it coming and wrote in a spell book to find. Mention to him/her that without the spell book your character has no abilities, hopefully he will fix it
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Mar 24, 2016 16:48
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Defiant Sally posted:Can someone give me an idea of what spell scrolls should cost? I'm playing a wizard in Hoard of the Dragon Queen and it's been kinda stingy on the worthwhile loot and I'm trying to find a use for the thousands of gold this campaign throws at you. In all seriousness: Don't use spell scrolls. Use scrolls with spells enchanted onto them. The difference is that spell scrolls are free (slotless/resourceless) spell casts for spellcasters for whom that spell is on their list only. Scrolls with spells can be used by anyone who can read. You want the latter, to even the field a little for non-spellcasters. Spell scrolls just make the utility gulf more massive by making the spells not cost anything meaningful to cast. Suddenly it's not just solving the dungeon that falls to spellcasters, the loot (or what you buy with the loot) is all about spellcasters only also! As to pricing, I'd price scrolls-with-spells according to what the spells on them are and how much I want them to be part of my campaign/how much I want my fighters etc. to have access to those spells. Look at how much gold they have and how many slotless casts of x spell you want them to have if they blew all their money on spell/effect x and go from there.
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Mar 24, 2016 17:11
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