Novum posted:

Somebody mentioned balancing high end casters with exhaustion levels a while back. Was that a fully fleshed out homebrew or just an idea in the moment?

Novum posted:

Somebody mentioned balancing high end casters with exhaustion levels a while back. Was that a fully fleshed out homebrew or just an idea in the moment?

Elfgames posted:

Stats should be

Killin' Dudes, Castin' Spells, Doin' Stealin' Stuff, Knowin' Things, Botherin' Gods

Kai Tave posted:

Elfgames posted:

Doin' stuff already covers stealing things but also gives the less eloquent among us the ability to be good at talky poo poo without adding another stat.

Sword of Sharpness story posted:

In our session last night my character was able to get his hands on a Longsword of Sharpness.
We opened up the DMG and read about how if you roll a 20 you can do extra damage, and if you roll another 20 you take a limb off of your target.
While the prospect of de-limbing was pretty entertaining we were discussing how rare it would be to roll two 20s in a row. .25% chance of it ever happening.
We continued on our journey and our next encounter was against a Night Hag. I drew my new sword, rolled... 20!!
We cheered around the table and then rolled again to see if I could take a limb... ANOTHER 20!!!
High fives for everyone and we were all cheering around the table as my character chopped the night hags arm off the first time ever swinging the sword.
I've never felt like THIS big of a nerd. So awesome.

Boing posted:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/4e82cc/sword_of_sharpness_story/


D&D is so boring that this is the most exciting thing that happens in it.

goatface posted:

Death to ability scores.

Red Metal posted:

I think I remember those guys. They had the character sheet with the ability score box that didn't show all the ability scores at once, right?

Red Metal posted:

I think I remember those guys. They had the character sheet with the ability score box that didn't show all the ability scores at once, right?

Kai Tave posted:

Also isn't the reason WotC dropped them because they couldn't stay on task? WotC wanted them to create a digital character builder while Trapdoor decided that what they really needed was some extensive suite of unasked for digital tools that they then tried to ask for some ludicrous amount of money for? It was a weird situation all around.

ritorix posted:

Yeah and I dont think they gave up the dream. From that press release - "Playbook will allow players to roll up and manage characters, while Game Masters can purchase and prep adventures and campaigns"

Kaysette posted:

Greg Leeds has resigned as President of Wizards of the Coast, and will be replaced by Chris Cocks

Talk about a cock-up!

...that's all I got.

e: his face is too small

Kaysette posted:

Greg Leeds has resigned as President of Wizards of the Coast, and will be replaced by Chris Cocks

Talk about a cock-up!

...that's all I got.

e: his face is too small

AlphaDog posted:

Dungeonscape trip report: It was a lot of pages of clicking to generate a lot of pages of stuff which I guess you could use to play D&D if you were a masochist.

Part the first: Getting to the character sheet screen

1: Where to click on the blank screen I'm shown after logon is slightly unclear. Is it the cog icon? Is it "character" down the bottom? Nope, it's "Choose a character" at the top, which doesn't look like a button, but a heading.

2: Race select screen lists size and speed, but not stat bonuses.

3: Class select screen is about what you'd expect, a pic of a dude and the blurb from the start ofthe class description.

4: "Roll ability scores" is the default screen. "Buy ability scores" is secondary. I mean OF COURSE you're not going to just click "roll" until you get a good set. The text box on the bottom left of the ability score screen DOES contain the racial ability score increase, and this is NOT reflected in the scores it shows me at the top of the screen, although the box does explicitly tell me this is the case in text that runs out of the bottom of the box.

5: Background has titles and descriptions, no mention of mechanics or indeed description of what I'm actually getting by selecting it.

6: Personality characteristics screen: It's possible to scroll off the top of the screen leaving the list blank. "Ideals" does contain the mechanical effect (ie, alignment).

7: Starting wealth/equipment screen. I get to see what gear I got from what I've selected 2 major screens ago with Backgrounds. Otherwise it seems fine. Or else I can "choose starting wealth", but it's not clear that it's an either/or proposition. Clicking "next" here gives me a "Choose one: Martial melee weapons" popup with no stats or information about any of the weapons.

8: Now I'm asked to describe my character... I can roll for height and weight and choose my alignment from a dropdown box. You can enter literally anything in the other boxes, even the one for age. The alignment dropdown appears to be an empty black box, but moving the cursor over it lights up the alignments line by line.

9: It's not clear what's going on on this screen. One the left side I'm asked to tick a box for Proficiency: <Smith's Tools, Brewer's Supplies, Mason's Tools> and the right side describes those tools and what a proficiency is. The tools come with a GP value and weight, but it's unclear if I'm getting them now or if I'll have to buy them later.

10: Now I can choose a fighting style with absolutely zero indication of what that is or does. It's literally just a list of fighting styles on the screen. There's a space to the right that's big and blank, as if there should be text there. There is no text there.

11: This screen looks the same but lists Skills instead of Fighting Styles. The big area on the right DOES have skill descriptions. However, I clicked "Next" on the previous screen without really looking at what I'd chosen and now the "Previous" button isn't doing anything, so I'm not sure what kind of fighter I am and I have no way to check.

12: Finally, a character sheet. Wait, this doesn't have much of the info I just entered... how do I page though it? I can either click the tiny tiny dots under the centre column or I can move my mouse or the side of the reddish area and an arrow appears. Groovy. I'll now go through this page by page.


Part the Second: The six page layout clusterfuck Character Sheet

Page 1:

On the left, an illustration. It's OK, I guess. I'm not sure if I can upload my own or if I'm stuck with these. Briefly clicking around makes it seem like these are it.

In the middle, my stats, level, and xp. Clicking on each stats brings up base and final values, although I'm not sure what that is. Clicking on my Con shows that there's a "user adjustment" of +4 although I'm now not sure where that came from.

On the right, all the things I chose in part 8. I wrote "Eleventy One" in the "age" box, and it's parsed that to "0", so that's nice. Clicking on any of these things brings up a SUPER HELPFUL popup in the middle of the screen that says, for instance, "HAIR, The character's hair color. Cancel/Accept". I now realise that's what happens if I click on the word "hair", but if I click on what I wrote for that answer, there's a popup where I can change it.

Page 2:

On the left, Attacks and Proficiencies. The Attacks part seems fine. It's got he weapon name and then the to hit adjustment and the damage. Clicking on the weapon name brings up detailed info. including where the numbers come from. Clicking on the numbers themselves does nothing. I appear to have gained proficiency in all three trade tools, although I only selected Mason.

In the middle, confusingly labelled "attributes", are my AC, speed, initiative, HP, etc. TO adjust my CURRENT HP, I'd have to click it to open a popup, enter the numer of damage/healing I've just taken in a box, click the +/- thing until correct, then hit Accept. It's clunky and would be super annoying during play.

On the right, Saving Throws. Clicking on them lets me adjust them, but I'm not sure why.

Page 3:

On the left, Skills. These default to showing "All". There's a dropdown box so I can change that to "proficient", but the box is blacked out again like the Alignment one was. I can still use it, but eh.

In the middle, Class Features. I chose Fighter. It shows I have a Second Wind and that my Fighting Style was Archery, which I'd forgotten about not remembering. I can't change it from here, but a helpful popup tells me what it does and that the +1 is "already included in calculations". It doesn't say WHICH calculations, although I guess it's pretty obvious.

On the right, Racial traits. Helpful popups to describe them, but text from all of those would fit in the vast amount of blank space that is the red background of the character sheet (which takes up maybe a quarter of my screen... seriously, there's a lot of blank space here).

Page 4:

Spells. Slots on the left (I have none), a blank heading "spellcasting" in the middle, a list of ALL SPELLS (not actuall all spells) on the right. I guess this page does something if you did not CHOOSE POORLY way back on the class screen.

Page 5:

Equipment! All my gear on the left. Turns out I didn't get ANY tools. I got pitons though. Sweet.

In the middle, a blank 3-slot list of attuned magic items. Clicking "Attune" does nothing. Clicking "add" eventually brings up a list of magic items, with a "view cart" button at the bottom. There is no mention of what this stuff actually DOES, but since most of it is "Longsword +1" it probably doesn't matter much.

On the right, treasure. To adjust the number of coins you have, again you need to click the value, enter the new value into the popup, then click accept. Clunky but consistent with the other clunky stuff.

Page 6:

Background on the left. The poo poo I chose from the lists doesn't even fit in the boxes. There's a checkbox here for Inspiration.

The rest of the page is blank, with a section to enter "Notes". I mean COME THE gently caress ON, the poo poo I picked FROM THE LISTS of personality traits doesn't fit in the goddamn box on the left and the WHOLE REST OF THE SCREEN might as well read "this space intentionally left blank".

Conclusion

Using this in a game would be a goddamn nightmare and I'm not even surprised.

e: I could wait and see what the final version is like, but reading the feedback lists and developer responses gives me absolutely no hope that this will ever be presented in a sane usable format. I mean six loving pages, each of which uses about a third of the available real estate on the screen at 1920x1200. You could condense this to two loving pages with a little bit of effort, especially since you're happy cutting off text in boxes when there's still plenty of loving room available. Maybe it's designed for 800x600, but why?

LFK posted:

Designed for mobile first!

I leveled up my Bard.

It forces you to roll HP every level, so gently caress you if you're using fixed HP per level. Actually, this isn't quite true. You need to roll first, then you can enter a fixed value, otherwise Next stays greyed out. You can enter any value you want, so now I have thousands of HP. This is fine, all told, though the normal interface for adjusting your total is... well, [you have to click and up/down arrow one by one]http://i.imgur.com/Qst027y.png[/IMG] so if you, say, accidentally gave yourself thousands of hit points it would actually be easier to rebuild your character.

The Bard College selection gives me the fluffy description of each college, but no mechanical overview.

The Bard bonus skills feature comes up with a list of all the skills, with no indication of which ones I'd already selected. I'm assuming if I select Deception again it'll just accept it as is, and I'll never be able to change it.

Dungeonscape don't give a gently caress about stat limits. At level 4 it let me boost my Charisma to 25. Which is odd, since I should only have a Charisma of 19 from my rolled 17 and Tiefling bonus.

On my spell list there's no way to change a spell to "Prepared."

At the moment this isn't really a character builder, too much is broken or doesn't work right. It's nice that it'll often let you enter an arbitrary value, but it's odd that it only allows that in some places but not others. If I can add anything to my HP when I level up, why can't I just change my HP at any given time by typing it in? Right now it's a side grade to a digital character sheet, and in a lot of ways would be an improvement if it simply were a digital character sheet, if so much relies on the player looking crap up in the PHB anyway.

Kaysette posted:

Greg Leeds has resigned as President of Wizards of the Coast, and will be replaced by Chris Cocks

Talk about a cock-up!

...that's all I got.

e: his face is too small

Kaysette posted:

e: his face is too small

gradenko_2000 posted:

It's also not something that the player is ever in control of.

CaPensiPraxis posted:

Yeah, it's something I my never understand. Yeah, that was a cool thing, but it was total utter random chance and you had no hand in its conception or execution. Vorpal swords etc. bore the hell out of me, because you can't use them mechanically for cool plans or clever combos. It's just a thing that sometimes happens when "I attack" when you attack often enough.

For contrast, one of my single favorite memorable badass combat moments in a game I played was when our characters learned that our werewolf foes were weak to citrus (they were pirate themed werewolves). One popped his head through a door to here's Johnny us, and I immediately pegged him with a jar of citrus water I'd had written on my character sheet the entire game that everyone but me had forgotten about. I felt like a badass for remembering I had it, and was rewarded for bothering to keep a detailed inventory.

Mendrian posted:

gently caress even a sword that emits a sub-zero chill (for +1 cold damage) has more use than a Vorpal sword, freeze water, put out fires, etc.

Mendrian posted:

gently caress even a sword that emits a sub-zero chill (for +1 cold damage) has more use than a Vorpal sword, freeze water, put out fires, etc.

Harvey Mantaco posted:

I keep seeing people recommend dungeon world as an alternative. I read a thing on it and is the combat as poo poo as it sounds? "Everyone goes whenever they want! Do two things in a row! Whatever!"
Isn't that too loosy goosy in play?

thespaceinvader posted:

I dunno, a sword that snicker-snacks straight through anything with minimal effort sounds AMAZINGLY useful.

Harvey Mantaco posted:

I keep seeing people recommend dungeon world as an alternative. I read a thing on it and is the combat as poo poo as it sounds? "Everyone goes whenever they want! Do two things in a row! Whatever!"
Isn't that too loosy goosy in play?

Scyther posted:

To be honest if you don't like the idea of loosy goosy "when the hell is it my turn?" combat, Strike might be a better alternative.

Harvey Mantaco posted:

Yeah. I don't want to go too off the topic of the thread but for a bunch of goons that seems to loathe "GM May I" so much I can't believe this Dungeon World game is so liked.
I'm honestly not trying to be lovely when I say that, it's just really confusing.