|
P.d0t posted:I feel the same way about realms as I feel about player options: the assumption that I should have an encyclopedic knowledge of all the bloat, just so I can ignore the parts that are crap, is a lovely baseline to start from. Particularly when we're talking about newcomers. I don't think you need to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the Realms to run it at all. The parts that are crap are far enough away to new players (like you're not going to be looking up the Double Diamond Saga, Once Around the Realms, or anything written by slade) that you really don't need to worry about it. Unless you mean something else, there's no crap you need to avoid. FRINGE posted:They really need to go back to this for intro and interlude adventures. Well, and some of the best adventures for the Realms follow exactly that model. Under Illefarn and Haunted Halls of Eveningstar are amazing sandboxes that work really well as introductory products for any D&D game, not just the Realms. Skellybones posted:Ariva which wizards are more powerful and more critical to the Forgotten Realms setting than Elminster and how many books are about them? This is three different questions put together in an attempt to create a strawman. Let's pull them apart. Which mages are equally powerful as Elminster? In recent publishing history, Larloch, Manshoon, Szass Tam, and Laeral as Open Lord off the top of my head. Which mages are equally as critical? How about Vangerdahast, the power behind Cormyr? Manshoon built the Zhentarim. Khelben Blackstaff worked tirelessly to safeguard Faerun for hundreds of years, culminating in the return of an elven city to Faerun from its protective slumber. Again, there are more examples. None of these characters have as many novels with them as the main character as Elminster does, sure. That's a reflection of the Books division repeatedly contracting Ed to specifically write Elminster novels; he happily writes about other characters if he can. For examples of other important mages to the Realms in fiction check out Blackstaff by Steven Schend and one of the novels with Vangerdahast as a main character - Swords of Eveningstar or Death of a Dragon. Splicer posted:Forgotten Realms, a setting for the Dungeons & Dragons* roleplaying game! There's plenty of both in the Realms, it's just that dungeon-crawling isn't the primary mode of play. Dungeons in the Realms are lived spaces, often resettled by groups after whatever created the dungeon in the first place. Then, engaging with that dungeon often has unforeseen consequences in the larger world. The Knights of Myth Drannor delved into the Haunted Halls of Eveningstar as new adventurers looking for treasure and glory. They ended up killing the Zhentarim mage Whisper, dramatically changing the power balance of Cormyr's northern border for years and causing the Zhentarim's continued dependence on the Black Road. Dragons in the Realms are notable because they're detailed as active characters first and foremost. They have their own plots, their own designs, their own dreams and wants - and those often affect what goes on in the area around them. They're the most diverse, interesting dragons in any D&D setting. Only Eberron comes close, but it's very one-note with the dragon focus on the Draconic Prophecy. In the Realms you have jokester dragons, a dragon that tries everything she can to become a debutante in Waterdhavian society, so forth and so on. bewilderment posted:What is the primary hook of the realms? The Realms is basically PoL before it was cool, with an emphasis on characters interacting with each other and having their own desires and plans. Also notable is the influence of the deities and their churches in pretty much every aspect of the game - churches in the Realms are political powers unto themselves, and that often affects things. Now, as I noted above, this may not seem that unusual. Back in 1987, for D&D, it was. The only other campaign settings D&D had were the sketchy town-and-dungeon Greyhawk, and the single all-encompassing narrative of Dragonlance. The Realms significantly widened the scope of a D&D setting by presenting a living world with diverse playable detail in so many directions, it could go almost anywhere. In 2016, a lot of D&D campaign settings - and other RPGs - have learned from what the Realms showed, and that's why it doesn't stick out so much. Eberron takes overlapping conspiracies and interests across the campaign setting and puts them towards strong thematic concerns. Planescape's factions likely wouldn't exist if the Harpers hadn't proven player factions were playable first. So forth and so on. AlphaDog posted:I'm sure it's different now, and maybe I'm wrong about what it used to be like, but nearly everything I saw about FR in the early to mid 90s involved exploring the ruins of somewhere or other where complicated poo poo went down hundreds or thousands of years ago. My only time playing in FR (as opposed to reading older setting books and novels) was 6 or 7 sessions of AD&D in the early 90s. We were literally running around the ruins of Myth Drannor. Primary doesn't mean the setting can't have space for that mode of play or facilitate it. Ed Greenwood talks about modes of play in the DM's Sourcebook of the Realms back in the very first campaign set. He goes over the town and dungeon as a good model for new players, and then encourages experienced players to push out towards a sandbox built up through greater campaign engagement on the very next page. Off the top of my head, 90s supplements that are definitively not about dungeon-oriented play include Code of the Harpers, Cult of the Dragon, Giantcraft, and Pirates of the Fallen Stars.
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 08:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 21:00 |
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:To be perfectly fair aren't most of the 5e adventures set inside dungeons? I know Lost Mine of Phandelver puts you inside a goblin cave within 5 minutes, and many dozens of pages back I know there was one person here running Princes of the Apocalypse that remarked about three levels of elemental-worshipping cultists. As I and ProfessorCirno pointed out earlier, the 5e adventures have not been actually written for the Realms. They've been generic D&D or Greyhawk adventures forced into the Realms for marketing's sake - they're a gummy, non-Realmsian treatment of dragons, Tharizdun, and Zuggtmoy all over a setting that doesn't need them. We'll see if the giants one is any better, since they're at least trying to build upon pre-existing Realmslore. There's nothing wrong with a dungeon in an FR adventure. There's nothing wrong with a dungeon being the focus of an FR adventure (and Ed wrote two prominent large dungeon adventures in Ruins of Undermountain and Ruins of Myth Drannor, as AlphaDog alluded to.) But it's important to keep in mind that the FR is so much more than just dungeons, and has a lot more to offer than that. KittyEmpress posted:Forgotten Realms is the boring setting that tries to do everything and open up any variety of fantasy story you would like, from any mythology or national standard of fantasy, and does all of them half heartedly and without much substance due to it. You are thoroughly wrong and obviously haven't been paying attention to this conversation. However, thank you for the drive-by shitpost. Your hot take is appreciated.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 08:33
|
|
|
bewilderment posted:What is the primary hook of the realms? Where 4E went wrong was that it tried to turn FR into a (potentially) interesting shitkickers, inc setting, which isn't what the FR fans wanted. They would ideally have ignored it entirely and resurrected greyhawk or something for encounters but Real World Politics said no. e: that was a bet bad typo Splicer fucked around with this message at 11:13 on Jul 4, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 09:05
|
|
|
Arivia posted:Planescape's factions likely wouldn't exist if the Harpers hadn't proven player factions were playable first. So forth and so on. I think you overestimate the importance of the FR setting. Planescape's factions were made possible chiefly because the World of Darkness games showed that such cliques were interesting to players.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 09:10
|
|
|
Arivia posted:There's plenty of both in the Realms, it's just that dungeon-crawling isn't the primary mode of play. Dungeons in the Realms are lived spaces, often resettled by groups after whatever created the dungeon in the first place. Then, engaging with that dungeon often has unforeseen consequences in the larger world. The Knights of Myth Drannor delved into the Haunted Halls of Eveningstar as new adventurers looking for treasure and glory. They ended up killing the Zhentarim mage Whisper, dramatically changing the power balance of Cormyr's northern border for years and causing the Zhentarim's continued dependence on the Black Road. Would you consider it a fair characterization of the Realms if I said that this smacks me of being one of the first codified/written settings that came from the shift in thinking, from dungeons-as-repositories-of-loot-and-towns-as-shopkeeper-and-innkeeper-waystations, into "the gnolls live in the dungeon, so killing them off is going to set off ripples across the region as the town of Mumford gets to expand but maybe the nearby town of Wexford doesn't like that and then they're both going to bump into the interests of the Orcs next" ?
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 09:16
|
|
|
The real question - with a damning non-answer in just about every D&D setting, FR is not alone here though potentially the worst about it - is "who are the fighters who are equal in power and importance to the almightiest wizards and clerics?" Not kings - pure fighters, who will pound for pound match those other Super Spellcasters.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 09:18
|
|
|
AlphaDog posted:BECMI gave you an abstracted town and dungeon in Basic, and then a generic-ish town and surrounds in Expert. Do it like that. In the core books, refer to it as Town and make it clear that the DM can give it a name or pick some backwater town off a setting map for it to be. Make sure there's a generic-ish dungeon with standard D&D stuff in it as an included intro adventure in the book. The dungeon is near Town. There's some hooks about other adventures, some NPCs, etc. This is the way it should be done. It seems to me that the problem with Forgotten Realms is that it's a good setting for D&D's novels, but a bad default setting for the game. The default should be setting agnostic. Hasbro's overarching goal should be to expand their markets and draw in new players. New players shouldn't just be dumped into a huge world with 30 years of backstory built already built up. An enormous world like FR with all it's baggage should be an option, not the default.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 09:24
|
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:The real question - with a damning non-answer in just about every D&D setting, FR is not alone here though potentially the worst about it - is "who are the fighters who are equal in power and importance to the almightiest wizards and clerics?" Did you forget that FR is home of Drizzt (also his father, and a bunch of other ridiculously powerful underdark characters), Wulfgar, Eltan (flaming fist guy) (and a bunch of other murder machines that I cant name from memory but Arivia probably can)? That wizard problem everyone brings up from scratch every other page was more a problem with WotC editions that "DnD", or FR, as far as individual power. If you mean political power, then your question is just an attempt at a framing trap since you "not Kings".
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 10:06
|
|
|
I googled "Wulfgar 3.5 stats" and found a statblock for a Barbarian 7/Fighter 4. Now, I'll grant that they may be depicted as much more powerful in the fiction, but a single-classed Wizard 11 is going to have stuff like Tenser's Transformation, Flesh to Stone, Summon Monster VI, Wall of Iron, Geas/Quest, and the likes. Hit him with a Mass Suggestion and he has a 10% chance to pass it with his +4 Will save, or try a Disintegrate for a 50% chance to hit him for 22d6 damage, or about two-thirds of his 115 HP.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 10:36
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:I googled "Wulfgar 3.5 stats" and found a statblock for a Barbarian 7/Fighter 4. Now, I'll grant that they may be depicted as much more powerful in the fiction, but a single-classed Wizard 11 is going to have stuff like Tenser's Transformation, Flesh to Stone, Summon Monster VI, Wall of Iron, Geas/Quest, and the likes. Drizzt was a dual-class fighter20/ranger16 or something close to that. The idea was that he hadnt yet passed his fighter level with the ranger experience. (There was another book that had him as relatively weak Ranger8 for some reason.)
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 10:44
|
|
|
Son of a Vondruke! posted:This is the way it should be done. It seems to me that the problem with Forgotten Realms is that it's a good setting for D&D's novels, but a bad default setting for the game. The default should be setting agnostic. Hasbro's overarching goal should be to expand their markets and draw in new players. New players shouldn't just be dumped into a huge world with 30 years of backstory built already built up. An enormous world like FR with all it's baggage should be an option, not the default. Bolded are the parts most players (never mind new players) actually hear: 427 years ago when the Third War was raging, the armies of Arginia defeated the armies of Barginia in a battle in the Spire Marshes. Thousands upon thousands of troops died, as many to disease and the terrible mires as to the enemy. The area was forgotten avoided by most for the next few hundred years, but occasionally rusted helmets and swords still appear in the bogs near towns by the marsh. Over the past fifty years or so, Swamp Orcs of Kra'kun have started to collect the old, rusted steel for unknown reasons and have been raiding the swamp edge towns of Kerrytan, Brownsburg, and Startertown, where our story begins. Additionally, a shadowy figure known as the Blood Mage of Doomspire is rumored to be in the area. Doomsprie wizards are an ancient sect of etc etc etc. Blah Blah they're very bad and dangerous and have been doing shady deals and gaining political power for the past few decades and <fast forward> <fast forward some more> the Blood Mage is supposed to be raising a skeleton army from the Third War troops' bodies so that the Doomspire wizards can finally take their revenge againt King Simon the Good, son of King Simon the Adequate, son Of King Dave, son of Warlord Arag'kun The Mighty who took the throne from Emperor Jojo the Seventh after the battle at Skull Mountain where the Wizard Grundle the Green devastated the imperial troops by firing pink lighning out of his nostrils after utilising the artifact of K'k'kru which he siezed from the lizard man king as detailed in the Chronicles Of Grundle The Green Volume XXIV. The orcs have been fleeing the swamps where the Blood Mage is working on his army, which is why they've stopped just scavenging stuff up and started stealing cows and stuff. PCs will need to stop the Orcs and the Blood Mage in order to save the villages and ultimately the kingdom.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 11:12
|
|
|
Sage Genesis posted:I think you overestimate the importance of the FR setting. Planescape's factions were made possible chiefly because the World of Darkness games showed that such cliques were interesting to players. I don't think so. Sure, VtM made player factions popular, but it was the Realms that proved they were playable in D&D first. gradenko_2000 posted:Would you consider it a fair characterization of the Realms if I said that this smacks me of being one of the first codified/written settings that came from the shift in thinking, from dungeons-as-repositories-of-loot-and-towns-as-shopkeeper-and-innkeeper-waystations, into "the gnolls live in the dungeon, so killing them off is going to set off ripples across the region as the town of Mumford gets to expand but maybe the nearby town of Wexford doesn't like that and then they're both going to bump into the interests of the Orcs next" ? I think that's completely fair. I actually found some stuff the other day about how Ed and Gary Gygax used to talk about just that, with Ed criticizing Gary's monster models. ProfessorCirno posted:The real question - with a damning non-answer in just about every D&D setting, FR is not alone here though potentially the worst about it - is "who are the fighters who are equal in power and importance to the almightiest wizards and clerics?" Kings are where a lot of high-level fighters end up, because of how the Realms broadly follows the old 1e/2e stronghold and followers structure. So five of the high-level fighters I can think of off the top of my head are rulers in one way or another - Azoun IV, Alusair, Piergeron, Mourngrym, Duke Eltan (as FRINGE pointed out first.) I'd also add Mirt, Durnan, that Swordsman I can't remember in Waterdeep, Drizzt, Yamun Khahan, Erevis Cale, and the mortal Cyric. Didn't look at any books yet. They don't receive as much focus because TSR/WotC see wizards and high-level play as the cash cow. Oh! Dabron Sashenstar. Okay, checking a book, that was Brian the Swordmaster. FRINGE posted:Im pretty sure in 2e he was past that (and not multiclass), and he had an unmodified 19Str. When you add the artifact hammer in, he was a good wizard smasher. I checked the Heroes Lorebook (basically a 2e supplement of stats for prominent characters) and Drizzt is a ranger 16 (dual-classed from warrior 18) as you note. Wulfgar was a 9th level barbarian. It's notable that you can't really go by character levels for a lot of FR characters. The novels and game supplements have never quite matched in a lot of ways, and often designers will change a character's level for one reason or another. 3e was particularly upsetting to character statistics, since the different multiclassing rewrote a lot of things. Elminster gained like six levels due to the structure of Elminster: the Making of a Mage. And unsurprisingly, the changes resulted in a lot of not-wizards being reduced in level, like Drizzt becoming a fighter 10/barbarian 1/ranger 5. Alusair got loving whiplash from this, as Ed set her as a Fighter 20 (to match her father, who she was now succeeding as Regent of Cormyr) in a Dragon magazine article tying up the Cormyr trilogy, only for the FRCS to bust her back down to Fighter 7/Ranger 1/Purple Dragon Knight 2 a couple months later. AlphaDog posted:Bolded are the parts most players (never mind new players) actually hear: Nobody wants to hear this poo poo. No one in their right minds writing FR material wants you to read this kind of stuff verbatim to your players. The people who have done lots of timeline and history work (Eric Boyd, George Krashos, Steven Schend, Brian James) do it to offer new details for DMs to add their own material or provide new ideas, but oh god don't read it out loud. Ed does long narrations like that, but he focuses on setting the scene and characters not reading off history, and he's an absurdly good in person storyteller apparently.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 11:49
|
|
|
Trying to explain book character actions in game mechanics is a fool's errand. I think in the first drizzt book he's taking no damage from dodging fireballs and then taking off a mages stoneskin in one throw of pebbles, stuff that doesn't exist mechanically. So dont worry about it Otoh in 1e/2e forgotten realms you can assume the high powered wizards have to gently caress off after each book for a month to re memorize their spells
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 12:11
|
|
|
Arivia posted:Nobody wants to hear this poo poo. No one in their right minds writing FR material wants you to read this kind of stuff verbatim to your players. The people who have done lots of timeline and history work (Eric Boyd, George Krashos, Steven Schend, Brian James) do it to offer new details for DMs to add their own material or provide new ideas, but oh god don't read it out loud. I know nobody wants to hear it! I don't know anyone who wants to read it either. Especially in a product that's supposed to be for new players, which is what I've been talking about. I'm not talking about something that will appeal to you, your group, or your apparent massive knowledge of the Forgotten Realms setting, I'm talking about an introductory mini-setting or a generic small-sandbox adventure module. Here's the outline I'd want: There are skeletons in the Spire Marsh from an old, famous battle. Orcs have been scavenging the old weapons and armor, but recently they've been driven out by necromancer called the Blood Mage who is trying to raise a skeleton army. The orcs are raiding local villages along the edge of the marsh, including Startertown where the adventure begins. The Blood Mage is the real villain in this adventure, and at the end you'll find out this is a small part in a wider plan by his bosses. Then an area map, a list of NPCs in Startertown, a couple of locations and encounters in Spire Marsh, and a dungeon map with encounter key for the Blood Mage's lair. A section explaining different ways things could go, like enlisitng the help of the orcs vs killing them, or organising a village militia for defense instead of personally going orc-slaying. Finally, and in my mind this could be an online, free component that gets updated if a setting gets updated: A section explaining how if you're playing this adventure in Forgotten Realms, use the FR brand evil wizards, and it's the town of X in the swamps of Y at FR map square whatever, and a couple of NPCs change to FR branded races or classes or whatever and there's FR branded food at the tavern (then the same for Greyhawk and whatever other setting). Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 12:47 on Jul 4, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 12:40
|
|
|
AlphaDog posted:BECMI gave you an abstracted town and dungeon in Basic, and then a generic-ish town and surrounds in Expert. Do it like that. In the core books, refer to it as Town and make it clear that the DM can give it a name or pick some backwater town off a setting map for it to be. Make sure there's a generic-ish dungeon with standard D&D stuff in it as an included intro adventure in the book. The dungeon is near Town. There's some hooks about other adventures, some NPCs, etc. There's a module called Wreck Ashore with the following overviews for the DM: quote:The scenario takes place on and around a swampy peninsula that juts out from a longer stretch of coastline. Along one side of this peninsula stretches a dangerous reef. Just offshore on the reef side stands a lighthouse built to warn ships of the danger. At the base of the peninsula on the side away from the reef is a small port town called Seawell. To get a good feel for this area, look at a map of Florida and imagine that the state is only about 50 miles long and 50 miles wide. The lighthouse is just off the coast near St. Augustine, and Seawell lies on the coast just south of Tallahassee. This peninsula juts out from a longer coastline.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 12:49
|
|
|
quote:The scenario can be placed on any coastal peninsula that features a reef. As always, feel free to adapt the material presented here as you see fit to make it work with your campaign. That's the exact sort of thing I'm talking about! There was a crapload of that sort of thing for B/X and BECMI, and I know it kinda continued up through 1e and 2e into 3rd ed, but it seemed to just kind of peter out and disappear. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Jul 4, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 12:53
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:I googled "Wulfgar 3.5 stats" and found a statblock for a Barbarian 7/Fighter 4. Now, I'll grant that they may be depicted as much more powerful in the fiction, but a single-classed Wizard 11 is going to have stuff like Tenser's Transformation, Flesh to Stone, Summon Monster VI, Wall of Iron, Geas/Quest, and the likes. You'd think it was imbalanced but after the Wizard kills Wulfgar and all his friends in a couple of rounds he has to go and rest for a few hours before doing it again, so it all works out.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 14:59
|
|
|
Skellybones posted:You'd think it was imbalanced but after the Wizard kills Wulfgar and all his friends in a couple of rounds he has to go and rest for a few hours before doing it again, so it all works out. True. The Wizard can only kill a limited amount of Wulfgars per day, but a Wulfgar can remain dead all day without stopping.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 15:31
|
|
|
Wulfgar can just pass his saving throws. Right? Right? 
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 15:40
|
|
|
mastershakeman posted:Wulfgar can just pass his saving throws. Right? Right? gradenko_2000 posted:I googled "Wulfgar 3.5 stats"
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 16:41
|
|
|
KittyEmpress posted:Forgotten Realms is the boring setting that tries to do everything and open up any variety of fantasy story you would like, from any mythology or national standard of fantasy, and does all of them half heartedly and without much substance due to it.  Dragonshard and DDO were set in Eberron.mastershakeman posted:Trying to explain book character actions in game mechanics is a fool's errand. I think in the first drizzt book he's taking no damage from dodging fireballs and then taking off a mages stoneskin in one throw of pebbles, stuff that doesn't exist mechanically. So dont worry about it Ever since the wonder that was 3.X, you can explain all of this with "A Feat did it". Doresh fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Jul 4, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 17:09
|
|
|
I still see a lot of  in FR adventure outlines for the DM. Stuff like this, from last season's adventure league: That's a whole lot of background for an organized league game that should last about 4 hours tops. Maybe 10% of that will get across to the players as they sprint through a module to get their xp and loots. But I don't think the writers can help themselves.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 19:32
|
|
|
The funniest.things about 3.5 Forgotten Realms was the statted npcs. Almost every spellcaster would be either pure spellcaster or spellcaster + regional PRC that grants casting but a lot of martial statted characters (and bards/ other half casters) had these weird rear end multiclasses and almost never referenced any prestige classes. So you end up with things like fighter 3/ranger 6/paladin 2 people who make 0 sense mechanically. Almost every statted npc was so little of a threat with so little mechanical rigor that generally a better built (spellcasting ) character could start traveling the world at level 7, killing heads of state without any trouble. This wouldn't be weird, except that the Kings were almost always talked about as being the mightiest of warriors in the nation. It was really clear that the people writing the fluff.books had no idea how to play thrir own game in 3.5
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 19:36
|
|
|
KittyEmpress posted:Almost every statted npc was so little of a threat with so little mechanical rigor that generally a better built (spellcasting ) character could start traveling the world at level 7, killing heads of state without any trouble. This wouldn't be weird, except that the Kings were almost always talked about as being the mightiest of warriors in the nation. It was really clear that the people writing the fluff.books had no idea how to play thrir own game in 3.5 I think it is well-established the writers didn't know their own rules very well. And how do these novels get around the problem of "Who cares about regicides if we have resurrection spells?"
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 19:39
|
|
|
Part of the reason drizzt gets to swing above his weight as a "mere martial" is his racial spell resistance.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 20:09
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:Part of the reason drizzt gets to swing above his weight as a "mere martial" is his racial spell resistance. Which in 3e the game is a horrible disadvantage because you're resistant to good spells too!
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 20:56
|
|
|
You can willingly suppress it, and you always overcome your own resistance.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 21:35
|
|
|
KittyEmpress posted:The funniest.things about 3.5 Forgotten Realms was the statted npcs. Almost every spellcaster would be either pure spellcaster or spellcaster + regional PRC that grants casting but a lot of martial statted characters (and bards/ other half casters) had these weird rear end multiclasses and almost never referenced any prestige classes. So you end up with things like fighter 3/ranger 6/paladin 2 people who make 0 sense mechanically. It's basically a mix of two things. 1) The vast vast majority of FR NPCs were written in AD&D, so you got a lot of weird multiclassing whenever humans were involved. 2) This was what 3.x promised. "Organic character growth." Your character got real religious recently? Take a level in cleric! They spent a level being sneaky and dastardly? Take a level in rogue! Of course it turns out that doing this doesn't work mechanically in the slightest, but 3.x has always been the character sheet edition, so writers didn't care or didn't notice. Of course, it doesn't help that "martial class" is split up into hundreds of different classes and PrCs, whereas "wizard" remained one class forever.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 21:44
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:You can willingly suppress it, and you always overcome your own resistance. Suppressing it takes a full round action. Better hope the party cleric beats your SR when casting Heal.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 21:48
|
|
|
Drow don't have that anymore in 5th Edition. They have advantage on saving throws vs. charm and sleep spells, but nothing innately resistant to all spells in either the PC race or Monster Manual stat blocks.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 21:51
|
|
|
Back when I played 3e our Drow's spell resistance never helped him once due to a combination of spell-resistance-piercing feats being obviously good picks, even for NPCs, and spellcasters being a pain in the rear end to stat up, so if the DM bothered to make one he was always our level or higher.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 22:03
|
|
|
Spell Resistance in 3.x is a trap because it blocked the friendly spells and not the hostile ones, because spells that affected the area around you and conjuration spells didn't get hit by spell resistance, and those were the best ones already in 3.x. You didn't think there'd EVER be an actual defense against magic in 3.x, did you?
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2016 22:16
|
|
|
Not to mention plenty of offensive spells that just ignore SR entirely. Create Pit in Pathfinder is probably the most egregious example. But there's also stuff like Evard's Black Tentacles and Cloudkill. What, you expected Spell Resistance to help you resist spells?
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2016 00:35
|
|
|
Someone a few pages back mentioned they use the Escalation Die from 13th Age. This seems like a wonderful idea because getting bogged down in combat is the worst. Is there any particular conflict with 5e from that rule?
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2016 02:59
|
|
|
Either switch to spell attack rolls ala 4e, or increase the DCs of spells by the amount of the Escalation Die.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2016 03:05
|
|
|
I'm 2e Drizzt. I get Thief skills for no good reason, and can instantly kill an enemy I hit by more than 5 points.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2016 04:11
|
|
|
dwarf74 posted:I'm 2e Drizzt. I get Thief skills for no good reason, and can instantly kill an enemy I hit by more than 5 points. Thats actually a good way to handle things (in 2e). "Feats" would have been great things to tack onto the single-class structure of 2e. They were bad to use as fundamental/necessary things that had a tree of development to them. (3e was bad.) Like sure the 18/16 F/Rn from the murder city is good at killing things.* Maybe the 12 Pr of Healing can pray and radiate regen at 1/rnd once per day. And the 7 Pr of the Sun can dispel darkness at will and summon light 1/day. The 14 Ro (or Br) can use makeup/voices well enough to have an undetectable Alter Self at will (with some prep time). Adding special one-off abilities/skills to characters as the play is great. Making a formal system out of it would be a humungous (nearly undoable) chore, since it depends on the individual character/player to make them fit (and fun), but it works really well. (* I think the skills you are talking about were actually Ranger skills though. Rangers got several of the "thief" skills for use in the wilderness. The only special thing was that auto-kill ability .)
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2016 05:41
|
|
|
I dabbled in AD&D back in the 90s, playing in a campaign for around 6 months or so and I remember it very fondly. I was telling my wife and son how much fun I used to have and we decided to pick up the 5E core books and try to play some D&D. Around the same time we met some others who were playing Pathfinder and started playing in a campaign with them, so my idea of trying my hand at being a DM got put on hold. Fast forward a few months and our Pathfinder campaign is REALLY dragging and is way too bogged down in the details for my taste. I decided to try to come up with a one shot or short campaign that our group could run through as a kind of break from the monotony of a campaign that is clearly not working as intended. I was really nervous about DMing in front of our group so I made a short one shot scenario (borrowing from different published adventures) for two players and made my wife and my son be my guinea pigs. I play things a bit faster and looser than our current DM and both my wife and son had such a great time that they both want me to come up with more stuff. In fact they've been pestering me about playing again this week but I don't have anything prepped yet. The positive feedback has given me more confidence about trying to run sessions for a larger group of players and now I am looking for something to put a group of six through. Five of the six don't have experience with RPGs and while a lot of veterans get tired of cliched D&D tropes, I get the feeling that those cliches are kind of what our group is looking for. I have given a fair amount of thought to trying to change In Search of the Unknown or The Keep on the Borderlands to 5E and letting the group get some classic dungeon crawling in. I am leaning towards something like that for a couple of reasons. First, due to our schedules, we can't meet every week. There could be a month or more in between sessions and having static dungeons with NPCs in a town makes creating episodic content easier and players won't have to keep a complex story straight in between sessions. Secondly, a couple of our group members are still pretty shy and have kind of a difficult time assuming the role of their character. I think that easing them into a hack and slash kind of dungeon crawl where I can get them to start describing their actions might ease them into things more than trying to force them to something less combat focused. Does this sound like the idea would work? I've never done any of this stuff before but it doesn't look like it can be too hard once I've nailed down some NPCs and backstories for folks. I did a pretty good job of balancing encounters for 2 and feel somewhat comfortable adhocing combat to make it challenging without being completely deadly to total newbies. My main concern is fleshing everything outside of the dungeons out well enough to work and creating enough adventure hooks to get the party to explore the dungeons.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2016 09:31
|
|
|
You sound like you're doing just fine, and that's as good a place to start as any. My only caution would be to review these older modules and keep an eye out for "gotchas" and death traps. Depending on the players and depending on how you run them, they can either be "oh so that's how dungeoneering is like, cool!" or "this is arbitrary and punitive and sucks"
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2016 09:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 21:00 |
|
|
In addition to those, theres a few other old classics you could pull things out of: U series http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/110325/U1U3-Underwater-Series-1e-BUNDLE A series http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/169626/A0A4-Against-the-Slave-Lords-1e T series http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17068/T14-Temple-of-Elemental-Evil-1e?it=1 http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/28447/Return-to-the-Temple-of-Elemental-Evil-3e?it=1 Theres also the N's and I's, but I cant remember what they are like that clearly.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2016 09:51
|
|