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Arivia posted:Like I said, there's information in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide for 5e. Faiths and Avatars for 2e has even more information, but it's for an older version of the game and is of dubious canonicity for 5e depending upon your DM (5e bringing Myrkul back plays a bit of havoc with Kelemvor's duties.) An Athar Paladin bent on taking down the wall of the faithless, and generally just being a Paladin of Atheism was one character concept I had for a Planescape game I had to duck out of due to time constraints. Partially because I love the Athar, and being a Paladin empowered by either The Source or by the collective belief of all atheist souls is rad, and partially because the wall of the faithless is one of the things I find existentially terrifying in FR (also the fact most of the gods are cool with it). I get that it's the ecumenical stick and a means of storing faithless souls so fiends don't steal them for nefarious ends, but that doesn't make it any less awful, especially since FR afterlife doesn't separate Memory and Soul like most do in Planescape. Other character concepts were; A priest of Jergal, former mighty death God currently the accountant of death, and trucking around with the dustmen. Because Jergal is the best, LN hell yeah. A Magmin Barbarian, in it for the treasure (to eat) and to throw people around by their ankles. Had the skills of "Always on Fire +5" and the flaw of "Always on Fire -2". A possessed suit of armor, fitting in with the adverturers guild party (small guild, just PCs and whoever we could recruit) because nobody ever questions why an adventurer never takes off their armor. Planescape is rad and everyone should play it, is what I'm saying.
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Jan 19, 2017 18:47
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Ambi posted:FR afterlife doesn't separate Memory and Soul What?
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Jan 19, 2017 19:14
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Basically the afterlife in the Forgotten Realms is the absolute shittiest poo poo show ever because AO is the worst god. So your soul remembers your previous life. After all, what good is the threat of eternal suffering if you know you aren't going to actually experience.
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Jan 19, 2017 19:38
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wizard on a water slide posted:The uneven XP in AD&D is one of those things that, like a lot of things in AD&D, actually had a kind of smart design logic behind it that 3E advocates who bash AD&D seem unaware of and, like a lot of things in AD&D, the actual numbers are almost entirely arbitrary. Cirno points out the way Mage levels become curiously cheap in the mid-levels, and I'd also suggest that there's no real reason not to multiclass and point to whatever the gently caress is going on with mid-high level Druid advancement. I'd actually disagree with the "no reason not to multiclass" bit, at least once you hit 2e. Multiclass means no weapon mastery and no using kits, which could both make for a substantial difference in power. And a multiclass mage, every other level, is a full spell level lower - while the pure class wizard is throwing fireballs (which were actually powerful back then), the multiclass one has no AoE spells at all. There's also the action economy to keep in mind - a fighter/mage can only ever do one of those things at a time. Now, once you start talking thieves, then certainly, you always want to multiclass, but that's more because thieves are loving garbage then anything else. jng2058 posted:The DM in a game I'm playing in is a hard rear end in that respect, using experience points and not giving your character any if you the player can't make it for some reason as well as setting your new character's XP back to the start of the level your old character was at if your character dies and needs to be replaced. This has led to the guy who practically lives at the game store and has never missed a session having a level 12 character, most of the rest of us at levels 10 or 11, and the guy who misses half the games because he travels a lot for work back at level 9. Fun fact: AD&D had a solution for this, and it was one explicitly used. See, AD&D was a very focused game. You looted things. Honestly, that's about it. Like, sure, you got a bit of xp for killing monsters, but it was miniscule to the XP you got from looting things. Your XP was very literally your gold count. So what happens when someone is far lower level then everyone else? You just give them more gold until they catch up!
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Jan 19, 2017 22:00
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Kurieg posted:Basically the afterlife in the Forgotten Realms is the absolute shittiest poo poo show ever because AO is the worst god. So your soul remembers your previous life. After all, what good is the threat of eternal suffering if you know you aren't going to actually experience. Eh, it works out fine for 99% of people. Those it doesn't know the score when they make their choice, which is particularly poignant with that cult of Ao in Waterdeep in the 1360s.
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Jan 19, 2017 22:01
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Isn't the fact that the Time of Troubles needed to happen more or less objective proof that it doesn't work out fine for 99% of people? There's no incentive for the gods of evil not to be utter shitheels to their followers since the alternative is worse. Hell there's no incentive for the gods of Good either.
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Jan 19, 2017 22:44
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what made 2e thieves so bad? (assuming hide in shadows house ruled to allow movement)
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Jan 20, 2017 00:12
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mastershakeman posted:what made 2e thieves so bad? (assuming hide in shadows house ruled to allow movement) Knock & invisibility.
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Jan 20, 2017 00:21
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slap me and kiss me posted:Knock & invisibility. well, compared to other editions and whatnot. move silently is a thing too although quiet helps with that the big thing that's fixed is not having two sneak rolls in later editions but that's all I'm really aware of
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Jan 20, 2017 00:23
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mastershakeman posted:what made 2e thieves so bad? (assuming hide in shadows house ruled to allow movement) Bad hit point and THAC0 progression for a class that relies on to-hit rolls and mostly ends up in melee if they want to do any damage. Most of the space devoted to Backstab in the PHB explains why you don't usually get to use it, and then when you do get to use it you find that it's a multiplier to weapon dice before modifiers are applied (like 4th ed's "2w" format) which isn't that great. Trying to be a generalist with your thief skills just makes you suck at everything until late-mid levels.
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Jan 20, 2017 00:30
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How many skeletons/corpses could a good necromancer feasibly raise at once? For story reasons, so not a PC
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Jan 20, 2017 00:40
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Thumbtacks posted:How many skeletons/corpses could a good necromancer feasibly raise at once? For story reasons, so not a PC There's a formula for this but the easiest way to abstract it is the number of spell slots of 3rd level and above they have x 5.
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Jan 20, 2017 00:43
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Thumbtacks posted:How many skeletons/corpses could a good necromancer feasibly raise at once? For story reasons, so not a PC If its not a PC you can just summon as many as you need to service the story.
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Jan 20, 2017 00:43
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That works. I have a day or two before our campaign actually starts so I'm trying to flesh out as many details as possible. I'm still debating having a weaker dragonborn so she's not a Krogan but I'm not sure how small it can reasonably be before it's unnecessary
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Jan 20, 2017 00:45
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Kurieg posted:Isn't the fact that the Time of Troubles needed to happen more or less objective proof that it doesn't work out fine for 99% of people? There's no incentive for the gods of evil not to be utter shitheels to their followers since the alternative is worse. Hell there's no incentive for the gods of Good either. The changes in the afterlife were a result of the Time of Troubles, not a cause for it. And yes, the gods need to promise something to their followers in order to get worshiped - it's commonly power, but there are other options like forgetfulness and lust. Remember, you just need to follow a god, not a specific one - gods that don't provide largely die out, like Auppenser did. If you're not providing, your worshipers just go somewhere else - you can see that in the schisms at Zhentil Keep through the 1360s for how it works for evil deities. A similar problem existed for Waukeen at the same time. Now, worshipers of evil gods often have pretty lovely afterlives - but they specifically signed up for that, and they're still dedicated to their chosen deities even in the afterlife.
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Jan 20, 2017 00:59
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mastershakeman posted:what made 2e thieves so bad? (assuming hide in shadows house ruled to allow movement) In earlier versions of the game, your Thief skill percentages were simply a function of your level (plus or minus racial adjustments, plus or minus Dex adjustments) In 2e, you were given 60 "skill points" to start with, and had to distribute those across the eight Thief skills, with no more than 30 points being sunk into any single skill at any one time On every level-up, you gained another 30 points, with no more than 15 points being sunk into any single skill at any one time It'd take you ~19 levels to get everything maxed out, as opposed to earlier incarnations of the Thief where you might start seeing skills max out as soon as level 12.
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Jan 20, 2017 03:41
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Found a group I might be joining. Based on composition (so far two clerics and a druid) and me being new to D&D, it looks like I might wanna be a frontliner. Warlock looks coolest to me, but we can't all be casters and the learning curve looks higher. Fighters look bleh, though. Paladins seem neat but the oaths are a bit dull, flavor-wise. Would it be too much of a stretch to play an Oath of the Ancients paladin who emphasizes the tenets about joy and celebration and camaraderie etc instead of being some goofy green-clad elf? Like a dwarf whose devotion to celebrating and manifesting the light comes from his love of beer and song and good times? Joyless crusaders and edgy platemail batmans don't seem like my bag. Paladin 6/Warlock X is a pretty good multiclass combination. Heavy armor, shield, and a huge bonus to saves aura while you lay waste with Eldritch Blast and use your Warlock spell slots for all-day smiting.
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Jan 20, 2017 03:58
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gradenko_2000 posted:In earlier versions of the game, your Thief skill percentages were simply a function of your level (plus or minus racial adjustments, plus or minus Dex adjustments) Beyond that, so many things are immune to backstab that it's really only viable at low levels.
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Jan 20, 2017 04:52
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Arivia posted:The changes in the afterlife were a result of the Time of Troubles, not a cause for it. And yes, the gods need to promise something to their followers in order to get worshiped - it's commonly power, but there are other options like forgetfulness and lust. Remember, you just need to follow a god, not a specific one - gods that don't provide largely die out, like Auppenser did. If you're not providing, your worshipers just go somewhere else - you can see that in the schisms at Zhentil Keep through the 1360s for how it works for evil deities. A similar problem existed for Waukeen at the same time. Sometimes it's not even lovely. But generally a god has to be decent to their followers so that they don't leave them and go for another god. Though most people in the realms don't pick a patron god instead tending to pay homage depending on the situation.
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Jan 20, 2017 05:19
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slap me and kiss me posted:Beyond that, so many things are immune to backstab that it's really only viable at low levels. 
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Jan 20, 2017 06:00
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nelson posted:This one struck a particular nerve with me. Everything started off well enough against the human caravan ambushes and goblin raiders. But by level 5 or so the campaign became all undead all day. And then, for a change of pace, we moved on to constructs when we got higher level. After years, if not decades of playing video games where "critical hits!!!" were a thing that you pretty much just always got, my eyes practically popped out of their sockets when I realized that you couldn't sneak attack nor critically hit things in D&D just because they were "unliving" My WoW Rogue could Kidney Strike an ooze.
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Jan 20, 2017 06:25
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gradenko_2000 posted:In earlier versions of the game, your Thief skill percentages were simply a function of your level (plus or minus racial adjustments, plus or minus Dex adjustments) So it's not just that your skills were duplicated by the Wizard, the Wizard did it all flawlessly and better than you ever could. Then you're a poo poo fighter who didn't ever get to use your signature skill in combat. It's real sad.
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Jan 20, 2017 06:46
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The 2e thief was lovely because the AD&D thief was broken beyond repair, and 2e wanted to stay mostly "backwards compatible." Rolling thief skills was a flat roll against their score, and they had way too many goddamn skills to keep track of. You started with 35% open locks? Guess what - that's your chance of success. Only 35%. Against any lock. And you can't just dump all your skill points in there, because there's 8 goddamn thief skills, and even if you trim away excess ones that leaves you with like 4 or 5 you need. Backstab didn't work on most monsters, and while the bonus was substantial (remember again that EVERYONE in AD&D has less HP, meaning HP damage is more valuable), you only had that one shot you could make out of stealth. Rogues also weren't all that great at fighting - they had severe armor caps (Remember - dex adds to armor regardless of what you're wearing in AD&D, and has a much smaller effect) so they couldn't reliably be on the front lines, and their attack bonus was mediocre. So they're unreliable in the non-combat section, and generally kinda bad in the combat section. And honestly, not much can actually fix this without radically changing aspects of the class - the chasis was ruined from the start. And, as was mentioned, wizards get spells very quickly that duplicate much of what you do. Ideally the answer is "have enough Thief poo poo that the wizard can't spend all their spells there," except then the return is "so have enough Thief poo poo that the thief inevitably fails a bunch?" So you multiclass them. Thieves are made for multiclassing. In fact, they are quite literally made for leveling on the side. See, the thief DID have one substantial weird thing - it's levels weren't capped for non-humans. Yes, non-human classes had level caps! It was how you ensured people would play as humans (hint: doesn't really work that way). But thieves had no cap! An elf thief/wizard would one day stop leveling in wizard, but would ALWAYS gain thief levels! There are other benefits. The "thief poo poo" didn't require a separate action, so you don't have to worry about the action economy. They level up pretty fast, so your HP is either better (mage) or at least more equal (fighter, cleric). A fighter can get all the benefits of backstab (though he'll need lighter armor), for a real good alpha strike, as nothing actually prohibited you from using a two handed sword. Wizard/thieves are just plain better at BEING thieves - when their skills (inevitably) fail, they can use a spell to back it up. Cleric/thieves...well, clerics are always useful, so you got that going for you. I mean, if you multiclass a thief, you're making a "better thief" rather then a "better wizard" or "better fighter." It's kinda selfish that way. But no yeah, always multiclass thief, because they're loving garbo.
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Jan 20, 2017 11:31
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ProfessorCirno posted:So you multiclass them. Thieves are made for multiclassing. In fact, they are quite literally made for leveling on the side. See, the thief DID have one substantial weird thing - it's levels weren't capped for non-humans. Yes, non-human classes had level caps! It was how you ensured people would play as humans (hint: doesn't really work that way). But thieves had no cap! An elf thief/wizard would one day stop leveling in wizard, but would ALWAYS gain thief levels! Not according to my 2e DMG. Elf Thief cap is level 12 - which is incidentally lower than their level cap in Mage (which is 15). I have no real argument with the rest of your post. Thieves were mostly garbage back in those days. But still, there is something to them which often gets ignored because everybody played them wrong and these days people think they're supposed to be skill monkeys. Here's the thing: Thieves were not really skill monkeys as we use the term. Instead, they had special unique class abilities which nobody else got (or at least not as good). Anybody can hide. But only Thieves can hide in shadows. Think about that for a moment. Try that in more modern editions, telling your DM you're going to hide in a tree's shadow on a sunny day. He'll probably say no, but in 2e that was their thing. Likewise, anybody can be silent, but only Thieves get to move silently. That Wizard with invisibility will give himself away the second he takes his first step. Stealth is literally impossible for Wizards in any situation where monsters are nearby, even with invisibility. Climb Walls is explicitly about climbing "very smooth surfaces without climbing gear". That means no hammering pitons which attracts guards, lighter loads, quicker movement. Thieves were supposed to function in dungeoncrawls with a high focus on "realistic" limitations for everybody, wandering monsters, and a lack of a general skill system. Thieves weren't all that great at it and they suck at combat, but they still had some edges which others just couldn't get without burning spell slots (and those were more limited in those days). Take them out of that environment and style, and they've got basically nothing. Then 3.0 came along and... took them out of that environment and style. They took away Hide in Shadows, turned it into mundane hiding, and gave it to everybody. The Rogue had more skill points but was just as capped at any one skill at the others.
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Jan 20, 2017 12:04
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When I started running B/X recently I emphatically told my friends "Please don't make a Thief, they're terrible," which also allows me to introduce lockpicks as a limited use resource and allowing any character to make Dexterity checks to open locked doors. The old-school Thief is not only bad in terms of having bad combat stats and saves and everything, the very design of the Thief implicitly suggests that ONLY the Thief can pick locks, disarm traps, move silently and hide in shadows. Even though there's been lots of arguments to-and-fro about what it actually means ("No no, everyone can sneak, but only the Thief has a % chance to move in complete silence") it just feels that scrapping it altogether is the best way to go. e: What I mean is that things like sneaking around, picking locks, disarming traps and everything should be part of every adventurer's know-how, having a class specifically focused on that just feels like it limits everyone else's reasonable options. Ratpick fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Jan 20, 2017 |
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Jan 20, 2017 12:08
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Sage Genesis posted:Not according to my 2e DMG. Elf Thief cap is level 12 - which is incidentally lower than their level cap in Mage (which is 15). I think Cirno's thinking of 1st ed where thief is uncapped for all races except half orcs who get uncapped assassin instead. The only other uncapped nonhuman race/class is half elf druids (the standard weird druid cap still counts for them though). That makes it pretty clear that you're intended to multi thief, and then still progress in it when you're done with your other class. (E: It also implies... things... about nonhumans). 1st ed has a lot of places where it feels like a couple of paragraphs of Gygax's ramblings are just missing. Just before or after the "Class level limitations" table is one of them - it has only terse dot points as notes instead of an explanation of the reasoning behind the numbers like there is near many other tables. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 12:42 on Jan 20, 2017 |
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Jan 20, 2017 12:35
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Sage Genesis posted:Then 3.0 came along and... took them out of that environment and style. They took away Hide in Shadows, turned it into mundane hiding, and gave it to everybody. The Rogue had more skill points but was just as capped at any one skill at the others. It's important to note that, as 3.0 mushed thief skills and NWPs together, the
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Jan 20, 2017 13:29
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Something I did in a recent 3e game was to do away with the whole "allocating skill points" poo poo because drat if that isn't the (second-)most tedious thing clunking up character generation. If it's a class skill, you have [level+3] ranks in it (the normal maximum) If it's a cross-class skill, you have [ (level+3) / 2] ranks in it (the normal maximum)
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Jan 20, 2017 13:37
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The original intention of the Thief, from what I've heard, was to explicitly remove stealth as an option from the other classes. In playtests and pre-Thief class, stealth was pretty much always the best option in any situation; it let you bypass encounters with no risk or resource expenditure. When they spun stealth into its own class they overestimated how powerful it was by itself, so the Thief class ended up being underpowered. This was exacerbated by game design changes taking the Thief out of the dungeon.
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Jan 20, 2017 13:39
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Yeah, you could make a pretty compelling argument that the Thief was one of the earliest examples of "exclusionary rules-making", where something that used to not be strictly defined, suddenly was, and now you can't do that thing without relying on the rule that defines it. Feats being the other hugely obvious example. There's also something in there about how the Thief is a class that, on its face, is a class that's conceptually built for the dungeon crawl. They fight less well than a Fighter, but you're not supposed to fight all the time anyway. They don't have spells, but they do have skills that are theoretically crutches you can regularly rely upon while pulling off your treasure-stealing shenanigans. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 13:49 on Jan 20, 2017 |
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Jan 20, 2017 13:47
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Do holy symbols generally have an appearance relevant to whatever God the person using it follows, or are they unrelated? Trying to figure out what it would look like so I can draw it. I guess kelemvor's would be like his symbol with the skeleton arm and scales but using a skeleton arm as my holy symbol seems...not right Thumbtacks fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Jan 20, 2017 |
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Jan 20, 2017 19:18
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Thumbtacks posted:Do holy symbols generally have an appearance relevant to whatever God the person using it follows, or are they unrelated? Trying to figure out what it would look like so I can draw it. Yes, each deity has its own holy symbol.
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Jan 20, 2017 19:23
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Thumbtacks posted:I guess kelemvor's would be like his symbol with the skeleton arm and scales but using a skeleton arm as my holy symbol seems...not right If a holy symbol can be a little statue of a dead Jew, tortured and nailed to a wooden cross, then it sure can be someone's arm.
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Jan 20, 2017 19:33
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It could also just be the scales, though. With your armor painted to look like a skeleton arm, maybe?
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Jan 20, 2017 19:45
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poo poo I do like that idea
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Jan 20, 2017 19:52
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Playing in a 5e starting shortly, as a Tabaxi Kensei Monk, and the GM has said we are free to craft magic items for an appropriate cost either ourselves or finding an artificer, and that he'd probably be fine with custom items if we run them by him for cost, using the DMG rarity costs for the most part. How useful and valuable would a set of gloves (or oils etc, some kind of reflective oil?) that extend Monk's Deflect Missiles to work on ranged spell attacks be? Because I'd love to bat Eldritch blasts or whatever back at people with Kensei swords, but I've never got to play monk before so idk how useful it would actually be, and how much it should cost?
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Jan 21, 2017 03:13
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Ambi posted:Playing in a 5e starting shortly, as a Tabaxi Kensei Monk, and the GM has said we are free to craft magic items for an appropriate cost either ourselves or finding an artificer, and that he'd probably be fine with custom items if we run them by him for cost, using the DMG rarity costs for the most part. The abilities of that item appear to have it be from level 5+ and probably costly? From what I read magic items aren't cheap. Also is the curse of strahd free pdf?
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Jan 21, 2017 05:33
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Big Black Brony posted:The abilities of that item appear to have it be from level 5+ and probably costly? From what I read magic items aren't cheap. Not the Curse of Strahd, but the Death House was released free if I am correct. It's level 1-3 and serves as an intro to Barovia
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Jan 21, 2017 05:37
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Well I feel I've been bitten by the bug. Had my first D&D/'Tabletop' RPG experience last night on Roll20 and it was fantastic. We plowed through a six hour session and ended up deciding to continue in a couple of weeks.
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Jan 21, 2017 12:54
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DM gave the thumbs up to the "Party Knight" Paladin so I gotta hammer this poo poo out. What was that really sweet character creator thing that was linked a while back?
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