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Kibner posted:Aren't there also feats or abilities or spells in 5e that let players re-roll after seeing the roll? How would they know when to apply that re-roll feature if they don't know what the original roll was? Awesome, yeah. I think Lucky does that as a feat and probably some other things. So that's something I'd need to make sure they roll their own poo poo if they have that kind of feat or ability, and is something I hadn't thought of because it hadn't come up. Good catch.
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Feb 9, 2017 17:12
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kingcom posted:Sounds like someone was saying a defining feature of the game over its counter parts was its simplicity when both those games have pretty minor differences of complexity? The context for that statement was immediately following my post about D&D being simpler to calculate rolls vs. Pathfinder's "weaponized algebra" method. In my head at the time was "I roll to hit, add my ability score (max of +5) plus proficiency bonus (max of +6), maybe +1/2/3 for magical weapons." Versus "I roll to hit, plus ability score, proficiency, magical item, minus penalty, plus feat bonus, minus monster bonus, plus weird edge-case bonus that may only come up once god I hope I remember it... ad nauseum." But if you guys want to die on the hill of pointing out that there are bad CR rules as written, Godspeed.
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Feb 9, 2017 17:13
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Generic Octopus posted:In play they're about the same to me (same action economy; martials attack, casters do their thing). Both of your listed times for chargen are not good, but it taking days for you make a PF character sounds like less of an issue with PF's rules and more an issue of you trying to look through all the material. You have to though. In fact, I poured over so much material and still never found out about Path of War. I had been making a martial character, but struggled with finding a build that wasn't played by "attack/move, end turn." so spending time looking for defender style, damage, control, builds that are designed to avoid magic, alpha strike, etc...trying everything I could to make a martial character that didn't suck, without PoW. There's just so much to the game nowadays and you'd better believe that Arcanist is going to be picking up everything to become a god. I don't know how much extra stuff exists for 5e. I've heard about Unearthed Arcana, but maybe that's all?
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Feb 9, 2017 17:30
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I will say that yeah, 5e is simpler in the sense that for example there are the 12 or whatever skills, they are all based on straight ability scores, so it's easy to tell if something rolls or not and it's easy for a DM to go "just roll [intelligence or whatever]" rather than trying to figure out particularly what kind of check something is. If you know what the ability scores mean the skills are almost wholly unnecessary except where proficiencies come into play. So it's simpler than versions that have skill points and so on. The downside to this is it's very difficult to make like, a fighter who is an ex-cop and so has strong investigation and perception because if you're making a fighter you're not gonna want to stack Wisdom and Intelligence, but you have zero hope of making those skills stand out relative to a Wizard or Cleric because even with say a +2 or even a +4 on double proficiency or something you're still likely to only be +4-5 total on the stat, where a Wizard might be +4 just without any proficiency at all. So in that regard it's not great and so I end up making heavy use of backgrounds and letting players make their own fluff backgrounds that I will give proficiencies for accordingly because, well, it's really not all that gamebreaking frankly. But again that points to 5e as not being particularly friendly to inexperienced DMs who might think that it's really important because the system is painstakingly developed by scientists at WotC and anything like that would unbalance it. I think that's maybe the bigger problem, is that new players have an expectation of balance because for example computer games make considerable effort to balance things. The new player is inclined to assume some thought was put into the design and everything has been playtested and this is how God Intended, when in fact uh none of that is true and if you assume that you're gonna end up limiting people's ability to roll fun characters or try fun stuff because there's no rule addressing it or there's no mechanic in RAW to let you do that.
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Feb 9, 2017 17:31
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koreban posted:The context for that statement was immediately following my post about D&D being simpler to calculate rolls vs. Pathfinder's "weaponized algebra" method. Don't forget circumstance bonuses, flanking, any spell bonuses your cleric has running, etc.. Paramemetic posted:The downside to this is it's very difficult to make like, a fighter who is an ex-cop and so has strong investigation and perception because if you're making a fighter you're not gonna want to stack Wisdom and Intelligence, but you have zero hope of making those skills stand out relative to a Wizard or Cleric because even with say a +2 or even a +4 on double proficiency or something you're still likely to only be +4-5 total on the stat, where a Wizard might be +4 just without any proficiency at all. So in that regard it's not great and so I end up making heavy use of backgrounds and letting players make their own fluff backgrounds that I will give proficiencies for accordingly because, well, it's really not all that gamebreaking frankly. I just wish Perception wasn't the god skill. Also almost every skill is based on mental stats, and physical stats are what, athletics and acrobatics? One STR skill? Intimidate is CHA based? As if the muscled bound thug with a two word vocabulary and scars across his face won't scare the ever loving poo poo out of you because, hey, he's not particularly charming or good looking? Get the gently caress out of here. That's one flaw DND has always had, where mental stats are equivalent to skills and proficiency. User0015 fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Feb 9, 2017 |
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Feb 9, 2017 17:32
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User0015 posted:You have to though. In fact, I poured over so much material and still never found out about Path of War. I had been making a martial character, but struggled with finding a build that wasn't played by "attack/move, end turn." so spending time looking for defender style, damage, control, builds that are designed to avoid magic, alpha strike, etc...trying everything I could to make a martial character that didn't suck, without PoW. There's just so much to the game nowadays and you'd better believe that Arcanist is going to be picking up everything to become a god. You're right insofar as there's not a lot in Core Pathfinder to a martial beyond power-attacking with more or less modifiers, but there's only really one archetype of a 5e Fighter that isn't guilty of that either. Which is, if anything another issue with 5e in that making casters and non-casters play on a somewhat more even keel was a solved problem by as early as late 3.5 even if you disregard 4e, but 5e threw most of that away in an attempt to pander to people who hated 4e.
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Feb 9, 2017 17:40
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Paramemetic posted:I think that's maybe the bigger problem, is that new players have an expectation of balance because for example computer games make considerable effort to balance things. Only in multi-player games, and even then only after a few patches. Otherwise balance is not a concern. It's all about fun and stupid combinations. Some tabletop RPGs do go all in on balance, or make balance a non-issue, but D&D is following Magic's famous model of giving different types of players what they want. It's why the champion fighter persists even after charops have proven its inferiority: certain types of players love it. A lot of the miserable, game-breaking balance issues that people here hate about 5e are things that I just haven't seen in actual play. I do see players naturally gravitate towards the types of classes that provide them the most fun, and enjoying them for a long time. There are lots of small things that I see house ruled away, but I've seen house rules in every RPG I've ever played. People like making rules and personalizing their games. It's part of the fun of tabletop RPGs.
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Feb 9, 2017 17:58
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:To what extent did it ever work? Tomb of Horrors is famous and stuff even outside of normal d&d circles but I don't think it's supposed to be like, a fun adventure for your friends. I witnessed a five-man party of people who had never played the Tomb of Horrors before complete the whole thing, final kill Acererak, get all the treasure and leave without a single casualty. It took 13 realtime hours and was probably incredibly unfun for the GM because it involved algorithmic lists of dungeon SOPs and hench amounts of planning and careful consideration. It's totally doable and that entire party had an absolute blast - the Tomb is very fair in its unfairness. The usual thing was "Okay, the Rogue will check for traps. Okay he found nothing so we cast Detect Traps. Okay that didn't find anything so we'll poke everything with an 11 foot pole (10 foot's not long enough). Okay nothing happened, we'll get Geoffrey the Safety Skeleton to activate whatever it is while we stand in the previous room. It's definitely trapped in some way, this is the Tomb of Horrors." They used the pregens that come with it - who are all 10th-14th level in AD&D - which helped considerably. Anyone running through it as a 1st level scrub has a 0% chance of success, so much of their method relied on things like Detect Traps, Geoffrey the Safety Skeleton, the ability to create temples and site-to-site teleport to them and so on. I was in the 'gently caress Tomb of Horrors' boat for a long while but having witnessed a Tomb of Horrors success story first hand has really changed my mind over whether total bullshit like the Tomb could ever be fun. It totally is assuming you're a hateful masochist with bottomless wells of patience and concentration, apparently.
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Feb 9, 2017 18:07
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User0015 posted:Don't forget circumstance bonuses, flanking, any spell bonuses your cleric has running, etc.. Again, still easier in relative terms to Pathfinder's system, just on the basis of Pathfinder's added character complexity. quote:I just wish Perception wasn't the god skill. If you use investigation when players are actively looking for something instead of perception as the catch-all-notice-a-thing stat, it can work. You only really need one or two characters with decent perception if they communicate with the party. quote:As if the muscled bound thug with a two word vocabulary and scars across his face won't scare the ever loving poo poo out of you because, hey, he's not particularly charming or good looking? Get the gently caress out of here. That's one flaw DND has always had, where mental stats are equivalent to skills and proficiency. This is where differing the DC for different players. The two word using muscle pins thug may be a DC8 to intimidate, whereas the gnome sorcerer may be an 18. These checks aren't necessarily fixed for all cases. Make the fighter have an easier time ofnit, because he's a muscle bound thug.
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Feb 9, 2017 18:09
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I mean, yeah, there is that too. I am definitely not one for munchkinning out the best character. My main character in a campaign right now is a Kobold Wild Magic Sorcerer. He's got -2 STR and -1 CON, and then Wild Magic which is The Worst Sorcerer, but I like playing characters with deficits and overcoming them through wit, and our table appreciates that kind of play. So yeah, I don't know that there are problems stemming from edge cases that actually show up that often. And obviously I'm not just absolutely opposed to 5e, I'm still playing it and we're still using it as the foundation, but then again I have also house ruled that my players can suggest stuff to me from other editions that I can adapt to fit into 5e if they want because it doesn't have lots. I'm running a Dark Suns campaign, and none of that has been adapted, so between a psionic class, elemental clerics, and weird races at the end of the day we're mostly playing "Paramemetic's game kinda based on 5e" and I assume that's how most tables must end up.
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Feb 9, 2017 18:12
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5e is fine. Stop telling people they're not having fun the right way you weird creeps.
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Feb 9, 2017 18:13
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Paramemetic posted:Change of topic: I've recently started rolling things like perception, insight, etc for my players behind the screen and giving them the result without telling them what the roll was. This forces them to make decisions based on what they know without the meta knowledge of "well it was a 3 so I shouldn't trust this." It has been a lot of fun and ends up giving the story more of a narrative feel. I would not do this for more "active" checks like athletics or acrobatics where the player would know if they hosed up anyhow and relies on it and definitely not during combat. Personally, as a player, I'd love if the DM did the searching rolls behind the scenes. Mainly because it adds to immersion but also because the DM knows whether something is there to be found and we don't have to waste time rolling dice just to confirm that nothing is there. As far as luck goes, I think it would be fine, if there were a secret door or treasure, to just straight up tell the player Guy searches the room and finds nothing but has a gut feeling that something is here... do you want to use your luck feature? It's a tad metagamey but it also eliminates the wasted use of a luck roll if nothing is there (which would be unfun). nelson fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Feb 9, 2017 |
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Feb 9, 2017 18:14
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nelson posted:Mainly because it adds to immersion but also because the DM knows whether something is there to be found and we don't have to waste time rolling dice just to confirm that nothing is there. If you were in a room where there's nothing and you said you wanted to search it, I would tell you to hold your dice and not roll because there's nothing in the room.
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Feb 9, 2017 18:27
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Paramemetic posted:Right, that's how I was doing it until a player rolled a 1 on a perception or an insight check and while nobody was weird about it, I kind of had this moment of "there is no doubt that they failed to see a thing that may or may not be there and they know it" and it kind of ended up being like CIA Freedom of Information Act stuff where they send you letters like "we can neither confirm nor deny the existence of such a document, but if such documents did exist, they would be classified." Yea I know where your coming from. Then all other players are like, oh he failed. I want to roll for the same check. In stone situations I say they one and done, but others who want to search a room I have a hard time saying no to. It's an interesting idea, post about it again after another session and let the thread (me) know how it's working if you can.
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Feb 9, 2017 18:28
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I have a new debate comparison. Lizardfolk, the best folk? They eat anything, he'd blurry non existent morals, and two I think racial attacks. Cons, maybe don't like cold? Might not wear big hats?
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Feb 9, 2017 18:34
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koreban posted:Again, still easier in relative terms to Pathfinder's system, just on the basis of Pathfinder's added character complexity. Maybe I confused your comment, but I was suggesting those things are part of Pathfinder. I didn't think 5e had inspiration buffs (or whatever the keyword is for a buff that always stacks), flanking, and clerics mostly give advantage over bonuses. I just remember calculating to-hit chance in PF can be pretty difficult for some things.
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Feb 9, 2017 18:54
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koreban posted:This is where differing the DC for different players. The two word using muscle pins thug may be a DC8 to intimidate, whereas the gnome sorcerer may be an 18. These checks aren't necessarily fixed for all cases. Make the fighter have an easier time ofnit, because he's a muscle bound thug. You don't get to advocate the rules are fine when you are literally advocating to ignore the rules. How is that so hard for you and others like you to understand? No one is saying your experiences with your friends are bad. They're saying that if you followed the rules of 5E your experiences would have been bad with a side of maybe we shouldn't praise rules that we don't use.
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Feb 9, 2017 19:00
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User0015 posted:I just remember calculating to-hit chance in PF can be pretty difficult for some things. If it's anything like 3.x there are a ton of potential modifiers.
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Feb 9, 2017 19:01
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Doodmons posted:I witnessed a five-man party of people who had never played the Tomb of Horrors before complete the whole thing, final kill Acererak, get all the treasure and leave without a single casualty. It took 13 realtime hours and was probably incredibly unfun for the GM because it involved algorithmic lists of dungeon SOPs and hench amounts of planning and careful consideration. It's totally doable and that entire party had an absolute blast - the Tomb is very fair in its unfairness. The usual thing was "Okay, the Rogue will check for traps. Okay he found nothing so we cast Detect Traps. Okay that didn't find anything so we'll poke everything with an 11 foot pole (10 foot's not long enough). Okay nothing happened, we'll get Geoffrey the Safety Skeleton to activate whatever it is while we stand in the previous room. It's definitely trapped in some way, this is the Tomb of Horrors." They used the pregens that come with it - who are all 10th-14th level in AD&D - which helped considerably. Anyone running through it as a 1st level scrub has a 0% chance of success, so much of their method relied on things like Detect Traps, Geoffrey the Safety Skeleton, the ability to create temples and site-to-site teleport to them and so on. That's pretty freaking cool. I'd have liked to see that.
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Feb 9, 2017 19:05
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TheBlandName posted:You don't get to advocate the rules are fine when you are literally advocating to ignore the rules. How is that so hard for you and others like you to understand? No one is saying your experiences with your friends are bad. They're saying that if you followed the rules of 5E your experiences would have been bad with a side of maybe we shouldn't praise rules that we don't use. One of the optional rules of 5e is to use the statistic that best fits the action. The example in the book (forget if players guide or DMG) was to use CON modifier with the Athletics skill if the action was to swim a long distance. Just use the rule that's the most fun and makes the most sense in the fiction.
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Feb 9, 2017 19:06
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esquilax posted:One of the optional rules of 5e is to use the statistic that best fits the action. The example in the book (forget if players guide or DMG) was to use CON modifier with the Athletics skill if the action was to swim a long distance. Just use the rule that's the most fun and makes the most sense in the fiction. Statistics literally does not work in favor of that example. The difference in attribute spreads means that, at a minimum, all the effort, discussion, and thought process that goes into advocating a particular modifier is mechanically meaningless more than 3 times as often as meaningful.
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Feb 9, 2017 19:11
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Big Black Brony posted:I have a new debate comparison. Lizardfolk, the best folk? They eat anything, he'd blurry non existent morals, and two I think racial attacks. I have a counterpoint: maybe the biggest hats? One of my earliest gaming experiences involved needing to run from three fights with lizardfolk in a row due to incredibly bad rolls. Now every fantasy game I run has the lizardfolk running casinos.
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Feb 9, 2017 19:17
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gradenko_2000 posted:If you were in a room where there's nothing and you said you wanted to search it, I would tell you to hold your dice and not roll because there's nothing in the room. Alternately, don't have a room with nothing in it. I mean, every room must have *some* point, even if it's just where Orcs dumped their Orc diapers.
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Feb 9, 2017 19:41
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gradenko_2000 posted:If you were in a room where there's nothing and you said you wanted to search it, I would tell you to hold your dice and not roll because there's nothing in the room. that doesn't work very well. they need to roll and find nothing so as to wonder if they missed something. Otherwise, if you let them roll and they find nothing, they'll know something is there that they missed
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Feb 9, 2017 19:43
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Nobody cares about me or my dumb drama problems but I'll post it here just for the closure value. The DM is going to start next session at the point where my character is still at full hp but grappled by the vampire just outside the manor. We talked about possible ways to survive from here and he's agreed that two of them sound like they'd probably work. I tried to get him to give me actual confirmation that I can live because I'd be equally annoyed just dying at the beginning of next session instead of at the end of the last but he was evasive. I think he's just trying to preserve the mystery though as he hinted that it's fine but wouldn't just say it straight out. So we're both happy with the outcome.
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Feb 9, 2017 20:00
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If anything I assume he's trying to not guarantee you you'll live. Giving you actual confirmation you can live reads an awful lot like confirmation you will live and I would never be comfortable giving that to any of my players.
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Feb 9, 2017 20:03
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You will die at the beginning of every session from here on out.
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Feb 9, 2017 20:05
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Sorry Agent, I would not remain hopeful about surviving. It's still a vampire, and you're starting in a very precarious position.
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Feb 9, 2017 20:07
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How the hell are pixies CR 1/4 monsters with all those spells two of which are a higher level than what a level 1 Wizard can cast and with superior invisibility on top
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Feb 9, 2017 20:09
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SettingSun posted:Sorry Agent, I would not remain hopeful about surviving. It's still a vampire, and you're starting in a very precarious position. I think I'll be fine. My rogue is slippery as gently caress by design and I happen to be carrying holy water in my pocket (given to me by the cleric before I went on my sneaking mission). He (the DM) agreed that smashing a vampire with holy water should break the grapple which should give me the time I need to slip inside the house. The vampire gets 2 attacks on me (including legendary actions) before I get another turn but I have 35 hp, 16 AC, and I'm still invisiible so he's got disadvantage on his attacks. I should live theoretically. If I don't we're going to have problems again because I'm still not happy with how the whole thing played out and 'hey maybe you'll live but probably not' would not be an adequate solution for me, but we talked about it so we'll find out. Unfortunately it's a biweekly game so I have to wait awhile to find out.
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Feb 9, 2017 20:10
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Ratpick posted:How the hell are pixies CR 1/4 monsters with all those spells two of which are a higher level than what a level 1 Wizard can cast and with superior invisibility on top Because the game designers just handwaved the entire game
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Feb 9, 2017 20:10
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Agent355 posted:I think I'll be fine. My rogue is slippery as gently caress by design and I happen to be carrying holy water in my pocket (given to me by the cleric before I went on my sneaking mission). He (the DM) agreed that smashing a vampire with holy water should break the grapple which should give me the time I need to slip inside the house. The vampire gets 2 attacks on me (including legendary actions) before I get another turn but I have 35 hp, 16 AC, and I'm still invisiible so he's got disadvantage on his attacks. I should live theoretically. Attacking the vampire with holy water will break your invisibility, or at least it should. But I'm pulling for ya. Regardless, do tell us the results when they happen so we can use it as ammo to continue to argue amongst ourselves about who is right and wrong.
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Feb 9, 2017 20:17
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That tomb of horrors play through sounds absolutely boring as gently caress. Scripting every room or interaction to a series of steps like was described seems to suck all the fun out of it. To top it off spending 13 hours doing it... ugh. It literally sounds like the party wrote pseudo code to get through each room. Not exactly my cup of key but if it floats your boat cool.
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Feb 9, 2017 20:21
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yeah I would agree. I think throwing the holy water should be a free action since it's just an item on my belt and my hands are empty, but it might be ruled as a standard action which leaves me with an awkward choice. At that point I would be free of the grapple but 50 ft from the mansion, I could use my cunning action to dash but then I have to survive an op attack, if he missed I'm home free. Or I could use a disengage action and avoid the op but not actually have enough movement to get into the mansion on that turn, but at only 20 ft away the party may be able to actually help and I might be able to survive a second round of attacks. There's also another plan that is a bit more complicated and frankly I feel is alot less reliable. of course if throwing holy water at the vampire is a free action I use my standard to dash and my cunning action to disengage and I live. ~~~~whoooo knooooooows
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Feb 9, 2017 20:22
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Man, you should probably write up a back up character, a vampire hunter gunslinger / artificier, to avenge your first character when he does. Your long lost brother Alucard.
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Feb 9, 2017 20:32
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Vampire Hunter 553 T-nega
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Feb 9, 2017 20:54
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TheBlandName posted:You don't get to advocate the rules are fine when you are literally advocating to ignore the rules. How is that so hard for you and others like you to understand? No one is saying your experiences with your friends are bad. They're saying that if you followed the rules of 5E your experiences would have been bad with a side of maybe we shouldn't praise rules that we don't use. Gonna need a page reference for where it says that DC checks are at a fixed number for each character attempting to make a check against it. If I decide the intimidation DC for Meathead McKnucklefists should be 8 and the DC for Squidgy Pillowfluffer is 18, that's entirely reasonable. By the same token, if they have to take Wis saves versus another monster's spell effect at DC17, they should be using the same check number. Here's a freebie. PHB p.174. Ability Checks: quote:For every ability check, the DM decides which of the six abilities is relevant to the task at hand and the difficulty of the task, represented by the Difficulty Class. If you want to rules lawyer that "each" refers to per all checks from all characters, we'll disagree. Each player who makes a check will make the check at a DC. Meathead's will be lower than Squidgy's for intimidation. Squidgy will have a lower DC than Meathead for persuasion.
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Feb 9, 2017 21:09
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Matt Mercer from critical role wrote a home brew that is basically a witcher. Even down to the ability to use mutagens.
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Feb 9, 2017 21:14
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koreban posted:Gonna need a page reference for where it says that DC checks are at a fixed number for each character attempting to make a check against it. Your interpretation is not strictly supported by the text of the rules, and neither is my own. Objectively speaking, you should already be agreeing with me that the rules are bad. But you resist that admission for some reason. Still, I contend that the most natural interpretation of the rules is that each task is (in keeping with common usage of the word) independent from who attempts it, and thus should be represented by a single, static Difficulty Class until a significant change in the task occurs. EDIT: To be perfectly clear, I am not saying you shouldn't be tweaking the Difficulty class so that Fightgar has a better chance of success at intimidation than Wizrob (your names were bad because they used 4 syllables too many). I'm saying that you should. But also that you should own that as your call and not try to hide behind interpreting a poorly written rule and pretend the rule is anything but what it is, poorly written. TheBlandName fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Feb 9, 2017 |
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Feb 9, 2017 21:27
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koreban posted:Gonna need a page reference for where it says that DC checks are at a fixed number for each character attempting to make a check against it. Well, then what's the point of different characters having different proficiencies? I thought that was supposed to set characters apart, not the DCs they get assigned.
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