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empathe
Nov 9, 2003

>:|

mastershakeman posted:

empathe, your very first session you had to fudge dice? that should be a bad sign

I didn't fudge dice that wasn't me.

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Arivia
Mar 17, 2011

empathe posted:

We started at level 1. Everyone had always wanted to play DnD, me included.

I wasn't going to bring them a different system.

Here, this has D&D right on the cover and is what they played in Stranger Things and is way more fun to play for everyone: http://www.dmsguild.com/product/17171/DD-Rules-Cyclopedia-Basic?it=1

koreban
Apr 4, 2008

I guess we all learned that trying to get along is way better than p. . .player hatin'.
Fun Shoe

Arivia posted:

Here, this has D&D right on the cover and is what they played in Stranger Things and is way more fun to play for everyone: http://www.dmsguild.com/product/17171/DD-Rules-Cyclopedia-Basic?it=1

I just finished reading the Fail Forward post and it's links.. So, your problem is with 5e specifically, and not WOTC? Like, the version is bad because a couple of bigots playtested it, but not the company that enabled the hiring and crediting of said bigots?

Turtlicious
Sep 17, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

empathe posted:

I didn't fudge dice that wasn't me.

What did you like about your first game, what did you enjoy, how did it go, what happened? I'm interested.

You said you ran Phandelver, that's a 5 man adventure, how did you adapt it for 4 people?

How did you "take it easy" on them? That implies die fudging, or ignoring some part of the adventure yeah?

Agent355
Jul 26, 2011


The best thing to do in this thread is complain about your DM killing you unfairly in my experience.

You'll get about 2 pages of people agreeing/disagreeing with you on merit and 1 or 2 users calling you a poo poo head drama queen.

I think that's a pretty good ratio actually.

Just post questions or suggest things to talk about and people will probably engage you.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

koreban posted:

I just finished reading the Fail Forward post and it's links.. So, your problem is with 5e specifically, and not WOTC? Like, the version is bad because a couple of bigots playtested it, but not the company that enabled the hiring and crediting of said bigots?

If you want to boycott WOTC as a whole that's also fine. I don't play MTG either.

Ever Disappointing
May 4, 2004

Agent355 posted:

The best thing to do in this thread is complain about your DM killing you unfairly in my experience.

You'll get about 2 pages of people agreeing/disagreeing with you on merit and 1 or 2 users calling you a poo poo head drama queen.

I think that's a pretty good ratio actually.

Just post questions or suggest things to talk about and people will probably engage you.

No one responded to my world map question :(

Vengarr
Jun 17, 2010

Smashed before noon

Turtlicious posted:

What did you like about your first game, what did you enjoy, how did it go, what happened? I'm interested.

You said you ran Phandelver, that's a 5 man adventure, how did you adapt it for 4 people?

How did you "take it easy" on them? That implies die fudging, or ignoring some part of the adventure yeah?

Taking it easy can also imply the enemies not fighting tactically sound. Sometimes the goblins are dumb and get tunnel vision on fighting the Fighter in front of them, sometimes they Get Smart and go after the Wizard.

Agent355
Jul 26, 2011


Tir McDohl posted:

No one responded to my world map question :(

I made my own map for one of my campaigns, it took like 5+ hours of work both using map building tools and then finishing it off with my own minimal paint.net skills.

The best thing that map did for me is get my players super interested right from the get go because of the obvious quality/time investment I had put into the world.

But other than that little burst of energy in the first session it didn't add anything. I think now I could achieve the same effect with a randomly generated more simple map with maybe an hour of photoshop/paint.net touch ups.

Paint.net is free by the way and a great program for doing simple things like messing about with maps and copy/pasting mountain ranges across a landscape.

I never found an actual map making tool that I really liked.

Vengarr posted:

Taking it easy can also imply the enemies not fighting tactically sound. Sometimes the goblins are dumb and get tunnel vision on fighting the Fighter in front of them, sometimes they Get Smart and go after the Wizard.

I do this in almost every encounter and make sure to give the players narrative descriptions of how/why the goblins are doing the things they do. Makes it feel alive and also makes it easier to balance out the encounter without reverting to straight die fudging.

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011

koreban posted:

I just finished reading the Fail Forward post and it's links.. So, your problem is with 5e specifically, and not WOTC? Like, the version is bad because a couple of bigots playtested it, but not the company that enabled the hiring and crediting of said bigots?

WotC has a lot of little moving parts, and all indication is that the D&D stuff is kept very separate from everything else. Mearls enabled all of that; it's his fault. There have been times in the past when having trouble with WotC in general makes sense (look up what got Peter Adkison fired), but it doesn't right now.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Agent355 posted:

Just post questions or suggest things to talk about and people will probably engage you.

Do this, and if you post "XYZ happened" try not to lose your poo poo or go "LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU I HAD FUN EVERYTHING'S FINE" if someone points out that the rules don't work like that, or that they think there's a better way of handling it, or that those particular rules don't work at all, or that you'd get a more sensible result if you sequenced it ZYX instead.

There's poo poo wrong with every RPG ever. You'll have a better experience when you fix what's wrong with the game you're playing. Everyone has a different opinion about what's broken and what's not and what the best way to fix things is. You will end up being a better player and GM by listening to people talk about this stuff and using or adapting the bits that work best for you.

When you say "I enjoyed X aspect of the game" and someone says "If you liked that you should check out <other game>" they're not telling you that you're a bad person who makes bad choices, they're saying "I liked that part too, and this other game has more parts like that". (Usually, I mean. Some people are dicks).

When you say "I had problems with Y thing", people will tell you how they fixed it. Other people will tell you how they fixed it. Sometimes there'll be a multipage argument about this. Sometimes many people will come away from that with new ideas.

Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Feb 11, 2017

ritorix
Jul 22, 2007

Vancian Roulette

Agent355 posted:

The best thing to do in this thread is complain about your DM killing you unfairly in my experience.

Stick around until we get into another Forgotten Realms argument, now that's some fireworks.

Turtlicious
Sep 17, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Tir McDohl posted:

I have been messing around with Donjon to make a world map for my game to mixed results. I like the looks of the maps, but they come out pretty pangaea-y even when I use an earth-like percentage of water (in which case there is just one giant ocean in the middle of the map). Any advice for good settings to use to get some distinct continents, or is there a better map maker out there I can use?

Crank the water, lower the ice, and max out the iterations. I don't really like Donjon tho. http://donjon.bin.sh/world/ (You're using this one right?)

http://gmworldmap.com I like this, I just zoom in and scroll around until I have something I like.

This is also good. http://topps.diku.dk/torbenm/maps.msp

Turtlicious fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Feb 11, 2017

Agent355
Jul 26, 2011


Here's why I like 5e.

I like relatively light weight combat. I think combat should enable players to be cool and do cool things and you don't need to drag it out or make it complex to do that.

I like dealing with the stats/skills I already know how to use and my players are already familiar with, obviously I could learn new ones and thats fine too but I still enjoy using ones I'm familiar with.

I like the overall turned down power level, or at least the theory they were working with. I don't like dealing with thousands of multipliers.

Overall the system is easy enough to play and keep from actively getting in the way when I DM (or play as a player) and lets me get to the meat of what I like, the roleplaying and world building.

Here's what I don't like about 5e:

martial/wizard balance

monster CR balance

end of list

Everything else I'm either ambivalent about or isn't a big enough issue for me to actually care. I know people don't like the 'ask your dm stuff' and I get the argument, it just doesn't actually bother me at all.

I have now ensured at least 10 more posts of argument.

Ever Disappointing
May 4, 2004

Thank you Agent and Turtlicious. Looks like something to work on this weekend while I sort out some more world details and backstory hooks.

Turtlicious
Sep 17, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Agent355 posted:

Here's why I like 5e.

I like relatively light weight combat. I think combat should enable players to be cool and do cool things and you don't need to drag it out or make it complex to do that.

I like dealing with the stats/skills I already know how to use and my players are already familiar with, obviously I could learn new ones and thats fine too but I still enjoy using ones I'm familiar with.

I like the overall turned down power level, or at least the theory they were working with. I don't like dealing with thousands of multipliers.

Overall the system is easy enough to play and keep from actively getting in the way when I DM (or play as a player) and lets me get to the meat of what I like, the roleplaying and world building.

Here's what I don't like about 5e:

martial/wizard balance

monster CR balance

end of list

Everything else I'm either ambivalent about or isn't a big enough issue for me to actually care. I know people don't like the 'ask your dm stuff' and I get the argument, it just doesn't actually bother me at all.

I have now ensured at least 10 more posts of argument.

Who is arguing? we're having a discussion. (There's going to be 10 pages more btw, not 10 posts.)

Agent355
Jul 26, 2011


Turtlicious posted:

Who is arguing? we're having a discussion. (There's going to be 10 pages more btw, not 10 posts.)

MY MOTHER IS A SAINT

Zarick
Dec 28, 2004

Agent355 posted:

Here's why I like 5e.

I like relatively light weight combat. I think combat should enable players to be cool and do cool things and you don't need to drag it out or make it complex to do that.

I like dealing with the stats/skills I already know how to use and my players are already familiar with, obviously I could learn new ones and thats fine too but I still enjoy using ones I'm familiar with.

I like the overall turned down power level, or at least the theory they were working with. I don't like dealing with thousands of multipliers.

Overall the system is easy enough to play and keep from actively getting in the way when I DM (or play as a player) and lets me get to the meat of what I like, the roleplaying and world building.

Here's what I don't like about 5e:

martial/wizard balance

monster CR balance

end of list

Everything else I'm either ambivalent about or isn't a big enough issue for me to actually care. I know people don't like the 'ask your dm stuff' and I get the argument, it just doesn't actually bother me at all.

I have now ensured at least 10 more posts of argument.

I mostly agree with this. The mushy 'natural language' of the rules could go away too.

Ever Disappointing
May 4, 2004

My perspective on 5e having come from 15 years of holier-than-thou non-D&D systems you've probably never heard of of (in large part because my GM customized everything and created all the powers and poo poo in his games himself), I wanted a simpler game that I could earn my GM wings on since I have little experience and so far it is working out quite nicely. I would have been eaten alive trying to run a Pathfinder game

empathe
Nov 9, 2003

>:|

Turtlicious posted:

What did you like about your first game, what did you enjoy, how did it go, what happened? I'm interested.

You said you ran Phandelver, that's a 5 man adventure, how did you adapt it for 4 people?

How did you "take it easy" on them? That implies die fudging, or ignoring some part of the adventure yeah?

This.

Vengarr posted:

Taking it easy can also imply the enemies not fighting tactically sound. Sometimes the goblins are dumb and get tunnel vision on fighting the Fighter in front of them, sometimes they Get Smart and go after the Wizard.

The only thing I did to take it easy was - they were in the first hideout and had cleared everything fairly easily so far. They found the tunnel to the boss's room and the rogue initiated the boss fight by going up there. The rest of the party was already climbing behind and got in over the next three rounds (one each round).

They took some hits there but had killed everything, but the boss. The boss was down the 3hp and instead of having him swing on the Paladin which probably would have taken the PC to 0hp on another hit, I had the boss try to flee. I felt that this was fine since the direction for the Boss, if the party had initiated the fight from the regular entrance was written to flee down the tunnel they came up (which they were basically blocking) if his wolf got killed, which they did. They also didn't alert him from the fight in the previous chamber so they didn't hide and get any sneak attacks on the party.

The only thing I fudged was having it:

a) not attack before running because if it knocked the Paladin unconscious it could have flee'd w/o taking an AoO
or
b) not taking an action to disengage to flee

I let the Paladin take the AoO (we were also already 20 min over the time we'd said we were going to stop) and he got the kill.

All the dice rolls were taken as rolled. Having the one experienced player on rogue helped them a lot as she was good at getting to roll Sneak Attack every round. I didn't scale anything down or change the adventure for a party of 4. We're trying to get a 5th player in (one of the player's wives) so we'd introduce her when they get to Phandalin. They did great.

Edit: They all also rolled REALLY well for their stats + racial bonuses so everyone but the cleric has a +4 to their primary stat for attacks/dmg.

empathe fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Feb 11, 2017

koreban
Apr 4, 2008

I guess we all learned that trying to get along is way better than p. . .player hatin'.
Fun Shoe

Arivia posted:

WotC has a lot of little moving parts, and all indication is that the D&D stuff is kept very separate from everything else. Mearls enabled all of that; it's his fault. There have been times in the past when having trouble with WotC in general makes sense (look up what got Peter Adkison fired), but it doesn't right now.

Okay, I get where you're coming from at least.

By the same token, I'll make a bad analogy because I was just thinking about this while making dinner for my kids:

The vegetables that went into my dinner tonight may have been grown by a white, ultra-conservative, evangelical christian, anti-LGBTQ, anti-muslim, pro-border wall, gun totin' yeehawdist, Trump voting, farmer. Maybe that farmer hires only white farmhands and sends money to groups like the one that's been trying to undermine the public school system in my area, which directly affects' my kid's schools.

I could put forth a ton of effort to find out where my local store sources their vegetables from, who the farmers are and insist on only buying from local farms that use organic methods, have inclusive hiring practices, donates to worthy causes, etc.

Or I could make a meal from Farmer John Q. Yeehawdist's carrots, and share it with my mixed-gender, mixed-racial, LGBTQ-friendly gaming group and then send a message to Farmer John saying that his products feed more than than hateful bigoted 'good 'ol boy' christian soldiers, but also queer, flannel-wearing hipster, Soros-paid professional protest liberal snowflakes from Portland Oregon. So thanks!

So, you can hate on 5th Ed and poo poo up the thread with spite over a couple of sad bigots whose fame entirely revolves around an unhealthy obsession with role playing games, or you can encourage inclusivity by the people who are playing the game and educating them about the fuckup Mearls made by hiring the bigots in the first place. Which do you think would rustle the jimmies of the ZackS' of the world?

More bees with honey and all that..

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Agent355 posted:

I like relatively light weight combat. I think combat should enable players to be cool and do cool things and you don't need to drag it out or make it complex to do that.

In what way do you you think the combat system enables or encourages "be cool and do cool things"?

Do you think that the lack of complexity* contributes to that, or is it just that you don't think it needs to be any more complex to achieve it? I can certainly see how fewer/lighter rules could encourage players to act outside the box, but I'm not convinced it works well in 5e's context of 5' move/range increments etc.




*We're comparing it to 3e/PF here, right?

Agent355
Jul 26, 2011


doing cool things is normally more about the narrative than the actual thing I find.

Like for instance the classic example is a guy climbing a dragon to stab it in the eye as a 'cool combat thing'. In no edition of dnd has this been a thing because swinging at the toes is every bit as effective so people do that. Instead I find the cool things come from players sacrificing themselves intentionally, or doing something against all odds, or taking down the lich they've been hunting for 5 sessions, or other big moments driven by dice or story.

So the sort of cool I'm talking about it based in roleplay alot, for instance there was an encounter I played in the other day where a character passed a strength check DC when they had a 0 mod and nobody expected them to succeed by rolling a natural 20 (after using inspiration) at just the right time to prevent the situation going from bad to worse. So that ended up being cool.

But thats a scenario where dice/narrative aligned and cool thing happened.

We also had a thing where a rogue snuck up on a monster and got the drop of it, getting as surprise round and instantly obliterating it (the rogue had the assassin archetype so got a free crit when the attack connected) and doing the cool things.

So I don't think the system needs to be any more complex to enable cool things, compared to things like 3.5/PF and like 4e as well. I have a 4e game I'm in and i loving hate the combat, it's so uninteresting but that's probably 90% the fault of the group I'm playing with and not the system. It is way too complex for what I want though.

DISCLAIMER: pity the fighter for the fighter cannot do the cool things, but like I said thats something I don't like and have to try and homerule around it. Which I'll agree is something I'd rather not do, but it's not a big enough deal to be a major problem for me.

Pleads
Jun 9, 2005

pew pew pew


AlphaDog posted:

Combat is also a series of rolls. Do you just do the rolls and say "you win, you have no idea what happened"? Of course you don't, you describe what happens or you get the players to describe what happens, probably every time a roll is made.
I was actually serious because the idea of the characters knowing something the players don't is funny to me (and my group) v:shobon:v

golden bubble
Jun 3, 2011

yospos

Pleads posted:

I was actually serious because the idea of the characters knowing something the players don't is funny to me (and my group) v:shobon:v

But that's kind of what a successful knowledge roll often is? When the DM tells the ranger that dire owlbears usually travel in trios in the haunted woods, it's not like in character the ranger is opening up his or her copy of "Dire creatures in the Haunted Woods: an Illustrated Guide 3rd Edition." The ranger is remember something they knew all along, but the player presumably did not.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Agent355 posted:

doing cool things is normally more about the narrative than the actual thing I find.

Like for instance the classic example is a guy climbing a dragon to stab it in the eye as a 'cool combat thing'. In no edition of dnd has this been a thing because swinging at the toes is every bit as effective so people do that. Instead I find the cool things come from players sacrificing themselves intentionally, or doing something against all odds, or taking down the lich they've been hunting for 5 sessions, or other big moments driven by dice or story.

So the sort of cool I'm talking about it based in roleplay alot, for instance there was an encounter I played in the other day where a character passed a strength check DC when they had a 0 mod and nobody expected them to succeed by rolling a natural 20 (after using inspiration) at just the right time to prevent the situation going from bad to worse. So that ended up being cool.

But thats a scenario where dice/narrative aligned and cool thing happened.

We also had a thing where a rogue snuck up on a monster and got the drop of it, getting as surprise round and instantly obliterating it (the rogue had the assassin archetype so got a free crit when the attack connected) and doing the cool things.

So I don't think the system needs to be any more complex to enable cool things, compared to things like 3.5/PF and like 4e as well. I have a 4e game I'm in and i loving hate the combat, it's so uninteresting but that's probably 90% the fault of the group I'm playing with and not the system. It is way too complex for what I want though.

DISCLAIMER: pity the fighter for the fighter cannot do the cool things, but like I said thats something I don't like and have to try and homerule around it. Which I'll agree is something I'd rather not do, but it's not a big enough deal to be a major problem for me.

Yeah, sounds like your group prefers the system to get out of the way while you think up awesome stuff to do. That's the way I like games to go too. I'm not sure why you'd pick D&D when there are other systems that are better at doing this, but if it's working for you then that's great.

Also, and I'm going to bring this up every single time I see someone doing it, there's no such thing as a surprise round in 5th ed. Being surprised means you don't act on the first combat round, not that your opponent gets an extra round to act.

Pleads posted:

I was actually serious because the idea of the characters knowing something the players don't is funny to me (and my group) v:shobon:v

Sorry I misread you. It's definitely a funny concept and at least some of the people I regularly game with would find it hilarious, so I might bring it in at some point in future.

golden bubble posted:

But that's kind of what a successful knowledge roll often is? When the DM tells the ranger that dire owlbears usually travel in trios in the haunted woods, it's not like in character the ranger is opening up his or her copy of "Dire creatures in the Haunted Woods: an Illustrated Guide 3rd Edition." The ranger is remember something they knew all along, but the player presumably did not.

The group I most recently played D&D with imported the Dungeon World concept of a successful knowledge roll meaning that the player gets to make up something about the world, if they want. Because some players don't really like to do that, the DM made it clear that they could just ask him to tell them things instead. Most players chose to contribute little bits of worldbuilding most of the time, and while I'm sure it pushed the game in unexpected directions, it was fun to see the idea working in D&D. Nothing random-stupid came up, but that's entirely on the players not the concept.

And yeah, a knowledge roll by the 5e rules seems to be character knowledge (right or wrong) that gets passed to the player.

Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 05:42 on Feb 11, 2017

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry

Agent355 posted:

Oh, I'll go first.

Me and another DM today were talking about motivating players to act how you want and the difference between wanting the characters to be scared and wanting the players to be scared.

Like, it's DnD, this is supposed to be a fun nerdy thing to do with friends that makes you enjoy spending time outside your cave. So we were talking about a situation like this.

The party is in some scary place, temple of doom sorta thing. The characters should feel scared, they are in a dangerous place, surrounded by dangerous things and in general most PCs would feel scared in this context outside of some particularly brave or stupid ones. The challenge is getting your players to react appropriately without having THEM be scared.

See like I want:

Characters - scared, nervous, afraid for the lives
Players - having fun, drinking dorito flavored mountain dew

So there is this kind of dichotomy. How do you get players to control their characters as if they're scared without ruining the fun, and is it possible to do such a thing at all? Is it just down to the players themselves? Maybe good roleplayers will just naturally do the appropriate thing and you as a DM don't need to encourage them. Maybe the sort of people who don't take it seriously and just sorta laugh at danger and do stupid random things will just never act properly no matter what you do.

I've been playing for like a decade+ but only DMing for the better part of a year or so and these are the things I think about when setting up dungeons. I've been erring on the side of player fun but now I have a group that doesn't really take anything serious. each session is super fun and everybody is laughing but most of them don't have actual characters. They make decisions 'in character' but the characters themselves are paper thin cardboard cut-outs and I wish there was more to them.

So, uh, let me a) shout LATE-PERIOD WITTGENSTEIN b) say see also (as long as you've played The Beginner's Guide) and c) leave you with this.

Everybody pretends a world in their own head, because what else can they do? So when somebody sits down to listen to a story what they're doing is pretending that the you they can imagine is the narrator of the story and they are the audience of the story. They have their own ideas of how you should act as a narrator and they should act as an audience.

And, I mean, if you're working in a medium where you're spitting out a story and people are consuming it a decade later on a different continent, the only thing you can do is worry about your own craft so as to hopefully get your audience pretends that you are the right kind of narrator and they are the right kind of audience.

But you're not working in that kind of medium.

So, I mean, to start off: be all like "hey I'm tryin' to tell a story about spooky stuff here can you humor me a little?" Don't be tone police beyond that, though. Just keep telling a story about spooky stuff. If you don't break "narrator character", it helps reinforce that they're supposed to be in "audience character".

If your players don't bust out laughing at it, a trick from Apocalypse World is to always use character names when you're talking about the game, so people know that it's not you talking to them, but your narrator talking to their character.

Or, I mean, maybe you're asking for how to make a dungeon crawl spooky? Well, you could try this:

Step 1: Ask and answer "why is this dungeon spooky, among all other dungeons?" Did Bad poo poo go down here? Is there some source of power here that's attracting Bad poo poo after it's passed on? Have the tides of the world shifted and Bad poo poo is just here now where it wasn't before? Come up with a spooky story and some images of the Bad poo poo. Also come up with a way that the players could find out about the Bad poo poo and make it less bad or at least block it out.

Step 2: Have a clock with a second hand somewhere you can check it discreetly.

Step 3: When somebody rolls a d20, glance at the clock. If the last digit of the die they rolled matches the last digit of the seconds you saw, Bad poo poo happens instead. At the start this is just... well, nothing. If a player attacked, somehow they just... didn't attack. Didn't make the motion. If they tried to make a save, somehow time jumps and they're hurt or otherwise affected. If a monster attacked, it just doesn't attack either. Freezes up. But roll damage like it succeeded anyway. If it makes a save it doesn't obviously react but whatever happened just didn't work.

As they go deeper, start intercutting scenes of the Bad poo poo when it happens. Drop hints of incongruous sights, weird sounds, memories of something that never happened. Try and get all of these to point to the things players can do to find out about the Bad poo poo. Like, get increasingly obvious about it until someone picks up on it, because odds are you are being more obscure than you think you are because you're only imagining how your audience is going to react. (Start offering "out of depth" reactions if the d20 is somebody making a death save, but don't count the save as failed. It just didn't happen, remember?)

When they start trying to address the Bad poo poo, freeze out both sides when it's Bad poo poo o'clock. Player saves succeed, monster attacks fail. Get a little more elaborate or at least more definite with how the Bad poo poo is intruding.

When they have successfully addressed or ameliorated the Bad poo poo leave some dungeon afterward and flip your original script. Player attacks and saves succeed, monster attacks and saves fail. The intrusive elements now reflect the things the players did.

But, you know, this is just me imagining an audience. If you think it's going to turn out to be bullshit don't bother.

Agent355
Jul 26, 2011


Always appreciate a good effort post, Thanks dude. Alot of good ideas in there. I'll definitely be using some of that.


I already use exclusively character names in session though, and do silly NPC voices and stuff. Just all part of trying to encourage people to participate in a narrative rather than being dice rollin sources of monkey cheese randomness.

nelson
Apr 12, 2009
College Slice
When my character got recently possessed by um, a frightened spirit, the DM just said you've not got a character flaw and you are fearful. The correct way to handle this and still have fun I thought was I would move away from monsters and hide (the RP part) but still shoot them from a distance (the fun part).

Nehru the Damaja
May 20, 2005

Would I be hopelessly gimped running a Warforge Forge domain cleric? I love the idea of being a big walking furnace that wants to know if he has a soul and wants to meet his creator, and also grappling people and casting Heat Metal on myself.

nelson
Apr 12, 2009
College Slice
Why would you think you'd be gimped? Your character concept sounds interesting to me.

Nehru the Damaja
May 20, 2005

I just don't know much about how clerics work yet -- like if I can be out on the front line taking hits and starting fires and stuff. I assume the high con and +1 to AC would help that a lot. Also don't know how the domains really stack up, like if taking Forge is leaving incredibly useful stuff on the table for little benefit or whatever.

I don't need to powergame but it's important that I can pull my weight I guess.

thefakenews
Oct 20, 2012

Nehru the Damaja posted:

I just don't know much about how clerics work yet -- like if I can be out on the front line taking hits and starting fires and stuff. I assume the high con and +1 to AC would help that a lot. Also don't know how the domains really stack up, like if taking Forge is leaving incredibly useful stuff on the table for little benefit or whatever.

I don't need to powergame but it's important that I can pull my weight I guess.

You will have decent AC and full spellcasting, in 5E this means you will be fine.

Slippery42
Nov 10, 2011

Nehru the Damaja posted:

Would I be hopelessly gimped running a Warforge Forge domain cleric? I love the idea of being a big walking furnace that wants to know if he has a soul and wants to meet his creator, and also grappling people and casting Heat Metal on myself.

Forge Clerics can make themselves practically invulnerable to weapon attacks for a good chunk of the game's level range. The +1 AC bonus from Warforged stacks on top of all the other small bonuses you get (level 1 and 6 domain features, as well as the shield of faith and shield spells). Don't be surprised if your DM has enemies (especially intelligent ones) occasionally wise up, realize you're unhittable, and ignore you in combat.

I'm pretty sure that Warforged don't get a racial wisdom bonus, so you'll need to wait until 12 to max that stat which means your spell attack/save DC will lag a bit, but considering the utility/insurance that Clerics in general bring to the table, I doubt you'll feel gimped at all.

Wrestlepig
Feb 25, 2011

my mum says im cool

Toilet Rascal

Nehru the Damaja posted:

Would I be hopelessly gimped running a Warforge Forge domain cleric? I love the idea of being a big walking furnace that wants to know if he has a soul and wants to meet his creator, and also grappling people and casting Heat Metal on myself.

Clerics are real good, general guideline is don't go someone without spells and you'll be alright.

koreban
Apr 4, 2008

I guess we all learned that trying to get along is way better than p. . .player hatin'.
Fun Shoe

Slippery42 posted:

I'm pretty sure that Warforged don't get a racial wisdom bonus, so you'll need to wait until 12 to max that stat which means your spell attack/save DC will lag a bit, but considering the utility/insurance that Clerics in general bring to the table, I doubt you'll feel gimped at all.

Stick to casting something like Searing Smite and using a weapon attack. 1d6 mace + 1d6 fire is essentially the same as a greatclub, with the bonus of a vs. save ability where your opponent keeps burning, or you use up an opponent's action to put out the flames.

You'll only really feel the spell attack limitations if you are trying to keep up with damage.

This assumes you have a party that has decent damage dealers in it. If it does, Bless your allies, Bane your opponents, Warding Bond an ally, use Beacon of Hope... Generally be an awesome frontline support caster. Run up into the archer line and take away their ranged attackers, get right up on the enemy spellcaster and silence him, then dare him to provoke an attack of opportunity if he moves out of the bubble. Need to cast a heal? No problem, walk away from the spellcaster and let him try to hit you with his crappy dagger and lovely dump stat bonuses.

Nehru the Damaja
May 20, 2005

The mental image I'm getting of a beautifully serene sweetheart Iron Giant cleric stomping into the fray surrounded by flames and pain is too good not to do. If this particular game doesn't get off the ground I'm gonna try to run it somewhere.

koreban
Apr 4, 2008

I guess we all learned that trying to get along is way better than p. . .player hatin'.
Fun Shoe
Multiclass with an Undying Light Warlock and get Cha bonuses to damage on all of your Fire and Radiant spells too, as well as resistance to Radiant damage, temporary HP after rests... it's pretty good.

koreban
Apr 4, 2008

I guess we all learned that trying to get along is way better than p. . .player hatin'.
Fun Shoe
And hellish rebuke!

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Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Forge cleric is the only thing that's made me want to play cleric. There's certainly nothing wrong with clerics, they look like a fun and effective class. It's just that the mechanics and fluff didn't really appeal to me until I saw the forge stuff.

I don't know anything at all about Warforged in 5e, but I like the idea of playing a character who put himself together out of spare parts after the god of the forge noticed a spark in an abandoned workshop, and let it strive...

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