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If you're running a oneshot: * Start immediately. Either the patron has just finished giving you the briefing (and you as the DM will just summarize), or the party is already outside the site of the mission, or the game even begins in the middle of the adventure. * Pace aggressively. Things have to move like a TV pilot. * Every scene should test a particular aspect of the game or the party. A common framework is the investigation-action flow: the party needs to find something out (where is the princess's necklace?) and then has to act on the intelligence (goblins stole it, get it back). * Another framework is the five-room dungeon: http://strolen.com/viewing/5_Room_Dungeon 1. a guarded entrance 2. a puzzle or roleplaying challenge 3. a twist to the original premise 4. the big climax 5. rewards and recognition
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Mar 3, 2017 16:48
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I love the five-room idea because it already matches really closely the flow I was thinking of but I hadn't considered going as far as condensing it to such a small area. That would make prep a lot easier.
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Mar 3, 2017 16:56
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Trast posted:Does anyone have recommendations for one shots that have 5E rules? Seconding this. Since friends want to play some D&D in a week and I need something to run. I'm happy to buy something off the community site if it's vouched for.
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Mar 3, 2017 18:31
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So a guy I know is gonna be running a 5e game and I was curious in running a bard so I was wondering if it was possible to do the whole polearm/shoving thing with them or would something else be better?
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Mar 4, 2017 03:51
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As long as you're cool with all those things coming online at 3rd level, sure. When you hit 3rd, take Athletics as one of your two expertise picks, grab Enhance Ability as one of your 2nd-level spells, and go College of Valor for martial weapon proficiencies (and the second attack at 6th level). Use your first three feats on Sentinel, Polearm Mastery, and Great Weapon Fighting. e: If your DM allows UA stuff and multiclassing, consider starting with 1 level of Fighter and taking the Tunnel Fighter style. Hello Sailor fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Mar 4, 2017 |
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Mar 4, 2017 05:19
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Has anyone playtested the homebrewed Oath of the Common Man communist paladin? I totally want to allow it in a setting I'm making but the thought of a level 3 paladin skipping one action to give himself advantage on the next 3 rounds seems insane, and only getting worse when you get to level 5 and the following 5 rounds have him attacking with advantage twice a round. http://walrock-homebrew.blogspot.com/2015/08/sacred-oath-oath-of-common-man-second.html
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Mar 5, 2017 03:19
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Has anyone playtested the homebrewed Oath of the Common Man communist paladin? I totally want to allow it in a setting I'm making but the thought of a level 3 paladin skipping one action to give himself advantage on the next 3 rounds seems insane, and only getting worse when you get to level 5 and the following 5 rounds have him attacking with advantage twice a round. Assuming they hit 2/3rds of the time (typical rate for every recent edition of D&D), attacking for 4 rounds in a row will yield 4 x 2/3 = 2.667 hits on average. Giving up an action one round and then attacking the next three with advantage will yield 3 x 8/9 = 2.667. The exact same! So it's not actually good - in fact, it's basically a trap at that point because you are giving up some other channel divinity option for a spell that yields no improvement. Not only no overall improvement over time, but it back-loads your damage when the optimum would be front-loading it. It's always better to get the damage out faster and give the enemies less time to mess with you. The one good use for it would be if you are not in a position to get off a good attack that round - then that spell would allow you to make up for that. Let's do the same math on giving up 2 attacks to get 5 rounds of advantage on 2 attacks per round.... 6 rounds of 2 attacks per round yields 12 x 2/3 = 8 hits on average. 5 rounds of 2 attacks per round with advantage yields 10 x 8/9 = 8.89 hits on average. So that's a mild 10% improvement on your damage over 6 rounds, but again it back-loads the damage when you would want to front-load it. For the first 3 rounds of the fight your damage output will be below what it would have been with no spell, and you'll catch up in the fourth round (by which point the outcome of the fight may already be decided). Overall, not a particularly strong spell if your goal is to hit the bad guys a lot. There may be some synergies with other abilities that I haven't considered here, but purely in terms of increasing how often you hit, it's not great. It also has obvious anti-synergies with any other features or abilities or situations that grant advantage, since there is no stacking of advantages.
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Mar 5, 2017 06:27
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Well I'll be damned. I knew giving up action for a turn was actually a big deal but I didn't know it worked out that severely. Thanks.
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Mar 5, 2017 08:18
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Call it the Glorious Five Turn Plan  . But only if you use the tool proficiency thing to force Sages and Nobles to do hard labor.
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Mar 5, 2017 08:32
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That's a great example of why rationalized design is so important. At first glance it'd look like it's really strong, but I personally thought that it'd be too weak, and then you do the math and it largely comes out as a wash. There's also that thing where one model of monster scaling, more reminiscent of 3e, means you get to hit more often as you go up in level, but that makes the ability even less valuable than Jimbozig's analysis compared to just attacking to begin with.
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Mar 5, 2017 09:01
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It still works out well enough in any situation where you have to advance on an enemy and don't get all the way there, but that's narrow enough that I doubt it'd break the game.
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Mar 5, 2017 09:30
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I'd also wager it works pretty well in situations where you're likely to remain disadvantaged, like fighting underwater without a swim speed, or being repeatedly restrained by one of the many monsters that does so.
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Mar 5, 2017 16:04
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Zarick posted:I'd also wager it works pretty well in situations where you're likely to remain disadvantaged, like fighting underwater without a swim speed, or being repeatedly restrained by one of the many monsters that does so. Yeah, any situation that lowers your hit rate significantly below 2/3rds makes that spell more appealing.
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Mar 5, 2017 16:14
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You'd also see a small increase in the average number of crits, but it's still best saved for fights where the foes are difficult to hit.
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Mar 5, 2017 18:17
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Q: What would a small town like Phandalin do when it suddenly has a lot of dead bodies? Assume the PCs cleaned out the Redbrands mercenaries in a day and now there are over 20 human/oid corpses in town and the Sleepy Giant inn burned down.
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Mar 5, 2017 22:27
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Bury them. Hire a wizard to cast Animate Dead* to create as many skeleton laborers as possible. Use the income generated by the skeleton laborers to hire the wizard to make more. 20 laborers working 24 hours a day gets a lot of poo poo done, so you'll want them working on infrastructure when you're not hiring them out etc. *And do whatever process is used to make those skeletons that last for thousands of years and keep doing what they were told, you know, like the ones patrolling dungeons etc
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Mar 5, 2017 23:03
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My players fed them all to the nothic.
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Mar 5, 2017 23:15
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Kommando posted:Q: AlphaDog posted:*And do whatever process is used to make those skeletons that last for thousands of years and keep doing what they were told, you know, like the ones patrolling dungeons etc
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Mar 6, 2017 00:12
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Kommando posted:Q: You burn them because unconsecrated corpses often are turned into undead, especially now that Myrkul's back. I'm assuming from your description that there's not enough time for them to have proper burials presided over by a priest of Kelemvor.
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Mar 6, 2017 00:13
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AlphaDog posted:*And do whatever process is used to make those skeletons that last for thousands of years and keep doing what they were told, you know, like the ones patrolling dungeons etc It's the same stuff they slather all over traps to keep them from breaking down over thousands of years.
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Mar 6, 2017 00:15
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Sounds like the starter adventure went wrong somewhere.
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Mar 6, 2017 02:47
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the red brands as written are outright antagonistic to the pcs.
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Mar 6, 2017 03:01
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Big Black Brony posted:Sounds like the starter adventure went wrong somewhere. 20 corpses in one day is pretty much a walk in the park, by D&D standards.
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Mar 6, 2017 03:13
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Arivia posted:You burn them because unconsecrated corpses often are turned into undead, especially now that Myrkul's back. I'm assuming from your description that there's not enough time for them to have proper burials presided over by a priest of Kelemvor. Alternatively, big hole + quicklime.
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Mar 6, 2017 03:13
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Splicer posted:I think this is why they have "And if you stop controlling them they default to murder mode" thing. Feral skeletons don't so much patrol dungeons so much as they go into power save mode until something murderable passes by. I know wandering monsters aren't a thing any more except in the DMG index, but how can you have dungeons and dragons without ancient tombs patrolled by skeletons? e: VVVVV That kicks rear end. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Mar 6, 2017 |
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Mar 6, 2017 03:28
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We had a campaign map printed up this weekend, $30. 36*24 inches, turned out really nice, source file was about 2200px tall.
ritorix fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Mar 6, 2017 |
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Mar 6, 2017 03:33
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ritorix posted:We had a campaign map printed up this weekend, $30. 36*24 inches, turned out really nice, source file was about 2200px tall. That looks awesome man, would unironically show up to play 5e (with Krag Hack obviously) at your place with that kind of effort. Edit: I'm the Savage North
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Mar 6, 2017 03:39
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Campaign has some generic names like that, and some earth-parallel stuff like basically a viking longship with a viking captain named Odenkirk. Which we of course started calling Captain Kirk.
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Mar 6, 2017 03:59
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So a situation came up tonight that was kind of strange. I am a fighter with Sentinel and am a Battle Master. I hit a baddie with menacing strike and he failed his DC, so he became afraid of me. On his turn, the DM made him flee from me outright towards another player. I said that provokes an AOO, swung, hit him, then realized that Sentinel should reduce his movement to 0. Both me and the DM were confused as to how that should have proceeded, since I've essentially locked him down as long as I save my reaction. How should that actually play out?
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Mar 6, 2017 05:46
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User0015 posted:So a situation came up tonight that was kind of strange. Set the rules aside, what does a cornered rat do? It fights, what does a cornered man do? It begs. DM should have chosen one of the two.
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Mar 6, 2017 05:50
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User0015 posted:So a situation came up tonight that was kind of strange. Frightened just means he can't willingly move closer to you; he doesn't have to run away, he can still fight you or anyone else in reach, just has disadvantage to attacks/checks as long as he can see you. Him choosing to run away and being stopped by Sentinel is the feat working as intended.
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Mar 6, 2017 05:52
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Yeah my Bard locks down half an encounter by sneezing. A Battlemaster hard controlling one target in melee is fine.
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Mar 6, 2017 06:00
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ritorix posted:Campaign has some generic names like that, and some earth-parallel stuff like basically a viking longship with a viking captain named Odenkirk. Which we of course started calling Captain Kirk. Generic names are good, turns out generic names are what people used irl (though to be fair that was mostly a case of ROME and NOT-ROME with eventually the addition of ALT-ROME)
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Mar 6, 2017 06:04
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edit: gently caress it. Going Bladesinger. That looks sick.
Nehru the Damaja fucked around with this message at 10:27 on Mar 6, 2017 |
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Mar 6, 2017 06:42
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User0015 posted:So a situation came up tonight that was kind of strange. Mechanically, the "frightened" from Menacing Attack lasts until the end of your next turn. "Frightened" means it has disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls and can't move towards the source of the fear (you). If you want to keep the opponent locked down, you need to hit and spend a superiority die and they have to fail a Wisdom save and your OA has to hit to trigger Sentinel. You can keep this up until you're out of superiority dice (4 rounds or so?) as long as you never miss and they never pass the save. Nothing about the Frightened condition says that the affected creature has to move away from the source of the fear, only that it can't move towards it. Narratively you're hitting someone scarily enough that they would really like to run away from you, then maneuvering and striking to keep them from getting away. Sounds like a good tactic. Sounds like it's working just fine the way you're playing it. But if I were DMing, I would interpret "frightened while in LoS of you" to mean "they try to move away", then after you gently caress up their retreat with Sentinel once or maybe twice, they'd surrender instead. Like, surrender hard, with bribery and promising to be a better person in future. Because you've already scared them (and beat them) half to death and now they've realised they can't get away from you no matter what they do. That's pants-making GBS threads abject terror begging for your life territory for sure. Also, silly question time! Is a Saving Throw an Ability Check? I've been going with "no", but I've heard of people saying it is, and it's kind of related to this topic. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Mar 6, 2017 |
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Mar 6, 2017 06:49
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AlphaDog posted:Also, silly question time! Is a Saving Throw an Ability Check? I've been going with "no", but I've heard of people saying it is, and it's kind of related to this topic. No; ability checks are 5e parlance for skill checks. Thusly, skill profs aren't save profs.
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Mar 6, 2017 07:00
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P.d0t posted:No; ability checks are 5e parlance for skill checks. Thusly, skill profs aren't save profs. Yeah, so if you're Frightening someone they don't get disadvantage on the wisdom save to not be frightened when you try to re-frighten them next round. Which makes it possible to lock something down as described above, but probably less likely than you'd think given you need to hit two times and also have them fail a save.
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Mar 6, 2017 07:03
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This is why spells like Hex are good for out-wrestling people.
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Mar 6, 2017 07:06
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Some things will call on an ability check and not a skill, but most ability checks end up just being skills. Basically all Skills are Ability Checks, not all Ability Checks are Skills, Initiative is an Ability Check for the occasional thing that interacts with those like the level 7 Champion or Level 2 Bard features, or spells that give advantage/disadvantage to ability checks. Saves may be based on Abilities, but they are not Ability Checks or Skills.
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Mar 6, 2017 07:11
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Generic Octopus posted:Frightened just means he can't willingly move closer to you; he doesn't have to run away, he can still fight you or anyone else in reach, just has disadvantage to attacks/checks as long as he can see you. Him choosing to run away and being stopped by Sentinel is the feat working as intended. Hmm ok. I'll mention that it doesn't require a monster to run away, but them choosing to do so does mean Sentinel can stop them in their tracks. I've been playing the Fighter as a tanky guardian, but he gets his face wrecked pretty hard. That particular fight, at level 3, I ended up taking over 20 points of damage, and had to both second wind and action surge a healing potion. I still dropped afterwards from incoming damage, so the amount of punishment I eat is pretty rough. I guess locking a guy down from running away like a coward isn't to much to ask for getting wrecked all the time.
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Mar 6, 2017 22:31
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