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piL posted:Solving spellcasting requires a change in tone. Trying to make non-spellcasting classes as 'narratively functional' ends up turning D&D into more of a super hero game, but I think many of the people who want to 'solve' caster superiority want exactly the opposite--they already find the tone too fantastic. A change in tone from "some players get to be superheroes" to "all players get to be superheroes" is exactly what most people trying to solve caster supremacy are arguing for. e: When I talk about curbing some of the wilder spell stuff, I'm not talking about limiting casters to fit in with some kind of down-powered vision of D&D. "Awesome stuff for everyone" is the goal, not "no awesome stuff for anyone". Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Mar 19, 2017 |
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Mar 19, 2017 13:31
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5e actually has kind of tacked away from the superhero thing, what with max-level spellcasters getting a single 9th level spell slot in 5e as opposed to the 4 or 6 they might have enjoyed in 3e.
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Mar 19, 2017 13:46
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AlphaDog posted:A change in tone from "some players get to be superheroes" to "all players get to be superheroes" is exactly what most people trying to solve caster supremacy are arguing for. Oh. What if at level 7 (adjust with research) non pure casters get to gestalt. Would two classes worth of abilities provide enough options to narrow the gap significantly without significant thematic change?
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Mar 19, 2017 15:49
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Cease to Hope posted:this is baffling because it's all the energy-expenditure-tracking that signifies "magic" in 3e-alikes, but none of the narrative breadth that goes with it. it's just "hit a dude but harder X/day". you've killed the sacred cow but you haven't solved the problem the cow was blocking. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the 5e Battlemaster also does this ... and even the much-vaunted 3e Tome of Battle also does this. None of these things solves the "narrative control" problem, but it does up the decision matrix to be more complex than "do I attack yes/no" and "who do I attack"
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Mar 19, 2017 15:58
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Huckabee Sting posted:My self, and a DM i play with use something similar. If a caster is constantly throwing around big displays of power creatures/entities/NPCs are going to search that player out for good and for ill. It makes sense that a wizard eventually would want to create a tower filled with traps and hazards because he is constantly being pursued by things that want to enslave his power. that's pretty cool.
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Mar 19, 2017 16:02
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piL posted:Solving spellcasting requires a change in tone. Trying to make non-spellcasting classes as 'narratively functional' ends up turning D&D into more of a super hero game, but I think many of the people who want to 'solve' caster superiority want exactly the opposite--they already find the tone too fantastic. They should just play a different roleplaying game, or never level past level 3. I think it's more that it requires a paradigm shift: if we have subsystems for combat and subsystems for narrative control (skills) then why are some classes getting resources that override both? They keep trying to 'balance' it by saying "but it's only X/day!" the problem is they never weigh such things properly, and on top of that it's not as though classes with spells can't use weapons or skills, so wtf? Like, take the example of ending an encounter with a Sleep spell or whatever. That's an encounter worth of damage/healing spells/hit dice that the party doesn't have to spend. Add that all up, and spell slots should probably be a lot more rare, since they're clearly undervalued in the design. Or you can give other classes comparable abilities that save the party similar amounts of resources. (Probably you want a combination of both, and I think this is doable, without just flatout reinventing 4th Edition.)
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Mar 19, 2017 17:08
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piL posted:Solving spellcasting requires a change in tone. Trying to make non-spellcasting classes as 'narratively functional' ends up turning D&D into more of a super hero game
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Mar 19, 2017 17:52
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Rules Question: If you're a cleric, can you use your holy symbol as the focus for any spells you cast (i.e. ones you have from multiclassing) or just cleric(/paladin) spells?
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Mar 19, 2017 19:20
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P.d0t posted:Rules Question: It says right in the cleric class description. "You can use a holy symbol as a spellcasting focus for your cleric spells"
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Mar 19, 2017 19:32
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One 9f my players said that they don't want narrative control they just want to hit things the best, so they chose Fighter =(
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Mar 19, 2017 19:58
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P.d0t posted:Rules Question: Right on the multiclassing rules: each spell you know and prepare is associated with a class, for which you use the appropriate spellcasting ability, and a spellcasting focus can only be used for the spells of the class associated with said focus.
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Mar 19, 2017 20:03
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piL posted:Oh. What if at level 7 (adjust with research) non pure casters get to gestalt. Would two classes worth of abilities provide enough options to narrow the gap significantly without significant thematic change? What thematic change are you talking about?
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Mar 19, 2017 20:47
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I think they're saying "is this a way to balance pure casters vs. everyone else without making a drastic re-commitment to a low-magic setting or one where we shoehorn in story consequences to being a caster"
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Mar 19, 2017 22:06
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Where does this idea of D&D having low magic settings come from? The dying/dead magic worlds are notable for having low magic. Eberron, Planescape and Spelljammer literally run on magic. Hell, in the original modules you can loot a Ray gun from a literal loving UFO. Shitkicker Fantasy Vietnam mostly exists in homebrew but so many nerds treat it as an assumption of the game. Hell Critical Role and Acquisitions Inc are/were the celebrity icons of two editions of the game. In one the party has a shop that shits magical artifacts for pennies. In the other the party pilots the Wizard's house around the Astral Sea and has a Pacific Rim fight in Waterdeep.
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Mar 19, 2017 22:14
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Nehru the Damaja posted:I think they're saying "is this a way to balance pure casters vs. everyone else without making a drastic re-commitment to a low-magic setting or one where we shoehorn in story consequences to being a caster"
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Mar 19, 2017 22:19
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I've been handing out magic items and Blessings pretty liberally to keep everyone feeling relevant. My party is punching waaaay above their weight, but it's fine since they're the first capital-a Adventurers ever and I want them to be legendary figures. Right now the only one feeling bummed is the Cleric, and that's because she just started playing a Bard in another game and is realizing how boring the Life domain is. I'll probably let her switch domains if she wants and keep the same faith. Multiple aspects of the same goddess and all that.
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Mar 19, 2017 22:30
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P.d0t posted:I think it's more that it requires a paradigm shift: if we have subsystems for combat and subsystems for narrative control (skills) then why are some classes getting resources that override both? Are there a lot of encounter-ending spells in 5e? (Are all the wizards I'm seeing being run sub-par?) Sleep spell just isn't that good, on average it can put 2 wolves to sleep. (The best use of it is after a combat has been going on a while and everything is weak.) Fireball can take a group of weaker minions if they miss their save, but it won't be enough to end hard encounters right off. And then there's a whole host of great concentration spells, which you can only have one going on at a time. My experience is that a wizard can guarantee a victory against an encounter in three-to-four rounds by burning their high-level slots, assuming no monsters with legendary resistances or inconvenient immunities, and assuming they aren't personally attacked. And after all that, with no high level slots left they'll be sub-par for the rest of the day.
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Mar 19, 2017 22:52
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lifg posted:Are there a lot of encounter-ending spells in 5e? (Are all the wizards I'm seeing being run sub-par?) The spell doesn't have to literally abort the encounter immediately, just generate enough advantage in the first turn that the fight's effectively over. Take the spell Banishment; all it does is remove one (or more with a higher spell slot) enemy from the board for 1 minute, doesn't damage or harm them otherwise. But you've nullified that one (or more) enemy for 10 rounds, so mop up what's left and murder it when it pops back in.
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Mar 19, 2017 23:11
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lifg posted:Are there a lot of encounter-ending spells in 5e? (Are all the wizards I'm seeing being run sub-par?) and then everyone decides to end the day because going on with the wizard at half strength makes everything even more dangerous
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Mar 19, 2017 23:55
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Sounds like the way to actually update the Martials is to let them hand pick magical weapons armor and accessories as they level up. Considering that Casters effectively get their old school treasure(spells) as a class feature.
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Mar 20, 2017 00:18
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Request for some RP help-- I'm in an online game with a large group that meets up as available (sort of Western Marches style). I'm playing a Tiefling Hexblade Warlock with social skills and the criminal background. I want to establish some kind of criminal enterprise in the town, fleecing people, selling drugs and poisons, and gouging refugees. How would you start something like this? What actual actions would you take to set yourself up as a criminal leader in town? All I can think of is using downtime to craft poisons and drugs and hoping the DM lets me sell them for retail.
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Mar 20, 2017 01:08
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WerrWaaa posted:Request for some RP help-- I'm in an online game with a large group that meets up as available (sort of Western Marches style). I'm playing a Tiefling Hexblade Warlock with social skills and the criminal background. I want to establish some kind of criminal enterprise in the town, fleecing people, selling drugs and poisons, and gouging refugees. How would you start something like this? What actual actions would you take to set yourself up as a criminal leader in town? All I can think of is using downtime to craft poisons and drugs and hoping the DM lets me sell them for retail. Not jokingly, because this is plot: have you asked your DM? If you have a long-term goal that could affect the plot in a big way, you're probably gonna want the DM on board. The DM might have some ideas on how to make this work, too. Also, if this is impossible because of Western Marches style, I actually don't know what that is.
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Mar 20, 2017 01:22
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Western Marches is basically sandbox. So there is no plot for me to disrupt-- only plot to create!
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Mar 20, 2017 01:30
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WerrWaaa posted:Request for some RP help-- I'm in an online game with a large group that meets up as available (sort of Western Marches style). I'm playing a Tiefling Hexblade Warlock with social skills and the criminal background. I want to establish some kind of criminal enterprise in the town, fleecing people, selling drugs and poisons, and gouging refugees. How would you start something like this? What actual actions would you take to set yourself up as a criminal leader in town? All I can think of is using downtime to craft poisons and drugs and hoping the DM lets me sell them for retail. First I'd check to make sure there's not another thieves' guild already operating in town. Unless they've been recently purged, there's likely to be one and they're unlikely to look favorably upon competition. Also, as mentioned above, make sure the DM is onboard with your elaborate subplot; you should probably try to get other PCs involved. However, should you find yourself in a town without a thieves' guild and and some other criminally-minded PCs with whom you've agreed upon a guild power structure, then you literally start tracking down other thieves and either persuading/forcing them to work for you or ending their careers.
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Mar 20, 2017 01:40
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First you'll need to zero in on what exactly your interests are. Any scumbag can throw together a gang, you're trying to run a business. Once you know what your angle is, you can either start recruiting from your local selection of social cast-offs and misfits OR get yourself in tight with one of the town gangs - which may be more advisable anyway, assuming there's a turf system in place. Joining a gang will likely involve some manner of initiation ritual or errand to prove your loyalty, whereas forming your own gang will likely run you up against the existing power structure, such as it is, so pick your poison. Once you've settled in, you can start to do business, though if it's a large-scale project it might help to have someone on the inside with the actual authorities first.
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Mar 20, 2017 01:46
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Razorwired posted:Sounds like the way to actually update the Martials is to let them hand pick magical weapons armor and accessories as they level up. Considering that Casters effectively get their old school treasure(spells) as a class feature. To expand on this: If you're playing AD&D by the book, then the only way to learn a new spell (ie, to get it into your spellbook) is to find it during play on a scroll, in a defeated opponent's spellbook, etc. Then you have to roll (against a % chance based on your Int) to see if you can learn that spell. If you fail, then that's it, you're done, you can't learn that spell ever. There's also a maximum number of spells you can know of each spell level, again based on your Int. The limit's not low, but once you hit it you'd have to increase your Int to ever learn any new spells of that level, and stat increase items aren't at all common. So yes, if you wanted to balance out casters and martials, and didn't want to go back to cockblocking wizards at every possible opportunity ("You rolled a 2 and now you can't ever learn Sleep lol"), then letting fighters select magic gear the same way wizards can now select magic spells would be one way of doing it.  e: Then you'd just have to come up with interesting magic items because "another longsword +1" isn't going to cut it here. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Mar 20, 2017 |
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Mar 20, 2017 01:57
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Razorwired posted:Where does this idea of D&D having low magic settings come from? The dying/dead magic worlds are notable for having low magic. Eberron, Planescape and Spelljammer literally run on magic. Hell, in the original modules you can loot a Ray gun from a literal loving UFO. A lot of people seem to combine the magic level and fantasy level of a setting together, which is one of the roots of the martial/caster divide.
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Mar 20, 2017 02:04
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Kuroyama posted:A lot of people seem to combine the magic level and fantasy level of a setting together, which is one of the roots of the martial/caster divide. That's what you get when most of the fantasy elements are decribed as magic and therefore PC-accessible spells.
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Mar 20, 2017 02:21
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I got recruited to help a relatively inexperienced friend DM his campaign with mostly new players today by running the monsters in his fights so he could focus on role-playing and bigger picture plot stuff. I showed up expecting to just hang out and help him look up rules but not get involved beyond that. Because I'm mostly used to playing 4E where the DM really doesn't have to pull any punches in combat and they said they'd been steamrolling every fight so far, I took the monsters the DM gave me and went loving HAM on the party. Nobody died, but I dropped 3 PCs in two fights, and I think they spent a lot of powers that they're probably going to be hurting without in the upcoming bigger fight. I know some of that can probably be chalked up to them being new players, but I want to make sure things stay fun for them and I'm not experienced enough with 5e to know whether it's mechanically "fair" enough for me to keep doing it that way. My experience with 4e has been that the encounters are balanced such that the monsters can take tactically optimal actions every round and the party is still almost certainly going to win even with some bad decisions and rolls. I'm of course gonna figure out whether that's the kind of experience the DM and players are looking for, but my question is whether this play style is even mechanically sustainable in 5E because I just don't know the monster XP budget the DM is giving me well enough.
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Mar 20, 2017 03:09
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Pharmaskittle posted:My experience with 4e has been that the encounters are balanced such that the monsters can take tactically optimal actions every round and the party is still almost certainly going to win even with some bad decisions and rolls. I'm of course gonna figure out whether that's the kind of experience the DM and players are looking for, but my question is whether this play style is even mechanically sustainable in 5E because I just don't know the monster XP budget the DM is giving me well enough.  nope
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Mar 20, 2017 03:15
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Pharmaskittle posted:I got recruited to help a relatively inexperienced friend DM his campaign with mostly new players today by running the monsters in his fights so he could focus on role-playing and bigger picture plot stuff. I showed up expecting to just hang out and help him look up rules but not get involved beyond that. Because I'm mostly used to playing 4E where the DM really doesn't have to pull any punches in combat and they said they'd been steamrolling every fight so far, I took the monsters the DM gave me and went loving HAM on the party. As someone who has only played 5e I've been told it is much closer related to 3.5e and Pathfinder than 4e. That might help your idea of what to expect in combat. The DM instructions for building an encounter are freely available online from Wizards as well. In the mean time if people are having fun and surviving then you could chalk it up as teaching them some valuable lessons. But if they feel like you are wiping the floor with them you might have to back off. Low level 5e some of the monsters can do serious damage when your dice get hot. It can get worse if the monsters have pack tactics or you are using your crowd control aggressively.
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Mar 20, 2017 03:18
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Trast posted:As someone who has only played 5e I've been told it is much closer related to 3.5e and Pathfinder than 4e. That might help your idea of what to expect in combat. The DM instructions for building an encounter are freely available online from Wizards as well. This is true but the encounter building advice is useless because the CR system is garbage. You'll definitely want to pull punches wrt multiple attack and pack tactics at low levels.
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Mar 20, 2017 03:47
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On death house. I was in the room with the cloak of resistance. Having fallen into the spike trap I was cautious and checked the walls and discovered similar dirt walls to the floors from the ghouls. I pushed thr dress and waredrobe in front of the openings. I then broke all of the beds and tables nearby and used the dead mimics sticky corpse glue to make a badass barricade. When I opened the footlocker and they came out I grabbed the alchemist fire and lit one of the ghasts/dresser on fire and landed crits on it through 3/4 cover. I managed to kill both of them before they could get an attack off. It felt good. (The party decided to simultaneously fight the shadows in the other room for some reason.
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Mar 20, 2017 05:02
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WerrWaaa posted:Western Marches is basically sandbox. So there is no plot for me to disrupt-- only plot to create! Not necessarily. Part of Ben Robbins' West Marches idea was that adventure was never in the town but always out THERE - if your DM sticks with that, and your adventures haven't been in civilization, then this might not fit.
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Mar 20, 2017 05:20
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AlphaDog posted:That's what you get when most of the fantasy elements are decribed as magic and therefore PC-accessible spells. Pharmaskittle posted:my question is whether this play style is even mechanically sustainable in 5E Splicer fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Mar 20, 2017 |
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Mar 20, 2017 08:22
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Splicer posted:The latter wouldn't necessarily apply if "gets all the spells" wasn't an available class feature. the problem remains that "do literally everything associated even loosely with magic, which does anything you can imagine" is still the scope of a class in the same game as "guy what stabs"
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Mar 20, 2017 08:25
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Cease to Hope posted:the problem remains that "do literally everything associated even loosely with magic, which does anything you can imagine" is still the scope of a class in the same game as "guy what stabs" Splicer fucked around with this message at 12:19 on Mar 20, 2017 |
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Mar 20, 2017 08:49
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The most fun I've had on my homebrew setting so far is making some alternative patrons. They're still in the PHB archetypes -- they're just new flavor appropriate ones. Why are Warlocks so fuckin cool...
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Mar 20, 2017 11:35
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Warlocks have a fairly consistent flavour, simple yet effective combat options, and interact with the rest economy without warping it around them. It's probably the best designed class, even if blade pact's bad.
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Mar 20, 2017 11:48
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rumble in the bunghole posted:Warlocks have a fairly consistent flavour, simple yet effective combat options, and interact with the rest economy without warping it around them. It's probably the best designed class, even if blade pact's bad. IIRC Blade Pact DPR isn't actually that bad but the lack of anything else in the class (vampiric is too little too late) to facilitate being in melee makes it a tough sell compared to blast sniping.
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Mar 20, 2017 13:48
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