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Yeah that series of spells is really awful in 5e and my druid gravitated towards it immediately. Right now I just cut the number of animals in half and let him pick them but I'm guessing it's broken even with only 4 wolves. He was bummed out and I feel bad, gently caress you whoever wrote the rules for that one.
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Apr 18, 2017 21:26
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Just let them make one really buff wolf with roughly the strength of about however many he could make otherwise. That fixes the action economy, at least.
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Apr 18, 2017 21:32
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About as strong like, it gets 8 attacks all with advantage due to pack tactics? That's kind of the problem...
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Apr 18, 2017 21:41
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Yeah, I'm half tempted to just houserule out that type of spell. He's easily the most combat/tactically-minded player, so I kind of feel bad taking out something that he's happy to have worked out as Extremely Effective. Hopefully he will enjoy his druid without a small horde of animals. The other players don't have an issue with it *yet* since it really helped them in the first/only fight it's been used in, but I know in a couple sessions the novelty will wear off. The wizard will want to do some AoEs, the barbarian and rogue will get tired of getting edged out of melee range (already ran into problems with this), and everyone will get sick of not getting to kill the monsters themselves. I'd like it to not have to get to that point first, though. Also, like, I don't want to have to deal with my encounters being on the edge of broken all the time. I shouldn't have to design them around a single player.
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Apr 18, 2017 22:01
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I'm not super familiar with 5e, could you just jack up the price of summons to the point where it's not practical to use on every fight, but you'd still pull it out on the big ones? Edit: I have no idea if this is balanced, but as an example, instead of making it just a spell that he refreshes every time he rests, make it something he gets x uses of per adventure and then during the downtime session when everyone else is buying new gear and restocking potions, he has to go buy a large draft animal (and a nice one, not some 15 year old nag that's about to keel over), lead it out into the woods and ritually slaughter it to summon the wolf pack, and then commune/negotiate with them for more summons. Like any good business relationship, negotiations go better after everyone's had a good meal. Keeshhound fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Apr 18, 2017 |
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Apr 18, 2017 22:54
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BadSamaritan posted:Yeah, I'm half tempted to just houserule out that type of spell. He's easily the most combat/tactically-minded player, so I kind of feel bad taking out something that he's happy to have worked out as Extremely Effective. Hopefully he will enjoy his druid without a small horde of animals. While that's a reasonable response, have a talk with the player first, he could legitimately feel cheesed about that.
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Apr 19, 2017 00:14
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Offer him a respec and offer to work with him to maintain the character concept if he wants, just not with those mechanics. That should cover all your bases.
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Apr 19, 2017 00:16
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Also speaking from personal experience, being The Guy With All the Bears gets really boring, really fast even for the person who's playing them. Not only does your turn take longer than everyone else's combined, you're also doing the exact same thing over and over for most of it.
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Apr 19, 2017 00:17
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Honestly shapeshifting is a cooler druid power anyway. Do they still get that in 5e?
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Apr 19, 2017 00:38
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Of course! I'm trying to get in touch with him to discuss it, but he tends to disappear during the week. I want to avoid springing a change on him at a session and I want this to be a discussion. He would absolutely get a respec if he wanted it! This character causing me the headaches is a new character he wanted to switch to- I would rather people have fun than make them stick it out with a character they're unhappy with. I just want other people to continue having fun too  He's really into how his guy shapeshifts- thankfully the summoning doesn't seem like a big part of the character concept, more of something the player has realized is a very effective mechanic. Thanks, everyone. This is the first game I've run, and I wanted to make sure my concerns weren't unreasonable.
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Apr 19, 2017 00:49
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It could be worse! One of the players at my weekly Adventurer's League table is a necromancer who spends all of his upper-level spell slots on Animate Dead every day, then drags out a billion skeletal archers from his Portable Hole whenever he's expecting a tough fight. Since it's Adventurer's League, I don't get to houserule this into sanity! (Luckily he's really chill about skeletons dying.)
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Apr 19, 2017 04:35
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blastron posted:It could be worse! One of the players at my weekly Adventurer's League table is a necromancer who spends all of his upper-level spell slots on Animate Dead every day, then drags out a billion skeletal archers from his Portable Hole whenever he's expecting a tough fight. Since it's Adventurer's League, I don't get to houserule this into sanity! I'm coming up with a 20th-level Necromancer wizard capping at either 144 or 168 creatures, depending upon how strictly you read the undead thrall class feature (which only specifically mentions increasing the per-spell undead creation count, not reasserting control, and creation makes far fewer per cast anyway). Additionally, for a standard portable hole of 6 feet diameter and 10 foot depth (282.7 cubic feet), you can fit about 120 human bodies (~2.3 cubic feet). Maybe 144 skeletons could cram in, but not zombies, and even 120 is with perfect packing. Zomborgon fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Apr 19, 2017 |
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Apr 19, 2017 05:06
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Skeletons are a lot more empty space than human bodies, maybe you can do some neat chair-stacking situations.
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Apr 19, 2017 06:30
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Speaking from experience, there are certain types of player who, when told "you have X amount of space, how are you going to fit all the skeletons inside," will break out complex math and a detailed explanation of how they've affixed ball-and-socket joints into each skeleton to increase their foldability to show that not only can they fit all the skeletons and their gear, but have space left over for loot.
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Apr 19, 2017 07:14
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In that case, have the skeletons fall out in a pile of bows & clavicles.
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Apr 19, 2017 07:37
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After about 50 the question isn't how many you have its how quickly you can deploy them. A portable hole is still a hole. Do the skeletons have ladders? Are the skeletons using each other as ladders?
8one6 fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Apr 19, 2017 |
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Apr 19, 2017 14:14
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Golden Bee posted:In that case, have the skeletons fall out in a pile of bows & clavicles. 8one6 posted:After about 50 the question isn't how many you have its how quickly you can deploy them. A portable hole is still a hole. Do the skeletons have ladders? Are the skeletons using each other as ladders? And here we have the solution. "You dump 120 skeletons out of the portable hole. They're a chaotic pile of bones, longbows and chattering skulls. It's going to take them X rounds to reassemble themselves and be useful." So the necro has plenty of power to work with, but it's got a wind-up time.
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Apr 19, 2017 15:37
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8one6 posted:After about 50 the question isn't how many you have its how quickly you can deploy them. A portable hole is still a hole. Do the skeletons have ladders? Are the skeletons using each other as ladders? You ever have one of those "Barrel of Monkeys" toys as a kid?
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Apr 19, 2017 15:38
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:You ever have one of those "Barrel of Monkeys" toys as a kid?
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Apr 19, 2017 15:39
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You gotta start thinking industrially. Don't just stack the skeletons for space, stack them like paper towel dispensers so that each skeleton you withdraw pulls the next skeleton into position.
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Apr 19, 2017 15:44
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yeah the skeletons go in in a line, and each one holds the guy in front of him's feet.
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Apr 19, 2017 15:49
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Golden Bee posted:In that case, have the skeletons fall out in a pile of bows & clavicles. Gonna make a hell of a racket, like a dozen xylophones kicked off a cliff.
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Apr 19, 2017 16:23
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gonna multiclass a necromancer-bard and have my own portable backup band
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Apr 19, 2017 16:25
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When did it become unfashionable for a DM to curbstomp summons and minions? Treating them as walking temp HP or tutorials for one shot kill moves is what I thought they were for.
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Apr 19, 2017 16:30
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We've agreed that he can get eight out a round in combat if there's a lot of space around the hole. He usually only has a few out at a time and only starts deploying them in earnest if there's a lot of prep time in advance. This is actually pretty considerate of him since it means he doesn't overwhelm most combat, but I need to come up with clever ways to stop him from trivializing boss fights. AoEs and visibility blockers are my go-tos, if the creatures have them. Sometimes I like to shake it up, though. There's a mind-controlling demon lord they're coming up against and I really hope he fails his Wisdom save.
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Apr 19, 2017 20:30
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What's a reasonable amount of setting information to provide if you'd like to mostly develop collaboratively? A page or so? I want to provide a skeleton but not make it arduous to digest. Area to be covered is roughly large medieval city sized, if that's a factor.
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Apr 19, 2017 23:28
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Hypnobeard posted:What's a reasonable amount of setting information to provide if you'd like to mostly develop collaboratively? A page or so? Yeah, a page of bullet points sounds about right. You want to paint very broad strokes that give a theme and feel without really filling in details. For example, don't try to detail how the government works. Instead, say something like "The city is notionally democratic, but the electoral process is controlled by shifting alliances of merchant guilds and crime mobs". That gives a clear idea of a theme that you want to include, but lets different details get added depending on how the players choose to interact with that aspect of the setting. Don't name or structure those guilds and gangs, and don't decide which ones are interesting or powerful. Let it come up as part of the collaborative effort.
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Apr 20, 2017 02:04
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Man D20 systems really are trash
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Apr 20, 2017 04:24
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bowmore posted:Man D20 systems really are trash 13th age is ok.
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Apr 20, 2017 11:26
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I'm setting up my players' party to meet up with a goddess on the elemental plane of fire. They're suitably high-level at this point, but this is the first time they'll have traveled between planes. The reason I want them there at all is because a friend of theirs was saved from death by the goddess, and their reunion will be cut short by the goddess asking the party for a favor in return. The only part I'm really stumbling with here is what exactly the goddess wants them to do. What could a party of six adventurers from the material plane possibly do that the goddess couldn't already do herself with an army of minions at her disposal? I've been thinking of something to do with a rogue envoy sent to a neighboring god, or emissaries sent to the material plane who decided to go against her instruction and instead enslave a city, but I'm really struggling to flesh out any of those ideas. Any suggestions on how I can make this trip to the elemental plane of fire worth it?
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Apr 20, 2017 14:35
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Deino posted:What could a party of six adventurers from the material plane possibly do that the goddess couldn't already do herself with an army of minions at her disposal? Gods can't travel to Sigil, and generally creatures from the elemental plane of fire are pretty easily recognisable as such. Something or someone of value is in sigil and she needs a deniable party to get/free/learn about it/them. EDIT: This also means that you can bring the party to whatever plane you want, as they might follow the lead from Sigil. If you don't want to use Sigil, but a different cosmic force, there's the Blood War, which is pretty closely monitored and might be a cold war at whatever point you're at. If both of these are too grand, Ravenloft is generally much easier to traverse if you're less important, and I can see why a goddess might not want to have gone there. Maybe a group of her operatives were already sent in and went missing! EDIT part 2: Obviously you could also send them to an elemental opposite, but no one likes the water level. Moriatti fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Apr 20, 2017 |
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Apr 20, 2017 15:41
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Deino posted:What could a party of six adventurers from the material plane possibly do that the goddess couldn't already do herself with an army of minions at her disposal? Anything that doesn't involve burning things. An army of fire elementals and salamanders is all cool and good, but they lack subtlety
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Apr 20, 2017 15:46
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Moriatti posted:Gods can't travel to Sigil, and generally creatures from the elemental plane of fire are pretty easily recognizable as such. I'd never heard of Sigil before now and it sounds like a very interesting concept from what I'm reading on various wiki pages. It would have been perfectly appropriate for the master-of-illusion fake shopkeeper stunt that I pulled on the party earlier in the campaign, as I kind of pulled it out of my rear end when I did. The goddess of fire is supposed to have some in-lore reason for having beef with the planes of earth and wind, but something just feels iffy about making them encounter and fight creatures of exclusively one "type". I think you and Azhais have given me exactly what I need. A trusted efreeti lieutenant of the goddess' was sent on a mission to recover an artifact from an ancient ruin in the material plane. Unfortunately, when he arrived there a headstrong but powerful wizard was there trying to find the same item, and captured the lieutenant. Now, the wizard has traveled to the marketplaces of Sigil and is trying to sell her lieutenant to whoever is interested in buying an enslaved extraplanar warrior. The party needs to travel to Sigil, seek out the wizard, and retrieve both the lieutenant and the artifact by whatever means possible. Of course this probably means avoiding direct combat, as the Lady of Pain probably won't be too interested in a fight breaking out on her watch. Too complicated?
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Apr 20, 2017 16:17
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Hypnobeard posted:What's a reasonable amount of setting information to provide if you'd like to mostly develop collaboratively? A page or so? Remember that cities, like characters, benefit from picking a small handful of very recognizable features and then letting details flow from those features. These can be societal (as AlphaDog notes) or physical (a broken clocktower in the center square, twisted like putty in the aftermath of a half-forgotten magical war, still keeps time correctly). Nobody wants to memorize a list of poo poo. Sometimes I come up with extraneous details for my games but they're for me; I do it because I like writing down cool ideas. Many of them are never used.
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Apr 20, 2017 18:27
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Mendrian posted:Remember that cities, like characters, benefit from picking a small handful of very recognizable features and then letting details flow from those features. These can be societal (as AlphaDog notes) or physical (a broken clocktower in the center square, twisted like putty in the aftermath of a half-forgotten magical war, still keeps time correctly). Nobody wants to memorize a list of poo poo. Sometimes I come up with extraneous details for my games but they're for me; I do it because I like writing down cool ideas. Many of them are never used. This I agree with. People will fill in the smaller details in their imagination. So having a few memorable features helps a lot. Something like "half the city's buildings are made of sandstone" or "the streets are lined with colored magical torches that light themselves each night". My players are just about to see if their criminal syndicate that they run can tamper with a government election going on. The setting is post-apocalyptic fantasy and the world has finally just gotten to the point where it can start to have governed nations again and this election will determine who runs the newly-founded nation for the next x years. What kind of events, twists, villains, etc. should the players run into while attempting to rig a wide-scale election? The players themselves are shady characters so they can do just about anything, I'm just struggling to come up with suitable stories for a party who normally battles monsters and raiders in the name of Crime and Self-Preservation.
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Apr 20, 2017 19:59
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For inspiration on election-rigging conspiracies, I would suggest reading the daily product of any fringe news outlet for the last six months or so.
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Apr 20, 2017 20:02
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Ilor posted:For inspiration on election-rigging conspiracies, I would suggest reading the daily product of any fringe news outlet for the last six months or so. Honestly, supermarket tabloids seem like a pretty unimpeachable source of inspiration for any gaming plot.
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Apr 20, 2017 20:52
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Deino posted:I'd never heard of Sigil before now and it sounds like a very interesting concept from what I'm reading on various wiki pages. It would have been perfectly appropriate for the master-of-illusion fake shopkeeper stunt that I pulled on the party earlier in the campaign, as I kind of pulled it out of my rear end when I did. that's a good clean plot imo. I'd put lots of characterization into the fire queen making it super obvious why she's not v good at subtle plans, if that fits your ideas about her, because that's funny.
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Apr 20, 2017 21:43
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Deino posted:Too complicated? Nah, actually, as far as Sigil goes, that's pretty straightforwards. Remember, Sigil is huge, so the chances of the players directly encountering the Lady of Pain on their first visit should be remote. Especially since the Lady is a cosmic force, not a character. Please treat it as such. Personally, I'd make the auction kind of an underground thing, that lets you make the bidders untouchable by power-level (Glaabrezu, Yugoloths, Dragons, etc.,) while still giving them goons to muscle around. It also allows you to avoid having to deal with the factions until you know whether you want to or not in your game. (Since you can easily explain their absence if you want to introduce them later.) Planescape is a rad setting, and all of the original 2e source books are pretty available if you look hard enough, so I'd definitely recommend looking. Even though you (probably?) aren't using the same ruleset, there's a lot of flavour to be taken.
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Apr 20, 2017 21:50
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Keeshhound posted:Honestly, supermarket tabloids seem like a pretty unimpeachable source of inspiration for any gaming plot.
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Apr 20, 2017 22:51
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