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I'm going to be DMing for the first time. I've run scifi games before but not D&D. I'm starting with the mines of phandelver. What's a good source for miniatures? I'm looking for some cheap goblins and stuff for the early parts of it to paint up, will figure out the rest later. One of the characters is playing an Oath of the Ancients paladin and I'm trying to figure out where to source a mini for her too, since it's a little unusual.
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Aug 1, 2017 15:22
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chutche2 posted:I'm going to be DMing for the first time. I've run scifi games before but not D&D. I'm starting with the mines of phandelver. Wizkids' new line of D&D/Pathfinder minis are great sculpts, cheap, and based to fit on a grid map. The line is still small though and Reaper Bones will easily fill in whatever else you need though bases can be large and oddly shaped.
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Aug 1, 2017 15:58
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Repost for new page: Any tips for running an Eberron game? Which are the good 3e/4e adventures? I want to run Seekers of the Ashen Crown and eventually introduce the Aurum as major antagonists(Dead for a Spell, maybe) but I need a good two or three hour opening session to get from 1st to 2nd asap. Any good ideas? Also, if you can't afford $20 minis what's a cheap alternative?
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Aug 1, 2017 16:10
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Captain Walker posted:Also, if you can't afford $20 minis what's a cheap alternative? Those unpainted D&D minis are like $3 per 1-3 models but if you want to go even cheaper: get Homies or similar from vending machines at Walmart. Similarly check Walmart or Target for clearance toys to see if they have anything appropriately sized for cheap. There are currently like five different lines of SD superhero toys that sometimes end up there. Another alternative for anyone not wanting to spend a ton on minis or painting: a company called Arc Knight makes board game style fantasy plastic standees that look really good and you get like 30+ per pack for $25-30. http://arcknight.squarespace.com/shop/
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Aug 1, 2017 16:20
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Yeah I don't mind paying $3 per mini, just trying to find ones that look right. The paladin is a half-elf female with a greataxe, trying to find something that fits the bill for that is tough.
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Aug 1, 2017 16:22
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chutche2 posted:Yeah I don't mind paying $3 per mini, just trying to find ones that look right. The paladin is a half-elf female with a greataxe, trying to find something that fits the bill for that is tough. You're probably not finding that, but here's a start. http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/Female%20axe
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Aug 1, 2017 16:34
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Thanks. I see one that might work, I'll see what she says about it.
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Aug 1, 2017 16:38
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Captain Walker posted:
Buy thick card paper, cut it into squares, draw little doodles of the bad guys on them. Encourage players to do the same for their characters.
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Aug 1, 2017 23:45
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Captain Walker posted:Repost for new page: There's also printable paper standups - for example the Order of the Stick guy did these, which are pretty easy to assemble and come in b/w and color. https://gumroad.com/l/amfesspring 
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Aug 2, 2017 00:27
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How the hell is an Iguanaman going to operate a blowgun with no possible Embouchure?
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Aug 2, 2017 00:37
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Krinkle posted:How the hell is an Iguanaman going to operate a blowgun with no possible Embouchure? Very carefully.
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Aug 2, 2017 01:10
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If you want wysiwyg, Lego minifigs are one of the absolute best games in town. It's been a while since I've browsed bricklink, but you should be able to outfit a party for somewhere around $3/PC.
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Aug 2, 2017 01:13
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Captain Walker posted:Repost for new page: If you just need a bunch of monsters and don't mind d using cardboard stand-ups, Pathfinder Pawns.
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Aug 2, 2017 01:15
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Here's what I did. I bought a bunch of these and then got a bunch of roll20 tokens, sized them in photoshop so they were an inch around, and had them printed on adhesive paper at kinkos. Then I punched them out with a 1" circle punch, available at craft stores in the scrapbooking section, and applied the stickers to the tokens. Similar plan is to get a bunch of these and print out 1" tokens on paper or cardstock and stick the stickers on them. That might look better than the first thing, but I did that before I found out the epoxy stickers exist.
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Aug 2, 2017 02:42
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Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:Here's what I did. This is the basic technique. I went full nerd and bought the magnetic status marker things too, but even without those, having the metal stickers, the plastic bases you linked, or even some 1" washers underneath would give them some good heft. Here's what I ended up with:   
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Aug 2, 2017 04:52
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It's going to be super hard for me to keep Phandelver a serious campaign after years of The Adventure Zone.
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Aug 2, 2017 04:56
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I tried to talk to Klarghhh and he just wasn't fuckin' having it.
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Aug 2, 2017 05:05
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Thanks for everyone's help! On an offnote while talking about this, I had a mini-meltdown against a grognard in a discord chat over bullshitting about the campaign, with players waiting till next week to start. I should have been more tact, but holy crap. If the players are so potentially hosed they cant stand an encounter let alone face it, I'm not alone in giving a free power up to full without a full rest to meet a challenge, right? Originally what I was hinting at was when the party will have a chance to fully rest, but if somehow they won perfectly, they won't need to. Is it unreasonable to outright state otherwise given half the party is brand new to RPGs if that they need to, they need to heal and consider spells? Let alone edit poo poo behind the scenes. This guy acted like it was a sacred crime to do this, he isn't even in our game.
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Aug 2, 2017 09:14
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Lord Psychodin posted:Thanks for everyone's help! The grog can get hosed. There's nothing at all wrong with helping out newbies to the game with above-board info or tips.
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Aug 2, 2017 09:19
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8one6 posted:The grog can get hosed. There's nothing at all wrong with helping out newbies to the game with above-board info or tips. Fuckin' agreed. The entire point of a game, of any game, is to have fun. This doesn't mean hand them easy wins always, but it does mean that as another participant of the game you (and tbh everyone's) goal should be to try and make sure people are having a good time. And part of that is knowledge of where choices lead. People against informed choices in games like this are almost always the people that want to lord their system mastery over others, like this is some kind of easily intuited system instead of an amalgamation of 40+ years of cultural cruft around pretending to be elves in a system derived from a fantastical notion of WWI/WWII naval battle mechanics.
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Aug 2, 2017 10:30
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8one6 posted:grogs can get hosed yup
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Aug 2, 2017 11:15
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Lord Psychodin posted:Thanks for everyone's help! There are games, dungeons, and tables, mainly from Back In The Day, where the DM has toiled over the math and designed it antagonistically yet fairly to be an experience - the players are trying to "beat" the DM, it is an arms race where the DM is challenging the players "come at my dungeon" and the players are building their characters to do it. In that world, in that time, it would be inappropriate for the DM to bend a mechanic or give the players some slack - the reality is those players didn't beat the DM's dungeon, the DM won, and the DM shouldn't be helping players "win" if they didn't earn "winning" by beating the dungeon as the mechanics allow. Those kinds of dungeons were often meticulously calculated to be winnable by certain approaches, and also came in an era where a long rest could happen by leaving the dungeon and resting, and where an expedition often involved oxcarts and commoner hires and so on. If someone was running a notorious "get hosed" module like Barrier Peaks or Tomb of Horrors or something, and decided "well I want the players to win so I will fudge some things here or give them a rest there that they shouldn't get" then that would be "bad DMing" from the perspective of the philosophy of that era. 5e is not that game. 5e will never be that game. Adhering super strictly to any rules or mechanics only makes sense if those rules and mechanics are designed mindfully and intentionally, playtested thoroughly, and balanced deliberately - 5e is not any of those things. Furthermore, D&D hasn't really been "players vs. the DM" since 3.5. There are DMs who still feel like their job is to antagonize the players, to wield their power over them, to make the players not just overcome the game world, but the DM. There are also DMs who feel their job is to arbitrate the rules with a computer precision, to be the processor on the game world and make sure that every rule is followed to the letter. Neither of these are good DMs for 5e. For the first, the vindictive "doing it vs the players" DM, it should be noted that 5e is part of a more modern movement of D&D that became an option in 3e and became the Way Things Are Done in 4e - the DM and the players are on the same side. The DM is telling a story, the players are the main characters, but the story is a story of heroism, not a story of tragedy (usually). Players expect the DM to present challenging and interesting fights but fights that the players are expected to win if possible or flee from if impossible but generally not fights that are almost certainly a TPK and if the players go in too early then the DM can cackle and go "hah HAH! I knew you would not defeat my traps!" For the second, the rules lawyer autismobot DM, 5e is not well tuned or well refined. It had kind of a goal of something like a design philosophy in mind, and it vaguely landed nearish there. A lot of stuff is broken or dysfunctional as written. A lot of rules add punitive amounts of math for no reason or don't have any math suggestions where it is needed. It's not a system for rules math lawyering because the rules are vague and the math is shaky at best. A good DM in a 5e environment is a facilitator who lets the players do what they want to do, helps them tell a story, and uses the game and its mechanics to make that story interesting and develop interesting encounters. You don't TPK the party because they need a rest but you don't want to give them a rest. You don't force the party into encounters they can't possibly win at all without giving them an exit. You do let them run in there and realize they are outmatched (if they are too new to realize it, you tell them "the odds here look impossible to you" as part of your encounter description) and then see how they react so long as "running away" is an option, and you follow the gentleman's agreement that you're not gonna chase the party forever until they die. In short: gently caress that grognard, I hope someone springs tomb of horrors on his personal favorite sheet.
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Aug 2, 2017 13:11
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There's a time and place for everything. One of the great things about the D&D Best Edition is that because the math wound up being so tight that you actually can have a DM who's antagonistic in fights (naturally, you still want your DM to be a facilitator outside of combat). I'd go so far as to say that antagonistic combat in that edition actually made things more enjoyable.
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Aug 2, 2017 14:24
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ReapersTouch posted:I let a barbarian player instantly kill a fire snake by pissing on it. My last party killed a fire giant by sticking a water orb in its mouth and detonating it while he slept. The GM almost had a stroke laughing.
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Aug 2, 2017 16:56
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Last session the spires of a massive slowly raised out of a desert, maybe like 2' a minute if memory serves. Cue warrior walking up to a solid spire and tying a rope to it. 50' later he tied a rope to that. After it finished going 200' up we had a pretty nice short cut past the monsters inside. Sadly the NPCs we were guarding decided to investigate inside and triggered the baddies inside, so some stayed to defend while others Batman'd up the side.
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Aug 2, 2017 19:17
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Conspiratiorist posted:Fighter is right behind Paladin as the top damage dealer in 5e gradenko_2000 posted:I'm willing to stand corrected on this and defer to you The tricky part of this argument is agreeing upon a fair set of assumptions for us to plug numbers into. Are we looking at single-turn burst? Purely at-will? Somewhere in between to simulate an adventure day? What levels would we measure at? How many short rests between long rests? What percentage of spell slots should translate into damage vs. utility? What magic weapons/items are factored in, if any? What AC/saving throw bonuses should our target dummies have? How many targets should be caught in an AoE? Should we allow UA archetypes (because Sharpshooter would flat-out make Fighters win handily by most metrics). How do we account for features that support allies (stunning strike, trip attack, distracting strike, wolf totem advantage, etc etc)? Based on the parameters chosen, I suspect it's possible to argue that any weapon-focused class can achieve top damage, though some of those claims are much more corner case than others (Monks would rely on Quivering Palm's save-or-die; Rogues on Assassin surprise crits). It's equally possible to argue that spellcasters deal far more damage than any of them if we assume they spend every spell slot on offense, AoEs are always viable for at least two targets, and that the adventure day is structured in such a way that they never have to fall back on cantrips.
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Aug 2, 2017 20:28
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Without even getting into the numbers, the biggest raw damage dealer in an encounter isn't necessarily guaranteed to be the biggest threat in a game with save-or-suck spells. Nor is the biggest threat even guaranteed to be the best target. Plus, surely there are situations where regardless of who is the Big Damage Dealer it makes a lot of sense to take down softer targets first to quickly decrease the overall danger level and/or deprive the Big Damage Dealer of support.
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Aug 2, 2017 20:43
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It's pretty uncontroversial fighters are top tier damage potential. The problem is using their attack action is the only way they interact with the game which is not interesting, and at high levels, not always the most useful even in fights.
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Aug 2, 2017 21:11
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EDIT: Disregard, I think I forgot what this discussion was about.
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Aug 2, 2017 21:21
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Slippery42 posted:The tricky part of this argument is agreeing upon a fair set of assumptions for us to plug numbers into. Are we looking at single-turn burst? Purely at-will? Somewhere in between to simulate an adventure day? What levels would we measure at? How many short rests between long rests? What percentage of spell slots should translate into damage vs. utility? What magic weapons/items are factored in, if any? What AC/saving throw bonuses should our target dummies have? How many targets should be caught in an AoE? Should we allow UA archetypes (because Sharpshooter would flat-out make Fighters win handily by most metrics). How do we account for features that support allies (stunning strike, trip attack, distracting strike, wolf totem advantage, etc etc)? Nothing tricky about it. Fighter is second best single-turn burst. Fighter is first or second at-will round-to-round depending on level. Somewhere between the two it's the same first. Anytime past 6th level, but most notably >11th when both Paladins and Fighters get a big power spike. Short rests don't even matter. Paladins rarely use their spell slots for utility. But it doesn't really matter. Magic items don't matter, you'd assume everyone would be similarly equipped. AC doesn't matter, but keep in mind that AC on difficult enemies tends to be fairly static while saves go up + other tricks to protect from save-or-lose. AoEs don't matter: single target damage is superior to distributed damage. UA doesn't matter, both Fighter and Paladin remain where they are respective of each other, though Fighter's burst per short rest gets neck to neck with Sharpshooter UA. The situation is between Fighter and Paladin precisely because they're the classes best built towards capitalizing on party synergy. Attacks have higher success chances than forcing saves, and it's easier to get advantage and misc. bonuses for them. I'm not contemplating Quivering Palm because it's a 17rh level ability. I'm also not contemplating Assassinate because it's a dogshit theorycraft ability disconnected from the reality of play. But if you feel you can argue about the direct damage competitiveness of spellcasters, by all means. Just keep in mind the vast majority of combats get decided in the first 3 rounds, and what you want the most for the actual tough fights is single-target burst damage to quickly diminish the number of enemies - this is where Fighters action surging and using their superiority dice, and Paladins smiting plus their offensive CDs, excel at, and it's on top of being the reliable top damage dealers the rest of the day. mango sentinel posted:It's pretty uncontroversial fighters are top tier damage potential. The problem is using their attack action is the only way they interact with the game which is not interesting, and at high levels, not always the most useful even in fights. This is mostly correct. If we grabbed only the martial classes and ordered them by overall versatility this is what we get: Warlock > Rogue > Paladin > Monk > Fighter >> Ranger >>>> Barbarian Though the initial argument was 'what do Fighters do in combat if not tanking', and the answer is indeed 'a shitton of loving damage'. But their chassis is built to actually stand there and take punishment back, so if the enemy is focusing on the squishier targets instead, then the squishies will be forced to abandon their functions to become decoys while Fighter does their job, which may or may not be very fun for them. Conspiratiorist fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Aug 2, 2017 |
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Aug 2, 2017 21:30
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Conspiratiorist posted:Nothing tricky about it. Short rests don't even matter: Whoa whoa whoa... Action surge and superiority dice both recharge after each short rest. Let's assume every attack hits (because AC doesn't matter) and all damage dice deal their average rolls. At level 6, a Paladin has 14d8 (63) extra average damage worth of smites that refresh every long rest. A greatsword-wielding battle master Fighter has 2(2d6 + 5) + 4d8 (42 avg) extra damage that refreshes every short rest. If the party gets one short rest between long rests, the Fighter then beats the Paladin's extra damage. If they get two, they beat it handily. At level 12, the Fighter is slightly behind the Paladin even after one short rest but back ahead after two. At level 20, the Fighter nearly keeps pace with the Paladin's daily smite damage without any short rests at all. AC doesn't matter: From the Fighter-favoring results above, you should understand why it might be a concern. The Paladin's extra damage doesn't depend on weapon accuracy since they apply smites after hitting, but the Fighter's extra damage is less certain and depends on knowing AC. If you wanted to make the math more complex and optimize around the -5/+10 feats or having advantage/disadvantage, AC matters for calculating the benefit of these as well. Magic items don't matter: Not a ton, granted, but the damage bonus from a +x weapon stacks more times when you get more attacks, and the attack bonus on a +x weapon makes extra damage from various feats and features more likely to land. It's worth keeping in mind. Attacks have higher success chances than forcing saves, and it's easier to get advantage and misc. bonuses for them: I'll absolutely agree with you here. This is something that the caster-supremacists in this thread handwave away, and I don't think they should. There are so many ways to gain advantage on attacks, but very few features or magic items that reduce an enemy's chance of saving against a spell (apart from hilarious Loremaster abuse). On top of that, at higher CRs (10+) especially, most published enemies have high enough saving throw bonuses and damage/condition immunities that a spellcaster can often find themselves wasting a precious turn or two looking for the blind spot where they can stick a spell (provided the player doesn't impart their own knowledge upon their character).
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Aug 2, 2017 23:03
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Slippery42 posted:
The best high level casters don't cast spells that require hits or saves, they just drop poo poo like Force Cage, Maze and Prismatic Wall (Or Wish to creatively cast a lower level spell that usually takes minutes to cast in a single turn) to completely remove pieces from the board and reshape the battlefield to their advantage. Incidentally those work the best with beefy martials who can truck out big hits, they compliment each other very well.
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Aug 3, 2017 00:22
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Short rests don't matter because Fighter is decidedly 2nd place without them. More is obviously better, but that's just how solid the Fighter chassis is vs other martials that they don't even need to short rest. In an optimal scenario where they are short resting after every fight, sure, bump them up from 2nd to 1st place, but it doesn't make a difference for the rest of the rabble. AC doesn't matter because - okay, first, clarification: Precision is in itself a form of damage by at-will turning misses into hits - because shifting AC doesn't affect the relative damage curves beyond the edge case of high AC enemies with low saves. Which, don't really exist. Magic items don't matter because, as you mentioned, effectiveness is a function of number of attacks and the only character that is getting more than 3 is Fighter. So it can only be a relative buff for them. I'll restate that my original argument is that Fighter is right behind Paladin as a damage dealer. Circumstantially one will best the other, but arguing about the relative placement just between the two of them is largely pedantic in this context: they are simply that close in play style and reliable and synergistic with whatever party abilities you bring to the table. But the other classes as damage dealers? loving garbage after the 11th level power spike. The only two who approach are Frenzied Berserker Barbarian, which is a garbo archetype for other reasons, and a Rogue that's reliably getting two sneak attacks per round. And you know what? If you have the party support to let you reliably get two SAs per round, go ahead, play Rogue, butcher everything and be amazing in and out of combat.
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Aug 3, 2017 00:42
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Just had an interesting encounter that probably should have taken like 15 minutes but actually took an hour. The party was crossing a bridge over a moat in a dungeon. When they were attacked by a Scrag/Aquatic Troll living under it. Other then the druid who turned in to a shark, the rest of the party was too afraid to go into the water and confront the Troll there. And just kept pelting it with ranged attacks. Except for the for the paladin who did not really have a solid ranged attack but eventually decided to jump on top of the troll. Now they dealt it fatal damage within 3 rounds being an 8th level party. But they kind of just kept beating on it and cutting off it's limbs. (Which still attacked them) Despite the fact it was clearly not working due to the Trolls regen. And the entire party knew about how trolls did not like fire, including the rogue who had a fire dagger. Yet it did not dawn on them to try and use fire until round 6 when they had done enough damage to troll to kill it 3 times over. And they only needed a single point of fire damage to kill it. Appearntly one of the main reasons they did not think to use it was uncertainty if it would work underwater. Using it when I Confirmed that it would.
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Aug 3, 2017 01:18
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They didnt just like, throw the pieces off the bridge one by one down the river or? Maybe that was their plan, I feel that probably would have solved the problem.
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Aug 3, 2017 01:33
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kingcom posted:They didnt just like, throw the pieces off the bridge one by one down the river or? Maybe that was their plan, I feel that probably would have solved the problem. Well no the troll was attacking them from the water. And only the druid was in there. (Kind of getting his rear end kicked so the party was afraid the Troll would grab him and swim off with him once it knocked him out of shark form.) All of them too afraid to jump into the water except for the Paladin who only worked up the courage to do so 4 rounds in.
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Aug 3, 2017 01:37
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MonsterEnvy posted:But they kind of just kept beating on it and cutting off it's limbs. I was more looking at this part of your statement. I mean if the limbs are off, they probably just float away from the current, as hilarious as the mental image of a severed arm trying to breastroke on its own is.
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Aug 3, 2017 01:42
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kingcom posted:I was more looking at this part of your statement. I mean if the limbs are off, they probably just float away from the current, as hilarious as the mental image of a severed arm trying to breastroke on its own is. The current was noted as being super weak. So more or less they just had arms and legs flailing about until the Troll reattached it or grew a replacement.
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Aug 3, 2017 01:44
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MonsterEnvy posted:The current was noted as being super weak. So more or less they just had arms and legs flailing about until the Troll reattached it or grew a replacement. Man now it makes even less sense why nobody wanted to go in. I assumed was like a running river and thats why everyone was thinking they'd rather stay dry and not make swim checks.
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Aug 3, 2017 01:56
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how did it attack them from range
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Aug 3, 2017 03:53
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