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Krinkle posted:What should a regular rear end salt of the earth druid know about the fey wild? I just read the DMG about it, and it's a lot less "plane of elemental nature" than I assumed. Are fey things that, like, hang out in nature, but don't really care for it the way a druid would? Fey are Fey the fair folk. They tend to all be pretty or like beauty. (Hags being the exception) Fey very while some care about Nature like Sprites and Pixes, other could give less of a poo poo like Boggles, Quicklings and Redcaps. They just tend to be their wild selves. Though most of them are connected to Nature in some way. The Feywild itself is more a wild reflection of the Material plane then the Plane of Nature. Emotions also run much higher in the Feywild, slight angry can turn murderous and produce a Redcap that desires only to murder, while being happy can turn into straight up joy. It's one of the reasons it's the opposite of the Shadowfell which is dark and gloomy. Anyway it's likely they would know little. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Sep 5, 2017 |
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Sep 5, 2017 22:32
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MonsterEnvy posted:Most of the odd monsters are in the game now due to the Current Monster Manual and VGM. Stuff like the Froghemoth, Flailsnail and Flumph. Can't think of any oddballs that are missing.
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Sep 5, 2017 22:34
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Splicer posted:Warlord Thats not a monster.
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Sep 5, 2017 22:35
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MonsterEnvy posted:Thats not a monster.
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Sep 5, 2017 22:51
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Splicer posted:Tell that to Mike Mearls! lol oh man I saw that set up coming from a mile away
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Sep 5, 2017 23:08
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How balanced is this homebrew? http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Necromancer_(5e_Class)
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Sep 6, 2017 00:15
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User0015 posted:How balanced is this homebrew? The first major problem I see is it doesn't actually have a "spells known" column on its table so there's no way to tell how many spells it actually knows at a given level. Given that, the class flat-out doesn't really function. The major offender besides that is probably the Animate Major Undead thing, if your DM is generous enough to give you a good corpse to animate with it. Having what is essentially a pet manticore at 7th level is a bit much, way to make martials even more pointless. At higher levels you can have things like chimeras and medusas. Though I'm not sure what the part at level 15 where it says "In addition, the major undead now lasts until its hit points reach 0 " means. I don't see any rules for it expiring before that, unless it's referring to needing to use the feature to retain control of the undead, though that seems mostly pointless unless it also removes the "can only have one at a time" restriction (which isn't specified). Also, the level 6 feature strikes me as redundant, unless it's meant to just be "you no longer need to know animate dead". The flavor part of the wording might also suggest that it doesn't require corpses but that isn't clear. As strictly read it might also let you turn level 1 and 2 slots into animate dead which presents problems. Some of the other features are fuzzily written too. Like, is the level 2 grim reaper feature supposed to add those to your spells known? The flavor part sounds like it is, but the mechanical part is not very clear, even considering this is 5E. Finally, the "multiclass" part is really strange. 50gp? Do you spend it or what?
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Sep 6, 2017 00:45
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Time Cowboy posted:Before y'all start going around again about edition wars... I would unironically go and pick up a 4e monster manuals and use the abilities and powers in them to add to existing monsters. I've been going through and doing this to make all the suuuper simple and uninteresting fights into something with mechanics and interesting things the players could stop and think about. kingcom fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Sep 6, 2017 |
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Sep 6, 2017 00:51
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Time Cowboy posted:Before y'all start going around again about edition wars... The 2E monster manuals have lots of fluff compared to later edition. The Big white (or black depending on printing) is probably worth getting.
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Sep 6, 2017 02:13
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Angrymog posted:The 2E monster manuals have lots of fluff compared to later edition. The Big white (or black depending on printing) is probably worth getting. That's one of my favorite D&D books. That said, there's a lot of boring-rear end "number appearing 20d12 and 1/4 in plate mail, 33/100 in chain mail with guisarme-glaive-voulges, 10% with rusty daggers a fifth of which are women and children" type stuff in the descriptions. If you're after weird and wonderful monsters, the 2nd ed Planescape compendiums have some great stuff too.
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Sep 6, 2017 03:03
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Trebuchet King posted:I missed 4e completely but I'd heard it characterized as kind of MMO-ified? Like in terms of mechanics and such. I definitely feel this way, but I don't really consider it an insult. I didn't play much 4e but what felt very "MMO" to me was giving all the classes a set of specific abilities that all functioned the same way and operated on cooldowns. Whereas in 3rd edition a given character based on their choice of feats and multi-classing could do all sorts of stupid, unpredictable things, in 4e a Fighter pretty much seemed to play like a Fighter every time and could be assumed to have a particular set of "buttons" to press in combat, some of which were at-will and could be "spammed" and some were per-encounter and thus "cooldown" abilities. Multi-classing was a lot less powerful and made much lighter changes to your character build. Again, this isn't a bad thing, but it made the game feel a lot more restrictive than 3e when it came out. It is absolutely, from my limited experience, the most mechanically sound version of D&D to date.
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Sep 6, 2017 04:21
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Druid Warcaster has Call Lightning up. Can he really only make opportunity spell attacks against people who are 5ft away from him and leave, thus striking himself with lightning too? Dang.
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Sep 6, 2017 04:56
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Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:I definitely feel this way, but I don't really consider it an insult. I didn't play much 4e but what felt very "MMO" to me was giving all the classes a set of specific abilities that all functioned the same way and operated on cooldowns. Whereas in 3rd edition a given character based on their choice of feats and multi-classing could do all sorts of stupid, unpredictable things, in 4e a Fighter pretty much seemed to play like a Fighter every time and could be assumed to have a particular set of "buttons" to press in combat, some of which were at-will and could be "spammed" and some were per-encounter and thus "cooldown" abilities. Multi-classing was a lot less powerful and made much lighter changes to your character build. Again, this isn't a bad thing, but it made the game feel a lot more restrictive than 3e when it came out. It is absolutely, from my limited experience, the most mechanically sound version of D&D to date. This thread of conversation should probably end before it is too late. But this is OBVIOUSLY false. Short of spellcasting pretty much anything a character, especially a fighter, could do in 3e they could do in 4e. A few feats may have let a Fighter do a lot of damage, if that really mattered in 3e, but didn't give them anything unpredictable. In fact of all classes in 4e the Fighter was one of the two with the most options and could do a lot of things beyond the simple "I attack" that was the vast majority of what a fighter could do in 3e. Krinkle posted:Druid Warcaster has Call Lightning up. Can he really only make opportunity spell attacks against people who are 5ft away from him and leave, thus striking himself with lightning too? Dang. Not sure Warcaster would allow that, there is some question about if you can use the extra attack turn abilities of a spell with Warcaster as the wording suggests cast a spell rather than attack with a continuing spell. Ryuujin fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Sep 6, 2017 |
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Sep 6, 2017 05:10
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The 4e designers went out of their way to give martial classes daily abilities because a 3e character couldn't do "stupid, unpredictable things" at all. A Fighter basically picked a single gimmick, like Tripping or Dungeoncrashing, and then just spammed that move over and over again*. Anything else was left up to the whims of the DM and whatever edge-case environmental interaction and skill check rules applied. To actually do "stupid, unpredictable things", you had to multi-class into caster classes ... which retroactively justifies that the model of giving 4e Fighters a set of explicitly defined combat moves was entirely correct! * this also had the nasty side-effect of those moves necessarily needing to be toned down/weighed down a lot - there's no limit on how often you can Trip a dude in 3e because "realistically speaking, of course a Fighter can just sweep the leg over and over again" ... but if a Trip attack is both unlimited and reliable, then it's really powerful! As a result, you then have to gate Tripping behind feats and opposed checks ... which waters down your one gimmick anyway. Or you're a crit build and there's a lot of uncrittable monsters. Or you're a sneak attack build and there's a lot of undead and plant life and golems and poo poo. And this culminates in Pathfinder just going straight-up "gently caress you Combat Maneuver Defense is BAB+STR+DEX, try beating that"
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Sep 6, 2017 05:26
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Yeah, sorry, I phrased that badly. I meant in terms of builds, like, well, stupid trip gimmicks. I am absolutely not trying to argue that a 4e fighter has fewer combat options than a 3e fighter. I am in agreement with you both and defer to the knowledge of experienced 4e players where I am mistaken. I am not looking at a 4e book and don't have very much experience with 4e at all. This is my memory of reading the 4e PHB when it came out. I guess what I'm saying is that the streamlined, reliable mechanics in 4e reminded me of the same sort of mechanics in World of Warcraft. Like, in 4e you pick a class, you pick a spec, and that's what you use as you level up and unlock new abilities. In Wow, you pick a class, you pick a spec, and that's what you use as you level up and unlock new abilities. In 3e, you pick a class, then you take a feat, and you pick another class and maybe a completely unrelated feat, possibly with a coherent goal in being the best at bull rushing or whatever or possibly based entirely on a whim. At level 6-10 if you've been planning you probably take another special class! Basically 3e characters were all over the place and had a ton of build options that ranged from incredibly powerful to actively detrimental and there was nothing except the DM to stop you from picking insane stupid options, like a ranger/sorcerer/monk or something. 4e character builds seemed like you'd have to make a real effort to pick something that wasn't at least basically functional. If you were used to having a ton of build options at every turn 4e seemed restrictive and "on-rails" because it reined in a lot of the madness of 3e, and the immediate comparison a lot of people would make would be to MMOs, because those are also RPG games that strive for mechanical balance and character development that is effective without system mastery and so they use a lot of the same techniques. If anything 5e is the most MMO like because it categorizes loot by item rarity.
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Sep 6, 2017 05:45
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Okay, yeah, that's a much fairer take on it, put like that.
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Sep 6, 2017 06:03
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People call 4e an mmo/Diablo ripoff because of the way ability presentation is unified across classes, more uniform buff/debuff mechanics, and the fact casters had infinitely useable damage spells. 4e combat is very much a miniature skirmish game but it's not like a video game at all.
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Sep 6, 2017 06:08
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gradenko_2000 posted:Dungeoncrashing. Man I loved Dungeoncrasher. As a concept if nothing else. Never got to play a full game with it. The closest I got was a high-ish level, around 12 or so, gestalt game where I was a huge monstrosity with a massive strength dungeoncrasher fighter levels and at least a level of War Hulk. Couldn't compare to what a spellcaster could actually do but when it came to doing straight damage and smacking things flying he couldn't be beat in that game. Of course one of the things I really wanted to be able to do with a Dungeoncrasher fighter, or a lot of high strength characters in general, was kool-aid manning through walls and even with Dungeoncrasher that was unlikely to be possible, except maybe with the above ridiculously strong build.
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Sep 6, 2017 06:21
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mango sentinel posted:People call 4e an mmo/Diablo ripoff because of the way ability presentation is unified across classes, more uniform buff/debuff mechanics, and the fact casters had infinitely useable damage spells. The great irony I think many would agree is that a 4e tactical videogame would have been awesome.
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Sep 6, 2017 06:22
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mango sentinel posted:People call 4e an mmo/Diablo ripoff because of the way ability presentation is unified across classes, more uniform buff/debuff mechanics, and the fact casters had infinitely useable damage spells. The Diablo comparison was 3E, the things tabletop nerds got uppity over for 4E was MMOs - and specifically WoW. Basically terrible nerds always have superiority complexes over people that enjoy (popular thing), even (maybe especially) inside of nerd culture. Also, every edition of D&D is a miniature skirmish game with differing levels of stuff wrapped around it of wildly differing qualities. 4E's handling of skill challenges was notoriously bad until years had passed, for instance. 5E continues the proud tradition of skills being really poorly handled, at least.
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Sep 6, 2017 06:24
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kingcom posted:The great irony I think many would agree is that a 4e tactical videogame would have been awesome. STILL loving WAITING FOR A GAMMA WORLD GAME IN THE FORM OF XCOM 
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Sep 6, 2017 06:35
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Mordiceius posted:STILL loving WAITING FOR A GAMMA WORLD GAME IN THE FORM OF XCOM God that would be so good 
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Sep 6, 2017 06:36
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Darwinism posted:The Diablo comparison was 3E, the things tabletop nerds got uppity over for 4E was MMOs - and specifically WoW. Basically terrible nerds always have superiority complexes over people that enjoy (popular thing), even (maybe especially) inside of nerd culture. Let's not forget that Ryan Dancey actively signal-boosted this kind of talk as part of marketing for people to jump ship to Pathfinder. Like, Dancey was still saying "uhhh WoW was really popular at the time and WOTC designed 4e to be like WoW to grab at that demographic" by as late as 2014
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Sep 6, 2017 06:37
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kingcom posted:God that would be so good Yes it would. D&D 4e's version of Gamma World was all about random, quickly generated characters and lots of death, WHICH IS BASICALLY WHAT I WANT FROM AN XCOM-LIKE. There isn't a large enough.I wish I was a good programmer because I would have made it myself.
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Sep 6, 2017 06:58
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Splicer posted:I'm skipping past "why is remembering what your class does a weird thing" to get right to how our fighter is level 5 and still doesn't understand the difference between an attack and an attack action despite having been GMing a different 5e game for close to a year. The people I play with don't think about the game at all when they're not playing it and have to be constantly reminded that when you're in combat first you roll to hit then you roll to damage. And what modifiers to add on. And huge piles of other stuff. They're down with the roleplay stuff but the actual mechanics of the game are just incidental. And yes I know that means we should play something else but D&D has a lot of buy-in and I want to be in the Forgotten Realms okay. My take on why people call 4th "MMOGish" is that you're picking roles as well as classes. Support and Leader and etc. And then you get loads of active abilities as you level up just like in a computer game as well. It's a shame they never did make a 4th edition computer game as I think it would work really well! As a person who was a grog for 2nd edition when 3rd came out the one thing I really remember people getting mad about was the game shifting to be All Races, All Classes. "I want to be a dwarf giant!" is something I remember getting said.
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Sep 6, 2017 07:41
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Taear posted:The people I play with don't think about the game at all when they're not playing it and have to be constantly reminded that when you're in combat first you roll to hit then you roll to damage. And what modifiers to add on. And huge piles of other stuff. They're down with the roleplay stuff but the actual mechanics of the game are just incidental. I mean, you really should. If the players are thinking of it in terms of the fiction first, the mechanics later, that's just about perfect for Dungeon World or HeroQuest.
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Sep 6, 2017 07:50
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Taear posted:And then you get loads of active abilities as you level up just like in a computer game as well. Holy poo poo, just like
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Sep 6, 2017 07:59
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Dungeon World is perennially overrated here, the typical DW game has about one's session worth of staying power before the novelty wears off.
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Sep 6, 2017 08:07
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We give you fuckers vaudeville gold and this is the thanks we get?
Splicer fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Sep 6, 2017 |
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Sep 6, 2017 08:10
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dont even fink about it posted:Dungeon World is perennially overrated here, the typical DW game has about one's session worth of staying power before the novelty wears off. My in person group tried it and while it was fun for 2 sessions we had this happen pretty much. I think we just need some numbers to latch onto as a security blanket. We're all a bit keen on optimising now and then, and looking for inter-party synergy from a mechanics perspective and while technically DW offers synergy limited by only imagination, we wanted someone else to do the imagining for us for a bit. I'd be keen to see how others play the game to see if they have better luck, or have a better way to edge out more staying power from the game.
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Sep 6, 2017 08:58
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"I want some mechanical heft behind my character" is a perfectly valid choice and desire, but if the players aren't actually interested in figuring out the numbers and the mechanics, it kind of falls flat.
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Sep 6, 2017 09:05
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gradenko_2000 posted:Let's not forget that Ryan Dancey actively signal-boosted this kind of talk as part of marketing for people to jump ship to Pathfinder. Nine times out of ten if you ask a grog what they mean by "4e is just like WoW!!" they won't actually be able to explain why this is the case for this reason.
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Sep 6, 2017 09:14
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Spiteski posted:My in person group tried it and while it was fun for 2 sessions we had this happen pretty much. I think we just need some numbers to latch onto as a security blanket. We're all a bit keen on optimising now and then, and looking for inter-party synergy from a mechanics perspective and while technically DW offers synergy limited by only imagination, we wanted someone else to do the imagining for us for a bit. One of the current strains of thought in modern tabletop gaming is "numbers = bad," generally as an overreaction to a long history of games that are "What if numbers, but too much?" Generally it's OK if your RPG has math involved, and the games DW is trying to emulate (your first D&D experience with your friends in your bedroom) all involved math and tables and details. Everyone survived and had a good time, even if they didn't fully understand everything they could do or that they were supposed to be doing. DW is not written very well considering how stone simple it is (a problem with a lot of games, but I digress), and has an extremely weak and boring progression system that never really takes you past about level 3 of any D&D game. It needs to give players stronger narrative options at higher level instead of half-assed mechanical bonuses as an afterthought. Most tables have players who don't engage with rules sets very well because they are shy and/or just going to game for the social experience. In my experience they are not cured by Dungeon World, which is to say that if they're not going to engage, they're not going to engage. That's their problem and not yours or a designer's. You can't design games for people who don't want to play games. On a relative scale to other games, most versions of D&D are not asking that much of people.
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Sep 6, 2017 09:28
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dont even fink about it posted:On a relative scale to other games, most versions of D&D are not asking that much of people. How so?
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Sep 6, 2017 11:06
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Any advice for someone completely new looking to wade in to a game? I haven't played any kind of D&D in 25 years but am interested in picking it up. The online tools look pretty cool and it looks like you can find pick up games here or through R20 etc. From what I've read, 5e seems to be a bit less min/max as compared to other versions so it seemed like a good place to start. Naturally I would love to connect with some "IRL" friends and learn from them but I'm a 40-something yr old who's been relocated geographically for work a couple of times in the past few years. So my local circle generally consists of people from work or parents I meet at my kids' sports/school events. I did find a pretty cool, local table top gaming shop that I have to check out. Any advice on where/what to read up on would be greatly appreciated.
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Sep 6, 2017 12:49
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mincedgarlic posted:Any advice for someone completely new looking to wade in to a game? I haven't played any kind of D&D in 25 years but am interested in picking it up. The online tools look pretty cool and it looks like you can find pick up games here or through R20 etc. From what I've read, 5e seems to be a bit less min/max as compared to other versions so it seemed like a good place to start. The Basic rules or SRD can give you a feel for the game. But the Players Handbook is the main starting point if you find yourself interested.
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Sep 6, 2017 15:00
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mincedgarlic posted:I did find a pretty cool, local table top gaming shop that I have to check out. Nice, see if they have any Adventurers' League games you can jump into. mincedgarlic posted:Any advice on where/what to read up on would be greatly appreciated. Just pick up the PHB and read through it. It's $30 on Amazon or grab it from your cool shop to make them very happy!
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Sep 6, 2017 15:06
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mincedgarlic posted:Any advice for someone completely new looking to wade in to a game? I haven't played any kind of D&D in 25 years but am interested in picking it up. The online tools look pretty cool and it looks like you can find pick up games here or through R20 etc. From what I've read, 5e seems to be a bit less min/max as compared to other versions so it seemed like a good place to start. I'm basically exactly where you are. I got the books, read over them a few times, and joined a game on Roll20. I'm seven sessions in now, a lot of the players are flaky as gently caress and the DM leaves a lot to be desired but it's still been a blast. My barbarian is riding around on a giant parrot and made friends with a giant gorilla who helped us kill a roc and a bone devil, both of which would have mulched us without Mighty Joe Young's assistance. Good times. Just jump in the deep end and have fun.
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Sep 6, 2017 16:04
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AlphaDog posted:How so? In general it is not that difficult to build a level 1 D&D character and the mechanics are straightforward (hit points, adding numbers and dice together when playing as opposed to less immediately intuitive stuff). This is not to say that it's the perfect game, especially along a larger scale, but DW isn't trying to hit that scale either.
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Sep 6, 2017 17:43
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Kaysette posted:Nice, see if they have any Adventurers' League games you can jump into. If you just want a reliable place to play in person, this is fine advice. One additional thing to note about Adventurers' League is that it's designed to let you take a character from one table to another. The main use case for this is if you want to play D&D at conventions (GenCon, Origins, PAX, etc) using the character you play with at a shop, though it can also apply to folks who move fairly frequently. If this is something important to you, you might check whether your shop uses the appropriate log sheets and whatnot. My local game shop didn't do this, and while nobody at GenCon asked for log sheets to prove my Warlock was indeed level 6, DMs will very likely ask if you have certain magic items, especially if it's beyond the expected rarity at your level of play. One player was asked to prove his Staff of the Magi at a level 5-10 table, for instance. For good reason, as that thing single-handedly turned its session into easy mode. Also, if you don't have a good time, don't be afraid to give it a chance at a different shop (if possible). Aside from not doing proper AL bookkeeping, a shop I played at for a couple weeks was a trainwreck of rules misinterpretations and poor DMing. Possibly related, +3 weapons handed out at level 4 and Hunter's Mark adding to the whole party's damage rolls might be why some people think 5e martials have no problems 
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Sep 6, 2017 21:28
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