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Reene posted:Sorlocks are incredibly good. I would regard starting as sorcerer being better because of your saves but going sorcerer later is still quite good. Wild Magic is not as mechanically good as dragon bloodline but it's a lot of fun if you have a DM willing to roll with it. Also metamagics are legit super handy and useful in my limited experience with them.
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Oct 31, 2017 01:26
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kingcom posted:Aren't fighters getting like a million attacks at high level in 2e AD&D? And have huge saves against almost everything? Plus just getting all the crazy whirlwind attacks and the like. It was WotC that started the 3e/feats debacle and combined it with "all wizards know any spells they decide to" which removed one of the important limits (and in large part the semi-randomness that required some thought on the players part*) on wizards. Also, numbers-wise, a mid-to-high level wizard was still at risk of immediate death if they got lippy with a couple lower level warriors and didn't have any friends with them (in 2e and before). Making all wizards invisible/flying/stoneskinned/fireball machines with real armor and extra hitpoints was a WotC thing that didn't exist before. *This was one of the reasons "new players should use fighters" was a thing. Fighters were good at surviving and getting things done, and they functioned in a reliable and predictable way. Wizards had a lot more "well lets see what happens" and that wasnt always great for new players. Clerics were the next "easiest" choice in that they could still fight and wear armor, and their spells were fairly reliable. Comparing normal fighters to in-print demigods will continue to be some 4e grognard talking point, but 2e did have some unspoken things that were done for unique high level warriors that didn't really have substantial official rules. (For one thing it would be hard to codify: "if you have a high level warrior give them unique abilities based on their preferred way of acting, just make it, up good luck!" - There is the high-level campaign book, but I have a total memory blank on how it did things, so maybe it was better than I think.) The best known printed example is Drizzt. In one book he was a level 8 nobody-ranger, and then in a later one (after the Homeland stuff I assume) he was a level 20 fighter dual-classed to 16 ranger (give or take, this is from memory), but more importantly he had some unique things like "if he rolls 5 higher than needed to hit, he instantly kills the target". That makes perfect sense for a 36th level super-fighter, but abstracting that out to substantial rules that do a lot of different things would take some work.
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Oct 31, 2017 02:14
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Toebone posted:I've playing Out of the Abyss as my first D&D game, just hit level three as a Warlock and took Pact of the Chain. I'm kind of considering multi-classing into a wild magic sorcerer for my next level and going down the sorcerer path from there on out, largely for RP/story reasons. How strong/viable would that be, compared to a straight warlock? My party also has a tome warlock, alchemist, bard, barbarian, monk, and a couple rogues. Sorlocks are one of the only caster builds that I'll concede can directly deal single-target damage roughly as well and consistently as a Fighter, and while their spellcasting progression is delayed, they pick up a 9th level slot at level 20. All in all, very strong. The tricky part is timing the Warlock dip. The best advice I've seen on this is to take 9 levels of Sorcerer before dipping. That gets you Con save proficiency, 5th level spells, the two ASIs needed to max Cha, and you pick up Agonizing Blast from Warlock immediately when EB scales to its third beam. Unfortunately, you've kinda painted yourself into a corner by starting Warlock, but between proficiency bonus bumps, cantrips scaling off character (rather than class) level, and the sheer amount of bullshit the Chain Pact pet can pull off, you'll hardly be unplayable - just maybe a little bored having to wait five more levels before your next big jump in power. A few things to be aware of, if you aren't already: Your group has Rogues? They love advantage and will love you if your familiar Help Actions for them every round. Note that your pet doesn't drop invisibility for doing this. The Rogues might even forgive you for having a better reconnaissance kit than they do  The big perk of multiclassing sor/war is to use the Quickened Spell metamagic to cast EB twice per turn. Note that one of those casts requires a bonus action, the same as casting or moving Hex. This means you'll need a round of setup to unload the Eldritch Machine Gun and still get Hex's damage bonus. This opportunity presents itself a little less often as you might hope, especially considering the number of folks in your party. Even bigger targets have a good shot of going down before you can set this up. I'm pretty sure you can fuel Flexible Casting with your Warlock Pact Magic slots to turn them into sorcery points. A single quicken costs two SP, so you basically have two free quickens per short rest before beginning to burn through a long rest resource.
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Oct 31, 2017 02:27
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kingcom posted:Also metamagics are legit super handy and useful in my limited experience with them. Yep. Quickcasting Eldritch Blast + Agonizing Blast is really, really good and it becomes sustainable fairly quickly. Heightened Spell is also amazing. Twinned is circumstantially useful depending on what you're twinning. Warlock makes metamagic incredibly more sustainable as well, since you can convert some spell slots into sorcery points before every short rest and regain them after thanks to Pact Magic.
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Oct 31, 2017 02:27
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FRINGE posted:...unique things like "if he rolls 5 higher than needed to hit, he instantly kills the target". That makes perfect sense for a 36th level super-fighter, but abstracting that out to substantial rules that do a lot of different things would take some work. Adding something that works like that to all fighters shouldn't be hard in a system with flat PC math and consistent monster math. Or just base it on the unmodified d20 roll instead. "You can instantly kill a monster of HD = <(fighter level -2) if you roll >(22 - your level)." I mean, those exact numbers are a guess, but you could approach it like that. Calculate your instakill number whenever you level up and then just tell the DM if you made it. Or even "when a monster of < (formula based on your level) HD is within your melee range in combat, it dies".
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Oct 31, 2017 02:33
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The design of the whole game changes pretty radically if you chose to have the wizard's spell list expand only slightly faster than the fighter's menagerie of magical items. I'm not sure it would be better, but it would more directly reflect 2E's idea of balance. Of course that whole cat is basically out of the bag now with the way other casters are designed. Honestly trying to achieve martial/caster parity in 5e just seems like a whole lot of work for no gain. If you like designing classes in your spare time that seems like the easiest way to do it but I'm not sure there's an elegant fix.
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Oct 31, 2017 03:37
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The biggest thing from pre-WotC era D&D that WotC-era D&D completely failed to understand as far as wizards go is that spells weren't an assumed class ability. Spells were gear. And the classes make so, so much more sense when you realize that! As fighters go up in level, they become better at utilizing the gear they find - you know, weapons and armor. And wizards do the same - as they level up, they become better at utilizing the gear THEY find - which are spells. "Cirno wouldn't it suck to level up to a new spell level and have no spells of that level?" Yeah, a lot like fighting a monster and not having the appropriate weapon to deal with them! Because that's just it: part of the game was "sometimes poo poo happens and you gotta deal with it." Because what you're supposed to do is tell the DM "I'm going to start trying to find where I can get some better spells" and be pointed to a plot hook. That's no longer part of the game for spellcasters. Now, you automatically get spells as you level, and you can pick and choose at that - something that, naturally, fighters cannot do. And beyond that, if we look at 3.x, the cost for spells was way, way dramatically lower then it had any right being. But that was by design, and the design was: spells were no longer seen as gear (see also my rants on how "wizard describes HOW you do a thing, not WHAT you do"), they were seen as an inherent part of the "wizard" class that they should always have access to.
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Oct 31, 2017 03:53
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FRINGE posted:There is the high-level campaign book, but I have a total memory blank on how it did things, so maybe it was better than I think.) Breech Immunity let the Fighter attack monsters that normally need magic weapons to be able to hit, even with their bare hands. At level 20, they can hit monsters with a +1 weapon requirement. At level 24, they can hit monsters with a +2 requirement. At level 27, +3, and at level 30, +4. Intimidation would cause all enemies with 4+1 Hit Dice or less to automatically flee from the Fighter. Enemies with more HD could make a Saving Throw vs Death - on a failure, they need to either flee from the Fighter, or fight with a -2 penalty to all rolls. At level 24, the Saving Throw vs Death is at a -2 penalty. At level 27, the Saving Throw vs Death is at a -4 penalty. At level 30, the Saving Throw vs Death is at a -6 penalty. Adaptation allowed a Fighter to ignore "foreign environment penalties", though this is a mechanic that I previously never knew of. All-Around Attack was basically a whirlwind attack, but it was only triggered by an attack that killed an enemy. Bravery let the Fighter make a skill check to ignore a fear effect. If they failed the skill check, the normal saving throw could still be attempted. Captivate let the Fighter cast at-will Suggestion against anyone with less than 8 HD, and generally made everyone regard the Fighter favorably. Death Blow traded-away all the Fighter's extra attacks in exchange for the first (and only) attack also forcing the target to make a Saving Throw versus Death, or die instantly. It would only work on targets with equal-or-less HD than the Warrior. Frighten/Challenge let the Fighter make a skill check to either force enemies to run away from them for 1d10 rounds, or force enemies to attack them for 1d10 rounds. Hardiness let the Fighter make a skill check to delay the effects of any magical effect on them until a later time. At level 15, the effect would be delayed by 5 rounds, scaling up to a 20-round delay by level 30. The example depicted is that the Fighter can get shot at with a Power Word Kill, delay the effects, have the Cleric cast a Heal on the Fighter, and then when the Power Word Kill finally kicks in 5 rounds later, the Fighter is above 60 HP and is thus immune. This ability also allows the Fighter to lapse into a coma instead of suffering the effects of a spell. A "minor" effect like blindness can be slept-off in a day, a "severe" effect like Phantasmal Killer or Power Word Kill can be slept-off in a week, and an "extreme" effect like magical aging or level-drain be slept-off in a month. Inner Focus let the Fighter make a skill check and give up a round's actions to temporarily increase either their Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution scores, but at the cost of the other two scores getting reduced. The reduction is always a -2 for the other two scores, but the increase is an instant bump to 18 (or 18/00) at level 10-14 to 19 at level 15-19 to 20 at level 20-24 to 21 at level 25-29 to 22 at level 30 Sense Danger granted a number of sub-abilities to the Fighter: the ability to sense any ambush within 200 yards the ability to detect any hidden weapons on a creature the ability to make a skill check to disregard the effects of getting attacked from the back the ability to detect all stealthed, invisible, ethereal, out-of-phase, astral, or otherwise hidden creatures within 30 yards the ability to see how many hit points a creature has Signature Item let the Fighter designate an item in their possession as a Signature Item, which would make it immune to item destruction as long as the owner-Fighter is still alive and still in possession of it. The Fighter also always knows exactly where the item is, and they can always summon/obtain a replacement for it in the event that it gets destroyed. The Fighter can designate multiple signature items: a suit of armor, a weapon, a shield, and one other miscellaneous item. Signature Mount gives the Fighter's mount a bunch of extra HP, makes it immune to AOE effects/spells, and lets the mount use the Fighter's saving throws for effects/spells that specifically target it. The Fighter can always summon/obtain a replacement for a slain signature mount, and the Fighter can have one signature mount each for flight, land-travel, and sea-travel. ProfessorCirno posted:Yeah, a lot like fighting a monster and not having the appropriate weapon to deal with them! Because that's just it: part of the game was "sometimes poo poo happens and you gotta deal with it." Because what you're supposed to do is tell the DM "I'm going to start trying to find where I can get some better spells" and be pointed to a plot hook. I like this framing because it reveals the juxtaposition that if the Fighter has to "grind a boss" until they get the Gauntlets of Ogre Power or whatever, then the Wizard similarly has to grind until they get the Scroll of Polymorph or whatever. (and replace "grind a boss" with "quest for", since we now generally operate on a model where dungeons have specific treats for players rather than leaving it up completely to the RNG treasure tables. And that's if the group is playing a series-of-loosely-connected-dungeon-crawls kind of campaign in the first place, because hot drat if players don't love to have 'politics and intrigue' in a goddamned D&D game instead) gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 04:19
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You can pry my intrigue and politics out of my cold dead hands.
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Oct 31, 2017 04:37
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Reene posted:You can pry my intrigue and politics out of my cold dead hands. Intrigue and politics are great in a game engine that wasn't designed forty years ago to run dungeon crawls, given that focus never actually left D&D, they just tried to paper over it (and maybe ironically just mostly made it worse at dungeon crawling).
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Oct 31, 2017 05:21
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My tone was a little harsh and absolutist, and it's fine to use politics as a backdrop and/or as a justification for where and why you fight, but I tend to look askance at people who brag about sessions that are only ever talkies without a build-up to combat, because that's a waste of the system. To put it another way, the Kaiserreich setting for Hearts of Iron has a complex series of events and decisions detailing the Second American Civil War. What the player decides to do as the US, coupled with some random outcomes and the AI's own choices, will determine if it's a two-faction, three-faction, or even four-faction war, and how strong or weak each individual faction is. The player can "game" the decision-making to maximize their chances of winning the war, or they can apply moral or ideological filter to their choices (i.e. supporting leftists or right-wingers or liberals), or any other intention in-between. But the outcome always results in a civil war, and the dev team actively worked to quash decision-trees that avoided it, because you're playing a WW2-simulating strategy game. The circumstances might be different, the players and their relative power levels might be different, but if you were going to avoid all the various infantry stats and dive bomber models and ship designs anyway, you're not really engaging with the game.
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Oct 31, 2017 05:33
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You're preaching to the choir, man. I know the system wasn't made for it and the myriad things they stapled into it starting in 3rd edition to appeal to non-wargamers are kludgey at best. But raw combat is frequently grim and joyless for me, so finding ways to exploit the way the game tries to create narratives is how I have the most fun generally.
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Oct 31, 2017 05:33
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I want to talk a little bit about how the "This system is for fighting" thing ends up in 4E (the good edition that never happened). 4E is really restrictive in that your game night probably has time for two fights period. That's not the same as "This game is designed for combat," and "gently caress everything outside of dungeon crawls anyway" is a pretty poo poo response to that. People should feel free to do a little bit more than that even in a system that doesn't support it well or have a hyper-developed subsystem for it. When you tried to do things in 4E you got the skill challenge, which was garbage. As a 4E DM I knew I could just coast because there was no way that I had to design more than two fights per week, since our group isn't teenagers or college students anymore and doesn't want to do an 8-12-hour marathon into 4 AM. I feel there is a middle ground between this and the lack of depth or variety in 5E, which we never got because a core fan group always had it in for 4E and the inmates took over the asylum. It's a shame because D&D reactionaries have driven me away from D&D and to some extent tabletop gaming in general, since D&D is still where the community is centered.
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Oct 31, 2017 05:46
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Reene posted:You're preaching to the choir, man. I know the system wasn't made for it and the myriad things they stapled into it starting in 3rd edition to appeal to non-wargamers are kludgey at best. I mean, if you're the one running it, you could always...use a different system. Honestly, and this is kinda unrelated, but at a certain point, I wonder how many people continue to throw money into D&D and proceed to use almost none of the rules, all because they don't want to call what they're doing "freeform."
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Oct 31, 2017 06:00
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ProfessorCirno posted:I mean, if you're the one running it, you could always...use a different system. Or they could continue playing what they want to play.
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Oct 31, 2017 06:06
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MonsterEnvy posted:Or they could continue playing what they want to play. By your own idiotic reductionist logic, then, do you agree we would've all been far happier if D&D 5e had never come out, because then it's fans would've just continued to play what they wanted to play?
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Oct 31, 2017 06:12
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ProfessorCirno posted:By your own idiotic reductionist logic, then, do you agree we would've all been far happier if D&D 5e had never come out, because then it's fans would've just continued to play what they wanted to play? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOd3tan59BE&t=32s
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Oct 31, 2017 06:19
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Yeah I like playing D&D 5e because it's streamlined, rules-lite, you roll your stats on 3d6 in order, and it's the best regional economic management TTRPG on the market.
Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 06:25
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ProfessorCirno posted:I mean, if you're the one running it, you could always...use a different system. I recently joined an RPG club wherein the coordinators are hardcore pushing Fiasco and PBTA games because 3/5 new GMs are adamant about playing 5e but when you look at their tables the groups might use the actual D&D rules like twice out of combat. There is constant resistance despite the fact that everyone who tried the Storygames winds up going back or talking up thr other games. Nerds just think Dungeons and Dragons is to RPGs as Band-Aid is to adhesive medical strip.
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Oct 31, 2017 07:02
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ProfessorCirno posted:By your own idiotic reductionist logic, then, do you agree we would've all been far happier if D&D 5e had never come out, because then it's fans would've just continued to play what they wanted to play? Yes you would have been happier because you would not be constantly complaining about it. And when I say play what you want to play I mean just play want you want to play. If you want to play Dungeon World play it, if you want to play Shadow of the Demon Lord play it, you want to play 4e play it, want to play 5e play it. And play them however you want to. If the people want to play something you don't like just let them. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 07:19
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MonsterEnvy posted:Yes you would have been happier because you would not be constantly complaining about it. Imagine how happy you'd be if 5th ed didn't exist and you'd latched on to a good game instead and could just agree with everyone posting about how great it is.
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Oct 31, 2017 07:36
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Are you two gonna gently caress or what?
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Oct 31, 2017 07:38
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Naw
ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 08:51 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 08:48
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AlphaDog posted:Adding something that works like that to all fighters shouldn't be hard in a system with flat PC math and consistent monster math. I was thinking in terms of "not just killing", and it looks like the high-level book was better than I thought. (I own the thing somewhere and seriously cant remember poo poo about it). gradenko_2000 posted:Breech Immunity let the Fighter attack monsters that normally need magic weapons to be able to hit, even with their bare hands. At level 20, they can hit monsters with a +1 weapon requirement. At level 24, they can hit monsters with a +2 requirement. At level 27, +3, and at level 30, +4. Yeah thats pretty decent in the 2e rules set. Strongly continues the "killing machine when provoked" thing that fighters should be feared for. Good luck stopping the fighter on a hippogryph/griffon/nightmare/drake that has the fighters saves and a stack of HP, along with the fighter being able to ignore magical effects long enough to close. I also miss some games where we nerded out on mounts. The party tracked the (basic) stats of the horses and whatnot and made use of their attacks and special battle tricks (warhorses with every book-trick we could scrap out in a game with a lot of overland travel).
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Oct 31, 2017 09:17
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MonsterEnvy posted:Yes you would have been happier because you would not be constantly complaining about it. Hint: Razorwired posted:I recently joined an RPG club wherein the coordinators are hardcore pushing Fiasco and PBTA games because 3/5 new GMs are adamant about playing 5e but when you look at their tables the groups might use the actual D&D rules like twice out of combat.
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Oct 31, 2017 10:00
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FRINGE posted:I was thinking in terms of "not just killing", and it looks like the high-level book was better than I thought. (I own the thing somewhere and seriously cant remember poo poo about it). Yeah, I got that, I was just commenting on that one specific insta-kill part. The 2e high level campaign abilities were great at the time though, for sure. They don't seem hard to port across, it'd mostly be adjusting the level/HD numbers, yeah? Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 10:00
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AlphaDog posted:Yeah, I got that, I was just commenting on that one specific insta-kill part. Its just a variation, but I kind of intuitively like it. * For post-3e people remember that lower AC was better in TSR DnD AlphaDog posted:The 2e high level campaign abilities were great at the time though, for sure. They don't seem hard to port across, it'd mostly be adjusting the level/HD numbers, yeah? FRINGE fucked around with this message at 11:09 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 11:06
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MonsterEnvy posted:Yes you would have been happier because you would not be constantly complaining about it. who exactly is stopping you from playing what you want?
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Oct 31, 2017 11:16
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FRINGE posted:I would want them to also have some effects that fit "flavors" too. So the nimble person can fight on tight ropes or while brachiating or whatever, and other specialist effects and "styles". Yeah, for sure. The swashbukling/wire-fu fighter, the berserk wrecking-ball, and the huge immovable wall of steel would definitely want different abilites. Core fighter stuff + specialisation, or each style as it's own whole thing?
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Oct 31, 2017 11:52
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Could we possibly have two 5e threads? A "5e is bad and you should feel bad" thread and a thread about actually playing and modding 5e, rather than trying to cram both topics of conversation into the same thread? It's loving tedious and not much use when someone has a 5e question and gets told to play 2nd/4th/SotDL/a PbtA game instead, and the vehemence with which those stances are put forwards is frankly, alienating. I like the games listed above, but it's probably fair to say that someone in the 5e thread has decided on 5e for any one of a number of reasons that being shrieked at won't change.
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Oct 31, 2017 12:32
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Have you considered that 5e has some fundamental issues that are simply not worth the effort to try and fix? Which is when recommending other games makes sense.
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Oct 31, 2017 12:43
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I mean, 40k fixed the problem by becoming a better game. It ain't perfect, but its a far cry from the days where the GW Death Thread was more active than it on some days. Maybe 5e needs to improve, and then it won't need its own death thread.
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Oct 31, 2017 12:47
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Page 1122 had a wealth of ideas on improving fighters, including ready made rules compatible solutions, so maybe chill out that these questions are supposedly not getting answered
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Oct 31, 2017 12:50
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I'm going to complain that nobody's discussing the game instead of interacting with any of the effortposts from the last few pages. Or if you'd prefer I can write another draft of a class so you can ignore it in favor of complaining about how nobody's talking about modding the game. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 12:57 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 12:53
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Given the stranglehold D&D has over the hobby, it seems only fair that people expressing frustrations with this shitpile produced by world-class subhumans be informed that there are alternatives.
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Oct 31, 2017 12:58
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That too. The fighter ideas were all really cool, and I love that they've pulled from modern design, classic design, and mythic sources alike. I know a lot of DMs don't accept homebrew, so it isn't too pertinent an answer for games in progress, but I'll be damned if it isn't a cool read.
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Oct 31, 2017 13:06
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What are good feats for a wizard
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Oct 31, 2017 13:33
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AlphaDog posted:Yeah, for sure. The swashbukling/wire-fu fighter, the berserk wrecking-ball, and the huge immovable wall of steel would definitely want different abilites. ("Semi" as in informed by the way they play the character, but still letting them pick things of course.) In 2e terms by the time you have 3x-5x specialization with your weapon, plus single weapon style specialization, its a pretty smooth jump to "youre the deadliest person on the continent with that weapon" and start instant-killing lesser beings. Or if youre a 12/12 Fighter/Rogue with Acrobatics and Tumbling then suddenly you bump up to fighting spider-man style where normal attacks almost never land and you get tons of opportunity attacks all around you. Im also big on narrative continuity, so lets say theres someone doing the "immovable wall of steel" thing, and the PC is an adherent of Torm or Ilmater, then its easy to explain their deep devotion allowing them to endure insane amounts of damage and pain to protect their friends and causes. (But its not an actual magical effect, so it cant be dismissed or countered.)
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Oct 31, 2017 13:59
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Angrymog posted:Could we possibly have two 5e threads? A "5e is bad and you should feel bad" thread and a thread about actually playing and modding 5e, rather than trying to cram both topics of conversation into the same thread?
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Oct 31, 2017 14:19
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Sion posted:What are good feats for a wizard
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Oct 31, 2017 14:19
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