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Xiahou Dun posted:Are you being sarcastic or are you an idiot. the "gently caress matt colville" at the bottom gives it away. They're being sarcastic, but other people unironically believe that
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Jan 18, 2018 05:00
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He made a video where that was his main argument: vague rules are good so it's better if the system is poorly written, and anyone who disagrees isn't a 'real' D&D player and probably doesn't have a life. I honestly feel this video is peak bad design apologism and nerd snobbishness. Like, how do you top it?
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Jan 18, 2018 05:12
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Conspiratiorist posted:He made a video where that was his main argument: vague rules are good so it's better if the system is poorly written, and anyone who disagrees isn't a 'real' D&D player and probably doesn't have a life. You gather some friends in a circle and burn 4e books on video.
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Jan 18, 2018 05:14
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slap me and kiss me posted:You gather some friends in a circle and burn 4e books on video. This is a real thing that happened didn't it.
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Jan 18, 2018 05:40
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kingcom posted:This is a real thing that happened didn't it. No, I made it up
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Jan 18, 2018 05:49
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D&D really does cause brain damage!
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Jan 18, 2018 05:59
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Man that is stupid. Why do that it makes no sense.
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Jan 18, 2018 06:00
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MonsterEnvy posted:Man that is stupid. Why do that it makes no sense. It's like the trump voters who burn NFL merchandise in protest. They think they are owning people but they're burning their own property. I never had to deal with people this bad but I still get told by people how terrible 4e is lol. Extra lols if they have never read it or seen it or anything and are convinced of its awfulness.
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Jan 18, 2018 06:03
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lmao even after that OP I thought that was a joke...then there were pictures
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Jan 18, 2018 06:04
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Travelogue We arrived at the gates of Eranmor shortly after dawn, and were met by a sight I did not expect. Sickly white walls wet with morning mist stretched in both directions, and a queue of travelers and pilgrims awaited before the gates. The rumors were true. Where once there was a simple river trading village now stood a vast metropolis, the likes of which challenged even the heights of Neverwinter. If not for the truth in front of me I would have not believed it. Perhaps the rumors of a portal to the Feywild in the city could be true as well. After a short wait, we were waived to the front and asked for our “papers”. Of course we had no such thing, so we were directed to a corridor inside of the city wall and led to a small waiting room. A few others were already gathered, a merchant and his guard, and very odorous, very unkempt man who refused eye contact. We took our seats and were shortly met by an thin older man and a young female gnome, both wearing plain grey robes. The gnome walked to a small podium and introduced herself as a clerk from “The Ministry of Order and Progress”. Quite the pretentious title, in my opinion. The ostentatious name was quickly belittled by her quick announcement of its other name and her inability to control her giggling. “Moop!”, she proclaimed. A quick chastisement from the older man revealed this to be the gnome’s first time leading an orientation. A bothersome task made tedious by inexperience, I feared. The young gnome began to collect information from us, furiously filling out documents as we replied. The guards worked for group called The Seekers, hired to protect the merchant. The tattered fellow merely groan “Grum” for his name and declared himself from “the woods”. I don’t doubt that, the fellow seemed homeless to me for sure. I introduced myself as Rang, a student of life and the arcane My companions Trundle and Saionji introduced themselves in turn, both proclaiming themselves to be fighters of some renown. Lastly, my friend Starke introduced himself, though he chose to hide his druidic nature. He’d heard his kind was less than welcome in this town. Our papers were quickly finished and we were given a quick introduction to the town and told where we were and weren’t allowed. Specifically the Emerald Square and the Feywild portal. A planar portal, she mentions, in passing, as if it was nothing. Ridiculous! As we were about to be dismissed, the gnome stopped us short and told us there was one more thing. The gnome produced a small wooden rod engraved with runes from under the podium. She told us she had to check us for “hypersensitivity to natural energies that are abundant in Eranmor” and that it was “for our own protection”. She began to waggle the rod in front of the applicants. First the merchant and the guards, and then our friend Grum. As she moved it back and forth in front of Grum he began to shake violently. The gnomes eyes grew wide, and Grum snatched the stick from her hands. “This is how they’re doing it”, he growled. Grum muttered something in Sylvan, something Starke later told me roughly translated to “No witnesses” and an incredible fight ensued. Grum filled the room with vines and shot shards of ice into the chest of one of the guards, killing him instantly. We rose and struck him with all our might, and he blew us all back as a thunderous wave blasted from his core. We rose and came at him again. Pushed back he muttered a curse. He merged himself with the vines he had filled the room with and reemerged next to a window. With one last wilting glare, he shifted into a bird and flew away. It was at this point the the guards finally managed to breach the door being held shut with Grums conjured vines. Seeing the dead body and all of us covered in blood they drew their weapons, but the crisis was averted when the young gnome reappeared and explained everything quite frantically. The captain of the Silver Street Guard, a young lady by the name of Mesdinae arrived on the scene and thanked us for our service. Our papers were gathered from the floor and delivered to us by the gnome and we were allowed to enter the city. In all the commotion it would seem we had skipped our turn with the waggling rod, a boon I suspect was worth the trouble to my friend Starke. We found lodgings and drank away the rest of the day. Rang of Dipkin 14 Mirtul 1493 CubeTheory fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Jan 18, 2018 |
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Jan 18, 2018 06:04
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CubeTheory posted:Fun Times. If you are going to present it this way. My one request is for the main cast to be listed in advance. (So we know who the PC's are.)
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Jan 18, 2018 06:43
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MonsterEnvy posted:If you are going to present it this way. My one request is for the main cast to be listed in advance. (So we know who the PC's are.) I was going to rotate the PoV, but I could do a quick write up in a bit.
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Jan 18, 2018 06:47
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My Strahd-campaign halfling warlock hopped on the back of our cleric's doomhound and rode it around the Amber Temple during a boss fight, and ended up landing a 115 foot Eldritch Blast critical killing blow on the big bad while doing so. He's such a stud.
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Jan 18, 2018 07:01
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CubeTheory posted:Travelogue Nice! Definitely keep them coming.  (But yeah a quick who's who would be good as well.)
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Jan 18, 2018 07:19
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The chronic difficulty in defining exactly what a "fighter" is and giving them useful, flavorful mechanics (read this series on the history of the fighter in DnD if you want to have an aneurysm) always makes me yearn for a better system. The fighter is an outgrowth of the "fighting man" from basic DnD: his description is essentially "guy who is good at fighting" (the cleric and magic user are explicitly not good at fighting). The introduction of variants like the cavalier, ranger, paladin, barbarian, etc. was partially canceled out by how difficult it was to qualify for those classes. (I think being a paladin in 2nd edition required something like 12 Str, 9 Con, 13 Wis, and 17 Cha. As the author of the above series notes, this means that if one of your players qualified to be a paladin by rolling their stats, you could be sure they had cheated.) Identifying these classes as special, restricted variants kind of made sense and didn't eat too much into the ubiquity of the fighter. Most characters who were trying to fit the "dude in armor who fights things" archetype were bound to be fighters. There was evidently little interest in giving them interesting or relevant mechanics, though, barring dozens of pages of poorly written TSR-ese that distinguishes between the twenty different varieties of polearm. (I swear a bill, a bec-de-corbin, and a glaive-voulge-guisarme-glaive are completely different weapons that need their own crunch text. Really!) Anyway, as new variant classes were introduced, the chunk of narrative space occupied by the fighter decreased. The fighter's role as of 3.x is more or less "guy who fights things but is not sneaky, does not live in a monastery, and is not a woodsman, a berserker, or a holy warrior". 4e tried to fix this by putting its foot down and saying "a fighter is a guy in armor who tanks"--of course one has to add "and does not rely on magic", but that's still a step in the right direction. Cue groaning from people who thought 4e didn't fit their conception of a fighter. "I want to play an archer!" Okay, play a ranger. "But I don't want to be a ranger! I want to be a fighter!" I suppose 4e or 5e could have taken cues from a system like Iron Heroes, which had seven or eight different fighter variants that were mostly unique (of course even that system had the generic "man-at-arms" class). I like the way Legend d20 handled the fighter. In Legend, each class is divided up into "tracks", which can be mixed-and-matched using the system's multiclassing rules. A barbarian, for example, has a track that grants a rage-like ability, a track that grants general combat powers such as the equivalent of Cleave, and a track that boosts defenses. A ranger has a track that adds traps and tactical abilities, a track that grants a ranged or melee fighting style, and a defensive track. A rogue has a track that allowed them to be sneaky and manipulate luck, as well as an offensive and defensive track (with three options for each!). And so on. There are only eight classes total, in addition to a number of "free floating" tracks accessible via multiclassing. Fighter was not one of the eight classes. There was simply no such thing! If you wanted to play "generic badass with a sword", you needed to think about how to achieve that from the existing tracks you had to work with (though taking barbarian, monk, or ranger and switching out one of their tracks for the "knight" track, which adds stickiness and proficiency with combat maneuvers, was probably a good starting point). 5e's decision to allow class features that bleed over into the design space occupied by other classes (the kensai, a monk variant, is a lightly armored fighter: the arcane archer, a fighter variant, is close to being a ranger: the brute, a UA fighter variant, is almost a barbarian: the banneret is almost a paladin) shows just how porous and ill defined the fighter is and always has been. It's not obvious how to fix this problem other than "get rid of the fighter altogether and split it into numerous subclasses", which is likely to piss off a lot of people. I actually quite like 5e (though I liked 4e as well--if anything 5e seems like it borrows more from 4e and 2e than from 3.x), but something about the design of the fighter continues to not sit well with me.
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Jan 18, 2018 07:52
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This is a really good post. The Fighter is a "what does it do" class, while the other Fighter spin-offs are "how do they do it" classes, and having both in the same game at the same time is going to be a problem. EDIT: Oh my word I just discovered the Knight track in Legend and this ability is off the drat hook: quote:2nd Circle – Valiant Challenge (EX): Creatures in your [Melee] range must target you if able when making melee attacks. The first instance of this ability to apply against a given creature overrides subsequent instances, so the first Knight to arrive is the mandatory target until he leaves, even if a second Knight also engages the same foe at a later time. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 08:06 on Jan 18, 2018 |
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Jan 18, 2018 08:02
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... Am I the only one who read "If you take the Attack action on your turn, you can use a bonus action to try to shove a creature within 5 feet of you with your shield." as meaning "Use it whenever on your turn so long as you take the attack action." and not "You must use it immediately after attacking."? I thought it was pretty straight forward  But then again I've got a nice shield so have been looking at the feat.
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Jan 18, 2018 08:13
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Aschlafly posted:but something about the design of the fighter continues to not sit well with me. For me it's the lack of doing a goddamn thing as a base class. Battlemaster should be the baseline fighter. All Monks have Ki. All casters have spells. Rogues sneak attack and get expertise and bonus action stuff. Paladin's smite and cast. Rangers and Barbarians are a bit worse defined than those, but they at least get rage and spells baseline. Fighter gets.....more attacks that do nothing special. They lack any inherent bonus as part of the basic class. If Battlemaster was the baseline class, and there were maybe 2 more tiers of maneuvers that unlocked as you leveled up or something, then Fighter would be an actual dynamic class. You could have a maneuver specialist subclass that goes all-in on those without adding anything new really, you have a Warlord-ish subclass that has maybe some party buff/action stuff and focuses some on being a diplomat and warleader and gets some abilities to command, you grab Eldritch Knight (which is actually pretty solid because magic), and whatever else trips your trigger. Barbarian takes up the "simple class that hits things" role because it's already way better at being that than the Champion, and is great for newer players thanks to rerolling misses with Reckless Attack and getting damage resistance, etc. Let the fighter be tacticool.
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Jan 18, 2018 08:17
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Arthil posted:... Am I the only one who read "If you take the Attack action on your turn, you can use a bonus action to try to shove a creature within 5 feet of you with your shield." as meaning "Use it whenever on your turn so long as you take the attack action." and not "You must use it immediately after attacking."? I understand why you might think it worked like that, and in the event I'd be a charitable enough GM to let you use it that way, but the "must use it immediately after" tradition derives from all the other contexts of Bonus Actions as being "triggered" by (Standard) Actions as prerequisites, and especially in light of Mearls's comments about how you could probably narrow down 5e's action economy to just Movement, Standard Actions, and "riders" on Standard Actions. Of course, this breaks the hell down as soon as you get into Bonus Actions that don't need any kind of triggering action at all and are instead used as "actions that are too minor to spend an entire action on" the same way 3e has Swift Actions or 4e has Minor Actions, but then that's because 5e's design is also a drat mess that they couldn't maintain consistency on.
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Jan 18, 2018 08:20
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gradenko_2000 posted:I understand why you might think it worked like that, and in the event I'd be a charitable enough GM to let you use it that way, but the "must use it immediately after" tradition derives from all the other contexts of Bonus Actions as being "triggered" by (Standard) Actions as prerequisites, and especially in light of Mearls's comments about how you could probably narrow down 5e's action economy to just Movement, Standard Actions, and "riders" on Standard Actions. That and Crawford more or less saying it worked how I read it. *Shrug* In this case the ways it's worded is exactly what it means. I think a big reason I just don't get bent out of shape about any of this stuff is I've never played anything other than 5E for long periods of time. The same weekend I went to a con in town, I did play a game of Pathfinder with a pregen character and had read up on it prior to going. A lot of the rules seemed a little weird coming from someone new. Arthil fucked around with this message at 09:11 on Jan 18, 2018 |
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Jan 18, 2018 09:07
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Arthil posted:That and Crawford more or less saying it worked how I read it. *Shrug* In this case the ways it's worded is exactly what it means. How do you parse "If you do X, you may also do Y" as anything other than sequential? How do you interpret this sentence: "If you observe a green traffic light facing you, you may drive your car through the intersection"? Like, no snark intended here, but there's no way you'd apply the same logic to the traffic light thing, right? So how do you manage to interpret it like that in the game? e: I'm asking seriously because I'm trying to write a game, and I thought "if X happens, Y is an option" was crystal clear about X needing to come before Y. e2: Never mind "immediately after" or anything else, I'm just interested in how (and why) you perceive your options for sequencing X and Y, when Y is contingent on "if X". Anyone else is welcome to respond too because I seriously can't wrap my head around this and there's enough people who think like that, that it looks like I need to change the way I think about phrasing this stuff. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Jan 18, 2018 |
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Jan 18, 2018 11:41
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No, I'm with you AlphaDog.
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Jan 18, 2018 12:03
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AlphaDog posted:Anyone else is welcome to respond too because I seriously can't wrap my head around this and there's enough people who think like that, that it looks like I need to change the way I think about phrasing this stuff. quote:If you take the Attack action on your turn, you can use a bonus action to try to shove a creature within 5 feet of you with your shield. The most charitable interpretation I'm willing to give this is that once you use the Attack action within a turn, you're also allowed to do the Shield-Shove at any other point later within the same turn that you used the Attack action, as long as the Attack action came first. It would be ... odd to read this as "if you used the Shield-Shove, then you're obliged to use the Attack action later in the turn"
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Jan 18, 2018 12:14
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Arthil posted:I think a big reason I just don't get bent out of shape about any of this stuff is I've never played anything other than 5E for long periods of time. I'm not really sure this is particularly relevant, necessarily. Granted it does mean that you don't have the best frame of reference for some things, but none of them really apply in this instance. See, the thing here is that 5e is just really badly designed and while that becomes obvious quicker to people who've played other games before, it's not exactly hard to notice without that experience either. 5e's insistence on "natural language" is the big crux of its written failings and it sure seems like it was used to pad out the page count a bit rather than having easy ways of looking up information quickly. This leads to a lot of repetition in what is said and how most things that it apply to are completely identical. Things like the shield bash question are important because they highlight this issue and also another one at the same time: it's not completely identical. It changes some words in such a minor way that its easy to overlook if you're not reading it and that change has a major effect on what the rule is. In this instance, it makes it a nonsense mess that means the opposite of what it says. It's clearly meant to be in-line with others of its ilk (hence the sensible interpretation being that it is), but it... isn't. I don't know if you've actually noticed this yet or not, but think about bonus actions in general. Look at what they are, look at what they do. They were originally designed to be stuff like Healing Word so that you could (pinch) heal in-combat and actually do something useful. They were then expanded and everything and their nan was thrown under that umbrella to make it just a minor action that you can take. Except that there's a catch: you can only take a bonus action if something gives you a bonus action to take. You cannot take a bonus action if you, somehow, do not have an ability that is already a bonus action and while that sounds impossible just think about what that means. Bonus actions are neither a bonus nor an action. This is just one of the many, many issues with 5e's writing and design in general.
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Jan 18, 2018 12:17
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So my point was that any game where "knock a guy down with my shield" is this complex cannot be described as "simple". I regret everything.
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Jan 18, 2018 12:21
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Splicer posted:So my point was that any game where "knock a guy down with my shield" is this complex cannot be described as "simple". Nobody wrote it, and nobody is currently writing it, but someone mentioned that they were going to write it, so the simple game has been written.
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Jan 18, 2018 12:32
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The fact that it doesn't very specifically state that the bonus action must be taken immediately after doing the attack action is why I read it that way. I'm assuming there must be other situations which are relevant to Crawford going "As with most bonus actions, you choose the timing, so the Shield Master shove can come before or after the Attack action." Or does everyone here use a bonus action after their action? Now don't get me wrong it isn't like I agree with everything in the book, it isn't always clear or consistent especially with the type of attack (somehow a melee weapon remaining a melee weapon even if thrown yet the attack isn't a melee weapon attack, for one) but in this case it just seemed perfectly clear. If you had to take the shove bonus action after attacking, it would say that. Instead it says when you take the attack action on your turn. This does mean the DM should go "Eh, EH you gotta use your action to attack remember?" if a player wanted to try and be a butt about it. Edit: I think the entire weird confusion would be fixed by just giving you a bonus action shove period. Arthil fucked around with this message at 12:59 on Jan 18, 2018 |
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Jan 18, 2018 12:55
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So... unless it was worded "If you observe a green traffic light facing you, you ...you'd drive through when the light was red? e: What I'm asking has nothing to do with what Crawford said - I think his change is a good change, but I can only perceive it as a change, whereas you seem to perceive it as exactly the same as the rule in the book. I really want to know how you're reading what's in the rulebook to mean that the condition "if you take the attack action" is met before you take the attack action. I mean, it sounds like you're disagreeing with the statement "you have not taken the attack action until you have taken the attack action", and... that can't really be what you're doing, right? e2: If you still don't understand what I'm getting at, this practical example will help: Go to the worst part of your city, and find a club, pub, or bar with large bouncers and a cover charge (don't worry about what kind of venue or how much the cover is, you're not going to be spending any money or staying for very long). The (unwritten) rule at play here is "if you pay the cover, you may go inside". Explain that because you intend to pay when you leave and there's no sign saying that you must immediately go inside after paying, "going inside" can happen before "paying", and then confidently walk through the door. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 13:35 on Jan 18, 2018 |
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Jan 18, 2018 13:02
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Splicer posted:So my point was that any game where "knock a guy down with my shield" is this complex cannot be described as "simple". Traditional Games > D&D NEXT: Dungeons & Dragons: I regret everything
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Jan 18, 2018 13:03
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There's a much easier way to solve this. If there is a Sage Advice entry on a written rule, the rule is probably not clear because Wizards of the Coast decided it was prudent to give a clarification.
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Jan 18, 2018 13:51
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The reason people were reading it that was is because there were a couple other things that were worded slightly differently that did have to be done afterwards. For example, the Monk's Flurry of Blows is worded as: "Immediately after you take the Attack action on your turn, you can spend I ki point to make two unarmed strikes as a bonus action." So yes, the lack of "immediately after" was what triggered people to ask about this and see if it was supposed to work the same way as Flurry, or if it was just supposed to lock you into taking the attack action.\ Edit: obviously Shield Master could have been worded a lot better to make it clearer that this is how it was intended to work.
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Jan 18, 2018 15:36
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The real problem is that a) "errata" came out that hosed the if then logic and b) it came out because shoving after you attack is stupid as gently caress and you basically always want to shove first, so why the rules have you always shoving last in the first place is baffling. Whoever wrote it didn't know what they were doing, the text should read "If you are wielding a shield, you may perform the shove attack maneuver as a bonus action." I can't think of a situation in which this breaks anything besides the very specific [literal] image of a knight combo in some writer with poor imagination's head.
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Jan 18, 2018 15:55
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Splicer posted:So my point was that any game where "knock a guy down with my shield" is this complex cannot be described as "simple".
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Jan 18, 2018 16:06
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If "using a shield" is some inherently complex behemoth task, then what on Earth counts as "simple"?
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Jan 18, 2018 16:19
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The funny thing is feats and combat rules aren't even really scratching the surface of the 'complex rules' in 5e. Each spell is its own block of new vague rules. Charm spells, illusion spells, info-gathering spells (legend lore/commune/contact plane) all each have crazy vague descriptions. Since most classes are spellcasters, as a campaign levels up the complexity load from all the new spell levels increases too.
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Jan 18, 2018 16:24
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Shield master is quite good on several builds, if you play it allowing knocking over before your attack. Paladins in particular.
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Jan 18, 2018 16:30
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Wait, I'm with AlphaDog on this one, because I can't wrap my head around the actual parsing either. If you can use the bonus action at any time, what happens if using said action makes it impossible to perform the triggering action? Like, say, for Shield Master, you use it to Shove a dude, who then gets shoved off a cliff but... Now there's no one to attack so... You can't actually use the Attack action to... trigger the bonus act-what!?
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Jan 18, 2018 16:45
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Agent Boogeyman posted:Wait, I'm with AlphaDog on this one, because I can't wrap my head around the actual parsing either. If you can use the bonus action at any time, what happens if using said action makes it impossible to perform the triggering action? Like, say, for Shield Master, you use it to Shove a dude, who then gets shoved off a cliff but... Now there's no one to attack so... You can't actually use the Attack action to... trigger the bonus act-what!? You attack the air if you really can't figure out something else to do. Or do nothing. Jesus Christ, I mean I'm on board that it's overly complicated and poo poo, but unless y'all are literal if/then statement computer programs you should be able to survive this. Or pull out a dagger or javelin and chuck it at another person or something. You don't have to attack the exact same person you pushed.
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Jan 18, 2018 16:49
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Sorry Bob, but if you can't attack anyone in the game, you have to attack someone at the table. The game demands blood.
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Jan 18, 2018 17:21
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(The text is bad, just throw it out and allow shield bashing even if the basher isn't going to attack.)
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Jan 18, 2018 17:29
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