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History Comes Inside! posted:Serious question what part of it makes it implied that this theoretical damsel in distress was raped because that seems to have just leapt into being out of absolutely nowhere. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yUafzOXHPE
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Jan 24, 2018 16:42
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This thread had 118 posts in the last 10 or so hours which I have to assume is Bad.
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Jan 24, 2018 16:58
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mango sentinel posted:This thread had 118 posts in the last 10 or so hours which I have to assume is Bad. Is it ever a good thing when nerds get excited?
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Jan 24, 2018 17:08
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In the interest of talking about literally anything else, I'd like to re-present my 5th Edition Monster Stats on an Business Card:quote:monster AC = 10+halfPlayerLevel If the player party is level 6, then an "average" difficulty monster would have something like: quote:13 AC And then you can have one such monster for every one player. This is roughly equivalent to my Improved Monster Stats table, but you don't need to carry the stats table around with you.
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Jan 24, 2018 17:15
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I feel like my players would not be challenged by that at all - something seems off. (I guess the problem is really that most monsters are melee only and my group has range.)
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Jan 24, 2018 17:17
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I feel like my players would not be challenged by that at all - something seems off. (I guess the problem is really that most monsters are melee only and my group has range.) Nothing says that that damage-per-round value has to be a melee attack, or even a physical attack.
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Jan 24, 2018 17:25
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gradenko_2000 posted:In the interest of talking about literally anything else, I'd like to re-present my 5th Edition Monster Stats on an Business Card: I thought I was doing that by asking about encounter design and we still got 100 posts of  I'd like to thank everyone who actually offered constructive encounter design advice. I feel like its gonna be a good one. The quick monster build looks great for filling out random mooks and quick encounters.
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Jan 24, 2018 17:39
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gradenko_2000 posted:Nothing says that that damage-per-round value has to be a melee attack, or even a physical attack. Still, even just with your raw numbers - my group probably has 160-200 health total and 12 damage/round means those monsters will be dead before they use, say, 30% of it even if every attack hits every round. (They are level 7 not 6 but even still.) In fact that might be the actual issue - two attacks that do 1d6+3 damage do not in any way represent 12 damage/round no matter what stat they attack, because sometimes they miss and this doesn't take that into account. I know D&D is partially a game of attrition and not every encounter has to be deadly but the combat is honestly kinda slow even when there's little tension, I'd rather minimize the number of fights that don't feel threatening and just also find other ways to consume their resources. I know that 4 monsters with 70 hp doing 2d6+7 when they hit are not going to challenge or worry them. I've been having trouble challenging my players and making encounters feel interesting to me at least. Maybe I just personally think dnd grid combat is boring by nature but I feel like I could do more to make them interesting. My group is very good at zoning and keeping monsters far out of reach and slowing their approach. Contriving everyone to have bows or spells is one way to do that but I don't love it. Like they did a fight against 4 giants where they ambushed them, and while it was extremely dangerous on paper, they were mostly fine the whole time and kept them mostly out of range.
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Jan 24, 2018 17:42
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It's probably better to subvert time-worn tropes that have sexist leanings in the first place, but if you talked yourself into it, you seriously just establish that kidnapping people for ransom is common. People are only going to wander into the rapey stuff if you leave them with no sensible reason for the kidnapping to have happened. And you establish that victims who aren't paid for end up dead or sold to workhouses, not into an unspecified slavery, for god's sake.
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Jan 24, 2018 17:49
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Still, even just with your raw numbers - my group probably has 160-200 health total and 12 damage/round means those monsters will be dead before they use, say, 30% of it even if every attack hits every round. I'm willing to admit that I might be low-balling those numbers. Crank them the hell up if you want, start with doubling the damage. I wrote that back when 5e was relatively young and I've never really had my math challenged, so if they're way off, that's all on me. It's also hard to get a good picture of exactly how challenging a combat can or should be because there's a multitude of ways to nullify a monster without going through the HP system, and especially since "roleplaying" and spells encourage such behavior.
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Jan 24, 2018 17:50
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gradenko_2000 posted:I'm willing to admit that I might be low-balling those numbers. Crank them the hell up if you want, start with doubling the damage. I wrote that back when 5e was relatively young and I've never really had my math challenged, so if they're way off, that's all on me. Your math seems better than the books still, where they'd still do too little damage, but also have double the HP. Now you have me wondering about generalizing it as well. As far as attacking other stats, one thing I also don't want is to constantly move the focus to have players do saving throws for basic attacks. Is it crazy to use 4e style defenses under the hood? Do I even have to tell them that's what I'm doing? (I think cutting words means that I do...)
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Jan 24, 2018 17:59
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I'm doing an Adventurer's League Tomb of Annihilation campaign and am about to break into lvl 6 on my Life Cleric. Now I made this character in like, literally under five minutes having only ever played 3rd before. My intention was to pump INT and WIS so I'd have lots of skill points and spell slots, because all I wanted was someone to cowboy up to skill checks while keeping the party from wiping too badly. Needless to say it doesn't work like that in 5th edition, I know this now and that WIS/CON would've been better for me but it's a little late to change. Is there a way I can utilize my high INT for something other than multiclassing to Wizard?
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Jan 24, 2018 18:02
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:As far as attacking other stats, one thing I also don't want is to constantly move the focus to have players do saving throws for basic attacks. Is it crazy to use 4e style defenses under the hood? Do I even have to tell them that's what I'm doing? (I think cutting words means that I do...) Converting to flat defenses versus rolled "spell attacks" is nice for "consistency" with AC, but yes, there will some cases where ability interactions mean you'll have to come up with further conversions. I would be open and honest to my group about it, if one were to consider doing it.
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Jan 24, 2018 18:03
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So there was some talk about D&D Beyond earlier. It still isn't perfect but it is better than a lot of options, that are still around. And they recently added a new thing to the builder. They are now adding the UA stuff to the builder, starting with the most recent one that had the Brute Fighter, Spore Druid, and Invention Wizard. Doesn't sound like they are going to go back to the older ones, but will be adding the new ones going forward. I did really like More Purple More Better's sheet, but it was mostly taken down. Also I had issues trying to use it on my tablet when at AL, while the web based Beyond works well enough on my tablet.
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Jan 24, 2018 18:12
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Willie Tomg posted:I'm doing an Adventurer's League Tomb of Annihilation campaign and am about to break into lvl 6 on my Life Cleric. ALTERNATE QUESTION: is there an ingame way to re-stat? That seems like a thing that could happen considering how the rest of my blind play of meat grinder 5e ToA has gone so far.
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Jan 24, 2018 19:53
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Nehru the Damaja posted:It's probably better to subvert time-worn tropes that have sexist leanings in the first place, but if you talked yourself into it, you seriously just establish that kidnapping people for ransom is common. People are only going to wander into the rapey stuff if you leave them with no sensible reason for the kidnapping to have happened. And you establish that victims who aren't paid for end up dead or sold to workhouses, not into an unspecified slavery, for god's sake. bewilderment posted:Beholders are also useful because they're territorial and very anti-other-beholder.
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Jan 24, 2018 20:05
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Willie Tomg posted:I'm doing an Adventurer's League Tomb of Annihilation campaign and am about to break into lvl 6 on my Life Cleric. Willie Tomg posted:ALTERNATE QUESTION: is there an ingame way to re-stat? That seems like a thing that could happen considering how the rest of my blind play of meat grinder 5e ToA has gone so far. You can get murdered and return to the game as a brand new tier 2 (aka level 5) character. You can get murdered and get reincarnated and bribe the GM to fudge the table roll and look the other way when your new stats don't quite match up.
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Jan 24, 2018 20:15
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Willie Tomg posted:ALTERNATE QUESTION: is there an ingame way to re-stat? That seems like a thing that could happen considering how the rest of my blind play of meat grinder 5e ToA has gone so far. There's no way to leverage that int except for using Int based skills. IIRC Adventurer's League allows a one time respec before level 5. You're past that and locked in. You're stuck until that character dies.
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Jan 24, 2018 20:16
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AlphaDog posted:Do you not consider this scenario to be a depiction of child abuse? I thought the them was the Party being hired to bring her back anyway I misunderstood. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Jan 24, 2018 |
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Jan 24, 2018 20:24
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mango sentinel posted:There's no way to leverage that int except for using Int based skills. I don't think it's one time I think you can do it as much as you want.
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Jan 24, 2018 20:38
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MonsterEnvy posted:I don't think it's one time I think you can do it as much as you want.
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Jan 24, 2018 20:38
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Welp time to make a shitload of history and arcana checks while farming the DM for roleplaying inspiration points 
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Jan 24, 2018 20:43
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Willie Tomg posted:Welp time to make a shitload of history and arcana checks while farming the DM for roleplaying inspiration points If the DM is nice he may bend the rules and let you reshuffling some of your stats. As you did not know what you were doing.
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Jan 24, 2018 21:04
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Willie Tomg posted:Welp time to make a shitload of history and arcana checks while farming the DM for roleplaying inspiration points In all fairness, Life Cleric is one of the best classes in the game so as long as you've got 18 Wisdom and either 15 Strength or 14 Dex (for heavy and medium armor respectively, or be a dorf), you should be effective even if your Constitution score is lacking. I mean - the worst consequence of low CON is dying. Just cast Spiritual Weapon and/or Spirit Guardians and use your action for Dodge.
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Jan 24, 2018 21:06
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Willie Tomg posted:Welp time to make a shitload of history and arcana checks while farming the DM for roleplaying inspiration points If you have any downtime (unlikely in ToA) you could take some time and money to get proficient in Investigation. That and arcana should do some real work in ToA puzzles, I think.
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Jan 24, 2018 21:24
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mango sentinel posted:If you have any downtime (unlikely in ToA) you could take some time and money to get proficient in Investigation. That and arcana should do some real work in ToA puzzles, I think. Nah we're in (are we doing spoilers for campaigns in this thread?) Omu, and our party is basically clearing the entire city house-by-house Fallujah style, fending off Yuan-Ti raids at night in whatever shattered building we can fudge into a makeshift fort because our DM is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at us trying to slow down our party and its hilarious. Did I mention I'm having a ton of fun? It's a good campaign, Lou. MonsterEnvy posted:If the DM is nice he may bend the rules and let you reshuffling some of your stats. As you did not know what you were doing. Nah this is in a loosely formal but still technically-official WoTC format with the DCI numbers and everything. TBH he's already been pretty chill with me so far, and there's been nothing to stop me from sanity-checking my stats with him except a mix of pride and forgetfulness, so whateva. Conspiratiorist posted:In all fairness, Life Cleric is one of the best classes in the game so as long as you've got 18 Wisdom and either 15 Strength or 14 Dex (for heavy and medium armor respectively, or be a dorf), you should be effective even if your Constitution score is lacking. I mean - the worst consequence of low CON is dying. Oh we're playing on meat grinder, my friend. I'm constantly no more than 25HP away from having my charsheet torn up. Living on the edge, man. Feels good!  Still, I got that 14 Dex and abuse Dodge a bunch--nothing like playing Sweet Georgia Brown on your phone while dodging a Flesh Golem in the jungle as the rest of the party trial-by-errors what does and doesn't work against Flesh Golems in 5e--and am in a pretty good place overall. I think I'm just gonna play the character to the hilt as a really frail but smart Gnomish Siegmayer of Catarina trotting down the halls in his dwarven half plate subsidizing a lot of really shall we say "aggressive" party decisions. Also I'm really glad I played this character for almost Three IRL Months before realizing spiritual weapon was just mordenkainen's sword but as a level 2 cleric spell and also was a bonus action. That, uhh.... That woulda come in handy a few times. Frankly.
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Jan 24, 2018 22:13
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Willie Tomg posted:
Shame Mordenkainen's Sword is not very good. (It's inferior to Spiritual weapon being cast in the same slot.) I like Mord and his Sword so I personally buff the sword up a bit. But it's not like you have to worry about it anyway as I don't think you can cast it.
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Jan 24, 2018 23:09
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bewilderment posted:I'm gonna ask the actual question at risk of sounding dumb - if there is not evil to vanquish in your DnD world, the kind of evil that is met with violent force because it itself seeks to do violence to people, I'm not sure why DnD is being used for this story. "Criminals that kill people" is not coterminous with "evil", nor with "violent and dangerous situations". There are plenty of monsters in D&D that aren't humanoid criminals committing crimes. For example, a dungeon full of skeletons, oozes, beasts and golems guarding an ancient treasure in the dungeon. Those can all be violent and dangerous and are distinct from human bandits kidnapping and murdering innocent townsfolk. I suspect most D&D groups take violent criminals for granted as part of the game (I've been in plenty of games that have), but there's no reason they have to be. The broad point is: it's cool and good practice to make sure everyone is on the same page about the content of a game.
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Jan 24, 2018 23:47
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I'm playing in ToA soon so anything spicy you talk about will give me an unfair advantage
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Jan 24, 2018 23:56
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Ignite Memories posted:I'm playing in ToA soon so anything spicy you talk about will give me an unfair advantage Uh try not to die if you like your character.
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Jan 25, 2018 01:06
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MonsterEnvy posted:Uh try not to die if you like your character. We just had our first death at level 8. In a way we’re lucky we made it that long after we pissed off the wrong thing in Omu. Banishment and the minute it bought us saved us from a TPK.
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Jan 25, 2018 01:49
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Kaysette posted:We just had our first death at level 8. In a way we’re lucky we made it that long after we pissed off the wrong thing in Omu. Banishment and the minute it bought us saved us from a TPK. Put it in spoiler blocks, what was killing you guys? Was it the Feathered King MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Jan 25, 2018 |
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Jan 25, 2018 02:13
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2 things I really dislike as a DM in the RAW rules for this edition. Easy ritual identify taking any mystery out of magic items at level 1. Maybe I want the players to get tricked by an intentionally mislabeled healing potion that was actually a “cyanide pill”/trap on the Duergar Spy. Maybe I want to give them something powerful but let them organically discover what it does, like the other editions. How completely boring weapon selection is without feats (yes there are feats but a fraction of past editions), or general combat maneuvers for anyone but Fighter. At the same time, RAW states a bunch of the magic item types are still things like Sword Only. Why restrict that when the types of weapons don’t even have an identity anymore? Yes I’ve house ruled things, I just can’t understand why removing this stuff is more fun, unless you’re a Wiza....never mind.
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Jan 25, 2018 03:02
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Forgot another one. Familiars being conjured creatures that just poof on death with no consequence other than having to resummon it with a prepped spell. I want the Rogue to scout for cool moments, not Splat the Pseudodragon. Familiars should at least be a friendly coworker if not a loved pet, this one is an intern on Star Trek.
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Jan 25, 2018 03:06
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Hi dnd goons. Appenrtly I'm susposed to be participating in a 5e game soonish both as a player and as a DM. It's an adventure a week type mercenary serial with out much overarching plot. As such characters are allowed to be a bit more whacky with personal goals. I have three questions I would like some assiastnace with: Is it possible to make a Goblin witchdoctor who rides a giant turtle? Does making a "test case" tomb of horrors with stuff toned down, because its just the prototype for checking it all works and not the full one, sound like a fun adventure? For example the orb of anhiliation is instead an orb of colour spray, and the lich at the end is a squeaky toy with magical prerecorded lines. Finally is a tattooed elf berzerker in a loincloth an acceptable character under the new dnd rules. I've only pkayed pathfinder for the last few years.
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Jan 25, 2018 03:11
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CDW posted:Forgot another one. Familiars being conjured creatures that just poof on death with no consequence other than having to resummon it with a prepped spell. Counterpoint: the fragile familiar causing a whole bunch of side effects because it died to a stiff breeze was dumb. You can roleplay missing a pet, being forced to have mechanical grief was dumb.
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Jan 25, 2018 03:15
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Gridlocked posted:Hi dnd goons. Appenrtly I'm susposed to be participating in a 5e game soonish both as a player and as a DM. It's an adventure a week type mercenary serial with out much overarching plot. As such characters are allowed to be a bit more whacky with personal goals. 1. Yes, but the turtle will have to be a tamed animal rather than a class feature, unless you're okay with playing a refluffed paladin as 'witchdoctor'. 2. I don't see why not. Dungeoncrawls are good for getting used to the system's crunch. 3. No. Barbarians wear medium armor (their Unarmored Defense is a flavor ability rather than something you can effectively build your concept about) and their core abilities key off STR, which Elves don't get a stat bonus to. Also, Berserker Barbarian is a very bad archetype that requires houseruling to work properly. My suggestion here would be either a Half-Elf Totem Barbarian, or a Wood Elf Monk.
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Jan 25, 2018 03:34
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Can monks be built with weapons still or do we have 4e monks who are bassed off unarmed more or less exclusively. Alternatively would a naked Skald work?
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Jan 25, 2018 03:36
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CDW posted:Easy ritual identify taking any mystery out of magic items at level 1. Maybe I want the players to get tricked by an intentionally mislabeled healing potion that was actually a “cyanide pill”/trap on the Duergar Spy. Maybe I want to give them something powerful but let them organically discover what it does, like the other editions. Identify costs 100 gold each cast. So it's not free which in my experience causes it to be used less. Also Identify does not reveal curses in items. quote:Some magic items bear curses that bedevil their users, sometimes long after a user has stopped using an item. A magic item’s description specifies whether the item is cursed. Most methods of identifying items, including the identify spell, fail to reveal such a curse, although lore might hint at it. A curse should be a surprise to the item’s user when the curse’s effects are revealed. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Jan 25, 2018 |
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Jan 25, 2018 03:37
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Gridlocked posted:Can monks be built with weapons still or do we have 4e monks who are bassed off unarmed more or less exclusively. Their selection is limited but monks can use weapons, and in fact prefer using them when possible, since they'll offer better damage die than their unarmed attack scaling until their late levels (plus magical properties and such). Standard monks will generally use spears and quarterstaves, but the Kensei archetype in the Xanathar's supplement can use any non-heavy weapon (meaning, the 1d10 versatile martial weapons). Bards wear armor (light). Melee Bards wear medium armor. To get it out of the way, the only effective unarmored martial/gish set ups in the system are: - Monks - DEX draconic sorcerer/paladin multiclass - Bladesinger Wizard (with possible Eldritch Knight Fighter multiclass) In addition, Fighters, Paladins, Rangers or Rogues going DEX that just hate armor could, through a couple different means, spend some of their limited build choices to snatch the Mage Armor spell. Far from the wisest choice, but doable.
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Jan 25, 2018 03:55
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