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PMush Perfect posted:What kinds of issues would a party without an arcane caster run into? This group I'm running has a druid, so I'm not worried about if they're strong enough to deal with things, just if there's unexpected problems they'll run into down the line. I think you'd be more or less fine in terms of survivability (assuming you can find Clerics to cast certain niche healing spells), but you will be missing teleportation circle and leomund's tiny hut which are nice utility. Druid can still do a ton of the other utility stuff though, like scrying, stealth buffs, locating objects/creatures, etc.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 14:03 |
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# ? Jun 4, 2024 05:06 |
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Infinity Gaia posted:Bard doesn't get Reliable Talent which is just absolutely a-loving-mazing. Bards also don't get to bonus action hide/dash/etc. I dunno if my party is just unoptimized as gently caress (probably) but the ranged rogue with sharpshooter is easily the best at doing consistent high damage from absolute safety half a mile away while still being insanely useful out of combat. Uncanny Dodge and Evasion mean that even if he DOES get targeted, it doesn't do much damage at all. Since he's a Thief he's been pretty much literally invisible since level 9 too. Reliable Talent is v. good but it's a lategame (level 11) ability; that point when versatile casters start running away with their narrative power. Additionally, Bards don't need Cunning Action to function the way Rogues do, since they're spellcasters, and their bonus actions are for Bardic Inspiration and spells. If your unhasted rogue is the consistent damage dealer then yeah, any other martials in that party aren't optimized. Look, I'm saying Rogues are okay, but their utility is incomparable to a Bard or Tier 2+ Wizard. They aren't some kind of exquisitely designed class that's excellent both in and out of combat - they're really just kind of decent at one, and p a s s a b l e at the other, with fairly limited ways to play them effectively to boot. But, compare that to the bulk of martials, who have practically zero out of combat mechanics? Sure, thumbs up, you go Rogues. Yet, still I wouldn't play one without a source of Haste because, if I can neither engage on the gentlemen's agreement game of "come enemies, ignore the guy in the funny robes and try and hit ME", nor deal a shitton of damage to punish enemies in case they refuse to play that game, then why the gently caress am I playing a martial? The common answer to that is "because you want to play a Rogue! Rogues are cool, right? Sneakyman!" and... in this really bland system, where it's common practice to just come up with the flavors you want yourself as far as fluff goes, that answer is just not good enough for me.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 14:07 |
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CaPensiPraxis posted:Without flanking its harder to guarantee using sneak attack all the time. Bonus action hide means you can get advantage basically all the time as a ranged rogue. And you still sneak from range if an ally is adjacent, even without advantage.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 17:28 |
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You have to take into account that there is a difference showing up at a table with a fully optimized character and not. Showing up fully optimized you become "that guy" who everyone just rolls their eyes at because they don't have any fun unless you're rolling one more damage dice than the guy next to you. If you're playing an RPG, play the character you want to play. If it just happens to have a lot of utility or damage then cool. Showing up with an Oath Bow, rolling an absurd initiative to do close to 300 damage on a boss fight will not make you many friends these days.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 19:01 |
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Infinity Gaia posted:ranged rogue with sharpshooter is easily the best at doing consistent high damage from absolute safety half a mile away But... he's not half a mile away, right? Unless your combat maps are gigantic empty wastelands this is not a thing that should even be remotely possible. Like this gets posted every-so-often in this thread and it's just confusing every time it does. Sure, it's theoretically possible, but its not something that happens in real gameplay unless the DM is actively just not designing anything and slams down an empty piece of graph paper or whatever,
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 19:24 |
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Anyone see a problem with allowing the weapon type of Shadow Blade to be changed for flavor assuming the character doesn't have any feats or abilities that affect a particular weapon type and it doesn't gain range?
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 19:38 |
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Dragonatrix posted:But... he's not half a mile away, right? Unless your combat maps are gigantic empty wastelands this is not a thing that should even be remotely possible. Like this gets posted every-so-often in this thread and it's just confusing every time it does. Sure, it's theoretically possible, but its not something that happens in real gameplay unless the DM is actively just not designing anything and slams down an empty piece of graph paper or whatever, They've now taken the fight to the giants and the sharpshooter rogue rerolled as a bard though so I'm down to one bow user, kinda solving it for me.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 19:39 |
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Philthy posted:You have to take into account that there is a difference showing up at a table with a fully optimized character and not. Showing up fully optimized you become "that guy" who everyone just rolls their eyes at because they don't have any fun unless you're rolling one more damage dice than the guy next to you. And you have to take into consideration that martial optimization in 5e is having 16 in either STR or DEX and one of the five combat feats. It's such an extremely low ceiling people accidentally make optimized characters - it's as simple as picking Great Weapon Master on a Barbarian. Yet, it makes an enormous difference in performance. "Hit Things Harder" is just not an equal choice to "Flavor Ability That Never Really Comes Up" in Dungeons and Dragons The Fifth Edition, a shoddily designed system that's 80% combat rules*. Trying to pretend it is, and accusing people that realize it is not of playing the game wrong, is just disingenuous. You know, I've always been of the opinion that for people familiar with the system and their group, they can play whatever they want; they have the experience to figure out what's fun for them. But for newbies to the system that come in with questions like "hey, is a ranged rogue viable?" you gotta give it to them straight, and stop this 'teach the controversy' or whatever the gently caress nonsense. *Check the PHB, it really is.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 19:56 |
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Dragonatrix posted:But... he's not half a mile away, right? Unless your combat maps are gigantic empty wastelands this is not a thing that should even be remotely possible. Like this gets posted every-so-often in this thread and it's just confusing every time it does. Sure, it's theoretically possible, but its not something that happens in real gameplay unless the DM is actively just not designing anything and slams down an empty piece of graph paper or whatever, Tuning encounters to make sure all of your PCs can get some time to shine is part of the GMs work. If you got a PC who is awesome at range letting adding a few archers taking pot shots from a far ledge or while flying lets them get some time to shine. This applies to Rogue chat as well. If the PCs are doubting how good Rogue is then maybe it is time to up the traps and locked doors.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 19:56 |
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I recently had an issue where one of my players wanted to Dispel Magic on a magical labyrinth which was sending the players through a number of trials to see if they were worthy to enter its sacred grotto. To me, this would be like trying to pull the magic out of an innately magical thing. I said no, because that would open a can of worms like: could I dispel the river of Styx, could I dispel a Genasi and instantly kill them, what spell level is the plane of Mount Celestia so I know what to roll is dispel it from existence? How do you explain the difference between like a fireball and things that have magic inherently built into them?
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 20:01 |
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Trent Squawkbox posted:I recently had an issue where one of my players wanted to Dispel Magic on a magical labyrinth which was sending the players through a number of trials to see if they were worthy to enter its sacred grotto. To me, this would be like trying to pull the magic out of an innately magical thing. I said no, because that would open a can of worms like: could I dispel the river of Styx, could I dispel a Genasi and instantly kill them, what spell level is the plane of Mount Celestia so I know what to roll is dispel it from existence? "As you cast Dispel Magic you can feel the magic start to leave the area... but then the arcane marks on the structure start to glow and the magic returns. Make an Arcana Check" Ignore the Dice Roll "After quick study you understand that the magic in an innate part of the structure that is way, way beyond your ability to dispel"
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 20:03 |
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Xae posted:"As you cast Dispel Magic you can feel the magic start to leave the area... but then the arcane marks on the structure start to glow and the magic returns. Make an Arcana Check" :Arcana Check rolls a 1: "Make an INT save" The magic flares as the maze is repowered, lashing out magical energy at the source of the attack. Suffer 3d6 damage, half if you pass your save.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 20:15 |
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Nephzinho posted::Arcana Check rolls a 1: Yeah, I could have responded on a scale of 'Nothing happens' to 'The maze knows what you're trying to do and ejects of from the maze, barring you from entering ever again."
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 20:22 |
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Trent Squawkbox posted:I recently had an issue where one of my players wanted to Dispel Magic on a magical labyrinth which was sending the players through a number of trials to see if they were worthy to enter its sacred grotto. To me, this would be like trying to pull the magic out of an innately magical thing. I said no, because that would open a can of worms like: could I dispel the river of Styx, could I dispel a Genasi and instantly kill them, what spell level is the plane of Mount Celestia so I know what to roll is dispel it from existence? I would explain it to my newer players this way. Dispel Magic sets the duration of any Spell affecting a target to "Done right this second". If someone cast Enlarge on a Bag of Holding, you would just dispel the Enlarge by setting its duration to Done, not destroy the Bag of Holding. The magic/spells that made the bag are done and gone, yes the bag itself is magical, but that's not what Dispel Magic says it does, it just ends spells ON a target.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 20:23 |
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Would Dendar the Night Serpent have worshipers? I'm trying to find a fun FR deity for a Divine Soul sorcerer. They can be evil so long as I can frame it that the clergy aren't also inherently evil. (E.g. my cleric of Umberlee is focused on the rules and rituals as an intermediary so that travelers stay safe.)
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 20:26 |
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CDW posted:I would explain it to my newer players this way. Dispel Magic sets the duration of any Spell affecting a target to "Done right this second". I was about to say, according to the description, all the spell can do is end another spell of appropriate level. Not every magical effect is a spell, however, so it doesn't work against all magic. I'd just tell them it's not a spell, and thus can't be dispelled with Dispel Magic.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 20:29 |
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Would Dendar the Night Serpent have worshipers? I'm trying to find a fun FR deity for a Divine Soul sorcerer. They can be evil so long as I can frame it that the clergy aren't also inherently evil. (E.g. my cleric of Umberlee is focused on the rules and rituals as an intermediary so that travelers stay safe.) Sure. The Yuan-ti in Tomb of Annihilation worship him, as do the cannibals that roam the jungle.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 20:31 |
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Trent Squawkbox posted:Yeah, I could have responded on a scale of 'Nothing happens' to 'The maze knows what you're trying to do and ejects of from the maze, barring you from entering ever again." It really is one of the reasons I hate DnD magic. It's narrative power, but it takes away from the narrative. It doesn't add complexity or story elements or much of anything, it just invalidates obstacles, and since it's a character feature I balk at restricting it's use, because what else is the wizard supposed to do if not sling magic? Imagine if every answer was simply "Wizard" "How did you scale this perfectly smooth wall?" "How did you manage to charm the dragon into letting you take their stash?" "There was an army here just now, what happened?" (oh and about Rogue vs Bards, Rogues are great at using skills, bards are great at just bypassing it. Why roll for it when you can just declare it done?)
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 20:44 |
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Trent Squawkbox posted:I recently had an issue where one of my players wanted to Dispel Magic on a magical labyrinth which was sending the players through a number of trials to see if they were worthy to enter its sacred grotto. To me, this would be like trying to pull the magic out of an innately magical thing. I said no, because that would open a can of worms like: could I dispel the river of Styx, could I dispel a Genasi and instantly kill them, what spell level is the plane of Mount Celestia so I know what to roll is dispel it from existence? If it's a magical labyrinth as in somebody worked magic to not only create it but sustain its effects, like force walls and teleport doors and whatever, then it's not inherently magical and it can be dispelled. The question is, what's left afterward? A regular stone maze to a grotto that was already there, or a blank cave wall since the magic was shuttling you through a bunch of disconnected cave pockets and who knows where the grotto really is?
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 20:47 |
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Glazius posted:If it's a magical labyrinth as in somebody worked magic to not only create it but sustain its effects, like force walls and teleport doors and whatever, then it's not inherently magical and it can be dispelled. Since it's in the easy to understand setting of Planescape, the maze was just as natural to the plane of Elysium as a river is to the material plane. Nobody 'made' it, except maybe the will of a god that lives there. I feel like they should have been able to dispel the current effect temporarily, but then have immediately pop back as they would be able to target the illusion of the trials, but not the maze itself.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 21:03 |
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Sometimes the PCs choose a fight instead of it choosing them. My PCs are generally fighting giants who are not easily concealed. It'd be pretty contrived if they were constantly surprised out of nowhere by twenty foot tall beings. Moreover, the central conflict is of giants coming in and loving up human places, meaning interiors are generally too small to hold giants at all. Xae posted:Tuning encounters to make sure all of your PCs can get some time to shine is part of the GMs work. Right, but neither of these remotely are the same thing as "standing over half a mile away where nothing can even pretend to touch them" is the thing. Just because the PCs shoot first doesn't make someone with a bow literally invincible purely because they have a bow.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 21:06 |
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Dragonatrix posted:Right, but neither of these remotely are the same thing as "standing over half a mile away where nothing can even pretend to touch them" is the thing. Just because the PCs shoot first doesn't make someone with a bow literally invincible purely because they have a bow. Okay well sharpshooter lets you shoot 600 feet without disadvantage and ignore cover, and giants have a 30 foot movement speed. Other members of the group load up on things that slow down or otherwise lower movement. Sometimes I can contrive terrain that means it might only be, say, 200 feet, but it's hard and not something I want to do every time my group starts a fight outdoors. It still takes them 4 rounds to reach the party in that scenario, if they do nothing but dash, and that's assuming my party hasn't plant growthed and sleet stormed all over the place. Literally invincible is hyperbole but invincible enough that the CRs are even more meaningless than they normally are is totally accurate. I've accepted that I gotta contrive encounters around who my party is to some degree but I feel like their party composition (when they had two high-damage bow people) forced me to design encounters with a hand behind my back, and the narrative requirements of giants took the other hand too.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 21:12 |
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Okay well sharpshooter lets you shoot 600 feet without disadvantage and ignore cover, and giants have a 30 foot movement speed. Other members of the group load up on things that slow down or otherwise lower movement. Sometimes I can contrive terrain that means it might only be, say, 200 feet, but it's hard and not something I want to do every time my group starts a fight outdoors. It still takes them 4 rounds to reach the party in that scenario, if they do nothing but dash, and that's assuming my party hasn't plant growthed and sleet stormed all over the place. Right, so.... why are they just running straight forward for 4 turns instead of, I don't know, doing what Giants do and throwing large boulders and tree trunks? Or, I dunno, using a ballista like a crossbow, because they are Giants and can easily do that? Just having range doesn't instantly negate fights. It changes fights, if folks really go all in on hyper-optimising it, but that doesn't require arbitrary contrivance or making things sneak up/appear out of nowhere/whatever to deal with.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 21:20 |
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Giants do rather poorly out on the open steppe, turns out.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 21:34 |
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Okay well sharpshooter lets you shoot 600 feet without disadvantage and ignore cover, and giants have a 30 foot movement speed. Other members of the group load up on things that slow down or otherwise lower movement. Sometimes I can contrive terrain that means it might only be, say, 200 feet, but it's hard and not something I want to do every time my group starts a fight outdoors. It still takes them 4 rounds to reach the party in that scenario, if they do nothing but dash, and that's assuming my party hasn't plant growthed and sleet stormed all over the place. I'm also running SKT with a player who has Sharpshooter. They ended up encountering a Fire Giant and a troll in a swamp, but it was at a 300ft distance. They mostly ran back and shot at him and the Sharpshooter got to do his cool stuff. I also pulled out the chase rules which everyone thought was pretty fun. Once the giant closed the gap enough he could throw a boulder and they already know how much it hurts. But yeah in SKT specifically there's a lot of "Open Space" where encounters happen.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 21:56 |
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Dragonatrix posted:Right, so.... why are they just running straight forward for 4 turns instead of, I don't know, doing what Giants do and throwing large boulders and tree trunks? Or, I dunno, using a ballista like a crossbow, because they are Giants and can easily do that? Like I've been addressing this issue for a year at this point and it's remained true. It's not that I don't have any workarounds, but this intersection of narrative and mechanical constraints makes encounter design feel really contrived and obnoxious to do in a system where it already starts out that way. When a planned encounter ends up tense and engaging for my party I feel lucky, not satisfied.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 22:05 |
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Follow-up, what are some other really fun/unusual deities to be clerics/divine souls/zealots/etc for? I was really pleased with how much extra material I had to work with and how much it livened up the characters when I did clerics of Mystra and Umberlee. I don't want to keep playing Cleric forever but I'm sold on using religion to flesh out interesting details now. But there's so many and it's tricky sometimes to tell the difference between an interesting deity and a deity that makes your character interesting. Like I personally think Mystra is pretty boring but having a cleric from the Magic NRA is a neat angle.Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Uh yeah that is what they do but, at least as they are in the book, it really neuters them - those rocks have disadvantage if they're further than 60 feet and even without that, it's half as many attacks as they get in melee. I've added other powers from SKT as well but mostly it's the same issue. They are not particularly threatening outside of melee, that is their thing. As someone who's been dunking on giants for six months with Sleet Storm, he speaks the truth.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 22:11 |
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Would Dendar the Night Serpent have worshipers? I'm trying to find a fun FR deity for a Divine Soul sorcerer. They can be evil so long as I can frame it that the clergy aren't also inherently evil. (E.g. my cleric of Umberlee is focused on the rules and rituals as an intermediary so that travelers stay safe.) Dendar is given as an example of a Great Old One Warlock Patron in the PHB and is stated as being one of the big three Yuan Ti Gods in 5e.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 22:40 |
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Also previews of the art for Three of the new monsters coming in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. (Alongside their old art.) Archdevil Geryon Marut Astral Dreadnought (The Cacodemons in Doom were literally this things head ripped off and put into the game.) MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Feb 27, 2018 |
# ? Feb 27, 2018 22:44 |
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Follow-up, what are some other really fun/unusual deities to be clerics/divine souls/zealots/etc for? I was really pleased with how much extra material I had to work with and how much it livened up the characters when I did clerics of Mystra and Umberlee. I don't want to keep playing Cleric forever but I'm sold on using religion to flesh out interesting details now. But there's so many and it's tricky sometimes to tell the difference between an interesting deity and a deity that makes your character interesting. Like I personally think Mystra is pretty boring but having a cleric from the Magic NRA is a neat angle. A lot of words have been spilled over FR deities. Some FR gods go well with typically non-religious classes. There's the Red Knight (the chess goddess of strategy), Savras (divination god for a divination wizard?), Siamorphe for nobility background characters, or Valkur for pirate PCs. Following one of them can be a nice little detail to attach to a character. The setting has a heap of dead/forgotten gods and vestiges that could be referenced. Cults or single devotees can always rise up again, half the time receiving their power from a different god who is just taking advantage and pretending to be the other one. Most of the Netherese pantheon qualifies: Karsus (technically a god for a minute or so), Jannath (harvest goddess), Kozah (a storm god), Moander, Targus, Tyche. Tyche is neat, the luck god before it split into sibling bad vs good luck gods Beshaba/Tymora. A character somehow empowered by remnants or a mcguffin of Tyche would attract attention from both new luck churches. Then some religions have heresies, a small offshoot cult that worships a normal FR god but in a crazy way. 'We worship the sun god Lathander, but only because he's going to consume us all'. A heresy could even take an evil god and make them seem nice. An example is the dark moon heresy.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 22:55 |
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Conspiratiorist posted:Warlock is not better than Rogue. In fact, I'd strongly recommend against Warlock for a newbie, since its core mechanics are hosed.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 23:04 |
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ritorix posted:Then some religions have heresies, a small offshoot cult that worships a normal FR god but in a crazy way. 'We worship the sun god Lathander, but only because he's going to consume us all'. A heresy could even take an evil god and make them seem nice. An example is the dark moon heresy. Hah siiiiick.
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# ? Feb 27, 2018 23:10 |
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MonsterEnvy posted:Archdevil Geryon On first glance I thought the shofar was melded with his left arm. Which would be cool, but a bit impractical.
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# ? Feb 28, 2018 01:02 |
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Dragonatrix posted:But... he's not half a mile away, right? Unless your combat maps are gigantic empty wastelands this is not a thing that should even be remotely possible. Like this gets posted every-so-often in this thread and it's just confusing every time it does. Sure, it's theoretically possible, but its not something that happens in real gameplay unless the DM is actively just not designing anything and slams down an empty piece of graph paper or whatever, I usually try to design my setpiece battles so that my players each have something they can do according to their playstyle. One likes the roguish archetype and attacking at range, so when I design something there's at least one spot where she can have open sight lines. Of course, I also have enemies that will harass anyone left alone like that, so it's not something I just let her get away with. It also deepends where they're fighting. If it's outdoors then there's going to be plenty of options to get clear, long-distance sight lines.
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# ? Feb 28, 2018 01:04 |
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Hah siiiiick. If you wanted something for a Grave Domain too, and find Kelemvor a little too... stuffy. Then his Senechal, Jergal works well. His followers are chroniclers of death, writing down the when and how in their duties to Jergal. While they otherwise follow things similarly to Kelemvor... Jergal doesn't have the hatred for using Undeath to seek the true end goal. Everything Dies, eventually. I've been thinking of making a cleric that follows him, and work out with the DM that for NPCs he'll roll to see if his god tells him if it is their time or not.
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# ? Feb 28, 2018 01:06 |
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DalaranJ posted:On first glance I thought the shofar was melded with his left arm. Which would be cool, but a bit impractical. ... Dammit.
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# ? Feb 28, 2018 01:44 |
I've been running Tomb of Annihilation and I really like the hexcrawling aspect of it, although one of my gripes is that players are very incentivized to stay in the field and not return to Port Nyanzaru to sell off loot and recuperate. How come hexcrawls died out, anyways?
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# ? Feb 28, 2018 02:10 |
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Elysiume posted:I've been looking at warlock, and I'm curious what you mean by its core mechanics being hosed. Personally I look at the miserably small number of spells they get per rest, and can only see the choice between doing nothing but eldritch blasts and constantly whining at the party to take a rest so you can cast a second spell today. Is there something else (and am I overestimating how meager their spells are)? That's most of it. They're okay if the DM is giving you a short rest every other fight, and you have 6-8 fights per day, but otherwise you're functioning like a subpar martial with extremely limited casting. Short Rests are a hosed mechanic and are needed for Warlocks to function as intended. The alternative is DMs handing out the third pact slot earlier or a Rod of the Pact Keeper. The other problem is that the class gives you this wide list of invocations to pick from, but 4-5 of those are so much better than the rest that it's a false choice. And believe me, I've seen newbies running around without Agonizing Blast; it's the saddest thing.
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# ? Feb 28, 2018 02:23 |
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SunAndSpring posted:I've been running Tomb of Annihilation and I really like the hexcrawling aspect of it, although one of my gripes is that players are very incentivized to stay in the field and not return to Port Nyanzaru to sell off loot and recuperate. How come hexcrawls died out, anyways? There's a certain degree of tedium that makes them stop being fun after a while if you're being too insistent on following all of the rules. The repetition of: *survival check for hunting, mark off rations as needed* for ToA specifically *set up water catcher to catch overnight rainfall, mark off water supplies as needed* Combine that with a few days where the random encounters just don't happen because you're strictly following ~*the rules*~ for random encounters happening and they lose their luster. There's a really careful balancing act needed to find exactly how much simulation your players are really interested in.
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# ? Feb 28, 2018 02:27 |
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# ? Jun 4, 2024 05:06 |
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1-encounter days are also hilariously unbalanced in favor of full casters.
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# ? Feb 28, 2018 02:42 |