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CDW posted:I would like to bitch about something dumb in 5e, at least to me. This is up there with players asking if saying the word "parkour" will let them replace an athletics check with an acrobatics one to me. Perception is already insane without people giving it all of the investigation functions.
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May 6, 2018 18:46
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Loot was shared, minus the spell scroll that's currently rolled up and hidden from the stereotypical scroll fiend wizard.
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May 6, 2018 19:02
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Cassa posted:Any must have 5e DM sites? Other than Donjon and Gradenko's fixed math? I like Kobold Fight Club. https://kobold.club/fight/#/encounter-builder
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May 6, 2018 19:19
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MonsterEnvy posted:I like Kobold Fight Club. Seconded, I use it to roughly check the difficulty all of my basic encounters.
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May 6, 2018 19:25
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Just finished the first session of my new campaign. Went quite well. The party is: - A tiefling Paladin of Avandra, who was one of the leaders of a protest-turned-uprising against tiefling discrimination years prior. After the event he became a paladin of the temple of Avandra, but instead of helping the needy and making a difference he's spent years doing thankless gruntwork, losing his mind of boredom and being berated by the head of the temple, who is a blustering rear end in a top hat. - A halfling Cleric of Yondalla, who puts in long hours and works incredibly hard at the temple in the hopes of becoming a journeyman and getting out into the world, but is constantly looked over for promotion by a matron who can't even get his name right consistently. - A dragonborn Monk of the Raven Queen, raised and trained in a remote commune to battle those who subvert the natural order of death, come to the big city chasing a strange dream vision, only to find that she's the only warrior in a shrine of what amount to funeral directors. Her colleagues are nice enough but she feels out of place. Also her scales are bright gold and she tends to attract groups of awestruck kobolds. They've been friends for years, and together they're the greatest pub quiz team in this part of town, and like to commiserate each other over their awful jobs. As the campaign started they helped a friendly but excitable gnome wizard get away from an unsavoury type that was harassing her at their local pub, and end up making a friend. The guy's mistake was trying to be a creep in a bar full of paladins, and it ended up with them throwing him into the river, cheering all the while. The next day there was a montage of their respective awful working days; then each independently discovered missing supplies in their respective temples, and ran into each other in the huge line outside the watch house. There had been a spree of thefts in the region. Mostly things like incense, formaldehyde and oils, but the Diadem of Avandra, a non-magical but religiously-significant item of jewellery, was also gone. They also met their gnome friend, whose wand was missing, and they deduced that the creep from the previous night had stolen it. A priest ran from the nearby church of Pelor having seen and heard something crawling around in their storeroom. The party took it upon themselves to investigate - but not before Paladin, who has proficiency in woodworking, hastily carved an old bit of wood into a marker he stuck in the ground to mark their place in line. In the basement were two giant rats and a rat swarm. Having not run 5e before I discovered how fragile 1st level characters are. After the fight they found broken glass and a pool of green liquid, the same shade of green as the flecks of foam from the rats' mouths. Coupled with the ratholes they found being too small for the rats they fought, they seemed to put two and two together about the liquid being a mutagenic potion. A scream from upstairs spurred them into action as a parishioner was attacked by a similarly mutated Pigeon Of Unusual Size. They were originally meant to fight two of them but I took one away after how hairy the last fight got. After vanquishing it, receiving a potion of healing as a reward, and selling the pigeon body to goblins for 1gp, they took the mystery fluid to a friendly local alchemist, an elderly tiefling. He knew them all, whether through business or, in Paladin's case, because they lived in the same neighbourhood before Paladin joined the temple, and was happy to help. After listening to their story and what was stolen, and consulting dusty tomes, he informed them that the theft of magic items, potion ingredients and a relic of Avandra (goddess of, among other things, luck) indicate an attempt to create a potion of Perfect Luck - which is sacrilege in Paladin's eyes. Returning to the pub, where the gnome's wand was thought to have been stolen, they conferred with the barkeeper, a gruff yet amicable dwarf with a bad leg. He'd not seen the creepy guy steal the wand because he'd been distracted by a complicated drink order... and at this point he realised that could have been a deliberate attempt to distract him from the theft. Luckily he knew the accomplice and led the party to his address. What followed was an on-foot chase including packs of feral dogs, crowds, and two guys carrying a pane of glass. (Paladin tried to slide under it, forgetting he was carrying Cleric like a halfling rucksack, and smashed through it without breaking stride instead.) It ended when Paladin cut the culprit off and threw Cleric at him, missing by a hair but staggering him enough for Monk to catch up and tackle him. The accomplice spilled the beans and the party found the thief's hideout. After a battle on the ground floor with the creep from the pub and a larger, burlier thug, they find the thief in the attic, distractedly working on potions. Rolling a 1 on Stealth, they fail to sneak up on him, but a natural 20 on an Intimidate check by the Paladin, augmented by Thaumaturgy, stopped him from attacking and skipped an encounter entirely. The alchemist did make his escape though - with one hand he threw a flashbang sort of potion down a hole in the floor, and with the other he downed a slowfall potion and leapt out the window. The flash agitated his Huge pet spider in the floor below, which tore a hole in the floorboards and attacked the party. Here, I discovered that a CR1 Giant Spider can one-shot a level 1 character, even if they succeed on the saving throw for the poison. Both Paladin and Cleric went down this way, leaving Monk hanging on to its back. She eventually killed it with an unarmed strike to the head. Now, I'd been playing around with using music in my DMing for the first time, and up to now I'd been using the Dragon Quest 8 soundtrack, but when the Monk pummelled the giant spider's head into a pulp, fists and claws flailing and flames spewing from her maw, there was only one track I could use. After killing it she dragged her friends to safety and the arms of the City Watch. Meanwhile, as I'd mentioned in an earlier post, the alchemist's Slow Fall potion was mixed poorly and resulted in a Very Slow Fall potion. He was falling incredibly slowly as the Watch milled around beneath him waiting for him to get within arm's reach. The party, once revived, got a share of the alchemist's loot as a finder's fee, which included a +1 Shield along with various knickknacks. Also that cape from Xanathar's Guide to Everything that billows dramatically with a bonus action. Having experienced a real adventure together for the first time, as well as earning more in one day than they normally did in a month, the next day at work felt awful for them, but they got backpats, applause and a heroes' welcome at the pub. The owner, a retired adventurer himself, offered to help them start on the path to becoming freelance adventurers, like an old warrior had done for him years prior. Having gotten The Itch, and despite some reservations from Cleric who was a little shaken by the whole ordeal, they sealed it with a handshake and ascended to level 2, ending the session.
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May 6, 2018 20:13
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Blockhouse posted:Thinking about changing up some of the magic items in LMoP to better fit with my players. Like Talon is cool and all but a +1 longsword really doesn't play well when the three melee frontliners use great weapons, polearms, or is a cleric. Have the loot be "+1 Weapon", and then whoever wants it, it's that class of weapon. I hand-pick stuff and throw it in, but I've seen it work just as well this way.
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May 6, 2018 20:27
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I run Perception as trying to find something that is hiding, whereas Investigation is trying to find something that is hidden.
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May 6, 2018 22:56
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A pit trap covered by a tarp of leaves or whatever is hidden. Good to know you make people actively search to see a classic trap that is literally just a hole in the ground.  But seriously, there's a pretty obvious distinction. Perception covers the five primary senses; Investigation is actively searching and making connections between things. In practice there should be zero overlap between them, but they're explained so badly and in older editions, Investigation didn't exist so you had to make do with Perception (or its antecedents) and that got carried over via inertia and How It Was Always Done.
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May 7, 2018 00:09
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Dragonatrix posted:A pit trap covered by a tarp of leaves or whatever is hidden. Good to know you make people actively search to see a classic trap that is literally just a hole in the ground.
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May 7, 2018 00:50
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blastron posted:I run Perception as trying to find something that is hiding, whereas Investigation is trying to find something that is hidden. I can't tell if I'd need to roll investigation or perception to parse a distinction this insanely fine. I usually just let people roll either one and tell them not to take both at char gen.
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May 7, 2018 02:15
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I think Perception should just be house-ruled out of the game except for stealth checks If the party could feasibly see something, let them see it. (I'm aware this slides down the slippery slope into "why play this system at all in that case" and well...)
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May 7, 2018 02:24
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Mendrian posted:I can't tell if I'd need to roll investigation or perception to parse a distinction this insanely fine. Same, and this is 100% the way to do it imo. It's super dumb that game about fighting monsters in dungeons have two separate skills for clue hunting so unironically the best way to treat this is just as an Athletics/Acrobatics distinction. They cover virtually the exact same ground except allowing different archetypes to achieve the same thing.
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May 7, 2018 02:24
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My buddy and I are gonna do the beginner Adventurer's League stuff at Gencon. Neither of us has really played since 2E. Are there any good youtubes or podcasts or anything for intros to 5E, mechanically?
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May 7, 2018 02:31
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Kaysette posted:Seconded, I use it to roughly check the difficulty all of my basic encounters. Anything else? Seems like a serious dearth of cool resources for this edition.
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May 7, 2018 02:53
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Anyone have good idea for glass cannon enemies in an evil jungle type setting? Looking for less than 100 hp and around 40 damage a round.
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May 7, 2018 02:53
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Toshimo posted:My buddy and I are gonna do the beginner Adventurer's League stuff at Gencon. Neither of us has really played since 2E. Are there any good youtubes or podcasts or anything for intros to 5E, mechanically? Hard to go wrong with either The Adventure Zone or Critical Role for actual play. They don't get all the rules right all the time, but they're solid enough and often quite listenable. TAZ's first few episodes cover the beginning of the 5e Starter Set adventure before drifting into homebrew territory, so if you want to see how people run/play published material, there you go. Outside of podcasts, the quote in the OP by gradenko_2000 covers the basic mechanics. I think the tier 1 adventures at GenCon have pre-generated characters available for you to use, and DMs/fellow players are often more than willing to help you out with any questions you might have. Best of luck in your adventure(s). I've got a group with five buddies and me all signed up for the tier 2 track, and I can't wait to rock my Warlock again for the first time since last GenCon!
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May 7, 2018 03:37
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Slippery42 posted:Hard to go wrong with either The Adventure Zone or Critical Role for actual play. They don't get all the rules right all the time, but they're solid enough and often quite listenable. TAZ's first few episodes cover the beginning of the 5e Starter Set adventure before drifting into homebrew territory, so if you want to see how people run/play published material, there you go. Outside of podcasts, the quote in the OP by gradenko_2000 covers the basic mechanics. I think the tier 1 adventures at GenCon have pre-generated characters available for you to use, and DMs/fellow players are often more than willing to help you out with any questions you might have. When it comes to rules though, The Adventure Zone basically stops playing anything resembling the rules by episode 5 or so lol.
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May 7, 2018 03:42
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Slippery42 posted:Hard to go wrong with either The Adventure Zone or Critical Role for actual play. That’s actually a very wrong suggestion for learning the mechanics of 5e.
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May 7, 2018 03:45
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kingcom posted:When it comes to rules though, The Adventure Zone basically stops playing anything resembling the rules by episode 5 or so lol. Kaysette posted:That’s actually a very wrong suggestion for learning the mechanics of 5e.
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May 7, 2018 03:52
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Elysiume posted:Yeah, TAZ is a good listen but hoo boy do they play fast and loose with the rules. Unless the fighter asks to do anything interesting then hooo boy do we need to stick to the rules intensely.
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May 7, 2018 03:57
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So you got me to skip around in episode 1 of TAZ to see whether I should rethink my recommendation. I've heard them cover who their characters are, what they're able to do, what's on the character sheet and what it means, most of the basic mechanics, and it's novices learning to run/play the game asking questions that another self-described novice might ask. Sounds ok to me? I won't dispute that they play fast and loose with the rules, often involving letting spells do things they shouldn't, but I don't remember them changing so much so that it's no longer recognizably 5e (granted, I've only listened through the 11th hour arc). Most of those problems don't really become apparent until they've gained a couple levels. For what someone needs to know for a level 1 game, the first episode or two is fine. For Toshimo, if you want to skip the character description stuff, skip to about 30 minutes in or so, and about 45 minutes for the dice to start rolling.
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May 7, 2018 04:59
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CubeTheory posted:Anyone have good idea for glass cannon enemies in an evil jungle type setting? Looking for less than 100 hp and around 40 damage a round. Yuan Ti of various types?
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May 7, 2018 05:11
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MonsterEnvy posted:Yuan Ti of various types? Yeah, this is probably the correct path. They've never fought them before so I can just attach whatever stats I need to them. Thanks.
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May 7, 2018 06:41
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I don't think a podcast is the answer at all considering the question proposed. Without visuals and with a heavy focus on being funny/entertaining to a general audience, as opposed to numbers focused, none of them are going to serve as a good crunchy mechanics introduction. Add on top of that the fact that everything is going to be theater of the mind and rules-light inherently, again due to the medium. They're kind of the opposite of what one would want for learning the system. Just pick any random youtube video of some jamoke talking through mechanics.
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May 7, 2018 07:02
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Toshimo posted:My buddy and I are gonna do the beginner Adventurer's League stuff at Gencon. Neither of us has really played since 2E. Are there any good youtubes or podcasts or anything for intros to 5E, mechanically? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z3K_mfkfibJrCeClm2kczfOiA0sSuBIwf9ggBJ9b_Is/edit?usp=sharing This is not precisely accurate to the rules, but it is 90% there.
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May 7, 2018 07:08
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Hey, I'm doing a theatre-of-the-mind LMoP on Mondays over Discord if anyone is interested. See my thread here
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May 7, 2018 14:16
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CDW posted:I would like to bitch about something dumb in 5e, at least to me. In keeping with the theme of clue-finding, I also use Investigation checks for determining the loot you were able to recover from the corpse you just murked.
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May 7, 2018 16:10
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What do you guys think of the Immortal Mystic? I am starting a new campaign and one of my players wants to play one, and I am pretty unfamiliar with them. They do fit the tone of my setting, though. This player is the only guy in the group who likes to optimize his characters, and from a little googling it seems that this class may be a little unbalanced already?
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May 7, 2018 21:09
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Don't give it to the minmaxer lol. Mystics can do anything (if not everything) and some of the abilities are definitely poorly tuned.
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May 7, 2018 21:36
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Mystic is good but not game-breakingly so, it's just kinda on par with full casters - better than others in some areas, worse in others. Also nothing about it is more subject to optimization than any other caster class so I am not sure why a 'minmaxer' shouldn't have it unless you're also gonna just ban all casters for that player? Unless you mean gaming short rests or something but that takes DM cooperation
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May 7, 2018 21:50
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EDIT: I guess this was wrong
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May 7, 2018 22:03
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The Dregs posted:What do you guys think of the Immortal Mystic? I am starting a new campaign and one of my players wants to play one, and I am pretty unfamiliar with them. They do fit the tone of my setting, though. This player is the only guy in the group who likes to optimize his characters, and from a little googling it seems that this class may be a little unbalanced already? Forcing the DM to read a 30-page booklet on a badly written class is for assholes.
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May 7, 2018 22:48
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Conspiratiorist posted:Forcing the DM to read a 30-page booklet on a badly written class is for assholes. Are there DMs that don't love reading stuff like this?
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May 7, 2018 23:15
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Me.
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May 7, 2018 23:40
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CubeTheory posted:Are there DMs that don't love reading stuff like this? Its the mechanical version of shoving a loose leaf 300 page character backstory in my face and insisting that I work it into the setting.
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May 7, 2018 23:48
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I’m just tooooooooooooooooooooo lazy
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May 8, 2018 01:05
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Gimme a deck, 5 slides max, not too much text.
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May 8, 2018 01:06
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CubeTheory posted:Are there DMs that don't love reading stuff like this? Yo.
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May 8, 2018 01:15
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Both me and my current DM would hate that. Sell it in an elevator pitch, have answers for spot questions, and be ready to provide the documentation when we are ready for it or don't waste our time.
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May 8, 2018 01:19
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blastron posted:I run Perception as trying to find something that is hiding, whereas Investigation is trying to find something that is hidden. I’ve always used Perception to detect a hidden thing, and Investigation to search a known thing. Perception lets you discover the raised tile, Investigate tells you it’s a trap trigger. Perception lets you find the seams and detect the secret door, Investigate is how you find the hidden keyhole. As other people have said there’s a lot of overlap and “but what about this specific instance?” but at least it gives a reason for both to exist.
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May 8, 2018 01:20
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