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MonsterEnvy posted:Your forgetting the other way. They can cure it easily, but not on the spot. kingcom posted:Okay so heres the second problem that is the classic dnd death problem. If it's not permanent and instead just 'you need to find a specific resource/ability to clear it' you run into a new problem. Either its easy to clear (either because you have or its a spell one of your players has and can just wave their hand or spend a minor resource to do so) OR its not easy to clear and the party has to decide whether they derail the adventure to go get this thing cleared and resolved before they continue. If they keep pressing on it can be interesting but you're basically setting up a big giant flag to derail the pacing of the plot. 2/3 different resolutions either don't matter or require you to carefully manage when things like this happen or you kill any momentum your game might have. This is usually a sign of bad design. So heres the thing, your group may avoid this but virtually every group I've ever played with will make the opposite call to the one your group made. This is because they dont want someone being unable to participate or heavily restricted AND they don't want to die. Like I said, you've introduced a scenario where unless there is reliably going to be something to push the players forward despite the problem, the optimal choice is to leave and fix it and come back later. MonsterEnvy posted:The most boring option I can think of which my players would pretty much never choose, would be to leave the dungeon for a couple of days to fully restore and refresh everything. But even that can be used in an interesting way as events can happen in the dungeon or plot while they are gone. Like I've said, you've introduced an option that actively rewards the boring option. This is bad design, for mechanics that permanently impair you characters ability to perform, you have to provide some kind of incentive to keep going despite this problem. kingcom fucked around with this message at 07:09 on May 17, 2018 |
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May 17, 2018 07:05
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kingcom posted:Permanent damage can be good but it's usually a bad idea to do permanent drain to health because that tends to happen to the character who most need health to do their jobs and results in a death spiral. That low health will cause that character who is up front to be more likely to die later because of that low health. It means they fundamentally lose the ability to fulfill their role and since D&D usually pigeonholes people it, removing a critical resources like health can be devastating to certain classes. So regarding this and the death thing, I agree that the dnd death problem is kind of a bummer. Death really doesn't seem to add tension in most cases. You could solve it directly by just not having resurrection in your setting, with all that entails, but high 5e characters are a bear to build so it's on the DM to ensure deaths don't happen too often. Permanent ability drain is sort of another way around it. It's a way to indicate that it's time to require someone because they're disabled beyond the point of reasonably adventuring any more. That is distinctly narratively different from straight-up killing someone and has it's own distinct feeling for the player, for better or worse. That's sort of the idea I was going for, not necessarily using HP in particular to do it. I read about Pendragon recently and it plays out over the course of years and your characters age and their stats go down and you play a whole family line over the course of a campaign. That certainly isn't d&d but it's something. (Does 5e have monsters that age you?)
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May 17, 2018 07:14
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CeallaSo posted:Moonveil Manor stuff Sounds like a neat twist on the old classic. I haven't looked at more than the DMs Guild page, but the fact that there's no map included means that I just might nick a few things from that old Clue movie (the one with Tim Curry) when stealing it for my own game. Also quote:eskillator  double also quote:If it's not permanent and instead just 'you need to find a specific resource/ability to clear it' you run into a new problem. Either its easy to clear (either because you have or its a spell one of your players has and can just wave their hand or spend a minor resource to do so) OR its not easy to clear and the party has to decide whether they derail the adventure to go get this thing cleared and resolved before they continue. D&D has always been about resource management pretty much from the days of the little brown books; dunno if you've heard the term "fantasy fuckin' Vietnam", but it was a pretty apt description. Things have changed since those days, but the concept of being prepared for some of the weird poo poo you might run into really hasn't gone away, not entirely. Even then, as you mention there's the narrative for the party to worry about. Do they have enough time to stop the BBEG from completing the ritual to take over the world, or can they spare the time to return to the local cleric in town to bring their friend back to life? You see that as a problem, I see that as plothooks. Like, what if the party does press on, leaving their fallen friends to the afterlife? Maybe the BBEG's ritual involves stopping spirits from truly passing on, and now they can fight alongside their living compatriots (like the Teron Gorefiend fight in the Black Temple raid, to steal from World of Warcraft). Especially as characters reach higher and higher levels, there's so many more resources available to them that actually challenging a high-level party with even a small amount of foresight and preparation is difficult. quote:So heres the thing, your group may avoid this but virtually every group I've ever played with will make the opposite call to the one your group made. This is because they dont want someone being unable to participate or heavily restricted AND they don't want to die. Like I said, you've introduced a scenario where unless there is reliably going to be something to push the players forward despite the problem, the optimal choice is to leave and fix it and come back later. That right there, that's the sign of a good DM and an immersive world, in my eyes. Not everything can be just leisurely strolled through, have the party running on the 15-minute adventuring day and holing up the rest of the time in Leomund's Tiny Hut, and have nothing going on in the background. There should always be stuff going on, even if the players choose not to actively engage with those particular plothooks at that point in time. Not saying everything needs to be horrendously worldshaking every single time, but even something as small as the local merchants can't really restock you as well because their shipments have been getting attacked, or there's a local holiday celebrating the town's hero and people are out enjoying themselves when the party returns, or there's been threats of war in the east and any ablebodied men and any workable iron is to be shipped out to the border just in case. Always have plothooks available, and always have timetables in the back of your mind in case the players don't interact with any particular hook for things to work themselves out, as such things do. Aniodia fucked around with this message at 07:26 on May 17, 2018 |
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May 17, 2018 07:16
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:(Does 5e have monsters that age you?)
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May 17, 2018 07:18
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Okay there's my setting, for some reason no ghosts have passed on in hundreds of years but anyone they "touch" quickly ages. They find employment all over and are generally paid well but also are often perpetually sad because they cannot touch or interact with anything and they incidentally hurt living people they love by aging them.
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May 17, 2018 07:22
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you find yourself covered in a swarm of time ants, each of their hundreds of jolting bites shivers your spine and ages you by 10 minutes
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May 17, 2018 07:26
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"time ants" is an incredibly evocative term.
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May 17, 2018 07:36
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Aniodia posted:You see that as a problem, I see that as plothooks. Like, what if the party does press on, leaving their fallen friends to the afterlife? Maybe the BBEG's ritual involves stopping spirits from truly passing on, and now they can fight alongside their living compatriots (like the Teron Gorefiend fight in the Black Temple raid, to steal from World of Warcraft). Especially as characters reach higher and higher levels, there's so many more resources available to them that actually challenging a high-level party with even a small amount of foresight and preparation is difficult. This is directed at me right? Okay lets break this down a lot. You don't seem to be understanding what i'm talking about. The question of 'do we press on or do we pull back' is a good one but D&D handles that question quite poorly in a lot of ways that make it far less interesting that don't actually consider a bunch of people all sitting around the table wanting to play. If you have someone who dies before the BBEG and the party decides to push on, then you have the big climax with someone sitting on their phone unable to play. So then you need to think as the GM what you are going to do about that. Yeah you can pull something out of your rear end and allow the player to participate but if you do that too often then your players realise death doesn't matter really. This is what I was trying to get across with permanent health damage like that. You are apply an effect that can potentially just remove a player from properly participating in a fight since HP is absolutely something that can determine Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Permanent ability drain is sort of another way around it. It's a way to indicate that it's time to require someone because they're disabled beyond the point of reasonably adventuring any more. That is distinctly narratively different from straight-up killing someone and has it's own distinct feeling for the player, for better or worse. That's sort of the idea I was going for, not necessarily using HP in particular to do it. There are many different ways to deal with long term penalties that are actually real interesting. You're essentially trying to make it fun for your players to get kicked in the butt, so you need to design with that in consideration: FATE is the classic example and lets you have a FATE point to someone if they accept the GM doing something bad to them, these are points that let you take control of the story later on so you're trading loss of control now for loss of control later. It lets you build high points and low points for your character as the game progresses. The result is that if I kick you in the butt now, you get to kick me in the butt later. Something like this could work extremely well in D&D I think but inspiration is a little too restrictive for handling something like death and theres no way to pay it out on the scale of 'death' You can do the FFG Star Wars method where when you go down you are dealt a critical injury that applies a smaller penalty. There is a potential for you to die from these but they require multiple critical injuries to stack up and kill you and essentially are a slow build up to death. Instead of one big kick in the butt, you get several small kicks up your leg so you can see the butt kick coming and brace for it, avoid it or push your luck. This allows you to ramp up the tension over time until you reach a crescendo. You have the Modiphius system's approach where instead of getting kicked in the butt, you are instead playing a constant back and forth game with the GM trading chips that represent small kicks to butts here and there that you can stockpile when things are going well and spend when things are going bad OR give the GM chances to kick you in return for kicking the GM a little bit now. This gives you a very swingy back and forth game. EDIT: To point out how to do permanent effects interestingly without having someone sit out or sit out in all but name you get them something to trade up. A real good mechanic for murder hobo D&D is 'you gotta kill to keep living'. You're character has died but through will/divine intervention/obsession/etc you alive until you prove you shouldn't be. If you stop you're dead dead but if you manage to keep going to kill the villain you get to keep his lifespan instead. Or set up inspiration as a more powerful mechanic that you can trade to avoid permanent death such that raising the dead wont help you. Or if you want to play up a setting with gods actively running around and bringing people back, turn death into a reputation system where dying is about how highly or lowly your god respects you and you trying to make sure you stay in their favour or maybe even jumping ship, make it a resource they are spending to come back in play or alternatively a they could have spent those 'my god loves me' points to give them an edge in combat, getting extra actions, a boon of some kind, etc. If you want to implement non-death permanent effects, make them sap up something other than their core gameplay resource, have them take away a character's memory or have a demon like the one that spawned this be so evil it actively makes others think less of you just be being in it's presence, turning previously friendly npcs into npcs that distrust them. This can be really interesting if you let the GM pick an NPC who now distrusts them but you let the Player pick an NPC who was a villain now actively think better of them because of this infernal aura. This makes the player have some influence over their punishment. kingcom fucked around with this message at 08:15 on May 17, 2018 |
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May 17, 2018 07:51
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Aniodia posted:You see that as a problem, I see that as plothooks. Like, what if the party does press on, leaving their fallen friends to the afterlife? Maybe the BBEG's ritual involves stopping spirits from truly passing on, and now they can fight alongside their living compatriots The only lasting mechanical penalty in D&D is death. Fudging with HP doesn't change that, because HP only matters when you run out, because that makes you dead. Ability drain doesn't work (post ad&d) because skill rolls are just as all or nothing as HP. They do nothing because you succeeded anyway, or they're catastrophic because you fail utterly. This all or nothing (or all or half, for spells) mindset is baked into every part of D&Ds mechanics. And there's nothing wrong with that, as long as the rest of the game acknowledges that and is designed accordingly. D&D however has character death as the only long-term mechanical penalty, no "what to do while your character is dead" mechanics, and a time-intensive character creation process. Put all these together and you have the situation where actually following through with the only in-system stick comes with the in-system prompts of "I dunno, you figure it out", defaulting to "Dave plays with bus phone for an hour".
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May 17, 2018 09:05
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I always enjoyed this little bugger from the eponymous fourthcore adventure but it's very much a final battle - see the nether damage type. 
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May 17, 2018 09:40
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Chain Blightening is the best name
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May 17, 2018 10:11
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I was in a one shot last night on Roll20 in a Homebrew world. The DM begins by saying, "I have spent all day tweaking this dungeon to get it right, I can't wait". I roll up a Battle Master, we begin at level 3. The other characters are a Bard, a Warlock, and a Rogue. We get a mysterious letter, follow a guy into his home, and he has what appears to be statues actually be crossbow men and draw bead on us. My Lawful Good Fighter tries to parley with him and talk him down, but our Warlock makes a move for the door and so the DM calls for Initiative. I had a pretty good combat, killing one with Riposte and another with a Precision Strike. It was fun. Warlock goes down, but the Bard does a Healing Word on her. So now the DM reveals that the house we are in actually extends into a dungeon, and the door behind us locks ominously. I start to proceed down the corridor he's prepared with the dynamic lighting and catch sight of what appears to be an ooze. Meanwhile, the Warlock is at the door we came in. First trying to bash it. Then use Presti to make a lever or something to open it. DM says no. Warlock tries to see if she can slide a note under the door. Nope. Finally says she is using her Familiar owl to go find a guard. Cue 20 minutes of arguing about the semantics of it, and the PHB mentioning how thick a wall has to be in order to use this ability through it, etc. No help comes. DM asks how long the Warlock wants to wait. So we end up waiting in the starting room of a dungeon for 2 hours (real time) until the guards save us from the adventure. Session closed. My Fighter spent the session braiding the Bard's hair. We could barely get in a word over the Warlock and DM incessantly going back and forth trying to compromise, RAW vs. RAI, the extents of this spell and what should happen vs. the DM's expectations. When the DM described the results of the Warlock's intentions, the Warlock replied to most everything with "I wouldn't have done it like this, I would've did this". I snarkily say, "we have successfully avoided the one shot!", and the warlock says back, "i have successfully roleplayed my character!"... but you knew you were playing a one-shot. A character that isn't an adventurer is a bad character in D&D, in my opinion. The reluctant hero bit is good and fun, but eventually needs to rise to action. Pretty sure it was metagaming just to be contrarian to the DM making a comment about tweaking a dungeon. I like to think I follow plot hooks pretty well, and find it infuriating when players pound on a clearly dead end. There's an invisible wall there. We have 3 hours tonight. Let's roll some dice and kill things. Find a way for your character to justify being in a loving adventure or don't play. Firstborn fucked around with this message at 13:22 on May 17, 2018 |
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May 17, 2018 13:17
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Firstborn posted:I was in a one shot last night on Roll20 in a Homebrew world. The DM begins by saying, "I have spent all day tweaking this dungeon to get it right, I can't wait". I roll up a Battle Master, we begin at level 3. The other characters are a Bard, a Warlock, and a Rogue. We get a mysterious letter, follow a guy into his home, and he has what appears to be statues actually be crossbow men and draw bead on us. My Lawful Good Fighter tries to parley with him and talk him down, but our Warlock makes a move for the door and so the DM calls for Initiative. I had a pretty good combat, killing one with Riposte and another with a Precision Strike. It was fun. Warlock goes down, but the Bard does a Healing Word on her. Holy poo poo. What was happening during those two hours?
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May 17, 2018 13:22
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Firstborn posted:I was in a one shot last night on Roll20 in a Homebrew world. The DM begins by saying, "I have spent all day tweaking this dungeon to get it right, I can't wait". I roll up a Battle Master, we begin at level 3. The other characters are a Bard, a Warlock, and a Rogue. We get a mysterious letter, follow a guy into his home, and he has what appears to be statues actually be crossbow men and draw bead on us. My Lawful Good Fighter tries to parley with him and talk him down, but our Warlock makes a move for the door and so the DM calls for Initiative. I had a pretty good combat, killing one with Riposte and another with a Precision Strike. It was fun. Warlock goes down, but the Bard does a Healing Word on her. Why would you play a character that completely avoids adventures in a game about going in adventures? I think the DM should have created some sort of sense of urgency monster or thing to push you guys in as well.
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May 17, 2018 13:26
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Are there any fun monsters or monster abilities that would be usable as a boss fight for a level four party? It's a human using twisted magic and it's very plot-relevant so I want it to be memorable, but the Black Spider fight was kind of underwhelming to them so I don't want to just give him a spell list.
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May 17, 2018 13:34
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Firstborn posted:I snarkily say, "we have successfully avoided the one shot!", and the warlock says back, "i have successfully roleplayed my character!" It gets discussed all the time that "It's what my character would do." is not an excuse to be an rear end in a top hat. Should have just left them at the door they care about so much and explored the dungeon without him.
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May 17, 2018 13:43
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SettingSun posted:It gets discussed all the time that "It's what my character would do." is not an excuse to be an rear end in a top hat. Should have just left them at the door they care about so much and explored the dungeon without him. Yeah exactly. It's amazing how often people let one blowhard get their way instead of saying "have fun doing that we'll see you later" As to the HP drain thing, it's not really different than any other resource management issue. I actually had a character once who had something similar happen, and instead of staying at the front line, well wow it was someone else's turn. How is it really any different than burning out the party's healing spells and saying do you want to sit here doing nothing or press ahead? D&D has always been about how casters, especially once tjeyre at mid level, can win any encounter they know the details of. The only way to ever put pressure on parties is with time being an issue. Hell, this just came up in our homebrew- the DM wants to expand critical effect ranges. Right now we play with them and they range the gamut and are pretty interesting, but since monsters can do them too it's a serious concern. I raised the issue of feeling like he was punishing players for wanting to fight monsters, since if someone gets a broken foot it means we're forced to rest or travel slowly, through no fault but a bad roll. His response was that he didn't want adventurers to just blindly attack everything and that this was yet another trade-off. I don't agree because at some point there has to be a line of having fun in a game, but it's a good example.
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May 17, 2018 14:03
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SettingSun posted:It gets discussed all the time that "It's what my character would do." is not an excuse to be an rear end in a top hat. Should have just left them at the door they care about so much and explored the dungeon without him.
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May 17, 2018 14:07
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Look at this thing. Look at that block the path ability. Why can't PC fighters have that? Everything PCs get is half assed or stripped down like that PC minotaur that has to move its full goddamned movement to use its charge ability unlike every 10ft charge ability since the beginning of time.
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May 17, 2018 17:08
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Cat Face Joe posted:Look at this thing. Look at that block the path ability. Why can't PC fighters have that? Everything PCs get is half assed or stripped down like that PC minotaur that has to move its full goddamned movement to use its charge ability unlike every 10ft charge ability since the beginning of time. well you see Ogres are magical creatures and ...
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May 17, 2018 17:20
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Has anyone tried having a setting where people have x number of lives? Maybe that would make death meaningful without losing characters to one off bullshit rng.
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May 17, 2018 18:36
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It's called Paranoia and it's a very good game!
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May 17, 2018 18:49
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Hrm, whatcha all think is the best time to take a two level rogue dip as a warlock?
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May 17, 2018 19:27
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CubeTheory posted:Hrm, whatcha all think is the best time to take a two level rogue dip as a warlock? Sort of a broad question, isn't it? What are you trying to do with your warlock (other than, presumably, be a sneaky lad)? As a general rule I avoid multiclassing prior to 5th, because there's such a huge jump in power at that level that delaying it isn't going to do you any favors. Depending on your patron, you might want to wait until 6th before taking the dip. But that's about as much as I can say without knowing more about what it is you're trying to accomplish.
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May 17, 2018 19:42
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CeallaSo posted:Sort of a broad question, isn't it? What are you trying to do with your warlock (other than, presumably, be a sneaky lad)? As a general rule I avoid multiclassing prior to 5th, because there's such a huge jump in power at that level that delaying it isn't going to do you any favors. Depending on your patron, you might want to wait until 6th before taking the dip. But that's about as much as I can say without knowing more about what it is you're trying to accomplish. I'm a melee focused blade pact Fiend Warlock at level 3 that leans pretty heavily on Shadow Blade or abusing Darkness/Devil's Sight. I'm definitely going to 5 first, thinking about dipping after that.
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May 17, 2018 20:03
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Cat Face Joe posted:Look at this thing. Look at that block the path ability. Why can't PC fighters have that? Everything PCs get is half assed or stripped down like that PC minotaur that has to move its full goddamned movement to use its charge ability unlike every 10ft charge ability since the beginning of time. It's a good ability and I would not mind introducing it to tank based fighters or maybe as a feat focused on defensive players. I would strip it down slightly at first. Maybe not having the full 3d10 at first. But I would have it go up as they level.
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May 17, 2018 20:06
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Start at 3d10, have it go up as they level. It shouldn't be any issue, it'd be rad to be like "look at this ogre chump, only has 3d10", and I wouldn't worry at imbalance because no one cares about the math anyway.
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May 17, 2018 20:27
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MonsterEnvy posted:It's a good ability and I would not mind introducing it to tank based fighters or maybe as a feat focused on defensive players.
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May 17, 2018 20:32
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Splicer posted:-2 Strength is a pretty hefty penalty. Just give it to Fighters as one of three or four Stances they can take on top of the existing Fighter stuff. Whoah, whoah, whoah — Let’s not add weaboo fightan magic to our game! Seriously, though — Why aren’t stances a limited resource like Fighters/Wardens/etc. had previously? Defenders being able to Mark is one of the first things I’d houserule into a 5e home game.
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May 17, 2018 22:34
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CubeTheory posted:Hrm, whatcha all think is the best time to take a two level rogue dip as a warlock? Level 1 for the first one to get all the proficiencies and level 24 the second one because why do you need it? 😛
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May 17, 2018 22:57
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mango sentinel posted:Level 1 for the first one to get all the proficiencies and level 24 the second one because why do you need it? 😛 Cunning Action
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May 17, 2018 23:13
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mastershakeman posted:Hell, this just came up in our homebrew- the DM wants to expand critical effect ranges. Right now we play with them and they range the gamut and are pretty interesting, but since monsters can do them too it's a serious concern. I raised the issue of feeling like he was punishing players for wanting to fight monsters, since if someone gets a broken foot it means we're forced to rest or travel slowly, through no fault but a bad roll. His response was that he didn't want adventurers to just blindly attack everything and that this was yet another trade-off. I don't agree because at some point there has to be a line of having fun in a game, but it's a good example.
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May 17, 2018 23:46
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ImpactVector posted:I know this is your GM and not you, but critical injuries or fumbles are really dangerous things to play with, because they'll affect the players a lot more often and more severely than some monsters who have the game lifespan of half of a single fight. Especially when the players are often outnumbered both in bodies and d20s rolled. Stuff like this works well in games like Call of Cthulhu because the PCs might only have a lifespan of 3 sessions. In D&D it seems sort of counter to the overall themes.
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May 17, 2018 23:48
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I just treat critical misses as the characters turning 30 degrees and firing directly into a wall like XCOM soldiers
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May 17, 2018 23:50
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BetterWeirdthanDead posted:Whoah, whoah, whoah — Let’s not add weaboo fightan magic to our game! Marking is a rule in the DMG. But it's pretty simple and I don't know if it works the same as in 4e. DMG posted:Mark
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May 17, 2018 23:54
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ImpactVector posted:I know this is your GM and not you, but critical injuries or fumbles are really dangerous things to play with, because they'll affect the players a lot more often and more severely than some monsters who have the game lifespan of half of a single fight. Especially when the players are often outnumbered both in bodies and d20s rolled. yeah I made that exact argument to him. then again last game I had a character get by with one arm for like 8 playing sessions until we finally could regenerate it and it was pretty cool.
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May 17, 2018 23:58
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A level 20 fighter will crit fail one in five attack actions (on average, if they full attack each time). If they have a penalty at all (other than "you miss your target, no ifs ands or buts"), it needs to be way, way rarer than just rolling a 1. High level characters roll more attacks, getting more 1s, and it's ridiculous to have critical fumbles get more likely at high levels.
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May 17, 2018 23:59
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MonsterEnvy posted:Marking is a rule in the DMG. But it's pretty simple and I don't know if it works the same as in 4e. this absolutely doesn't resemble anything like what 4e marking is or is supposed to accomplish
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May 18, 2018 00:00
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I avoid crit fails entirely, outside of a single player who has a lucky ring. The ring is a d4 that is rolled as a modifier to the d20, on a 4 it gives +1 and on double 1 it is a crit fail.
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May 18, 2018 00:16
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On that same fighter that would still make them get a crit fail every ~20 rounds so hopefully it's not too bad of a crit fail. It's less of an issue on characters with fewer attacks per turn certainly.
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May 18, 2018 00:40
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