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GrumpyGoesWest posted:We used an hour glass. I put on the table at first and then after a few sessions I put it behind my screen. Now we don't need one at all. In a party of four it generally takes about less than a minute for all players. I don't allow table talk either though. I'll describe player hp like I do monsters so no one asks others about hp or ac or ki or whatever. I loving loathe DMs who want to be cute about hiding the raw combat numbers on enemies, and compartmentalize player information.
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Jun 26, 2018 01:02
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Conspiratiorist posted:I loving loathe DMs who want to be cute about hiding the raw combat numbers on enemies, and compartmentalize player information. I mean most of our time was spent asking about resources and it really slowed us down. I'll tell my players your halfway there (on hp) or you hit exactly (on ac) and at this point we all know what each other's ac and health is. They even glance at each other's sheets which is fine. Plus one of our dudes researches monsters in downtime so he has his own little MM. They love it. If they didn't I wouldn't do it.
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Jun 26, 2018 01:08
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So our group of 6 level 7s killed an ancient blue dracolich last night. Our monk probably rolled around 10 nat 20s, one of them a deathsave, so he got to stand up and continue with the flurry of blows. Ancestral Guardian barb is probably the most team supporting build out there halving everyones damage they were receiving. Myself, the bard, was bringing people back up with ranged healing word after the barb, paladin, monk, and warlock were down. Our dm wasn't expecting us to do win, so he didnt figure he needed lair actions, lol.
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Jun 26, 2018 01:12
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GrumpyGoesWest posted:I'll describe player hp like I do monsters so no one asks others about hp or ac or ki or whatever. "who is hurt from the last fight?" "I'm about fourty one seventy fifths healthy, if you're estimating on a numeric scale"
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Jun 26, 2018 01:22
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inthesto posted:Has anyone ever experimented with having a co-DM whose primary role is to play the NPCs? It's really atypical, but there's a few podcasts that do it really well, and it solves the issue of "DM has to talk to themself in two distinct voices" that's annoying as hell when it comes up. I had a gm give a player the responsibility of acting out a npc when they’re off scene. It’s great if players are good at improv and would be on board with it, although you can’t use it if you have big plans for the character. I can’t imagine enjoying the role of sometime occasional gm, it might work for a dressed-up narrative thing like most podcasts but it’s not a fit for the table. I recommend abstracting the conversation like you would with any other npc vs npc thing. If it doesn’t have a player involved it’s not important enough to get details.
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Jun 26, 2018 01:35
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Our group got a new player and I nearly killed him beyond the reach of anything but like True Resurrection and Wish that same day. We were in a big brawl that had an unusual magical artifact that had got knocked off kilter and was getting rapidly unstable. The description was clear enough that we all basically understand "this thing is at risk of exploding." But the DM's concept of "explode" and my concept of "explode" were very different and after punting an arcana check about whether this was gonna go up on its own or needed us to keep damaging it, I decided to keep damaging it and hucked a Firebolt its way. 8 damage. When the gravity of the situation is made more clear, we start hauling rear end and rather than move/dash, I get cute and move and use Minor Conjuration to cover my back with a sheet of lead. DM decides this isn't effective and the difference in movement is just enough that it one-shots me to unconscious. Everything in the immediate vicinity of the artifact is just magically irradiated slag now. That's when I learn that when I chucked that Firebolt for 8, it had 9 hp left. If it had gone off, there would be no body to recover for our new guy.
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Jun 26, 2018 01:47
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NeurosisHead posted:"who is hurt from the last fight?" Haha. Hey if my wizard replies with that cool.
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Jun 26, 2018 01:57
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Trent Squawkbox posted:Anybody try to run the Variant Initiative rules? Specifically the, each turn, declare action, get modifiers based on how fast/slow action is, then roll, rules. It's not great. The "speed factor" part doesn't really work. You're not going to change weapons or cast different spells to get a small boost to initiative. The randomness of a d20 will swamp out the speed factor on any single round where going first might be desirable. In my experience, it doesn't generate "realism" or "immersion" either. It's just extra busywork tracking modifiers. Not the worst, but not worth it. Rerolling initiative each round achieves what it's trying to do. It introduces strategic uncertainty from round to round, making it tougher to coordinate party actions based on predictability of the initiative order. Some people will like that, and some people will hate it. I can see pros and cons. Declaring your action at the top of each round, and losing your action if you don't actually take that action, is real bad. In theory, this is the "stick" used to motivate faster resolution of combat. Everyone picks their action simultaneously, so there's no excuse for dawdling on your turn. Here's the problem: It promotes choosing safe and reliable actions. Losing your action sucks. When you have to declare before rolling initiative each round, you can't know how the field will look on your turn. You'll quickly figure out that it's better to avoid choosing actions/spells which might no longer be valid by the time your turn comes up. Instead, you'll favor actions/spells which will be usable regardless of the action on intervening turns. It also eliminates creative responses to those changing conditions; even if you've got a brilliant new idea because X or Y happened, you can't do it because you already declared your action. The speed of resolving combat is... a wash, at best? Individual turns move a bit faster. But the added "declare actions and roll initiative" stage to each round consumes enough time to balance out. It might be faster if you've got a whole bunch of indecisive casters, each taking 5 minutes per turn, since they can all go into the tank at the same time. But there's better ways to solve that problem. EDIT: It's great illustration that a whole lot of garbage house rules/variants/homebrew comes out of an impulse toward "realism" or "simulationism," rather than a concern for how those house rules/variants/homebrew will actually interact with the rest of the game and with player behavior. escalator dropdown fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Jun 26, 2018 |
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Jun 26, 2018 02:23
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GrumpyGoesWest posted:We used an hour glass. I put on the table at first and then after a few sessions I put it behind my screen. Now we don't need one at all. In a party of four it generally takes about less than a minute for all players. I don't allow table talk either though. I'll describe player hp like I do monsters so no one asks others about hp or ac or ki or whatever. Why do you disallow table talk? Also i don't see the point of the variant initiative rule when you're still doing turn based movement and spells don't get interrupted and all that. They threw out the baby with the bathwater and are now trying to get the water back in without remembering the baby
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Jun 26, 2018 02:44
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mastershakeman posted:Why do you disallow table talk? We're here to play, not gossip like schoolchildren!
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Jun 26, 2018 05:19
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escalator dropdown posted:Declaring your action at the top of each round, and losing your action if you don't actually take that action, is real bad. In theory, this is the "stick" used to motivate faster resolution of combat. Everyone picks their action simultaneously, so there's no excuse for dawdling on your turn. Here's the problem: It promotes choosing safe and reliable actions. Losing your action sucks. When you have to declare before rolling initiative each round, you can't know how the field will look on your turn. You'll quickly figure out that it's better to avoid choosing actions/spells which might no longer be valid by the time your turn comes up. Instead, you'll favor actions/spells which will be usable regardless of the action on intervening turns. It also eliminates creative responses to those changing conditions; even if you've got a brilliant new idea because X or Y happened, you can't do it because you already declared your action. To be fair, the whole concept of declaring your action at the start of the round, before rolling initiative, isn't a new thing. In fact, as far as I can tell it's been around since at least 1983, when it shows up as part of the combat order in the Mentzer Basic DM's Guide (p. 3). I've seen spins on that as well, mostly ways to have the better initiatives get a read as to what the characters with the worse initiatives are doing and are able to react accordingly. I'll give you that it doesn't really help the speed of combat too much, which is one of D&D's major pitfalls, but I'll disagree with the discouraging of creative responses. If anything, players would end up being more creative, because they know they can't react instantly to the changing tide of combat, and need to plan ahead for what might happen. Restrictions breed creativity, and having to respond to things one turn at a time, instead of being able to interrupt an enemy's turn at a moment's notice, is a pretty decent restriction that some players will thrive under, while others won't. It's definitely not for every group, but it's not something that's without precedent.
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Jun 26, 2018 06:00
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Mr. Humalong posted:We're here to play, not gossip like schoolchildren! Ugh, people wanting to talk to their friends instead of roll dice, assholes.
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Jun 26, 2018 06:01
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Mendrian posted:There needs to be a sidebar in thr DMG that says, "when a player does something straightforward with a class feature, and it feels crazy, step away from the table and think really hard before trying to 'fix' it.' There's definitely a certain bad mentality at play when a player does A Thing with a class ability that's specifically designed to let them do it, and a DM's first instinct is to not let them do it. inthesto posted:Has anyone ever experimented with having a co-DM whose primary role is to play the NPCs? It's really atypical, but there's a few podcasts that do it really well, and it solves the issue of "DM has to talk to themself in two distinct voices" that's annoying as hell when it comes up. Alternatively, if ever you're in a position where two NPCs have to talk to each other, don't do it. Summarize their interaction, jump immediately to the results, and only ever focus on interactions between yourself and the players. Elysiume posted:Someone on their first session of basically any game probably shouldn't be trying to house rule much of anything, honestly. Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:*first attack of the starter adventure involves a goblin attacking a surprised party member with advantage, killing them in one hit* The response to "a newbie DM shouldn't houserule a game until they really know what they're doing" isn't to bring up the shittiness of level 1 as an excuse to actually jump into houseruling right off the bat, it's to point out the game is badly designed because people die in one hit if you try to run it by-the-book.
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Jun 26, 2018 06:45
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gradenko_2000 posted:The response to "a newbie DM shouldn't houserule a game until they really know what they're doing" isn't to bring up the shittiness of level 1 as an excuse to actually jump into houseruling right off the bat, it's to point out the game is badly designed because people die in one hit if you try to run it by-the-book. Enemies using the dodge action, for example. Yes, they can technically do this. It makes sense for a near dead enemy to try it at least once if they want to run away from the party. But it just makes your players with a ranged weapon feel like they are wasting their time if an entire pack of wild dogs is spamming dodge on approach until they reach melee/caster cantrips that ignore dodge range 
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Jun 26, 2018 06:55
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Section Z posted:an entire pack of wild dogs is spamming dodge on approach until they reach melee/caster cantrips that ignore dodge range mastershakeman posted:They threw out the baby with the bathwater and are now trying to get the water back in without remembering the baby GrumpyGoesWest posted:We used an hour glass. I put on the table at first and then after a few sessions I put it behind my screen. Now we don't need one at all. In a party of four it generally takes about less than a minute for all players. I don't allow table talk either though. I'll describe player hp like I do monsters so no one asks others about hp or ac or ki or whatever.
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Jun 26, 2018 07:38
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Toshimo posted:Just to be clear, you do know that flyby (and the Help action in general) only apply to the first attack roll of the turn, so it doesn't matter if someone has multiple attacks or is dual-wielding? Yes, I mentioned in my first post on the subject that it was on the first attack roll from anyone on that target, and ultimately why i dont really think its a huge deal. DKWildz fucked around with this message at 08:01 on Jun 26, 2018 |
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Jun 26, 2018 07:46
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Jun 26, 2018 15:10
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gradenko_2000 posted:The response to "a newbie DM shouldn't houserule a game until they really know what they're doing" isn't to bring up the shittiness of level 1 as an excuse to actually jump into houseruling right off the bat, it's to point out the game is badly designed because people die in one hit if you try to run it by-the-book.
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Jun 26, 2018 15:22
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mastershakeman posted:Why do you disallow table talk? Ultimately it led to slower play time in combat. Outside combat or in town it's a little different. Our combat encounters we're taking so long at the beginning so as a group we decided to take a more rp or instinctual approach. So instead of a player saying I'm only down to 4 hp. He now says towards a healer he's beaten up really bad, heal me or something to that effect. This approach works well for my group and they enjoy it quite a bit.
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Jun 26, 2018 15:33
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I'm going to add flasks of oil to the list of examples of stuff that just doesn't make sense due to ~natural language~
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Jun 26, 2018 19:16
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Trent Squawkbox posted:Anybody try to run the Variant Initiative rules? Specifically the, each turn, declare action, get modifiers based on how fast/slow action is, then roll, rules. If you're looking for switching up the initiative system, you may want to check out SotDL's fast turn/slow turn system: at the start of a round, all combatants choose whether they're taking a fast or slow turn. From there, the turn order goes: 1. All fast turn players in any order they like 2. All fast turn enemies in any order they like 3. All slow turn players in any order they like 4. All slow turn enemies in any order they like If you take a fast turn you can either move or take an action. If you take a slow turn you can do both. It speeds up combat pretty significantly compared to a traditional initiative order and makes it easier for player characters to work together, since they can choose to take their turns back to back.
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Jun 26, 2018 19:58
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Cool idea but you still need to evaluate the tactical advantage of taking a fast or slow turn.
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Jun 26, 2018 20:03
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Jimmeeee posted:If you're looking for switching up the initiative system, you may want to check out SotDL's fast turn/slow turn system: at the start of a round, all combatants choose whether they're taking a fast or slow turn. From there, the turn order goes: This is completely broken don't do this
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Jun 26, 2018 20:41
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Matt Colville did an interesting video recently on things he's tried out to speed up combat in other ways. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZe-YKDttGo Long story short, he has the players track how much damage has been done to each creature, and state the new total each time more is added to it, so that he can mention 'bloodied' moments and ultimately tell them that it has fallen when enough has been done. It's all information that the players can already know if they care to track it (just like some players will keep track of the AC of a monster based on various rolls players make until they lock it in), and you're still free to make the health of each one variable and/or add a bit, subtract a bit if you feel it calls for it in the situation. EDIT: I'll mention he does cover a monster having a resistance where you'll add HP to the total HP number that you have based on a hit that triggers resistance, so that the numbers can still work. DKWildz fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Jun 26, 2018 |
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Jun 26, 2018 20:49
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kidkissinger posted:This is completely broken don't do this Seriously.....all casters now also have perfect initiative. All your debuffs and buffs will always be on before the enemy has a chance to do anything. And that is like the smallest way that is broken.
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Jun 26, 2018 21:10
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Madmarker posted:Seriously.....all casters now also have perfect initiative. All your debuffs and buffs will always be on before the enemy has a chance to do anything. And that is like the smallest way that is broken. I don't love the idea of complicating anything more, but just make spellcasting a slow action on its own and your problem is partially solved.
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Jun 26, 2018 21:41
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Madmarker posted:Seriously.....all casters now also have perfect initiative. All your debuffs and buffs will always be on before the enemy has a chance to do anything. And that is like the smallest way that is broken. It's also only if they're not surprised. Jeffrey of YOSPOS fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Jun 26, 2018 |
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Jun 26, 2018 21:44
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Madmarker posted:Seriously.....all casters now also have perfect initiative. All your debuffs and buffs will always be on before the enemy has a chance to do anything. And that is like the smallest way that is broken. While a problem that doesn't exist in SotDL where casters don't have encounter-ending spells, all it means in 5e is that instead of randomly determining if the caster(s) will go first and potentially dominate an encounter, you'll know they'll always go first and can balance all encounters accordingly.
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Jun 26, 2018 22:16
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If I was trying to run a charlatan bard that is basically zapp brannigan what would I need besides high charisma and low wisdom?
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Jun 26, 2018 23:50
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RC Cola posted:If I was trying to run a charlatan bard that is basically zapp brannigan what would I need besides high charisma and low wisdom? Chutzpah
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Jun 27, 2018 00:05
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Real velour
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Jun 27, 2018 00:05
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For your reading pleasure: https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/6369419/details-thread (I hope you can see this without having an account)
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Jun 27, 2018 00:09
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You can't, I had to log in.
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Jun 27, 2018 00:46
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RC Cola posted:If I was trying to run a charlatan bard that is basically zapp brannigan what would I need besides high charisma and low wisdom? Wave after wave of men to throw at your enemies.
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Jun 27, 2018 03:46
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Trojan Kaiju posted:Wave after wave of men to throw at your enemies. Don't worry, the other players will be generating those.
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Jun 27, 2018 03:58
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PHB and Character Builder just dropped on Roll20: https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/bundle/29/players-handbook
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Jun 27, 2018 06:10
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RC Cola posted:If I was trying to run a charlatan bard that is basically zapp brannigan what would I need besides high charisma and low wisdom? A big book of incorrect cheesy pickup lines for when you cast Vicious Mockery: A horse that you ride, but the horse doesn't walk or run, it rides around on Tensers Floating Disk.
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Jun 27, 2018 06:31
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RC Cola posted:If I was trying to run a charlatan bard that is basically zapp brannigan what would I need besides high charisma and low wisdom? A friend to play an exhausted wizard that keeps doing your job for you while you burn spell slots on trying to impress the ladies.
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Jun 27, 2018 06:37
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One of my players is an arcane trickster rogue who took warlock spells with magic initiate. They've gotten good use out of it and I figured it'd be neat if their usage caught the attention of an actual warlock patron, especially since "fey spirits terrorizing the neighborhood" was a major plot point for a while. They aren't interested in multiclassing (afaik), but I think throwing them an RP bone could be fun. Not sure where to go with a hook like that, though. Traipsing through the Feywild would be a major diversion from what's going on in the campaign. e: posted this here instead of the GM advice thread, whoops. Hobo By Design fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Jun 27, 2018 |
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Jun 27, 2018 09:09
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They're a thief, right? Or presumably a scoundrel, at the very least. Have your patron offer them a job. They need something, perhaps something ancillary to whatever the party's doing anyway, and because they're feeling very generous they'll even let the rogue keep siphoning their powers without asking, which would certainly be a terrible thing to do without asking permission, wouldn't it?
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Jun 27, 2018 09:26
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