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So a discussion came up with my players in ToA and I'm looking for some input: One of the traps (from my story a few days ago) is a giant adamantine fan blocking a corridor. The book says you could destroy it, but only with force damage. What sort of things deal force damage? Spells like Eldritch Blast do but it has been clarified that spells that explicitly target creatures can only target creatures and obviously a fan is not a creature.
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Jul 20, 2018 15:00
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They probably didn't think about that. Just let the players target the fan with spells.
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Jul 20, 2018 15:11
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I did, since it seemed lame that you couldn't. I'm just thinking about other ways that it could be destroyed.
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Jul 20, 2018 15:39
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Jam something metal in there?
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Jul 20, 2018 15:42
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Cast reduce on it, pull it out then walk out with your tens of thousands of gp worth of adamantine
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Jul 20, 2018 15:51
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The adventure is very specific about how this challenge can be overcome. If you shove an immovable rod in there, it'll jam the fan. Any other item will get knocked away or destroyed. If you get close enough to it without it activating, you can body it and prevent it from spinning at all. It takes a combat turn to get up to speed, so you can also dive through it on a DC 20 acrobatics check during that time. Or you can destroy it with force damage. It's that last one that gets me wondering. The designers say that spells that don't say they target objects, can't, and as far as I know only spells deal force damage. A weird conundrum. Piell posted:Cast reduce on it, pull it out then walk out with your tens of thousands of gp worth of adamantine If only. You cannot leave the Tomb the way you came in. Any spell that would translocate you out of it instead deposits you in its trash compactor as a special rule. Acererak is a jerk.
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Jul 20, 2018 15:57
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SettingSun posted:It's that last one that gets me wondering. The designers say that spells that don't say they target objects, can't, and as far as I know only spells deal force damage. A weird conundrum. the answer is that they didn't this through, both in the sense that they're applying that spell targeting rule without realizing how stifling it would be for interacting with the game world (roleplaying!), and in the sense that they probably didn't realize that that rule existed and how it interacted with the spell selection
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Jul 20, 2018 16:00
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True Polymorph the fan into a commoner and hit him with Eldritch Blast
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Jul 20, 2018 16:12
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Toebone posted:True Polymorph the fan into a commoner and hit him with Eldritch Blast No way, I'd hope the party takes it as an NPC and then I make him say stupid fan puns the whole time. "You sure blew that enemy way!"
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Jul 20, 2018 16:26
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Arcane/Bigby's Hand (Wizard, level 5), Disintegrate (Wizard or Sorcerer, level 6), Mordenkainen's Sword (Wizard or Bard, level 7), or, er, Zephyr Strike (Ranger, Level 1).
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Jul 20, 2018 16:56
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mango sentinel posted:Thanks for the input thread! I grabbed A Most Potent Brew and Death House. A brew most potent is probably closer to what I should run but Death House is way cooler even if it's needlessly huge for what it is. I'm running a Strahd Campaign and we started with Death House and it was pretty sweet. If you run it go look up discussion threads on Reddit for it, a lot of people have come up with other various cool/creepy poo poo to do to the PCs as they explore the house. The actual combats are lethal as written though, I gave my PCs a free feat at first level and an extra 10 hp, and changed almost all of the encounters and they still almost died by the end.
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Jul 20, 2018 18:27
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SettingSun posted:it has been clarified that spells that explicitly target creatures can only target creatures Lol what?
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Jul 20, 2018 18:31
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Yeah, in a game with a lot of dumb things, that is seriously a contender for top dumb thing.
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Jul 20, 2018 18:45
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I get it because adjudicating attacks on objects is super-weird - how the hell do I decide if shatter breaks something or not? What HP does a bridge have? The way I've done it are either "yes it breaks the thing congrats" if it's relatively weak, or okay I'll decide on a good faith hit point value in advance, good luck! At the end of the day it kinda just seems like I gotta decide based on nothing. EDIT: Also as a bonus, when you google this issue you get loads of reddit posts talking about, like, how flexible and/or shock absorbing different materials are as if I give a poo poo about anything but how to make the game work??? Okay yes metal will shatter better if it's frozen first, thanks wikipenis!!! Jeffrey of YOSPOS fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Jul 20, 2018 |
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Jul 20, 2018 18:47
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Epi Lepi posted:I'm running a Strahd Campaign and we started with Death House and it was pretty sweet. If you run it go look up discussion threads on Reddit for it, a lot of people have come up with other various cool/creepy poo poo to do to the PCs as they explore the house. The actual combats are lethal as written though, I gave my PCs a free feat at first level and an extra 10 hp, and changed almost all of the encounters and they still almost died by the end. Yeah I was gonna give everyone +con score to base hp and do fixed damage but I've heard it's pretty rough especially the end
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Jul 20, 2018 18:50
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Mendrian posted:Lol what? When it's keeping people from trying to cast charm on doorways and other absurd bullshit, that's fine. That's why we have these things. When you are arguing that your glorified 'shoot it with a magic not arrow' is not allowed to shoot, you've gone off the deep end of strangling yourself to death with semantics. 4th ed, but it had my favorite rules clarifications that I can ever remember off the top of my head though. Of "Oh my god you guys, you have to HIT the enemy do deal your sneak/quarry/pact/etc damage. Holy poo poo". I also got a giggle out of any "Stop shooting yourself in the face with this power to trigger damage effects" rulings.
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Jul 20, 2018 19:08
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You have to let people cast Charm Monster on a normal door otherwise they can try to cast Charm Monster on every door and it'll only go off if the door is a mimic 
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Jul 20, 2018 19:24
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Elysiume posted:You have to let people cast Charm Monster on a normal door otherwise they can try to cast Charm Monster on every door and it'll only go off if the door is a mimic You jest, but this was an actual discussion my players had: "Cast Eldritch Blast on that chest or something. If he lets you then it has to be a mimic." They were a little gunshy after the last chest they ran into turned out to be a mimic.
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Jul 20, 2018 19:28
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The correct answer is that the spell always goes off, it just doesn't work with the wrong target. So if players want to use up their spell slots to no effect, that's fine
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Jul 20, 2018 19:31
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You should absolutely be allowed to cast Charm on a locked door to give advantage to checks on opening that door, imo
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Jul 20, 2018 19:31
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The way to stop your players from doing that is to make every single chest they try it on a mimic for the rest of the campaign
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Jul 20, 2018 19:33
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Ignite Memories posted:The way to stop your players from doing that is to make every single chest they try it on a mimic for the rest of the campaign
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Jul 20, 2018 19:37
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That's when you go the Dark Souls route where sure, you can attack the chest, but if you do enough damage you'll just smash the chest and whatever's inside.
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Jul 20, 2018 19:37
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Elysiume posted:That's when you go the Dark Souls route where sure, you can attack the chest, but if you do enough damage you'll just smash the chest and whatever's inside. 
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Jul 20, 2018 20:27
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I get it because adjudicating attacks on objects is super-weird - how the hell do I decide if shatter breaks something or not? What HP does a bridge have? The way I've done it are either "yes it breaks the thing congrats" if it's relatively weak, or okay I'll decide on a good faith hit point value in advance, good luck! At the end of the day it kinda just seems like I gotta decide based on nothing. 3E had fairly detailed rules on how much DR and HP objects had. Would it be that hard to graft on a slapdash version into 5E? Speaking of, is the Take 20 rule worth importing? Take 10 is fairly useless, because situations where a PC would Take 10 and succeed, you shouldn't be asking them to roll in the first place. Take 20 seems like it could have some uses, if you're willing to use time as a pressure point as a DM.
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Jul 20, 2018 22:17
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3.P has extensive object rules, SotDL has very high-level object rules. I think you could yank either or a middle ground of the two if you wanted to houserule. For reference, the brief of each is: SotDL: An items health is 10 x size, where size 1 is 3x3', size 2 is 6x6', etc. Fragile items have half HP, sturdy items have double or more. Some things simply do no damage, such as a dagger against a galleon, or cold against a sword. 3.P: Difference substances have different hardnesses, which is the amount of damage they'll absorb without being harmed. Stone has hardness 8, so dealing 9 damage to a stone wall means that only 1 damage gets through. Materials have HP per inch of thickness (e.g. stone is 15/in.), and some specified objects (such as chains) have specified hardnesses, HP, and DCs to break with a strength check. Plus a bunch of other details. inthesto posted:Speaking of, is the Take 20 rule worth importing? Take 10 is fairly useless, because situations where a PC would Take 10 and succeed, you shouldn't be asking them to roll in the first place. Take 20 seems like it could have some uses, if you're willing to use time as a pressure point as a DM. Elysiume fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Jul 20, 2018 |
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Jul 20, 2018 22:34
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Section Z posted:Keywords stuff has always felt like a grey area from how often it swings in the other direction of "Excuse me, it's says CREATURE and this is clearly a CONSTRUCT" nitpicking. Or baked into the rules technicality like how the Displacer beast does not count as a beast, resulting in an in universe party conversation of "Why the gently caress is it called a beast then?" mid battle. For as much of a necessary evil the general intentions are. That sort of seems like a super dumb thing in the 'ask your DM' edition though. Like, let me put it this way: If you find yourself in a situation where you want to cast a spell on a door but can't, and can envision asking a party member to go stand next to a door so that it can get caught in the AoE, you've failed the magic litmus test. The door thing is dumb but understandable but aren't objects immune to Charm and/or anything that forces a Intelligence/Charisma/Will save already?
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Jul 20, 2018 23:41
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Conspiratiorist posted:If all you really care for is the Imp familiar, then go only 3 Warlock levels for Chain pact, grabbing Booming Blade, Devil's Sight, Darkness, and whatever other spells and an invocation that look nice. If you're not married to Fiend (any patron lets you summon an Imp) you could also go Hexblade for medium armor and specially shield proficiency which would be nice. Splicer posted:Are you locked into fiend? Hexblade means you can cap your dex at 14 and then go full charisma. If you just want to stab with a demon friend I'd skip the rogue bit entirely and just go full hexblade + chain, grabbing all the hexblade invocations Looking into Hexblade again it does seem to be pretty synergistic with my idea for a stabby Warlock. I think my only hesitation in picking it originally was it looked like all the invocations that would work best with it were limited to Pact of the Blade exclusively: Is Hexblade still a viable Patron option if I'm not going full bladelock? Regardless of optimization I'm going to take at least my first level as a Rogue since it works better with the backstory I have set up for my character: An aspiring swashbuckler/master thief who became unknowingly possessed by an ancient demon during a dungeon crawl gone wrong. The imp familiar is supposed to be a physical manifestation of the demon who is currently inhabiting her body and using her to regain its power. She is completely oblivious to this and just thinks she has a rad demon buddy. My GM has okay'd me to have the Imp as a pet from level 1 but I'll only be able to use it in a mechanically meaningful way once I take Pact of the Chain.
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Jul 20, 2018 23:46
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Isn't it just lovely how most character concepts only start to make sense around level 3 but DMs insist on running campaigns that start lvl 1? Anyway, the abilities you from a 3 level Hexblade dip are all fine and good if you're predominantly Swash, and indeed going Dex 14 (for wearing medium armor) and focusing on Charisma as your primary attribute will make you just as good at melee as a Dex fighter but give you more options to use your Warlock spells, plus synergy with the Swashbuckler abilities. Going blade pact gives you the option of Improved Pact Weapon, which is nice but redundant if you find a magical rapier, and Extra Attack at level 5, which is also nice but if you're going mostly rogue then your primary damage comes from connecting Sneak Attack, and Booming Blade picks up the slack with some scaling. So no, you don't need to go there.
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Jul 21, 2018 00:15
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KingKalamari posted:Looking into Hexblade again it does seem to be pretty synergistic with my idea for a stabby Warlock. I think my only hesitation in picking it originally was it looked like all the invocations that would work best with it were limited to Pact of the Blade exclusively: Is Hexblade still a viable Patron option if I'm not going full bladelock?
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Jul 21, 2018 00:38
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No. 1 Apartheid Fan posted:Just FWIW to soothe my restless mind as someone who's now spent a lot of time DMing and playing 5E: the Battlemaster's maneuver and superiority dice mechanics should literally be the core mechanic of the Fighter class, right? Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Sure....prepare for your mind to be blown as I change fighter to "martial class". Madmarker posted:Honestly, I'd just be happy if all fighters got "Come and Get it" from 4e. ImpactVector posted:I believe they were called "Martial Dice" at one point in the playtest and given to rogues as well. I'm a few days late but every now and again this conversation reoccurs, so here's homebrew that's inspired by this recurring thread topic and addresses all of these things. It turns out it's on special right now. It's working for our table. There's also a free version which is a couple of revisions behind. Essentially, everyone gets to use an expanded list of martial maneuvers. Fighters get more and full casters get much less. 
clusterfuck fucked around with this message at 09:26 on Jul 21, 2018 |
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Jul 21, 2018 09:05
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If you have the time to go through and implement a homebrew that overhauls all the existing D&D 5e classes, you'd be better off learning a different system that has these issues addressed already as part of its core design rather than held together by staples and band-aids.
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Jul 21, 2018 16:22
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If 5e didn't have so much visibility and support behind it I'd say you're probably right. People only really want to go for 5e except the occasional classic style nerd who just wants to run AD&D. I've never met one of these artisinal tabletop nerds in real life.
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Jul 21, 2018 16:45
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There seems to be a whole lot of saying "well 5e does this poorly you should just play something else instead!" But nobody ever loving says what your "else" should be. Can someone post this magical game that everyone should be playing that handles tactical combat, social interaction, exploration and everything everything else while also being better for martial combat classes? I get 5e has problems but it's getting annoying seeing the same post of just "play something else!" when nobody posts what that is.
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Jul 21, 2018 16:49
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doctor 7 posted:There seems to be a whole lot of saying "well 5e does this poorly you should just play something else instead!" G U R P S
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Jul 21, 2018 16:51
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doctor 7 posted:There seems to be a whole lot of saying "well 5e does this poorly you should just play something else instead!" Legends of the Wulin
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Jul 21, 2018 16:52
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doctor 7 posted:There seems to be a whole lot of saying "well 5e does this poorly you should just play something else instead!" Shadow of the Demon Lord
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Jul 21, 2018 16:53
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Strike
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Jul 21, 2018 16:56
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Conspiratiorist posted:Shadow of the Demon Lord
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Jul 21, 2018 16:56
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NachtSieger posted:Legends of the Wulin This is the best answer, if only because somewhere between your fifteenth and fiftieth read through of the book you will learn to let go of your vain desire to understand its rules. Only then you will have achieved enlightenment. (Seriously Wulin is probably up there with Dogs for best RPG but holy hell did that book need an editor.)
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Jul 21, 2018 17:03
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