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Splicer posted:I'd like some mish mash of 4E's Dark Sun survival days and Torchbearer's injury track as some kind of semi-abstract cost of living deal. You don't have to explicitly buy soap, but if you found out halfway through the trip that you underbudgetted you could choose "Out of soap" as a consequence and gain some kind of smelly/diseased aspect. But not too far to work out the money split for survival days minus food and water, so we could resale the sustenance to NPCs who are chumps that can't subsist on magical sunblock alone. So we had twice the bookkeeping anyways  Shame "3 Warforged, a Shardmind, and a Revenant halfling " didn't really get off the ground. Also, I have a dust collecting AD&D ravenloft book somewhere with a reminder that there is a loving Darksun section of Ravenloft. Which is always a fun bit of trivia when people try to debate which setting is worse to live in. The answer obviously is "Both at the same time!". Because I just love the idea of psychic barbarians wishing the lived someplace nice, like that town where half the population is were rats!
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Aug 2, 2018 10:54
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I'm going back to the Mage Killer Rogue for a second because I like the idea. Thought it over some and made a couple of modifications to it, most notably a very different capstone that I feel works better. This is what I've got so far:quote:Spell Stealer: Starting at 3rd level, you learn how to truly pressure spellcasters. Whenever an enemy that you can see attempts to cast a spell, you may make an attack as a Reaction. Due to the unexpected and sudden nature of this attack, you always get Sneak Attack damage. If you successfully hit and deal damage they must make a Concentration check with a DC of 10 or half the damage received, whichever is higher. On a failure, they lose the spell as if it was a maintained Concentration spell. Additionally, once per short rest, you may steal the spell they were attempting to cast provided it is of 3rd level or less. This increases to 7th level or less at level 13 and all spells regardless of level at level 17. You can cast any stolen spell once without using a spell slot or any material components. All unused stolen spells are lost on a Long Rest. You can maintain an additional stolen spell at levels 9, 13, 17 and 20. It's not too dissimilar to what was posted before, really. Just a tad stronger and with a more fitting final skill. E; renamed Spell Thief to Spell Stealer to prevent overlap with the one that already exists whoops 
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Aug 2, 2018 11:31
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If they could give us dark sun after this upcoming Eberron stuff that would make me a happy camper. On the flip side I don't think any of my current group of players would want to play in that setting as the "survival" bits of making their way through Chult seemed to grind on them a bit so I toned it down to keep things fun.
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Aug 2, 2018 17:39
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Fureil posted:If they could give us dark sun after this upcoming Eberron stuff that would make me a happy camper. On the flip side I don't think any of my current group of players would want to play in that setting as the "survival" bits of making their way through Chult seemed to grind on them a bit so I toned it down to keep things fun. I think a fun way to do the survival bits in Dark Sun is to just hand-wave it when it's not an issue (i.e. traveling with a caravan between cities) and then if you want to make it a story point have a random encounter that results in them losing their water supply and then giving them some moral dilemma to deal with to get water while out in the wastes. Survival stuff for its own sake is boring, but survival in the face of moral quandary is role-playing. The issue I see with a Dark Sun setting in 5e is the psionics. They were important part of the setting, but were really weird in AD&D 2e, requiring everyone to learn a clunky system with multiple kinds of defense or whatever. However, despite the weakness of psionic rules in 2e (imo) it served a greater purpose in helping Dark Sun feel that much more weird and alien compared to more blasé settings like FR. If there were a 5e Dark Sun, I want a full Psionics system, but I don't think the current 5e team has the chops to build those mechanics in a way that will be fun and good.
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Aug 2, 2018 19:00
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Finster Dexter posted:I think a fun way to do the survival bits in Dark Sun is to just hand-wave it when it's not an issue (i.e. traveling with a caravan between cities) and then if you want to make it a story point have a random encounter that results in them losing their water supply and then giving them some moral dilemma to deal with to get water while out in the wastes. Survival stuff for its own sake is boring, but survival in the face of moral quandary is role-playing. Agree about survival. It's boring "shopping for groceries" drudgery unless done where there is some kind of drama/conflict. The way the new Eberron 5E guide handles Dragonmarks would be a good template for how to handle Dark Sun Psionics - variant races, with feats at higher levels for potential improvement. The normal "natural" Psionics just had a few random powers of varying strength, and not everyone had them. Defiling and Preserving is a little tougher to model, but I guess you could call all PHB classes Preservers, and give alternate paths for Defilers (since PCs rarely do that). The real weakness of Dark Sun from a design standpoint was probably that the rarity of metal was modeled as all the weapons and armor being crappier than normal. Instead, it should have modeled the bone/wood/glass/stone equipment as normal, and made metal the equivalent of magic/mithril/adamantine items - where it has bonuses compared to the crappy common materials.
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Aug 2, 2018 19:20
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Finster Dexter posted:If there were a 5e Dark Sun, I want a full Psionics system, but I don't think the current 5e team has the chops to build those mechanics in a way that will be fun and good. I think you may be on to something https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/1000619465065750528?lang=en
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Aug 2, 2018 19:21
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Dragonatrix posted:I'm going back to the Mage Killer Rogue for a second because I like the idea. Thought it over some and made a couple of modifications to it, most notably a very different capstone that I feel works better. This is what I've got so far: These changes seem pretty good. At this point I think it would be a pretty decent Rogue Archetype.
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Aug 2, 2018 20:03
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Darwinism posted:I think you may be on to something jfc yeah that is exactly what I expected. Might as well bring in Kevin Siembeida from Rifts to develop psionics if we're just going to do the "it's another spell list" bullshit.
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Aug 2, 2018 20:09
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Darwinism posted:I think you may be on to something I forgot about that lol.
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Aug 2, 2018 20:20
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How have psionics ever been different than a new spell list with some special resource gimmick? I'll grant you, 2nd edition is the last time I actually looked at psionics rules, but that was just "here's your PP calculation, choose some abilities and cast them til you run out of PP"
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Aug 2, 2018 20:23
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Azhais posted:How have psionics ever been different than a new spell list with some special resource gimmick? Not being able to be interrupted or have anyone know you were using them was a gigantic deal
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Aug 2, 2018 20:49
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Azhais posted:How have psionics ever been different than a new spell list with some special resource gimmick? 2e was much clunkier than that. You had different kinds of psionic defense that were free powers you could use against certain types of powers (there were 5 or 6 types, iirc). Then, for each power you didn't just spend points, you had to make a Power roll and compare against the attribute for that particular power, which could be wisdom or charisma or whatever. If you rolled a 20 (a critical failure) some crazy bad would happen for each power. So, combat between psionicists was each person rolling power checks (one with his power, the other with his defense) and then evaluating the results. It got weird because if someone had Mind Blank, they'd be resistant to suggestion or whatever so on your next turn you'd better try something else. I think there was a concentration-like mechanic, as well, but I barely remember that. I'm not saying the 2e system was *good*, but it was at least different and was more involved than "use this other different spell list lmao I'm so good at design bing bong so simple"
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Aug 2, 2018 20:53
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mastershakeman posted:Not being able to be interrupted or have anyone know you were using them was a gigantic deal Which edition was that? Looking over the 3.5 rules they were visible and interruptable. Did 4th do it differently?
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Aug 2, 2018 21:04
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The problem with Psionics is that I don't really know how you'd merge theme and mechanics. Psionics should feel both 'natural' (meaning they don't draw from arcane magic, but rather innate reserves) and 'alien' (meaning, they don't practice any comprehensible arcane practice; different from the other magical traditions, in this case). 'Sorcerer' has 'natural' covered and Warlock has 'alien' covered (though one could argue that the mechanics manage to make it feel fairly banal). Psionics should have a list of innate class talents and they should have something 'weird' that makes them feel unusual, and I'm not talking about the Wild Sorcerer poo poo. Inflicting specialized conditions on themselves to make their powers strong or managing some kind of unique resource would be cool; and I'd rather if they were managing a resource, it would be more complex then just 'Psi points go down until you rest' since that's just spell slots with a coat of paint on it. Moving by degrees from 'Controlled' to 'Impassioned' with various good and bad effects for either extreme might be interesting, for example.
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Aug 2, 2018 21:07
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Azhais posted:How have psionics ever been different than a new spell list with some special resource gimmick? 3.5 psionics still used PP, but otherwise jettisoned nearly all the dumb bullshit from 3.0. You only had to care about one manifesting stat at the time, based on your class just like with casters, and while psionic powers had a base cost for a fixed effect you could augment them by spending additional PP for an increased effect. Psionic combat was almost completely out, with only a handful of vestiges that showed up as reworked powers. In general, while psionic PCs didn't have as much breadth as casters did with their 2868 spells to choose from, any given psionic power had a fair bit of versatility to it. About the only real issue with 3.5 psionics was the one class that didn't actually use the core system - the soulknife. It was trying to do cool things with making a magic sword with your mind, but when you're expected to get magic swords anyway (because this is D&D) it fell flat. 4E psionics were instead a variation on that edition's mechanics for powers and resource management. Nearly all pre-Essentials classes worked on the AEDU model; you had some At-will powers you could use indefinitely, Encounter powers usable on a per-encounter basis, Daily powers on a per-day basis, and Utility powers that used one of those prior schemes. Psionic classes instead remixed this with the older PP model, except for the monk which just used the AEDU model as normal. So for instance a psion would have some collection of At-will, Daily, and Utility powers. And in addition they got a scaling quantity of PP that they could use to buff their At-wills in various proscribed ways, effectively constructing their encounter powers out of those existing At-wills. The end result was essentially the same, but the path to getting there wasn't.
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Aug 2, 2018 21:10
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Sacrifice parts of the material body for immaterial boons ended up as a pure being of psionic power that can put up the appearance of flesh and blood.
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Aug 2, 2018 21:10
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Azhais posted:Which edition was that? Looking over the 3.5 rules they were visible and interruptable. Did 4th do it differently? 2nd. It had super complicated mechanics between psionics but a psionic vs anyone else did his stuff without anyone seeing it and without being interrupted by damage, unlike all other casters.
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Aug 2, 2018 21:11
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Mendrian posted:The problem with Psionics is that I don't really know how you'd merge theme and mechanics. I liked the system that d20 Star Wars used (not Saga edition) where you had vitality points that were like 90% of your total HP pool. I know vitality points are controversial but it ends up being kind of like Shadowrun. I need to hurt myself to use these powers, and I need to be careful how much I use them or I will knock myself out. I like stuff like that. The stuff you're talking about with conditions sounds maybe like the magic trait system from Arcana Unearthed, where you could augment a spell with elemental or other affects, allowing you to memorize an "Acidball" that was a lot like Fireball but had acid effects and would obviously interact differently with resistances, etc. I think that would be cool in a 5e psionics system... not in the Arcana Unearthed form, of course, but as a way to offer something beyond a basic "spell list".
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Aug 2, 2018 21:23
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Finster Dexter posted:2e was much clunkier than that. You had different kinds of psionic defense that were free powers you could use against certain types of powers (there were 5 or 6 types, iirc). Then, for each power you didn't just spend points, you had to make a Power roll and compare against the attribute for that particular power, which could be wisdom or charisma or whatever. If you rolled a 20 (a critical failure) some crazy bad would happen for each power. 5 attacks versus 5 defenses, but you had to buy all of them except mind blank. mind blank was given to every psionicist and was also free to use/sustain, but wasn't very good except against one specific attack (and was poo poo against the basic attack) there was also the thing where you would need to have Contact with a target to use telepathic abilities against them, and you created that either by a person willingly opening it up, by succeeding on a single psionic attack against a non-psionic target, or succeeding on three psionic attacks also there were very, very few psionic abilities that actually dealt damage, and they were expensive/weird to use. like iirc there was some psychic scream where you frowned for three rounds charging up a bunch of angst and then did something like a fireball worth of damage as pbaoe, or one that let you blow up inert matter (including unintelligent undead). i think the only real straight up general purpose nuke was disintegration which was expensive and difficult to get and if you rolled a 20 you'd have to save or die yourself lol
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Aug 2, 2018 21:24
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psionicists were a mess! psionicists were a waste!
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Aug 2, 2018 21:44
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I'm playing in a 5E game in my favorite setting (Dragonlance) ... we pushed it back to ~300 years before the Cataclysm in the Age of Might, and are based in Taladas (the OTHER continent), but I made a Wizard from Ansalon that's a member of the Tower's, and with talking to the DM, he wants to implement some 5E version of the moons (advantage/disadvantage and/or +1/-1's), so it got my psyched to go out and make a drat orrery for it. Please excuse the lumpy circles (I misplaced my compass back in grade school about 25 years ago or so now), but should be fun!
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Aug 3, 2018 02:05
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By the time you get to 3.5, psionics was practically magic, but with spell-points, with other the big design variation being that "augmentation" allowed you to play with metamagic like effects even without any metamagic feats (and without Skip Williams's Sorcerer bias weighing it all down). I don't really agree that "psionics is just another spell list" is really a bad thing, because from the perspective of 3.5 psionics, it was that, but the variety of the spells and the nature of the things they did was sufficiently distinct from arcane and divine spell lists. The obnoxious thing is Mearls claiming that it's some kind of great innovation that he's come up with.
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Aug 3, 2018 03:04
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It seemed to me that mearls was also thinking martial psions would only get cantrips, and if you wanted the bigger stuff then gently caress you, take a level in a caster. Is that an incorrect read?
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Aug 3, 2018 03:20
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Poops Mcgoots posted:It seemed to me that mearls was also thinking martial psions would only get cantrips, and if you wanted the bigger stuff then gently caress you, take a level in a caster. Is that an incorrect read? Most of the flavor of the Martial Psionics sub-classes has the abilities being psionics.
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Aug 3, 2018 04:16
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DKWildz posted:I'm playing in a 5E game in my favorite setting (Dragonlance) ... we pushed it back to ~300 years before the Cataclysm in the Age of Might, and are based in Taladas (the OTHER continent), but I made a Wizard from Ansalon that's a member of the Tower's, and with talking to the DM, he wants to implement some 5E version of the moons (advantage/disadvantage and/or +1/-1's), so it got my psyched to go out and make a drat orrery for it. Please excuse the lumpy circles (I misplaced my compass back in grade school about 25 years ago or so now), but should be fun! Nuitari doesn't have an obvious space where it can align with the other moons to create the convergence whose name I forget. Otherwise pretty cool imo.
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Aug 3, 2018 04:36
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Zarick posted:Nuitari doesn't have an obvious space where it can align with the other moons to create the convergence whose name I forget. Otherwise pretty cool imo. Yes thats been something I've tried to look up a bit more but I think it just counts if all 3 moons have boxes touching eachother in high sanction at the same time. The night in question is called 'The Night of the Eye.' Nuitari cant have a perfectly aligned chart in that because it has a period of only 8 days. My lines arent perfectly scaled and drawn, but I copied the old 2nd edition chart that was remade on DLNexus. DKWildz fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Aug 3, 2018 |
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Aug 3, 2018 04:52
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Infinite Karma posted:The real weakness of Dark Sun from a design standpoint was probably that the rarity of metal was modeled as all the weapons and armor being crappier than normal. Instead, it should have modeled the bone/wood/glass/stone equipment as normal, and made metal the equivalent of magic/mithril/adamantine items - where it has bonuses compared to the crappy common materials. Given how popular Druids are, you'd think there would be far more carry over of that mentality outside of 4th ed Dark Sun. But I guess why bother when Druids always get hand out specialty "Non metal" armor more easily than martial classes? Though 5th edition is something I'd actually expect to just say "gently caress it, Dark Sun bone sword = Metal sword"... If for rear end backwards "Because we're too lazy to make variant rules" rather than "Because it's more fun this way" at least the end result would be good I also got a laugh at how they called the 5th ed Psychic Ideas Guy class 'Mystic'. I guess because even they know outright calling your class 'Psychic' will make people a lot of weary veterans laugh in your face. But 'I want to play a Mystic!' is more likely to get a pass. Section Z fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Aug 3, 2018 |
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Aug 3, 2018 06:52
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I have a group I play with every other week that runs 5e. I'm playing a lv 6 college of glamour bard. I recently played in a one off 9th level session, where I just leveled my bard up to 9 and changed a few things because I didn't have time to spend making a new character. I ended up being a little underwhelmed with what I got from the extra levels. I'm someone who cares more about flavour and utility, than power and damage. While it was certainly nice to have higher spell save dc's, there wasn't much else new to play with, and nothing that added to the depth of my character. So I've been thinking about what other things I can do for more flavour, like maybe multi-classing for example. I'm just not sure what I should look at. I was hoping people in here might have suggestions? Here is my character.  https://ddb.ac/characters/3935492/hU9cuW <- Beyond link A little about her: Since tieflings get a bad rap, she grew up resenting peoples mistrust and hostility. Where some tieflings dedicate themselves to doing good to change peoples opinions, and others give up and embrace the stereotype, she went down the middle. She dedicated her life to changing peoples minds manually. She's going to become world famous and worshiped, and she doesn't care how dirty her hands get while doing it. Neutral Evil alignment. College of Glamour bard seemed like the obvious starting point for that, since it really focuses on control and charm. Enthralling Performance, and Mantle of Majesty are utterly perfect abilities for this shtick. Being a musician also seemed like a good basis for becoming widely popular. I really want to keep building on that though, and I'm not sure going further in Bard levels is the best way forward. I want to min/max for roleplay! Does anyone have any fun ideas that would build on that shtick going forward? We just advanced to lv 7 and I haven't decided what to do yet. I was considering going archfey warlock for a "sold my soul at the crossroads" bard angle, and because it has a nice first level aoe charm. But I'm not sold on it. I have access to all the available books on beyond, and my GM will allow some homebrew within reason, but I prefer to look at official material first to keep a semblance of balance. Anyone have other suggestions?
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Aug 3, 2018 10:10
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Cheap Shot posted:Does anyone have any fun ideas that would build on that shtick going forward? We just advanced to lv 7 and I haven't decided what to do yet. I was considering going archfey warlock for a "sold my soul at the crossroads" bard angle, and because it has a nice first level aoe charm. But I'm not sold on it. I have access to all the available books on beyond, and my GM will allow some homebrew within reason, but I prefer to look at official material first to keep a semblance of balance. Two levels of warlock will get you solid at-will ranged damage. Otherwise stick it out with bard, they have some really good 4th- and 5th-level spells (Greater Invisibility, Polymorph, Animate Objects, Dominate Person, Modify Memory). Also magical secrets will eventually open up pretty much every option in the game for you.
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Aug 3, 2018 10:51
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Cheap Shot posted:I'm playing a lv 6 college of glamour bard. Feylock's AoE charm/fear effect lasts all of 6 seconds, it's not in any way useful. What could be useful for the concept is the Disguise Self and Silent Image at-will invocations, both which become available at Warlock lvl 2. However, you've got me making a frowny face at the notion of being 'underwhelmed' over becoming a 5th level caster. Like, seriously? Polymorph, Hallucinatory Terrain, Dominate Person, Geas, Modify Memory, Seeming, Planar Binding - and when you get to 11, Mass Suggestion, plus whatever spells you stole off other lists at 10. This kind of declarative narrative power is somehow not good for your character concept?
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Aug 3, 2018 10:55
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Conspiratiorist posted:Feylock's AoE charm/fear effect lasts all of 6 seconds, it's not in any way useful. Ah, it's not the quality of spells, it's the access to them. A lot of 4th and then 5th level spells would be great for my character, but at level 9 I only had 1 lv 5 spell slot. I found I spent most of the night sitting on it afraid to waste it*. I don't mind continuing with Bard and just trying to tailor things better, but I'm hoping to see if there's anything else fun and flavorful I can do that will give me... I don't know how to put it.. something I can use more often, or something that impacts the playstyle more. Sorry, not trying to be difficult. Definitely not discounting continuing with bard, just wanting to explore options. Thank you for the tip about Fey Presence! That's a really good point, you're right. Not very useful. The "per short rest" part lulled me in because our group ends up taking a lot of those. *I ended up wasting it anyway, because I tried to get rocks in a collapsed tunnel to clear themselves and then the GM pointed out that animate objects only lasts 1 minute and pulled a "no take backsies". Why the gently caress does it only last 1 minute? That's so depressing.
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Aug 3, 2018 12:22
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I was asking on another forum about what you can actually do with money and got this. https://gurbintrollgames.wordpress.com/blackballs-treasure-2/ I think it looks like a way better model then the official one. opinions?
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Aug 3, 2018 12:52
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DKWildz posted:Yes thats been something I've tried to look up a bit more but I think it just counts if all 3 moons have boxes touching eachother in high sanction at the same time. The night in question is called 'The Night of the Eye.' Nuitari cant have a perfectly aligned chart in that because it has a period of only 8 days. My lines arent perfectly scaled and drawn, but I copied the old 2nd edition chart that was remade on DLNexus. Yeah, you have almost an exact copy of what's in the 1e AD&D Dragonlance Adventures book. That book explains there are bonuses for two or three moons in alignment, and alignment just means you can draw a line from the center of the chart through all three positions. So, with the current positions you have with the tokens there means you have alignment of 3 moons so you get some crazy bonuses like more spells/day and a higher caster level.
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Aug 3, 2018 17:02
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The DM is smart to enforce animate objects being lovely and awful to use because it's terrible for the game as written to give you 10 extra actions in every combat. Summons in 5e are extremely poorly thought-out and written and might well be this game's most egregious crime.
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Aug 3, 2018 17:10
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Animate Objects is, rather than a utility spell, a very potent offensive spell. Release a bag of ball bearings or coins, cast Animate Objects on it, and for the rest of the fight or until the enemies drop some serious AoE (AC18, 20 hp, +4 dex save) you'll be automatically making ten 1d4+4 damage attacks at +8 to hit - it actually outdamages martials that didn't optimize or aren't packing some serious magic items, all while leaving your own actions free.
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Aug 3, 2018 17:36
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If you’re ever at a banquet that goes south, animate the silverware and kill everyone.
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Aug 3, 2018 17:48
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Kaysette posted:If you’re ever at a banquet that goes south, animate the silverware and kill everyone.
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Aug 3, 2018 18:11
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:You don't have to be at a banquet to have 10 handy forks on your belt. 
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Aug 3, 2018 18:34
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Kaysette posted:If you’re ever at a banquet that goes south, animate the silverware and kill everyone. It has it's own share of (harmless) terribly written rules, in the sense that it offers "You can load an enchanted stone into a sling to use instead of throwing it!"... But that would CUT THE EFFECTIVE RANGE IN HALF. Because your magic throwing arm is 60 feet, while a 5th ed sling gets 30 feet effective range "I enchanted these sling stones! Which means using them in a sling is worse because... Martial cooties?" Section Z fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Aug 3, 2018 |
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Aug 3, 2018 18:34
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Would it be game-breaking if Animate Objects were scaled down so that for each slot below 5th, you take away 2 objects? So, basically you could cast as 1st-level spell and get 2 forks.
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Aug 3, 2018 19:53
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