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change of topic a bit....what's your favorite race? by a design standpoint, most beast races, human variants, moon elves, and tieflings are my favorites. (though humans are very flexible in terms of story potential. i hate being stuck in one alignment unless house rules change it.)
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Oct 2, 2018 14:01
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koreban posted:Calm Emotions. Everyone knows it as the spell that keeps you from being frightened. But there’s another paragraph. You can cast it on someone to cause them to be indifferent to creatures it would normally take hostile action against. You can’t take hostile actions against his buddies, and generally he should know when the spell fades that it went down, but he may not, explicitly stated in the text of the spell. Uh huh, cool. So if there was a party of just a fighter and a rogue - let's call them, I dunno, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser - what resources would they be using up in this case?
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Oct 2, 2018 14:08
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Splicer posted:No I'm talking about the FFG funny dice games Oh poo poo yeah I was talking about the page snipe about making "Healing being a limited but meaningful resource that doesn't take up the healer's main action is a pipedream" having been a solved thing lol.
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Oct 2, 2018 14:29
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my page snipe was about 4e though.
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koreban posted:Do you have an example in mind? Genuinely interested to see how it's handled in other systems. If we are talking funny dice system, the FFG star wars stuff tends to make it very easy for non-hulk armour type characters to go down but when it makes it very difficult to straight out kill them like this. Instead they receive a critical hit, roll on the crit table (1d100 roll) and have a effect but every effect they receive will cause the next critical effect roll to add +10 to it. The only way to 'die' is to roll a 150 or great on a 1d100 but with those stacking critical effect it makes it possible. The big point is the high the roll the more impactful the effect meaning that if you get in over your head and/or get unlucky its going to be a minor punishment (because thats what should be doing in a star wars space adventure) but if you let happen it makes your next thing riskier and riskier. Plus removing these critical results can be a difficult task and not something you can just do without getting some triumphs (critical successes) on the fly. It also means that unless something really bad happens, a character is pushing their limits or its intentional, characters just don't die. They instead have dramatic effects happen, you have you hand cut off, you're blinded, your leg is broken etc. It keeps the scene and narrative going but really ups the drama and tension as a character then needs to fight on despite this. Luke loses his arm and needs to call on the force to get Leia's help. The thing to keep in mind is that death is ultimately one of the least interesting consequences of a decision, its rarely an entertaining moment unless its been set up as a big moment. Fruity20 posted:change of topic a bit....what's your favorite race? by a design standpoint, most beast races, human variants, moon elves, and tieflings are my favorites. (though humans are very flexible in terms of story potential. i hate being stuck in one alignment unless house rules change it.) Narratively? I will always love dragonborn, huge hulking warriors just chock full of charisma and personality with a patron dragon of defending the innocent and the weak. Unfortunately they kinda suck in 5e so variant human is kinda my go to, especially since not many GMs are giving feats outside of the Stat, the variant human lets me take something unique and interesting that lets me try a weird concept without making me sacrifice my character mechanically which is nice. kingcom fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Oct 2, 2018 |
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Oct 2, 2018 14:39
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Fruity20 posted:change of topic a bit....what's your favorite race? by a design standpoint, most beast races, human variants, moon elves, and tieflings are my favorites. (though humans are very flexible in terms of story potential. i hate being stuck in one alignment unless house rules change it.) Halflings. Pretty solid stat-wise, very fun to play. Small is the only issue, but you can work around it in most cases.
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Oct 2, 2018 14:51
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Fruity20 posted:change of topic a bit....what's your favorite race? by a design standpoint, most beast races, human variants, moon elves, and tieflings are my favorites. (though humans are very flexible in terms of story potential. i hate being stuck in one alignment unless house rules change it.) Tabaxi and Grung. Grung isn't a listed playable race but it's easy enough to figure out how to make one and they have a 25ft vertical leap. I once broke a one-shot with my Tabaxi's Better Climbing and the DEX bonus makes it easy to build a Monk. When I just had the PHB I gravitated towards Tiefling because if I can play a satan I'm gonna play a satan.
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Oct 2, 2018 14:56
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Trojan Kaiju posted:Grung isn't a listed playable race but it's easy enough to figure out how to make one and they have a 25ft vertical leap. Here's how they made it work for the Extra Life charity last year if anyone's curious.
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Oct 2, 2018 15:04
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Oh my god now I want to play a grung with all my heart and soul.
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Oct 2, 2018 15:09
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gradenko_2000 posted:My standard recommendation is to convert Healing Hit Dice into Reserve Points. How do you all work this out if you're using milestone leveling and your group manages to say, talk their way out of a fight with some bandits? Would you not consider that an encounter since they likely didn't deplete much other than a social spell or two and possibly some gold? If so and they're not getting any XP from bypassing a fight with their talents, has anyone found that their group tends to just fight everything because if they don't they'll just walk into an additional group of baddies before they can take a long rest? I assume it's not really a big deal and it's more about how the group plays and if they enjoy solving threats without violence just for the RP of it all.
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Oct 2, 2018 15:13
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Encounters are encounters. If you successfully engage with it and pass it, award experience. If they avoid it in a novel way, award experience. If they say “gently caress it, not bothering” don’t award experience.
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Oct 2, 2018 15:56
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poorlifedecision posted:How do you all work this out if you're using milestone leveling and your group manages to say, talk their way out of a fight with some bandits? Would you not consider that an encounter since they likely didn't deplete much other than a social spell or two and possibly some gold? If so and they're not getting any XP from bypassing a fight with their talents, has anyone found that their group tends to just fight everything because if they don't they'll just walk into an additional group of baddies before they can take a long rest? a "social encounter" in which the party is so successful that they don't lose any HP (assuming that's part of the stakes), or even one where they're so successful that they also don't spend any spell slots and just make it through with skill rolls, is no different from a combat encounter where the players all roll 17s or higher and manage to dispatch the goblins without taking a single hit it still counts as an encounter - the group was just so very lucky and/or competent at it that the stakes never caught up with them. Which can and does happen.
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Oct 2, 2018 16:05
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Fruity20 posted:change of topic a bit....what's your favorite race? by a design standpoint, most beast races, human variants, moon elves, and tieflings are my favorites. (though humans are very flexible in terms of story potential. i hate being stuck in one alignment unless house rules change it.) Human and Aasimar. I don't like playing non-humans that much, so it suits me well that the human/basically human/half-human races are mechanically the best.
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Oct 2, 2018 16:13
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I'm rolling up a gnome rogue for tomb of annihilation. I'm pretty excited. I love making new characters.
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Oct 2, 2018 16:13
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Regarding the idea of legendary actions/resistances and boss fights a couple of pages back, I rather liked the approach the Monster Vault from 4E had to this kind of thing, where the dragons had these off-turn attacks that they used at 10 + init, and the dragon would remove disabling effects at the end of their turn, but would also remove a disabling effect if it affected them when they got their off-turn attack (doing so forfeited the off-turn attack). This to me translates to "yes, you used a disabling effect on the boss, and you successfully denied it an action, which is roughly the equivalent effect this power would have on a normal multi-monster encounter". Along those lines, I feel legendary resistances miss the mark, and it would be more appropriate to have, say, a creature give up two or three legendary actions to remove a disabling effect. The sentiment was raised that was it "wasn't fair" when the PC could constantly negate effects, and that it was only appropriate the DM could do the same, but consider that the players are playing a different side of the game than the DM. The players have a limited skillset, while the DM can pull out whatever monster stats s/he wants, up to and including making up custom monsters, so the player should feel rewarded for picking good powers. The DM needs no such reward because it's trivially easy to say "I have a fire sorcerer in my party, so I can grab a dozen fire-immune monsters for the next dungeon and the final boss is a red dragon". As someone who plays both sides of the screen I can't say it gives me any particular pleasure to completely negate a PC's powers, to me the challenge is to mitigate their ability to completely negate an encounter while also making them feel as though their choices are useful and meaningful. The latter can easily fall apart if you just say "nope, it's immune to that". It can be harder because the design of 5E sure gives monsters more blanket immunities and negations than its predecessor, but I can't help but feel some on-the-fly adjustments here and there could fix some of that. Granted, some might say why bother with that when you can play a different system, but I presume many who browse this thread are committed to 5E DnD games for one reason or another. The takeaway here is that it's a different thing when a PC uses Counterspell to negate the big bad's Banishment, because the PC "paid" for that Counterspell. If you have the baddies do something similar you need to try and make sure the PCs understand that doing so cost the baddies something as well. When a monster has a lifespan of one encounter its spell slots are significantly less valuable than a PC's, because it can afford to blow them all at once, so it's not the same thing to simply say they cost the monster spell slots. Granted, having an enemy use Counterspell is not that bad, because it's a known quality to the PCs (presumably) with its own set of limitations including line-of-sight, range, requiring a reaction, etc. which you can work around. Things like legendary resistances are less satisfying because you can't do poo poo about them really. clusterfuck posted:Rejoice it's beer o'clock! Updated martial maneuvers for chumps to v1.3 including perpetual leverage, legend and true mojo and a bunch of other maneuvers mostly pillaged from the playtest material. Thanks for the suggestions thread and stop fighting / keep fighting as you prefer! I'll have to look into this later. I've been meaning to keep up with this kind of material but haven't been great about it.
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Oct 2, 2018 16:24
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When I was a kid it used to bug me when people would pick the more exotic races (to me, then, basically anything but elf, dwarf, or human). I had this idea that an aasimar or a tiefling would be seen as a monster because of fantasy racism and the whole game would be like working around that druid player who insists his character won't go into cities. Nowadays I don't think I'd get into elfgame racism unless a player specifically wanted to explore that aspect of his race choice. Otherwise fine, you're a humanoid elephant person and that's perfectly normal.
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Oct 2, 2018 16:48
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Sounds like you grew up.
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Oct 2, 2018 16:52
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Pollyanna posted:Sounds like you grew up. Reluctantly/allegedly. Also I've always loved playing halflings because I can get behind their values of never wearing shoes and eating constantly.
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Oct 2, 2018 16:58
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Imagined posted:When I was a kid it used to bug me when people would pick the more exotic races (to me, then, basically anything but elf, dwarf, or human). I had this idea that an aasimar or a tiefling would be seen as a monster because of fantasy racism and the whole game would be like working around that druid player who insists his character won't go into cities. Nowadays I don't think I'd get into elfgame racism unless a player specifically wanted to explore that aspect of his race choice. Otherwise fine, you're a humanoid elephant person and that's perfectly normal. That's logically what would happen, and so to avoid it then you get the opposite effect: all races are treated as humans with at most a funny hat on. Even traditionally always chaotic evil monster races when a player selects them - the world's internal logic just bends over backwards to not make an issue out of it for the character in question. So say you go into this little town in the middle of nowhere, and it's multi-racial because of course, and you're asking around for strange going ons in your little side quest and you run into an elf farmer and it's like... what? Nothing special about him, he's just a random elf peasant in a random town, living in his little wood cabin with his wife and two kids and a dog. And at this point my brain is going "hold on, hold on, hold on... this is an elf. He's lived for literally hundreds of years. He's been around for several generations of the other town's residents. Possibly longer than the town's recorded history. And he's just a random impoverished shitfarmer with no special place in the community or anything?" But I just smile and nod, ask my questions, and move on with the investigation.
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Oct 2, 2018 17:13
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Trojan Kaiju posted:Tabaxi and Grung. Grung isn't a listed playable race but it's easy enough to figure out how to make one and they have a 25ft vertical leap. tiefling for the win.
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Oct 2, 2018 17:29
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Halflings are the best. I’d be a halfling.
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Oct 2, 2018 17:47
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Conspiratiorist posted:And at this point my brain is going "hold on, hold on, hold on... this is an elf. He's lived for literally hundreds of years. He's been around for several generations of the other town's residents. Possibly longer than the town's recorded history. And he's just a random impoverished shitfarmer with no special place in the community or anything?" Some people, even elves, are just not that bright, or talented, or charming. For every amazing adventurer there's gotta be at least once below average schmuck. I mean, he COULD be a former adventurer who has retired to the simple life and prefers it that way, but by the numbers there's at least one elf with 8's in every stat who just cannot get ahead.
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Oct 2, 2018 17:48
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Relentless posted:Some people, even elves, are just not that bright, or talented, or charming. For every amazing adventurer there's gotta be at least once below average schmuck. Delving into the dark waters of pedantry that surround any tabletop RPG discussion, I'd have to agree that "yes, you can justify the odd one out", however, the hidden nuance of my post is that the situation I described is no isolated event, but a common and (in-universe) unexplained occurrence borne out of DMs simply not thinking things through while accommodating the needs of the archetypal kitchensink-y D&D setting.
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Oct 2, 2018 18:22
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Conspiratiorist posted:Delving into the dark waters of pedantry that surround any tabletop RPG discussion, I'd have to agree that "yes, you can justify the odd one out", however, the hidden nuance of my post is that the situation I described is no isolated event, but a common and (in-universe) unexplained occurrence borne out of DMs simply not thinking things through while accommodating the needs of the archetypal kitchensink-y D&D setting. I actually sympathize, but unless the whole table is down I can't justify making GBS threads on someone's fun to preserve my immersion
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Oct 2, 2018 18:32
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Conspiratiorist posted:Delving into the dark waters of pedantry that surround any tabletop RPG discussion, I'd have to agree that "yes, you can justify the odd one out", however, the hidden nuance of my post is that the situation I described is no isolated event, but a common and (in-universe) unexplained occurrence borne out of DMs simply not thinking things through while accommodating the needs of the archetypal kitchensink-y D&D setting. I just don't care about the integrity of the setting or whatever
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Oct 2, 2018 18:33
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Maybe an easy thing, but I'm working on a concept for a fighter / rogue for whatever game I start in next. My thought being I want him to be burly ex - highwayman or bounty hunter sort, more in your face combat style than a straight rogue but not above cheap shots should the opportunity present itself. Not really a ranger because he's not really in tune with nature or magic. I'm guessing I would be looking at the first level or maybe two as rogue for skills and sneak attack, then immediately spend the rest of my career as a fighter, pick up duelist as my style and brute as my archetype, hone in on light blade feats and basically being aggro Zorro. I'm going to guess especially once you level past 5ish that the rogue side mostly is about the skill monkey stuff because the extra 1d6 sneak attack will not be quite as impactful. Would I be better off just leveling straight fighter and not delay the extra attacks and class features and then just burn feats on going skillmonkey?
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Oct 2, 2018 18:46
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Is there a reason to disarm an enemy I’m not seeing? The DMG has rules for it and the Battlemaster has a skill that lets them do it for free after damaging an opponent, but I don’t see why. Picking up a weapon is listed as a free action so it’s, what, a flavor inconvenience? Can someone tell me what I’m missing here?
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Oct 2, 2018 18:58
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Raar_Im_A_Dinosaur posted:I actually sympathize, but unless the whole table is down I can't justify making GBS threads on someone's fun to preserve my immersion Well, there's the case to be made about trying to avoid issues with players who might be sensitive to fantasy racism cropping up (let us ignore that the entire tiefling identity is fantasy racism), but most people actually loving love that poo poo. It makes them feel special when their characters are singled out for being unusual - you know, their character concept just passively being acknowledged. That's immersion. The actual problem is threefold: 1. The DM has to go the extra mile. They have to be willing to put in the effort - no way around it, and they have to do it in a way that will not be disruptive to actual play. But many DMs are not truly willing to do that, or have no idea how (see 2 in a moment), and to compound this they can also be afraid of making GBS threads on their player's fun to preserve their immersion, resulting in the world just ignoring the character concept beyond interactions forced by the player, if it even gets that far. 2. D&D-style fantasy is a loving mess, its writers hacks, and so the material lacks both internal logical consistency and gives no guidance as to how DMs should handle unusual races or character concepts, or even just the interactions of the numerous 'common' races within their standard template setting. It's all just mashed together as humans with different funny hats and maybe a surface-level cultural quirk. And this is so pervasive, people tend to not even spare two thoughts to it, and just roll with the punches. That's just D&D, right? 3. Sometimes everyone makes special snowflake character concepts, and that's that. When everyone is special, nobody is, and combine with 1 and 2 and your character concept barely even matters. We talked several pages ago about how Monks don't really exist in the D&D setting? Well, often player characters don't really exist, either. I don't really blame people for this - I think it's just an extension of how D&D is not even good for running itself.
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Oct 2, 2018 18:59
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Quidthulhu posted:Is there a reason to disarm an enemy I’m not seeing? The DMG has rules for it and the Battlemaster has a skill that lets them do it for free after damaging an opponent, but I don’t see why. Picking up a weapon is listed as a free action so it’s, what, a flavor inconvenience? Can someone tell me what I’m missing here?
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Oct 2, 2018 19:01
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I always thought it would be fun to create an all (insert race here) party so the whole group could have the same kind of immersive experience with respect to race.
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Oct 2, 2018 19:06
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Someone else could pick up the weapon or it could fall somewhere they can't reach. I mean I understand for coordinating reasons it’s great but is there any mechanical benefit from the fighter taking the feat and doing the thing that doesn’t require a second person helping? RAW for the battlemaster thing has the weapon falling at their feet. Not sure about flat disarm in the DMG.
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Oct 2, 2018 19:08
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If they're in melee they could pick it up themselves, no? I don't think there's much reason for PCs to use melee weapons in this but they often do.
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Oct 2, 2018 19:09
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Conspiratiorist posted:Delving into the dark waters of pedantry that surround any tabletop RPG discussion, I'd have to agree that "yes, you can justify the odd one out", however, the hidden nuance of my post is that the situation I described is no isolated event, but a common and (in-universe) unexplained occurrence borne out of DMs simply not thinking things through while accommodating the needs of the archetypal kitchensink-y D&D setting. Pedantically, half the population is below average. For ever PC who's an orphaned _____ raised by humans who grow up to be adventurers, there's an equal number of them that just became farmers like their adoptive parents. And adventuring is apparently REALLY dangerous for people who aren't the PCs judging by the number of corpses that get looted and random pieces of dwarven armor found in dungeons. Most of the elves you run into are likely to have chosen careers that don't involve fighting ogres. My group might be odd, but when we try to step back away from fantasy racism tropes (goblins are all lazy! minotaurs are all angry!) and apply them more as systemic (Goblins are basically raised in the fantasy equivalent of competing hillbilly murder cults) it clicks into place in a more logical way. That way you can still murder goblins without remorse, but it's because of their poor upbringing, not their genetics! If you see one armed with a busted shortsword in a cave, probably a hillbilly murdergoblin. Go ahead and shoot him before he notices us. But the one serving you ale at the bar? He's aight. This still requires a healthy dose cognitive dissonance and suspension of disbelief, but at least it's not Canonical Racism 24/7.
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Oct 2, 2018 19:14
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:If they're in melee they could pick it up themselves, no? I don't think there's much reason for PCs to use melee weapons in this but they often do. Can you pick up something in an enemies square? Does that count as moving into their square?
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Oct 2, 2018 19:17
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DeathSandwich posted:Maybe an easy thing, but I'm working on a concept for a fighter / rogue for whatever game I start in next. My thought being I want him to be burly ex - highwayman or bounty hunter sort, more in your face combat style than a straight rogue but not above cheap shots should the opportunity present itself. Not really a ranger because he's not really in tune with nature or magic. Either take your first level in Fighter for the Fighting Style and armor/shield proficiencies, and the rest on Rogue so you can be a decently tanky Strength Rogue, or take Fighter to 3 for Action Surge and Battle Master maneuvers (Precision in particular is really good on a Rogue), or take it all the way to 5 for Extra Attack (and maybe 6 for the ASI), and the rest goes Rogue. Or, I mean, just 1-2 level dip in Rogue for that last one, that works too. Rogue progression is cool and good and the sneak attack damage just keeps adding up. I'd strongly advice against getting skill feats beyond Brawny, if that UA is allowed. The Defensive Duelist feat isn't good, either. Just get more attributes. Also let me propose here taking Barbarian levels instead of Fighter. Barbarogue is legit. nelson posted:I always thought it would be fun to create an all (insert race here) party so the whole group could have the same kind of immersive experience with respect to race. I'm playing in an all-elves party in CoS, and Kasimir was very impressed when one flipped genders overnight. Conspiratiorist fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Oct 2, 2018 |
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Oct 2, 2018 19:18
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Quidthulhu posted:Can you pick up something in an enemies square? Does that count as moving into their square?
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Oct 2, 2018 19:20
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I dunno I don't fret over stuff like this, pick up the sword if you want, but rules people here will probably have some sort of answer. I am the same way, especially with 5e, but I figured I’d ask if I was missing something blatant before I houseruled it. I’m looking at this mechanic existing in two places which to me says “it matters because” but can’t find the answer to that question. I’m aware the answer might be “5th edition” though.
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Oct 2, 2018 19:29
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Quidthulhu posted:Is there a reason to disarm an enemy I’m not seeing? The DMG has rules for it and the Battlemaster has a skill that lets them do it for free after damaging an opponent, but I don’t see why. Picking up a weapon is listed as a free action so it’s, what, a flavor inconvenience? Can someone tell me what I’m missing here? This wildly depends on your GM's hot takes on accidentally(?) useless as designed rulings. Though odds are good if an enemy ever gets a disarming power they will get to do anything they want. Sort of like how a lot of monsters and encounters in every system bypass stealth rules the player has to obey. I've got a guy who thinks disarm (and the similar order from the command spell) is GREAT!... because "The party warlock could use mage hand or something- or" and is all excited about the possibilities of burning extra actions to actually finish the job on the whole disarming thing. But is still dead set on the at their feet, able to pick it up as part of their attack part. (Same deal for the 'drop' command. "It's DROP. Not THROW" ). Other people I play with are more fond of dramatically launching it 10 feet away out of their hand because it looks cooler that way as much as anything. Habitually carrying reasonable back up weapons is the best way to prevent being disarmed as a player. It's also the top way to prevent being pulled overboard into the water by aquatic enemies, a pair of shortswords on a Maul user is nearly as good as water walking. Meanwhile, bothering to disarm enemies is already wildly situational, and a lot of the time "Oh and they ALSO have a claw/bite/Punch stronger than your sword" if they even have weapons in the first place... But it's just so cool you want to do it anyways. Section Z fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Oct 2, 2018 |
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Oct 2, 2018 19:31
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Quidthulhu posted:I am the same way, especially with 5e, but I figured I’d ask if I was missing something blatant before I houseruled it. I’m looking at this mechanic existing in two places which to me says “it matters because” but can’t find the answer to that question. I’m aware the answer might be “5th edition” though. I did houserule that anything intelligent attacking with anything will always do at least 1d6 though - it's more crippling if that enemy is now stuck doing 1 damage + str per turn.
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Oct 2, 2018 19:31
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Section Z posted:This wildly depends on your GM's hot takes on useless as designed rulings. Though odds are good if an enemy ever gets a disarming power they will get to do anything they want. Sort of like how a lot of monsters and encounters in every system bypass stealth rules the player has to obey. Unless there's a rule preventing this, if picking up an item is a free action for them, it's a free action for you, so do it after the disarm and you have their weapon.
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Oct 2, 2018 19:34
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Quidthulhu posted:Is there a reason to disarm an enemy I’m not seeing? The DMG has rules for it and the Battlemaster has a skill that lets them do it for free after damaging an opponent, but I don’t see why. Picking up a weapon is listed as a free action so it’s, what, a flavor inconvenience? Can someone tell me what I’m missing here?
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Oct 2, 2018 19:35
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