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There's no Permanency spell in this version, right? That used to be great for similar kinds of shenanigans.
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Oct 5, 2018 02:12
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Upon review, I think i'll just grab Amulet of the Planes, make a low int character, then sprint into the boss room and try to use it to teleport to hell
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Oct 5, 2018 03:07
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Why don't Ranger/Fighter/Barbarian/Paladin fighter styles scale at all?
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Oct 5, 2018 03:18
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Cassa posted:Why don't Ranger/Fighter/Barbarian/Paladin fighter styles scale at all? Melee isn't allowed to have nice things
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Oct 5, 2018 03:32
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Tetracube posted:ah poo poo that's right No - If your concentration ends before the spell reaches its full duration, the devil doesn't disappear if it has become immune to your verbal commands. Instead, it acts in whatever manner it chooses for 3d6 minutes, and then it disappears. And you drop concentration the moment you start casting a spell longer than one action, like Planar Binding. The only summons that are effective to bind as such are from Conjure Elemental, since you lose control but they last the full hour before disappearing.
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Oct 5, 2018 03:33
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Azhais posted:Melee isn't allowed to have nice things It's incredibly sad that the tired old cookie cutter claims are still in use despite that. "You can swing your sword all day long! I can only cast magic missile and hold person so many times a day!" "You took Magic Missile and Hold Person as your 'Can cast infinity amount of times' options" "But that's only if I cast them at their lowest level!!!"
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Oct 5, 2018 04:32
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Section Z posted:While I am very glad they kept no more "Level 1 wizard cast a spell and now he's dead weight until your next camp out"? On one hand, 18th level is high enough that people should be getting powerful and exciting options. On the other hand, "I never run out of magic, ever" is absolutely not equal to the fighter's "I do one more damage, on average, when I use a maneuver, which are still limited per encounter." I mean, if a fighter could use one or two maneuvers any time, all the time, without spending superiority dice or even an action, it still wouldn't really come close, although that might be a good start. When a fighter's only job description is that he fights, would it have killed WotC to at least make them good at it?
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Oct 5, 2018 04:53
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Conspiratiorist posted:No - Get a friend to help and trade off summon/bind until you have an arbitrarily large demon army? lightrook posted:When a fighter's only job description is that he fights, would it have killed WotC to at least make them good at it? Yes. Literally yes. But now I've already said too much.
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Oct 5, 2018 05:02
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AlphaDog posted:Yes. You're completely right, and I hate the game so much for it. At least 5e gives casters a lot of options for Being Martials, But Better.
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Oct 5, 2018 05:20
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The best part of 3.X was martials getting 50+ Strength (and 1.5x Strength mods, plus double or triple power attacks), and hitting for 2d6+60, five times, at mid-levels. The worst part was casters using those same options, and doing the same thing. But at least melee combat was the way to poo poo out the most damage.
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Oct 5, 2018 05:43
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For all its other flaws, 3e was actually pretty good at letting martials put out damage. The larger overarching problem was that damage was rarely the fastest way to actually defeat any given monster.
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Oct 5, 2018 06:01
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Gharbad the Weak posted:I do remember the D&D next as "watch all the martial classes slowly get less interesting". this is a quote of a post that's like 15 days old but I'm just now catching up on the thread and like... the way they changed battlemaster's school capstone from recovering superiority dice on a per-round basis to a per-combat basis is one of the most insane playtest changes I've ever seen; they get that ability at the same time wizards get 9th level spells lmao gradenko_2000 posted:For all its other flaws, 3e was actually pretty good at letting martials put out damage. depends on the martial; one of my favorite dumb mechanics is still the AD&D-minded holdover that sneak attack didn't work on like half the monster manual Baku fucked around with this message at 08:04 on Oct 5, 2018 |
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Oct 5, 2018 08:01
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No. 1 Apartheid Fan posted:the way they changed battlemaster's school capstone from recovering superiority dice on a per-round basis to a per-combat basis is one of the most insane playtest changes I've ever seen; they get that ability at the same time wizards get 9th level spells lmao
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Oct 5, 2018 08:36
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No. 1 Apartheid Fan posted:depends on the martial; one of my favorite dumb mechanics is still the AD&D-minded holdover that sneak attack didn't work on like half the monster manual In AD&D? The only conditions on Backstab are "it's unaware of you" and "you are behind it". So yeah, that negates surprise is un-backstab-able. That might be vampires and maybe some demons/devils/dragons in the MM. Also anything you can't meaningfully be behind is immune, but that's only slimes and... um... otyugs?
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Oct 5, 2018 08:45
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Toplowtech posted:Wasn't the paladin's Smite allowed with range attacks in the playtest too? This is what Smite looked like in the Jun 7 2013 playtest packet:  This is what Smite looked like in the Aug 2 2013 playtest packet:  This is what Smite looked like in the (IIRC, final pre-release) Sep 19 2013 playtest packet:  And this is what we ended up with: 
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Oct 5, 2018 08:52
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What was their problem with Divine arrow of faith doing basically d8 instead of d6 "sneak attack" level of damage but with a limited number of charges? The Aug 2 2013 playtest is quite good with flat extra damage as you level.
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Oct 5, 2018 09:01
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AlphaDog posted:In AD&D? The only conditions on Backstab are "it's unaware of you" and "you are behind it". In 2E the victim also had to be generally humanoid (because otherwise you hadn't studied where to strike it, of course) and you had to be able to reach something vital (so, as the example says, no backstabbing giants unless you're on a window ledge). The humanoid requirement knocks out quite a bit.
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Oct 5, 2018 11:08
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Here's the relevant section from AD&D's PHB: So yeah, 3e did relax things a bit by letting "Sneak Attack" work across multiple attacks, and no longer needing literal stealth, and so on, but it did also still have that limitation where lots of enemies were immune to Sneak Attacks (and critical strikes) because of 'incorrect anatomy'
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Oct 5, 2018 11:17
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The problem was DM's of 3.5 HATED when martials did the large damage numbers. Heck one of my dm's banned leap attack. Yet none of them ever gave half a poo poo when you plane shifted an enemy to the plane of fire or negative energy plane or some poo poo and killed them that way.
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Oct 5, 2018 13:12
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I think the biggest nerf martials took to their own job (dealing damage) in 5e is that significant increases in damage are locked behind feats now, and feats are considered an "optional" rule (like the grid). So in other words, the game is not going to guide a new player towards picking up Great Weapon Master if they use a Great Sword. So by level 11 the Great Sword Fighter in a default rules game is dealing average of 36 damage. That's two more than a Hexblade Warlock with the same weapon (and without using any resources). That's how much they're valuing the spellcasting. Now martials still get to do better damage than (mostly) everyone else if you use feats, but you're now locking the biggest thing that separates martials from other characters behind build choices like "do I want +2 Strength or Great Weapon Master or Lucky?" and poo poo like that. The system does a terrible job of guiding players to the few things martials actually get to do. Of course the lack of narrative impact past level 10 is a thing too, but it bothers me that even before that Fighters are barely doing any more damage than anyone else. A level 5 Hexblade matches a level 5 Fighter for sustainable damage. How does that make sense?
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Oct 5, 2018 13:24
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gradenko_2000 posted:Here's the relevant section from AD&D's PHB: That's 2nd ed. 1st is (PHB) Back stabbing is the striking of a blow from behind, be it with club, dagger, or sword. <damage stuff here> Note that striking by surprise from behind also increases the hit probability by 20% (+4 on the thief's "to hit" die roll). (DMG) Opponents aware of the thief will be able to negate the attack form. Certain creatures (otyughs, slimes, molds, etc.) either negate surprise or have no definable "back", thus negating this ability.
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Oct 5, 2018 13:39
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The other big change was, as lightrook said, the flattening of BAB into proficiency bonuses, and how that interacts with Power Attack. It used to be that a full BAB class would scale hard and fast enough against monster AC that they'd be able to trade-away their BAB for more Power Attack - this actually forms the missing piece of how damage normally does not scale with level in D&D: in 3e it does for the Fighter, because they get a +1 BAB, and they immediately dump it into Power Attack for a +1 (or more likely +1.5) damage. In 5e, that doesn't exist anymore: everyone is at "full" BAB, and so the Fighter is hitting as often as the Wizard's firebolts (+6 prof +5 stat mod), and so even if Great Weapon Master exists, you don't have the "spare" attack bonus to take the -5 attack penalty in exchange for the +10 damage bonus ... except maybe if you had Advantage, but then Fighters don't have a way to reliably trigger Advantage, so they're still behind even in that department.
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Oct 5, 2018 13:39
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Given all this discussion, is there any third-party resource with tons of good martial-centered magic items that give them the combat edge they deserve and the occasional neat utility/narrative tricks?
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Oct 5, 2018 13:43
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Yeah, turning accuracy into proficiency bonus was a good move but it effectively meant that any class that could swing more than once is doing so with the same efficacy as a fighter. 13th Age's decision to just make damage class-based and scale by level is something they should really consider for the next game. It makes balancing the Fighter waaaay easier. Just make the Fighter get bonus damage on top of their Extra Attack. The plus side of this is they can still give the Sword Bard, Bladesinger, etc. Extra Attack without the bonus damage. You know what else gets me is that Fighters, Barbarians and Monks can't give themselves disadvantage to gain a benefit. That seems so incredibly obvious and they just didn't bother. Reckless Attack giving enemies advantage to attack you is a great mechanic but that's the extent of it.
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Oct 5, 2018 13:46
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Nickoten posted:You know what else gets me is that Fighters, Barbarians and Monks can't give themselves disadvantage to gain a benefit. That seems so incredibly obvious and they just didn't bother. Reckless Attack giving enemies advantage to attack you is a great mechanic but that's the extent of it. Giving yourself Disadvantage to impose some other effect on your melee attack is something that I see come up a lot in houserules that try to inject a little more dynamism into combat, such as called shots or an AC penalty or some other similar debuff, but I don't think it actually works all that well because you end up reducing your hit chance by so much that you either don't hit, or the debuff isn't worth it, relative to just taking a normal attack, hitting, dealing damage, and ending the fight that much quicker. You'd maybe want to do something like "all martial classes add double their proficiency bonus to their attack rolls" for this to work, so that, as with 3e, you can "spare" the attack bonus that you're dumping.
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Oct 5, 2018 13:54
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During the beta thats how gwm worked. It led to the blind drunk pyro build and it was glorious. Disadvantage is too overloaded for voluntary applications.
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Oct 5, 2018 14:27
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My party did something pretty weird last session and now I'm kinda wondering how to handle this: They have a halfling NPC traveling with them through the Underdark who has an old map his great grandpappy bequeathed to him that leads to a long lost tomb of a powerful sorcerer. They finally found the tomb, went in, and battled some specters. The halfling ended up taking a critical hit from one of the ghost's life drain attacks and it took him to 0 hp, killing him instantly. No cleric in the party, and none have access to resurrection spells yet anyway. Earlier in the campaign, our halfling bard traded some rare mushrooms she found with some kuo-toa merchants for a mindflayer tadpole in a jar. She's been keeping it with her and occasionally tossing in some brain matter from drow, duergar, or whatever other creatures they ended up killing along the way. The party also ended up meeting a rogue mindflayer who was studying the faerzress in the underdark. The bard asked him how long it would take for her tadpole to grow up, and the friendly mindflayer explained how ceremorphosis works. The party was pretty grossed out and moved on. So back to the battle with the ghosts, after the last specter was destroyed the bard quickly ran over to the dead halfling, unscrewed the lid from her jar, and poured the tadpole into his ear canal as everyone else at the table, including me, just stared in shock. It was getting late and I did not expect any of that to happen, so I ended the session on a cliffhanger, leaving their friend's fate until next time. How should this work? I definitely want this to work, because I think it's awesome and hilarious. From my little bit of reading around, I haven't found anything that says halflings can't be hosts for illithid. How do mindflayers work when created outside a colony? Should he retain some of his old personality?
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Oct 5, 2018 15:43
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As far as I know mindflayers require a living host to get the memories. So obviously you should have a stunted growth of some sort from the brain being fresh but dead.
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Oct 5, 2018 15:47
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Pussy Quipped posted:
How do you want it to work? It's been hand raised by the pc, that should give you some room to make what changes you want Edit: Clearly they SHOULD be alive but freshly dead is probably fine, don't worry about it Gharbad the Weak fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Oct 5, 2018 |
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Oct 5, 2018 15:53
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That's awesome. My first reaction is to run a D&D version of Alien but with psionic blasts from the vents.
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Oct 5, 2018 15:54
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amoral but well meaning baby illithid friend
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Oct 5, 2018 15:56
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have all the other mindflayers laugh at him for being short
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Oct 5, 2018 16:05
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lightrook posted:On the other hand, "I never run out of magic, ever" is absolutely not equal to the fighter's "I do one more damage, on average, when I use a maneuver, which are still limited per encounter." I mean, if a fighter could use one or two maneuvers any time, all the time, without spending superiority dice or even an action, it still wouldn't really come close, although that might be a good start. I am still more than a bit annoyed that they gave the bard sword subclass in Xanathar's maneuver-like abilities, and then as their subclass "capstone" they get to use them at-will by using a d6 instead of a d12. Compare that to the battlemaster "capstone" and it just hurts. I've been meaning to write a homebrew supplement of "alternative class features" and porting that over for battlemasters is #1 on the list.
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Oct 5, 2018 16:05
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Toplowtech posted:What was their problem with Divine arrow of faith doing basically d8 instead of d6 "sneak attack" level of damage but with a limited number of charges? The Aug 2 2013 playtest is quite good with flat extra damage as you level. Basically the entire 'playtest' process consisted of taking anything cool anyone could do with a sword or a bow and nerfing the loving hell out of it.
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Oct 5, 2018 16:08
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Farg posted:amoral but well meaning baby illithid friend I'm just imagining a puppy who really wants to please mom and dad, but also wants to eat brains and shoot mind blasts at random when he's bored.
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Oct 5, 2018 16:09
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Conspiratiorist posted:And you drop concentration the moment you start casting a spell longer than one action, like Planar Binding. fairly sure that's not a thing, or else it would be a concentration spell
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Oct 5, 2018 16:11
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A friendly little fellow with six face tentacles.
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Oct 5, 2018 16:19
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Tetracube posted:fairly sure that's not a thing, or else it would be a concentration spell That's what I see in the SRD under "Longer Casting Times", the quote is "When you cast a spell with a casting time longer than a single action or reaction, you must spend your action each turn casting the spell, and you must maintain your concentration while you do so." Incidentally using the Ready action to ready casting a spell also uses Concentration.
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Oct 5, 2018 16:20
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Magil Zeal posted:That's what I see in the SRD under "Longer Casting Times", the quote is "When you cast a spell with a casting time longer than a single action or reaction, you must spend your action each turn casting the spell, and you must maintain your concentration while you do so." Incidentally using the Ready action to ready casting a spell also uses Concentration.
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Oct 5, 2018 16:22
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Splicer posted:You are confusing concentration and Concentration. They're not the same thing. I know you're being facetious but I suppose I shouldn't have backspaced the (see “Concentration” below) part. Magil Zeal fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Oct 5, 2018 |
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Oct 5, 2018 16:26
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