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Sage Genesis posted:Refluffing is not the solution for that, because I want all of those abilities to be different. Actually, mechanically, meaningfully different. And you really exaggerate how hard it would be to parse for a human, you can literally condense the effects down to one or two lines in a stat block, as Sodomy Hussein showed. No DM will ever read two lines of Brimstone Rain and then suddenly get the vapors because he thinks Fireball looks kind of similar if you squint. If I need to remember 5 different fireball effects with trivial differences I will probably get annoyed, especially as modern RPG books come in at hundreds of pages anyway. I am perfectly happy abstracting all this crap to one function call, because at its core most of this stuff is AoE fire damage and adding some pointless little status effect isn't going to make that much difference. You already have hundreds of pages of crap to remember like combat rules, skill rules, various status effects - the more you can abstract and reduce to basic principles, the better. quote:(Also, if the DM starts to tell you brimstone rains down at a demon's command, do you actually, genuinely imagine a fiery explosion? Why would you even do that?) Because it's area of effect fire damage and in that context there is no meaningful difference? Yes, if you really wanted to you could add a DoT to brimstone rain and bonus damage to bloodied creatures to Final Pyre and pretend people give a crap enough to make two different abilities, but most of the time that's just padding and it's a rider on two spells that share much the same tactical use (fire damage over an area). There is a reason the meme "[2W] damage and slide the target 1 square" became a thing and it wasn't to applaud the diversity of powers.
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Oct 21, 2018 23:46
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I would just make Brimestone Rain and Final Pyre abilities unique to the monster not spells. A monster should only cast the spells, if they are actually casting the spells. Unique abilities can be whatever they need to be for the monsters, and should be printed in full on the stat block.
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Oct 21, 2018 23:57
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:If I need to remember 5 different fireball effects with trivial differences I will probably get annoyed, especially as modern RPG books come in at hundreds of pages anyway. I am perfectly happy abstracting all this crap to one function call, because at its core most of this stuff is AoE fire damage and adding some pointless little status effect isn't going to make that much difference. You already have hundreds of pages of crap to remember like combat rules, skill rules, various status effects - the more you can abstract and reduce to basic principles, the better. You keep saying you have to remember things. Why? I said you could put it in the stat block itself. Unless you mean to tell me that you memorize all stat blocks and don't reference them when running the game? I mean, hats off to you if you can do that, but that's not really standard I think. TheGreatEvilKing posted:Because it's area of effect fire damage and in that context there is no meaningful difference? Yes, if you really wanted to you could add a DoT to brimstone rain and bonus damage to bloodied creatures to Final Pyre and pretend people give a crap enough to make two different abilities, but most of the time that's just padding and it's a rider on two spells that share much the same tactical use (fire damage over an area). There is a reason the meme "[2W] damage and slide the target 1 square" became a thing and it wasn't to applaud the diversity of powers. You misunderstand my question. If the DM says, "brimstone rains down", why would you visualize an explosion instead? That's literally not what he said is happening. If the DM says you encounter an orc, do you picture them all as gnolls in your mind's eye as well or something? Also, could you lay off the condescension? I'm not pretending that I give a crap about differences between supernatural abilities. And as for 2[W] and slide... I've honestly not run across that before. That's a meme? Google can't find it for me. Must not have been a very popular one.
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Oct 22, 2018 00:00
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Why are function calls bad? Standardizing PC/monster abilities so you don't have to deal with special snowflake exceptions everywhere isn't a bad thing. If the terror of looking up fireball is really what's keeping the monsters down, you can reprint it if worst comes to worst. There is absolutely no reason a player fireball and enemy dark wizard fireball needs to work differently at all, and it's easier to adjudicate when they do the same thing. This is a perfectly decent spell to have as a monster spell at any level, assuming you scale the actual damage accordingly. But for a player, forcing someone to vomit fire on the person next to them is a really big deal with a host of both in and out of combat applications. So it's what, level 3? 4? 5? wait, why is this orc chief we're fighting at level 3 busting out spell level 5 spell? gently caress it I just wanted to have an orc make the bard vomit fire on people, screw it, he's casting fireball. Splicer fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Oct 22, 2018 |
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Oct 22, 2018 00:10
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Sage Genesis posted:You keep saying you have to remember things. Why? I said you could put it in the stat block itself. Unless you mean to tell me that you memorize all stat blocks and don't reference them when running the game? I mean, hats off to you if you can do that, but that's not really standard I think. 2 [W] and slide was kind of a 4e meme as it was a very common 1/encounter martial power to get a double attack and cause some kind of movement on your enemy. It was also extremely effective as a team combo and hence why it was used so often.
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Oct 22, 2018 00:12
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Splicer posted:It's a choice between being really good in combat or really good out of combat, which is not good balancing. Tradeoffs should remain within a pillar whenever possible. If we make skills a thing that matters in combat (enabling other powers, protecting you from certain things) it evens itself out, generally.
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Oct 22, 2018 00:15
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Refluffing is literally the solution for all of that. Ignoring the fact that you can be a PC necromancer but not a demon or fire giant, you can seriously just say the necromancer's fireball looks like a flaming skull or whatever and that the demon's fireball manifests as a rain of fire. It's not even hard. Ultimately, the game needs to be parsed by humans, and having 5 different fireballs with various piddly bonuses/alterations is in no way conducive to that. As a player I don't particularly care that the incoming fire AoE is 10 feet wider vs inflicting a -2 penalty to attack, I'm just going to visualize a fiery explosion - and if it's actually different enough that I care, make it a new spell. I feel like I've got the horse to the pond but it just won't drink the water yet. We agree in principle that the descriptions are terrible. We agree that you can refluff and be creative. We can't agree that you shouldn't have to pull from another book to read a stat block? Incidentally, it's also possible to just adjudicate that certain types of attacks provoke per the rules, which is what we are driving at with all this component stuff, or can have tags that indicate if they are spells and therefore subject to other effects. As far as upgrading his magic, again, let's remember that our enemy wizard probably has three rounds to live. He doesn't need to worry about pacing his magic out and other player-centric concerns. If his Fireball does more damage, just change the damage. I also have to know exactly what you mean by function call here. Name Change fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Oct 22, 2018 |
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Oct 22, 2018 00:23
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Splicer posted:There's stuff that's suitable as something a monster, or indeed a player, does once in one fight to make the fight cool that might be completely unsuitable for a player to be able to repeat on command. Like let's say I want an enemy orc fire wizard to have a spell that causes you to involuntarily vomit fire. Why? Because I think it would be fun to have an encounter where the players are encouraged to spread themselves far apart so they don't vomit fire on each other. And then avoid the flammable parts of the terrain. And then escape after the entire building catches fire. This is the sort of thing I would not even say is a spell, just an ability the Orc has. Ether through weird magic, or his god giving it to him.
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Oct 22, 2018 00:30
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MonsterEnvy posted:This is the sort of thing I would not even say is a spell, just an ability the Orc has. Ether through weird magic, or his god giving it to him. so it's magic but it's not a spell? 
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Oct 22, 2018 00:32
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Section Z posted:Mainly I've discovered that "GM just straight up tells you No" feels like a far lesser evil than- Yeah, for what it's worth whenever I go into the game and Change A Thing it's always under the guise of "because I think this would work better", and not because of something related to realism or "gameplay consistency". If we go back to the root of this conversation, it's about the Warlock's familiar being less powerful than we thought it would be, just because Crawford is saying "refer to the monster in the PHB, and not the version in the MM" ... but that's not the real reason behind it - the real reason is that ... they don't want the Warlock's familiar to be as powerful as it would be had it been using the MM version. And that feels like a cop-out.
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Oct 22, 2018 00:36
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Why do AL designers feel it is in any way acceptable to throw werewolves at T1 parties. It's miserable and awful and they should feel ashamed.
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Oct 22, 2018 00:37
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MonsterEnvy posted:This is the sort of thing I would not even say is a spell, just an ability the Orc has. Ether through weird magic, or his god giving it to him.
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Oct 22, 2018 00:41
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Sage Genesis posted:You keep saying you have to remember things. Why? I said you could put it in the stat block itself. Unless you mean to tell me that you memorize all stat blocks and don't reference them when running the game? I mean, hats off to you if you can do that, but that's not really standard I think. I wouldn't necessarily memorize them all, but I would want them to be close enough that I wouldn't have to continually have to go back and reference to see what special exception we have here. To go back to your example, it would be thematic to put the necromancer and the demon in the same encounter, and I wouldn't want to have to flip between the two of them to determine which fireball we're using. You'll probably still have to check back for numbers, but giving the necromancer and the demon fireball - a common, well known ability - means that you can throw it out instantaneously without having to go back and see which rider effect it has. I'd also expect monsters to share abilities as well, so if the DM goes "brimstone's raining down again" the cleric can prepare to dispel DoTs rather than making sure people are above 50% health. After all, it's not unreasonable for a lich to use Final Pyre as well, or for a fiend pact warlock to use Brimstone Rain. Even if we accept that some of these are NPC only you are probably going to want to have NPCs that share abilities. I'm not objecting to different fire abilities, I'm objecting to everyone having a special fire ability that follows no known pattern and is completely unique to it. quote:You misunderstand my question. If the DM says, "brimstone rains down", why would you visualize an explosion instead? That's literally not what he said is happening. If the DM says you encounter an orc, do you picture them all as gnolls in your mind's eye as well or something? My apologies, I assumed you were being condescending with the brimstone thing and replied in kind. (For reference, my picture of a fire rain is something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1lRseegK_E, where everything IS exploding). The 2[W] and slide people 1 square is the caricature people made of 4e powers because they considered them uninteresting, and part of my point is that there's only so much you can do to distinguish between area fire blasts before they become something else. Yea, mechanically maybe Final Pyre does half necrotic and half fire, but that's just such an uninteresting effect in game it doesn't justify a whole new ability. Sodomy Hussein posted:I feel like I've got the horse to the pond but it just won't drink the water yet. We agree in principle that the descriptions are terrible. We agree that you can refluff and be creative. We can't agree that you shouldn't have to pull from another book to read a stat block? I mean, when I say function call you're literally doing it by having tags that provoke and components like "spell". If I have the spell tag and provoke defined in the PHB for player abilities or say "weakened" I have to go out to the PHB ANYWAY when the monster ability says it weakens. I don't know why that is superior to having "fireball" be the cue to look up and have that composed of the various known elements rather than having to flip through the PHB for spell tags and status effects. Splicer posted:There's stuff that's suitable as something a monster, or indeed a player, does once in one fight to make the fight cool that might be completely unsuitable for a player to be able to repeat on command. Like let's say I want an enemy orc fire wizard to have a spell that causes you to involuntarily vomit fire. Why? Because I think it would be fun to have an encounter where the players are encouraged to spread themselves far apart so they don't vomit fire on each other. And then avoid the flammable parts of the terrain. And then escape after the entire building catches fire. This is kind of the don't put teleportation in the setting if you don't want people teleporting into bank vaults and stealing stuff problem. You can either give the ability to something obviously inhuman the players can't duplicate (mind flayer blasts, dragon fire breath), or come up with some variant that's not crazy, but in the above example you're gonna get the problem where people want to take the vomiting fire spell and you have to explain that this spell is basically like video game teleportation. You're not allowed to have it because it would break event flags. That's not really a satisfying conversation for anybody on any side of the table IMO, and if you make an ability that's evocative enough people are going to want to use it.
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Oct 22, 2018 00:50
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Toshimo posted:Why do AL designers feel it is in any way acceptable to throw werewolves at T1 parties. It's miserable and awful and they should feel ashamed. I'm going to take a stab and say because there are only so many monsters you can use at T1 and they've probably gone through literally all of them at this point so they're going far into stuff that they shouldn't use and even then still getting some repetitions. Also heres a thing that really frustrates me about damage reduction, its insanely boring to use enemies that have it but also lose it to magic weapons so that the entire premise of the damage reduction is just negated once everyone reaches a certain threshold. Like I get that you dont have to have your golf bag of weapons like 3.x days but man werewolves just go from really painful opponents to completely trivial once everyones got their magic items (or are just completely trivial to begin with if there is enough magic in the party). TheGreatEvilKing posted:This is kind of the don't put teleportation in the setting if you don't want people teleporting into bank vaults and stealing stuff problem. You can either give the ability to something obviously inhuman the players can't duplicate (mind flayer blasts, dragon fire breath), or come up with some variant that's not crazy, but in the above example you're gonna get the problem where people want to take the vomiting fire spell and you have to explain that this spell is basically like video game teleportation. You're not allowed to have it because it would break event flags. That's not really a satisfying conversation for anybody on any side of the table IMO, and if you make an ability that's evocative enough people are going to want to use it. Heres the thing, magic like this exists and is all over the place in D&D but a great many settings just fundamentally dont think about this or take any real logical steps about how it works (ironically its why Eberron, Eberrowns because its specifically built under the assumptions of D&D standard operating procedures). It's insanely frustrating because it means you have to come out and say 'oh actually nah please dont do this'. Real talk though, if a player wants to learn and do things a monster can do, you should absolutely encourage that behaviour tell them 'hey this is off the course of your experience so you gotta spend some time learning it'. Give them a goal to find someone who can teach it properly and a mentor or ally they need to try and make nice with. This is good character growth and should absolutely spur them on to the larger story. If your players are so interested in learning monster abilities, you should 100% let them. kingcom fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Oct 22, 2018 |
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Oct 22, 2018 00:55
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Brother Entropy posted:so it's magic but it's not a spell? Splicer posted:So don't make it a spell only the orc can cast, instead make it a spell only the orc can cast? Don't make it a spell that only the Orc can cast, instead make it an ability that only the Orc can use. On Players learning spells you do make up however, my system is that there are two ways. A. Find a Scroll of it, B. Find out it's name, level, and Components. Doing ether will add it to the spell list if the PC's are capable of learning it. An example of this, is a Spell I made up, Szass Tam's Supreme Spell Manipulation. Which the party wizard expressed interest in learning. I kept it from him, by the fact that Tam never put the spell to Scroll, so the only way you would be able to learn it, is to take the info directly from Tam's lich mind. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Oct 22, 2018 |
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Oct 22, 2018 00:59
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MonsterEnvy posted:Don't make it a spell that only the Orc can cast, instead make it an ability that only the Orc can use. Nah so heres your problem mate. If it's a spell, it can follow all the rules and logic of 'spell', its magic, it will have components, it can be counter-spelled, it can be interrupted, it can be anti-magicked. If you turn it into an ability you gently caress that over and on top of it you then just shaft players trying to interact with it. Then you need to write more conformations and clarifications on what can or cant interact and you've then undercut the entire point of what you were doing for zero gain. MonsterEnvy posted:On Players learning spells you do make up however, my system is that there are two ways. A. Find a Scroll of it, B. Find out it's name, level, and Components. Doing ether will add it to the spell list if the PC's are capable of learning it. Okay so heres this hot poo poo take to explain something for not just you but everyone. If you have players engaging with something you've made and wanting to learn more and get the thing they've expressed interest in, you should reward that and give them a path to learn it. This gives the player something to look forward to and encourages them to look for more things they should engage with. Reward engagement to inspire the repetition of good behaviour.
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Oct 22, 2018 01:16
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:I wouldn't necessarily memorize them all, but I would want them to be close enough that I wouldn't have to continually have to go back and reference to see what special exception we have here. To go back to your example, it would be thematic to put the necromancer and the demon in the same encounter, and I wouldn't want to have to flip between the two of them to determine which fireball we're using. You'll probably still have to check back for numbers, but giving the necromancer and the demon fireball - a common, well known ability - means that you can throw it out instantaneously without having to go back and see which rider effect it has. Ah I see what you mean about the brimstone rain. I was imagining like a brief shower of rain. Except instead of water, this stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmkmStZc240 So I was a bit confused why it all had to explode. Anyway, that's a bit besides the point. I think we're just going to have to stop this back and forth. I for one do continually flip between stat blocks (or more likely have them bookmarked, or printed out on a single page, or something similar) so referencing the multiple different Fireball-alikes is for me just as easy as referencing a single one. Point being, I think we approach the game sufficiently differently that both of our ways work best for ourselves. Not sure what more can be said about it. (NPCs sharing thematically similar abilities is fine, mind you. Great even! Something similar to 3e templates or 4e's monster themes, introduced in DMG2.)
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Oct 22, 2018 01:18
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kingcom posted:I'm going to take a stab and say because there are only so many monsters you can use at T1 and they've probably gone through literally all of them at this point so they're going far into stuff that they shouldn't use and even then still getting some repetitions. It's worse, though. Werewolves have immunity to mundane weapons, not resistance. I slogged through all of gencon with the fighters, barbs, rogues, monks, and rangers all doing zero damage. Then we hit DDAL08-01 tonight only to have the same thing happen. And the druid didn't take Shillelagh, so he was functionally useless after dumping a faerie fire.
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Oct 22, 2018 01:28
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Toshimo posted:It's worse, though. Werewolves have immunity to mundane weapons, not resistance. I slogged through all of gencon with the fighters, barbs, rogues, monks, and rangers all doing zero damage. Then we hit DDAL08-01 tonight only to have the same thing happen. And the druid didn't take Shillelagh, so he was functionally useless after dumping a faerie fire. Yeah I know, I've used them a couple of times and its incredibly dumb to go from useless to 'this monster is irrelevant' is what I was saying. It all rolls back into the idea that martial classes fundamentally need magic weapons or they dont get to participate in the game down the line, regardless of what the designers actually say. It's just in AL you have no guarantee that you're going to actually get a magic weapon so welp lol.
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Oct 22, 2018 01:40
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kingcom posted:Nah so heres your problem mate. If it's a spell, it can follow all the rules and logic of 'spell', its magic, it will have components, it can be counter-spelled, it can be interrupted, it can be anti-magicked. If you turn it into an ability you gently caress that over and on top of it you then just shaft players trying to interact with it. Then you need to write more conformations and clarifications on what can or cant interact and you've then undercut the entire point of what you were doing for zero gain. Also what do you mean you have to write more conformations and clarifications. The Ability can simply be this Orc has the ability to cause up to 3 targets within 30 feet or something, start throwing up fire if they fail a con save. Then you just write down the effect. Players will generally be interested in the ability, but won't try to learn it, when they find out it's not a spell. kingcom posted:Okay so heres this hot poo poo take to explain something for not just you but everyone. If you have players engaging with something you've made and wanting to learn more and get the thing they've expressed interest in, you should reward that and give them a path to learn it. This gives the player something to look forward to and encourages them to look for more things they should engage with. Reward engagement to inspire the repetition of good behaviour. I did, They could learn the spell from Tam was the path I granted. They needed to have some challenge to get access to it, as it was a very powerful spell. Namely it was a 6th level spell that functioned similar to counterspell, but instead of canceling the spell being cast, it allowed Tam to take control of the spell and act as he cast it instead. It was limited to affecting level 6 and lower spells but could be casted at higher levels to affect higher level spells. The party saw it in action when a friendly wizard tried to polymorph Tam, only get polymorphed himself. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Oct 22, 2018 |
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Oct 22, 2018 01:45
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kingcom posted:Yeah I know, I've used them a couple of times and its incredibly dumb to go from useless to 'this monster is irrelevant' is what I was saying. It all rolls back into the idea that martial classes fundamentally need magic weapons or they dont get to participate in the game down the line, regardless of what the designers actually say. It's just in AL you have no guarantee that you're going to actually get a magic weapon so welp lol.
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Oct 22, 2018 01:48
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quote:I mean, when I say function call you're literally doing it by having tags that provoke and components like "spell". If I have the spell tag and provoke defined in the PHB for player abilities or say "weakened" I have to go out to the PHB ANYWAY when the monster ability says it weakens. I don't know why that is superior to having "fireball" be the cue to look up and have that composed of the various known elements rather than having to flip through the PHB for spell tags and status effects. Oh. That's because you know what Weakened, Dazed, and Spell mean because they have essentially one-line effect definitions, hence you don't have to write out the effect definition every time. Or do you really think the book should call out exactly what Weakened or Fireball mean every single time they are used? Be honest now.
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Oct 22, 2018 01:49
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MadScientistWorking posted:Aren't magic items supposedly optional too? Yes.
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Oct 22, 2018 01:53
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MonsterEnvy posted:While it's true that prevents counterspell and stuff. But Players don't generally interact with non spells in the same way as spells. Okay so is this orc ability magical? Does it go through my anti-magic shield? My globe of invulnerability? If an ability requires a wisdom save does my deep gnome advantage on int/wis/cha saves against magic trigger? Can i stop this ability from firing in any way? You've introduced a lot of questions for no real gain. If you say 'its a magic spell, follow all the rules of magic spells' then you would be fine. I mean d&d has the 'spell-like ability' for ages but they drop this terminology for reasons? It was an easy way to indicate that 'this is a magic spell but you can put it in your spell book'. MonsterEnvy posted:I did, They could learn the spell from Tam was the path I granted. They needed to have some challenge to get access to it, as it was a very powerful spell. Namely it was a 6th level spell that functioned similar to counterspell, but instead of canceling the spell being cast, it allowed Tam to take control of the spell and act as he cast it instead. It was limited to affecting level 6 and lower spells but could be casted at higher levels to affect higher level spells. The party saw it in action when a friendly wizard tried to polymorph Tam, only get polymorphed himself. Okay so the issue I'm pointing out is that a spell where they need to go mind read this one guy to get it, its super specific and unless you had some player whose thing was reading minds all the time (forgive me if this is the case), its not got a lot of agency in place for the players. You want to give them control and let them feel like they driving the discovery. It's a spell hes made so its probably something he had to research and work out, so instead have it be documented to some degree in his notes and laboratory so that the players can take steps to recreate the experiments he undertook to create the spell. Have the player work on it and focus their time (or downtime) on coming up with the requirements for the experiments and maybe even a rare ingredient that is something they need to find to get it. Plus for extra bonus points you can have this ingredient be found at <insert your main plot location here> to loop it back into their overall goal. It makes it all feel and focus on the players development more than them hoping they have to read this guys mind through a series of convoluted traps and frustrations with taking the lich alive and disabling them etc. kingcom fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Oct 22, 2018 |
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Oct 22, 2018 01:57
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MadScientistWorking posted:Aren't magic items supposedly optional too? They are optional in that the math does not take them into account. So getting one will always be an upgrade. They are also not needed to progress through the game, even monsters with resistance or immunity can be countered by the Wizard casting Magic weapon or something on the Fighters sword. However they want the Magic Item's because it does make them better and helps a lot with stuff like resistance so you don't have to rely on the wizard buffing you. If a game is not going to give out magic items for some reason, the DM should not be using monsters that have immunity to non magic items. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Oct 22, 2018 |
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Oct 22, 2018 01:59
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MadScientistWorking posted:Aren't magic items supposedly optional too? lol MonsterEnvy posted:They are optional in that the math does not take them into account. So getting one will always be an upgrade. They are also not needed to progress through the game, even monsters with resistance or immunity can be countered by the Wizard casting Magic weapon or something on the Fighters sword. hahaahahahahahha. Theres that classic monsterenvy.
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Oct 22, 2018 02:03
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kingcom posted:Yeah I know, I've used them a couple of times and its incredibly dumb to go from useless to 'this monster is irrelevant' is what I was saying. It all rolls back into the idea that martial classes fundamentally need magic weapons or they dont get to participate in the game down the line, regardless of what the designers actually say. It's just in AL you have no guarantee that you're going to actually get a magic weapon so welp lol. It's even worse now, because going forward, you can't even get a magic weapon until Tier 2 full stop.
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Oct 22, 2018 02:07
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Toshimo posted:It's even worse now, because going forward, you can't even get a magic weapon until Tier 2 full stop. kingcom posted:lol None of this discounts what I said. Which boils down to, by the games terms and rules you don't need them but you do want them MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Oct 22, 2018 |
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Oct 22, 2018 02:16
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kingcom posted:Okay so is this orc ability magical? Does it go through my anti-magic shield? My globe of invulnerability? If an ability requires a wisdom save does my deep gnome advantage on int/wis/cha saves against magic trigger? Can i stop this ability from firing in any way? You've introduced a lot of questions for no real gain. If you say 'its a magic spell, follow all the rules of magic spells' then you would be fine. I mean d&d has the 'spell-like ability' for ages but they drop this terminology for reasons? It was an easy way to indicate that 'this is a magic spell but you can put it in your spell book'. kingcom posted:Okay so the issue I'm pointing out is that a spell where they need to go mind read this one guy to get it, its super specific and unless you had some player whose thing was reading minds all the time (forgive me if this is the case), its not got a lot of agency in place for the players. You want to give them control and let them feel like they driving the discovery. It's a spell hes made so its probably something he had to research and work out, so instead have it be documented to some degree in his notes and laboratory so that the players can take steps to recreate the experiments he undertook to create the spell. Have the player work on it and focus their time (or downtime) on coming up with the requirements for the experiments and maybe even a rare ingredient that is something they need to find to get it. Plus for extra bonus points you can have this ingredient be found at <insert your main plot location here> to loop it back into their overall goal. It makes it all feel and focus on the players development more than them hoping they have to read this guys mind through a series of convoluted traps and frustrations with taking the lich alive and disabling them etc. Something like this also works I agree with you there. For the call I made, I said Tam destroyed his work on the spell and refuses to commit it to scroll, cause as useful as having like 10 scrolls of the spell on his person would be, and 10 extra uses as a result. He was a afraid one could get into the wild or be stolen from him, allowing the spell to spread to other Wizards. I also forgot to mention the third way to get the spell. Which is look at his spell book. As a copy of it equivalent to a scroll is on there. Edit:Which I might as well add is the path they took, they decided they wanted to heist Tam's Spellbook. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Oct 22, 2018 |
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Oct 22, 2018 02:28
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This is about to get snippy as poo poo, so I'd like to throw out there that 5e intends for magic items to be optional. The practical outcome is that while the math generally works out to support this, you're still going to encounter that odd enemy that does require a magic weapon to hit, which means the claim that magic items are optional is busted as poo poo, and sounds especially egregious when justified under "well the Wizard can just deign to let the Fighter participate, so it's fine"
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Oct 22, 2018 02:43
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MonsterEnvy posted:There is nothing saying that spells are designed to be used for players over monsters. Really? One being in the Player's Handbook and the other the Monster Manual didn't give it away?
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Oct 22, 2018 02:45
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gradenko_2000 posted:This is about to get snippy as poo poo, so I'd like to throw out there that 5e intends for magic items to be optional. Or bypass your alternative means as a martial without the least shred of self awareness. There was a very short lived attempt at 4th ed with a friend of a friend, where my musing "At least tainted wounds feat means future demons can't bullshit themselves back to full health like that last one." And the GM happily laughed over voice without the least shred of malice, and said "Well, I guess I'll have to make that not work then" because they honestly had no idea how much of a dick move that was.
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Oct 22, 2018 02:47
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gradenko_2000 posted:This is about to get snippy as poo poo, so I'd like to throw out there that 5e intends for magic items to be optional.
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Oct 22, 2018 02:50
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gradenko_2000 posted:The practical outcome is that while the math generally works out to support this, you're still going to encounter that odd enemy that does require a magic weapon to hit, which means the claim that magic items are optional is busted as poo poo, and sounds especially egregious when justified under "well the Wizard can just deign to let the Fighter participate, so it's fine" And assuming the Wizard even knows that spell. And has prepared that spell. And doesn't have something better on which to devote their Concentration. And never gets hit and/or fails that Con save to retain Concentration.
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Oct 22, 2018 02:52
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Sodomy Hussein posted:Oh. That's because you know what Weakened, Dazed, and Spell mean because they have essentially one-line effect definitions, hence you don't have to write out the effect definition every time. Or do you really think the book should call out exactly what Weakened or Fireball mean every single time they are used? Be honest now. I don't, but I would argue most of the D&D spells could be condensed to a single line and called along the same vein. Fireball is fairly memorable as Xd6 in 20-foot radius, spell to the point that it's just as easy to put in a statblock as "weakened". Yes, you do need to look up corner behavior but that's not too much different than looking up how stun in 3.5 is an auto-disarm.
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Oct 22, 2018 02:53
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Pretty much every game expects the person running it, if not everyone playing it, to have memorized and therefore immediately recognize some material without full-fledged rules text. For instance, if I'm running Vampire I can look at an NPC stat block, see "Nightmare 2, Obfuscate 3", and know exactly what that means without fuss because the effects of the ten core vampire disciplines are just part of the bedrock of the game. By the same light, it's not really a big deal if a monster statblock just says "Fireball" or "Magic Missile", although it'd be a real dick move for one to say "Magic Jar".
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Oct 22, 2018 02:59
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gradenko_2000 posted:This is about to get snippy as poo poo, so I'd like to throw out there that 5e intends for magic items to be optional. Never said it was justified, just that is true that magic items are not Needed, because there are ways to get around not having them. However you do want magic items and players should get them.
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Oct 22, 2018 03:00
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Sage Genesis posted:And assuming the Wizard even knows that spell. and boy will that be an awkward conversation when you have two or three characters who fight with weapons and only one wizard to cast magic weapon
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Oct 22, 2018 03:00
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Brother Entropy posted:and boy will that be an awkward conversation when you have two or three characters who fight with weapons and only one wizard to cast magic weapon At that point the DM's the one being as rear end in a top hat for making this team fight something immune to non magic weapons and not giving them any.
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Oct 22, 2018 03:05
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:I don't, but I would argue most of the D&D spells could be condensed to a single line and called along the same vein. Fireball is fairly memorable as Xd6 in 20-foot radius, spell to the point that it's just as easy to put in a statblock as "weakened". It sounds like you want what I want - A standard list of effects that abilities can call. Making them all spells makes it weird and causes everyone you try to explain it to misunderstand your main point. Like, "I draw my bow and Rain Of Steel" and "I chant the words and cast Fireball" and "the gunpowder just fucken explodes like holy poo poo" should all gosub AoEsphere_LEVELD6. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Oct 22, 2018 |
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Oct 22, 2018 03:12
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