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I agree that Blue Mage should be a thing
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Oct 22, 2018 03:13
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MonsterEnvy posted: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. "Magic weapons are optional but also you're an rear end in a top hat for believing that".
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Oct 22, 2018 03:13
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MonsterEnvy posted: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. or they're just a new DM not yet aware of d&d's myriad bullshit we're all just supposed to take in stride
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Oct 22, 2018 03:17
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Brother Entropy posted:or they're just a new DM not yet aware of d&d's myriad bullshit we're all just supposed to take in stride Or, more specific to my complaint, they are running Adventurers League content which has specific enemies at pre-defined points and some are just mundane-immune at a level that players cannot, by rule, have magic weapons.
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Oct 22, 2018 03:26
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AlphaDog posted:It sounds like you want what I want - A standard list of effects that abilities can call. Sure. I'm also saying there should be a common list of abilities that are called in statblocks rather than composing them of AoEsphere Spell Fire in the statblock. Thus enemy melees would have Rain of Steel in their statblock and that would just be the double attack. Fighters get it, high level paladins get it, giant demons get it, etc.
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Oct 22, 2018 03:26
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Brother Entropy posted:or they're just a new DM not yet aware of d&d's myriad bullshit we're all just supposed to take in stride There was a period in Roman times when the common man did not know what the laws actually were; the elite kept that knowledge to themselves, for their own benefit. So they raised some ruckus and on their big central forum, twelve tablets with the laws were placed. Then came the problem that words are never 100% clear and the commoners raised another ruckus, demanding to learn how those laws ought to be interpreted. 5e feels a lot like that to me. Oh yes, you can take an imp for a familiar and there's special rules to cover imp familiars... except that rule doesn't apply to you somehow. Magic weapons are optional and not assumed to be part of the game... except the game also includes challenges for which they're mandatory. Bonus actions are neither a bonus nor an action, and there's a huge difference between an attack and an Attack. The PHB says that "When an object requires your action for its use, you take the Use an Object action"... except that's not true for attacking with a weapon, or activating a magic item, or throwing a vial of alchemist's fire. Can Phantasmal Force blind, paralyze, and kill a monster by "trapping" it in some elaborate iron maiden-ish contraption? Stuff like that. Reading the rules in the book is only the beginning of understanding what the rules actually are. Roman lawyers also used to argue cases in court based on the writings, letters, and comments made by highly respected lawyers who lived long before them. But not every collection of writings was complete, of course, this being the days long before the printing press. So whoever had a larger collection of writings could make themselves into a more effective lawyer, cherry picking from whatever piece of writing suited them best at the moment. That's us. Except now we use tweets from Mearls and Crawford, and the half-remembered articles from a purged website.
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Oct 22, 2018 03:52
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MonsterEnvy posted: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. if the DM can inadvertently maneuver themselves into a position where "magic items are optional" doesn't actually work, it means that there's something missing from the rules.
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Oct 22, 2018 03:55
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gradenko_2000 posted:if the DM can inadvertently maneuver themselves into a position where "magic items are optional" doesn't actually work, it means that there's something missing from the rules. Maybe I misunderstood, but it sounded like the original complaint was that there were nonmagic-immune monsters showing up in organised play, before the organised play rules allow the characters to have magical weapons. And if that's what's happening, trying to push blame onto the DM is a bit much.
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Oct 22, 2018 04:00
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AlphaDog posted:Maybe I misunderstood, but it sounded like the original complaint was that there were nonmagic-immune monsters showing up in organised play, before the organised play rules allow the characters to have magical weapons. I agree, and I'm not the one saying that it's the DMs job to compensate or not do that.
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Oct 22, 2018 04:02
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Sage Genesis posted:That's us. Except now we use tweets from Mearls and Crawford, and the half-remembered articles from a purged website. An apt comparison, given 80% of Judge Crawford’s tweets are vague non-answers pointing to existing materials as though gripped with terror of accidentally setting a new precedent if he gave a clear answer... and the other 20% are clear answers which overturn previous material/rulings because he’s suddenly decided to change how Shield Master works or how to adjudicate eligibility for Twinned metamagic.
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Oct 22, 2018 04:10
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AlphaDog posted:"Magic weapons are optional but also you're an rear end in a top hat for believing that". More like if you are not going to include magic items, don't toss enemies that require them or specific spells at the party. gradenko_2000 posted:if the DM can inadvertently maneuver themselves into a position where "magic items are optional" doesn't actually work, it means that there's something missing from the rules. Fun fact I don't recall the game books ever actually says magic items are optional. None of the books ever suggest this from what I can tell. Official guidelines have even said that at least 1 magic item is expected by level 5. Sage Genesis posted:Magic weapons are optional and not assumed to be part of the game... Not assumed to be part of the math. AlphaDog posted:Maybe I misunderstood, but it sounded like the original complaint was that there were nonmagic-immune monsters showing up in organised play, before the organised play rules allow the characters to have magical weapons. I was assuming home game when I made my comment about an rear end in a top hat DM. But this AL moment is also bad, as an adventure if it's going to send you against enemies immune to normal weapons should give you a way around it. Curse of Strahd for example, sends you against Werewolves, but as part of taking the job to fight the werewolves, your employer outfits you with silver weapons that ignore the Werewolves immunity. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Oct 22, 2018 |
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Oct 22, 2018 04:14
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When numbers are involved, you can't have both "not assumed to be part of the math" and "assumed to be part of the game".
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Oct 22, 2018 04:45
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Regardless of anything else, the familiar thing is a dumb hill to die on. The spell explicitly says that you are only using a spirit that mimics the form of a creature and the familiar stats are in the same book (PHB). Attempting to use the stats from a completely different source, trying to angle-shoot a variant rule, and then deliberately misreading it (the MM specifically states that it only applies to summoned extradimensional quasits, which the found familiar is not), is really like the worst bad take you could have on the problems with 5e. It's hard to take you seriously when you keep going back to that well.
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Oct 22, 2018 04:49
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Toshimo posted:The spell explicitly says that you are only using a spirit that mimics the form of a creature Which means for example, a Winged snake could have bat wings and horns. Angel feathers and a halo. Or goddamned butterfly wings.
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Oct 22, 2018 05:16
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AlphaDog posted:When numbers are involved, you can't have both "not assumed to be part of the math" and "assumed to be part of the game". Yes you can. The math of the game does not take into account magic items. As a result any magic items obtained are an increase in power over what they should have. However the game assumes that characters will obtain some magic items. As they are very useful in dealing with the Monsters that are immune or resistant to mundane weapons.
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Oct 22, 2018 05:30
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MonsterEnvy posted:Yes you can. The math of the game does not take into account magic items. As a result any magic items obtained are an increase in power over what they should have. Are you using "math" in an other-than-plain-english sense? If so, that's not clear in your response to Sage Genesis, which is what I was responding to.
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Oct 22, 2018 05:48
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AlphaDog posted:Are you using "math" in an other-than-plain-english sense? He's using ~~natural language~~. 
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Oct 22, 2018 05:49
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We aren’t really referring to bags of holding or that cloak with the patches here, the discussion is pretty focused on magic items as a numerical aspect of the gear treadmill.
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Oct 22, 2018 05:50
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AlphaDog posted:Are you using "math" in an other-than-plain-english sense? What do you mean. Like what I am saying is pretty self explanatory I think. Like at level 11 A character is expected and balanced around having their primary stat at 20. The character is not expected to have bonuses from a magic item. So the game is not built around them having a certain amount of +'s from their gear at certain levels. It's always just a bonus that makes them stronger then the baseline. Talking about Magic Items and their need reminds me of an old session and cool story from a few years back. Me and my group were playing a homebrew game, and they had recently taken down a Lamia cult and it's Jacklewere servants. However a pair of Jackleweres survived the fighting and escaped. The next session when the party was going through some downtime in a city and doing some roleplaying. The Barbarian went off on his own when night fell to go to a bath house. And the Barbarian being the one who slew the Lamia I felt the Jackleweres who were spying on the party would pick then to try and ambush the Barbarian. The Barbarian now equipped only with a towel, and alone was attacked by the pair. Now I expected the Barbarian to try and make it to his belongings as his magic maul was there and without it he could not hurt the Jackleweres. (Once he got it, I expected him to fairly easily deal with them) instead he cemented himself as a badass to the rest of the players. He killed them both with no weapons, knocking one prone, stepping on his neck to keep him under the water and drowning him, and just straight up throttling the other to death. The Jackleweres did not have the strength to resist him and failed all checks to break free. He stated a bit later he had been reading some Heracles stuff earlier and wanted to try the Nemean lion route on enemies impervious to normal weapons. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Oct 22, 2018 |
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Oct 22, 2018 05:51
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MonsterEnvy posted:Talking about Magic Items and their need reminds me of an old session and cool story from a few years back. Me and my group were playing a homebrew game, and they had recently taken down a Lamia cult and it's Jacklewere servants. However a pair of Jackleweres survived the fighting and escaped. The next session when the party was going through some downtime in a city and doing some roleplaying. The Barbarian went off on his own when night fell to go to a bath house. And the Barbarian being the one who slew the Lamia I felt the Jackleweres who were spying on the party would pick then to try and ambush the Barbarian. The Barbarian now equipped only with a towel, and alone was attacked by the pair. That's great.
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Oct 22, 2018 05:55
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Okay, in previous editions of D&D, if you didn't have a +5 weapon by so-and-so level, the AC of monsters that you were supposed to face by that level would be so high that your miss rate would be cripplingly high. When MonsterEnvy says that "the math of the game does not take into account magic items", what they're saying (at least I hope so) is that between getting your Strength to 20/+5 and getting your proficiency bonus to +6, that scenario that I described in the previous sentence isn't going to happen. And I know because I've plotted it out. So if you do get a +1 magical weapon, the additional to-hit and damage that it grants is a bonus, rather than a necessity ... Big caveat: ... at least, as far as to-hit rates are concerned.
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Oct 22, 2018 05:56
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gradenko_2000 posted:Okay, in previous editions of D&D, if you didn't have a +5 weapon by so-and-so level, the AC of monsters that you were supposed to face by that level would be so high that your miss rate would be cripplingly high.
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Oct 22, 2018 05:57
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MonsterEnvy posted:What do you mean. Like what I am saying is pretty self explanatory I think. Like at level 11 A character is expected and balanced around having their primary stat at 20. The character is not expected to have bonuses from a magic item. So the game is not built around them having a certain amount of +'s from their gear at certain levels. It's always just a bonus that makes them stronger then the baseline. OK, so at what level are you assumed to be able to hit, without assistance from another character, a creature immune to non-magical weapons?
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Oct 22, 2018 05:58
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AlphaDog posted:OK, so at what level are you assumed to be able to hit, without assistance from another character, a creature immune to non-magical weapons? I agree that "you don't need a magical weapon" and "some monsters need magical weapons in order to be hit" are contradictory concepts ... ... but that's not quite relevant to the point about the "math" of the game, as far as attack rolls vs AC is concerned
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Oct 22, 2018 06:02
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gradenko_2000 posted:I agree that "you don't need a magical weapon" and "some monsters need magical weapons in order to be hit" are contradictory concepts ... It's very relevant in terms of expected DPR though. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Oct 22, 2018 |
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Oct 22, 2018 06:04
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gradenko_2000 posted:I agree that "you don't need a magical weapon" and "some monsters need magical weapons in order to be hit" are contradictory concepts ... Yeah, all I am trying to say, is that technically you don't need magic weapons. But you want them as once enemies with immunities come in, it's just going to make stuff needlessly unfun and difficult if you don't have them or some other way of getting around them.
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Oct 22, 2018 06:09
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MonsterEnvy posted:Yeah, all I am trying to say, is that technically you don't need magic weapons. But you want them as once enemies with immunities come in, it's just going to make stuff needlessly unfun and difficult if you don't have them or some other way of getting around them. Oh, ok then. Somehow it sounded like you were trying to say the opposite. MonsterEnvy posted:Fun fact I don't recall the game books ever actually says magic items are optional. None of the books ever suggest this from what I can tell. Official guidelines have even said that at least 1 magic item is expected by level 5.
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Oct 22, 2018 06:17
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AlphaDog posted:Oh, ok then. Somehow it sounded like you were trying to say the opposite. I said technically you don't need them. I also said the book never says they are optional. Both of these things are true and don't contradict each other.
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Oct 22, 2018 06:20
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MonsterEnvy posted:I said technically you don't need them. I also said the book never says they are optional. Both of these things are true. But you do need them in certain situations, because monster abilities exisiting is part of the 'math' of the system. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous at best. The game likes to pretend you don't need them! But then there are creatures impossible to hurt without them. That are presented as equal options to encounter alongside every other creature for the godlike DM to include. So... the only way you're correct is if you include pretty hefty qualifiers. You don't need magic weapons IF the DM knows to not use certain creatures. You don't need magic weapons IF there are casters to compensate (lol). This is part of the system 'math.'
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Oct 22, 2018 06:23
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It's just needlessly pedantic. Do you need a +X weapon to hit a werewolf a commensurate amount to an equivalently challenging enemy and at the rate expected at that CR? No. Do you need a +X weapon to actually deal damage once you hit? Yeah.
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Oct 22, 2018 06:28
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The average D&D campaign is supposed to be full of strange, unpredictable things. Like, I agree that if you have a bandit-wizard he should probably do spells that are recognizable to the PCs because you're making a statement about the ubiquity of college-trained magic; unless it's important that it isn't the same across regions or something. But Trolls or Mind Flayers or whatever should pull entirely new abilities out of their rear end. For me it's more important that a monster be internally consistent with itself than that the whole campaign's magic system have a common origin.
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Oct 22, 2018 06:29
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Elysiume posted:It's just needlessly pedantic. Do you need a +X weapon to hit a werewolf a commensurate amount to an equivalently challenging enemy and at the rate expected at that CR? No. Do you need a +X weapon to actually deal damage once you hit? Yeah. exactly it's bullshit weasel arguments. if you can't meaningfully damage an enemy then you might as well not have hit them at all
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Oct 22, 2018 06:32
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MonsterEnvy posted:I said technically you don't need them. I also said the book never says they are optional. Both of these things are true and don't contradict each other. Do you believe magic items to be optional, or not optional?
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Oct 22, 2018 06:35
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Darwinism posted:So... the only way you're correct is if you include pretty hefty qualifiers. You don't need magic weapons IF the DM knows to not use certain creatures. You don't need magic weapons IF there are casters to compensate (lol). This is part of the system 'math.' The hefty qualifiers are why I am saying it's technically true. A party should have magic items in my opinion. AlphaDog posted:Do you believe magic items to be optional, or not optional? I think they are optional if games are run in certain ways. But parties should have access to them. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Oct 22, 2018 |
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Oct 22, 2018 06:36
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MonsterEnvy posted:I think they are optional if games are run in certain ways. so they are not optional
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Oct 22, 2018 06:46
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Elfgames posted:so they are not optional https://i.imgur.com/2oQkxcC.mp4
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Oct 22, 2018 06:58
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AlphaDog posted:Do you believe magic items to be optional, or not optional? Are you retarded? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 22, 2018 07:14
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I was JUST reading this blog. Are you the author? It's really good!
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Oct 22, 2018 07:17
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CuddlyZombie posted:I was JUST reading this blog. Are you the author? It's really good! Thank you, that's very nice of you to say. It's basically my repository of TG posts so I don't have to keep losing them inside this thread.
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Oct 22, 2018 07:21
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AlphaDog posted:Do you believe magic items to be optional, or not optional? You do know about low-magic games, right? I mean Jesus Christ you hang on some of the dumbest technicalities. The math of the system doesn’t require weapon-based to-hit bonuses in order to internally balance character progression versus monster AC in general. The use of magical weapons to damage creatures that have resistance or immunity to mundane weapons is handled through multiple avenues of explicitly mentioned factors: magical enchanted weapons, silvered mundane weapons, creative use of mechanics such as the aforementioned asphyxiation of the weremen. If people choose to play in a low-magic setting, the setting doesn’t require additional adjustments of its core math in order to function. The call of using creatures that require magically enchanted weapons in order to do damage is solely on the DM and in any reasonable scenario there would have been the conveyance of an expectation that either (1) no creatures with that specific immunity will be used, or (2) there will be a non-magical solution available to the players that they are expected to utilize (e.g. slivering their weapons.) MonsterEnvy has been correct in what he was saying and it’s been good information. You’re just being contrarian to be a jerk about it.
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Oct 22, 2018 08:44
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