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escalator dropdown posted:1) 5e tells DMs that magical weapons are “optional” (because of bounded accuracy) Page 277 of the DMG talks about damage vulnerabilities, resistances, and immunities and how to modify the CR table from Chapter 3 to account for them when creating monsters. It specifically mentions that higher level parties will be more likely to have resources to deal with these situations. It also mentions an alternative of just adjusting HP instead of playing into the vulnerabilities or resistances. There isn't a specific block of text that I can see that tells a relatively new DM how to handle those situations. I don't think they accounted for it, and I suspect the monster stat blocks were largely carried over from previous editions and didn't have the weight of 4+ years of playtesting to tease out all the weird interactions or subsequent dumb AL ruling changes that would put a party of low tier players against nonmagical immune creatures.
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Oct 23, 2018 23:45
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Splicer posted:koreban, your entire premise seems to be that being able to change the rules means the rules as written are above criticism. Then let me clarify, because that's not my claim: The rules as written are an attempt to define, in base abstract, a set of guidelines in how to set parameters and adjudicate situations given a broad paradigm and specific set examples. The rules have obvious issues because they were not written to be exacting in all ways. The rules are also guidelines that can, and should, be adjusted as required (see: fudging dice rolls). Any criticism of the rules should take into account some obvious caveats. (i.e. the Intellect Devourer is listed as a CR2 creature for the purposes of using the Encounter Building Table in the DMG to make an encounter, however the intent is to use it as a minion in a Mind Flayer lair, meaning it should be used a part of an aggregate whole towards a CR11+ encounter. Ergo, it's not entirely inappropriate for a CR2 Intellect Devourer to be in the Monster Manual, but if you isolate it as an example of bad design, you're doing so under suspect premise, at best, and probably making a deliberate bad faith argument if we're being honest.) I object to the deliberate bad faith arguments, or those made in opposition or ignorance of the guidelines that are made on pages 4-9 of the DMG where it's laid out several times that the rules aren't constraints that must be strictly adhered to, but are guidelines that should be used to frame the narrative but can and should be adjusted as required. quote:But 5e does not provide a minimum framework of rules. It contains a great deal of rules that in aggregate function better in some ways than others, with the "better" ways still being worse than they should be. If his intent for 5e was to provide a minimum framework of rules for maximum narrative possibility there wouldn't be multiple paragraphs required to explain how to put a guy in a headlock, or at the very least they would apply to more combat stunts than just putting a guy in a headlock. The complaints about 5e being a poorly written rules heavy games aren't because 5e is a rules light narrative game, they're because 5e is a poorly written rules heavy game that pays lip service to bring a rules light narrative game, either out if genuine ignorance as to what those words mean or as a paper thin excuse to cover up areas of lazy design. I didn't say it was a perfectly written game. I will offer this as an alternative to how I would contextualize this: Warmachine/Hordes are miniature skirmish combat games that I used to play. The Rulebook was decently brief and the attempt was to write it to be this balanced, competitive-minded game that supported tournament play as the baseline, and fun/narrative play as incidental to having a balanced rule set. The shooting rules were like 2 or 3 pages total and covered all the rules requires to understand shooting. The grappling/throwing rules and subsequent interactions with grappled/thrown/knocked down models took like twice that much space to lay out, because holy poo poo can that get complicated quickly. Tying that back to D&D, I believe that there are concepts that can be laid down with a minimum of explicit rules, and others that require fairly explicit designations because the level of interaction and consequence is much deeper. I take your intent and understand where you're coming from in what you say. I even agree that compared to a game like that one that's entire ruleset fits on a 3x5 card, D&D is not "rules light." I compare it to Pathfinder, however, and holy poo poo do they handwave a ton of stuff that PF lays out in excruciating detail. I also generally appreciate that 5e is simple enough that I can choose to apply or disapply certain rules as befits my narrative, and the game system doesn't collapse as a result of it. Houserules aren't canon, nor should they be. And someone's going to pipe up with "any game that needs to be houseruled is bullshit and should be thrown in a fire," which, fine, if that's your thing, have fun with whatever. My barometer for 5e being a good game or not comes down to (1) can my friends and I understand the rules well enough to play a game that flows and doesn't require us to refer to a book every 3 minutes, (2) does it support strict play within the confines of a written adventure so my friend can DM, and also open gameplay so I can run a modified sandbox game that lets me pull in poo poo from other IPs that I liked, and (3) can I find people who want to sit down and play this particular game with me. I'm certain I could get 1 and 2 from other systems, but 3 is the lynchpin right now. It's really easy to get people together for 5e games, but PF fails on #1, and SotDL fails on all three for us, and going more obscure from there, I basically fail on #3 for everything else (and not for lack of trying).
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Oct 24, 2018 00:11
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koreban posted:
The group talked about the game a lot, we dealt with a few different problems over the two years. Not to mention all the changes that had been made in previous campaigns. Seriously, quit being a trash human. edit: my dm is new, by the way, again As to you other nonsense. Is your point that 5e has dm fiat as a design decision and thus any problem with the rules is actually a problem with the players for not fixing the rules?
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Oct 24, 2018 00:48
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Mcmccarthy posted:As to you other nonsense. Is your point that 5e has dm fiat as a design decision and thus any problem with the rules is actually a problem with the players for not fixing the rules? No, my point is that the game supports the flexibility to have DM fiat by allowance and design, and this is a benefit, and not always a critical failure of rules writing. Hit 5e for the problems it has. Don’t make up problems because it’s cool to get in on the dogpile.
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Oct 24, 2018 01:21
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edit:I decided i don't care to keep talking with Koreban, so I'll drop it in hopes of being more likely to get a response to the below. In other news, i came to this subforum cause i was looking for some thoughts. Has anyone here ever tried capping player levels lower than 20? There was an edit of 3.5 called e6 where you capped at level 6 and then gained feats with exp after this and i thought that would be a good place to start. One of my concerns is that without the plethora of splat feats the characters might all end up with the same powers or whatever. I don't need three melee dudes all with great weapon master, polearm master, sentinel, ect... I'm fine with just turning higher level class features into feats, but depending how long the game goes this might not be enough. Are there any good dmsguild feats? Is there anything i should specifically avoid from unearthed arcana? Also i was thinking about changing rules for healing someone at 0 hp. As it is it sorta feels like you should really wait to heal someone until they are unconscious to get the most use out of your spell slot. Attack and healing word for 4 hp and bringing someone back from 0 is better than wasting an action on cure wounds for 8. I figured i could treat them sort of like healing surges. When unconscious at 0 hp, magical healing no longer returns you to consciousness. You can however use a free action to also spend a hit die at this time, if you do so you regain consciousness and hit die + con hp. Hopefully this makes being downed feel more dangerous, especially with a 6 or so hd cap. Keeps healing word at death's door a strong option and also allows a higher spell slot heal a time to shine when you can't let someone go down again because they'll stay down this time. Is that going to mess my game up a lot? I already tend to throw fewer harder encounters at my players and being rested isn't often an issue. Mcmccarthy fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Oct 24, 2018 |
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Oct 24, 2018 01:30
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Mcmccarthy posted:I came here to ask if anyone has done something like e6 with 5e. How did it work, were there any problems? 5e has a limited feat list and a handful of those are heads and shoulders above the rest, so there's little horizontal growth and customization possible with an early level cap. Level 8 is fine cap, as it lets all classes get their essential abilities. Level 12 if you don't mind seeing 5th and 6th level spells in your game (the most powerful offenders are easy to single out), as it lets everyone differentiate further with their capstones, and leaves room for some multiclasses to come onto their own. After that the mechanics just sort of break down so you shouldn't run 13+ level games anyway.
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Oct 24, 2018 02:00
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koreban posted:No, my point is that the game supports the flexibility to have DM fiat by allowance and design, and this is a benefit, and not always a critical failure of rules writing. every roleplaying game supports the "flexibility to have DM fiat," that is not remotely a unique or specific strength of D&D 5E on the other hand having things like monsters that are likely to result in TPKs if you naively use them in instances the game suggests rea appropriate, and having them repeatedly featured in the official campaign in instances where it's likely a party won't have the necessary in-game workarounds yet are real and specific problems with the game that the "flexibility to have DM fiat" in no way is compensation for e: or to get away from horrific monster design - in what concrete ways does D&D 5E better support "DM fiat by allowance and design" than SotDL, a game you called out as inadequate? or (leaving aside potential inability to find a game), how does D&D 5E concretely and specifically beat SotDL on "(1) can my friends and I understand the rules well enough to play a game that flows and doesn't require us to refer to a book every 3 minutes, (2) does it support strict play within the confines of a written adventure so my friend can DM, and also open gameplay so I can run a modified sandbox game that lets me pull in poo poo from other IPs that I liked" in ways that don't boil down to "pre-existing familiarity with the system" or "inexplicable willingness to homebrew/house-rule/make stuff up in one case and not the other"? LGD fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Oct 24, 2018 |
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Oct 24, 2018 02:05
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LGD posted:every roleplaying game supports the "flexibility to have DM fiat," that is not remotely a unique or specific strength of D&D 5E Help me out, then. How does another game handle a creature akin to the intellect devourer or werewolf situation appropriately? Genuine question. I don't have my PF1.0 bestiary nearby to check, and I'm not up to snuff on whatever they renamed the analogue creature to in order to check how they categorized a powerful, high level NPC's minion creature type that won't fail the same basic test of "here's a weak CR creature that's meant to be used as part of a much higher level encounter." quote:e: or to get away from horrific monster design - in what concrete ways does D&D 5E better support "DM fiat by allowance and design" than SotDL, a game you called out as inadequate? I never made the claim about DM fiat in preference to or as a comparison of any other system. I am fully aware that the DM fiat concept is not unique to D&D. I was addressing the counterclaims that get tossed out about "well here's this one cross-section of a rule that doesn't stand up well, BAD RULES WRITING!" And I'm saying, "Yo, you know that you can change that at the table because, yeah, it's bad, but like, it's a 5e rule.. that's more of a guideline. You're not bound to observe the rule exactly as written. Even the DMG says so all over the first 9 pages." quote:or (leaving aside potential inability to find a game), how does D&D 5E concretely and specifically beat SotDL on "(1) can my friends and I understand the rules well enough to play a game that flows and doesn't require us to refer to a book every 3 minutes, (2) does it support strict play within the confines of a written adventure so my friend can DM, and also open gameplay so I can run a modified sandbox game that lets me pull in poo poo from other IPs that I liked" in ways that don't boil down to "pre-existing familiarity with the system" or "inexplicable willingness to homebrew/house-rule/make stuff up in one case and not the other"? Part 1 is absolutely a lack of familiarity with the system, but it's also shared familiarity with 5e. This goes to the #3 claim that the people I play with aren't interested in expanding out into another system because 5e is familiar and they don't feel unnecessarily constrained by the system and it's rules. Part 2 is the stupid dickleeches, and titdemons, and other grimdark poo poo that SotDL is full of. My friend who DMs straight out of books doesn't want to deal with it. I don't want to deal with it. The system as written is too much teenage goth-horror to play in their as-written content. I'm sure it's fine for homebrew settings.
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Oct 24, 2018 02:59
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koreban posted:Help me out, then. How does another game handle a creature akin to the intellect devourer or werewolf situation appropriately? Genuine question. I don't have my PF1.0 bestiary nearby to check, and I'm not up to snuff on whatever they renamed the analogue creature to in order to check how they categorized a powerful, high level NPC's minion creature type that won't fail the same basic test of "here's a weak CR creature that's meant to be used as part of a much higher level encounter." Hate to be the person, but 4e had high level minions for this exact purpose
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Oct 24, 2018 03:16
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koreban posted:Help me out, then. How does another game handle a creature akin to the intellect devourer or werewolf situation appropriately? Genuine question. I don't have my PF1.0 bestiary nearby to check, and I'm not up to snuff on whatever they renamed the analogue creature to in order to check how they categorized a powerful, high level NPC's minion creature type that won't fail the same basic test of "here's a weak CR creature that's meant to be used as part of a much higher level encounter." and other games avoid it by either avoiding monsters with abilities that utterly break the game if the party is not made and equipped *just so,* or (to give your nonsense reasoning about the purpose of those monsters undue credit) have specific rules for 'minion'-type monsters that are meant to be used at high level (like D&D 4e e: f;b) quote:I never made the claim about DM fiat in preference to or as a comparison of any other system. I am fully aware that the DM fiat concept is not unique to D&D. I was addressing the counterclaims that get tossed out about "well here's this one cross-section of a rule that doesn't stand up well, BAD RULES WRITING!" And I'm saying, "Yo, you know that you can change that at the table because, yeah, it's bad, but like, it's a 5e rule.. that's more of a guideline. You're not bound to observe the rule exactly as written. Even the DMG says so all over the first 9 pages." quote:Part 1 is absolutely a lack of familiarity with the system, but it's also shared familiarity with 5e. This goes to the #3 claim that the people I play with aren't interested in expanding out into another system because 5e is familiar and they don't feel unnecessarily constrained by the system and it's rules. Part 2 is the stupid dickleeches, and titdemons, and other grimdark poo poo that SotDL is full of. My friend who DMs straight out of books doesn't want to deal with it. I don't want to deal with it. The system as written is too much teenage goth-horror to play in their as-written content. I'm sure it's fine for homebrew settings.
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Oct 24, 2018 03:18
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If I ordered a pizza but then had to remove all the toppings I didn’t order, add the toppings I wanted and then bake it because they forgot, I would never go to that pizza place again. They didn’t give me the space to explore my pizza experience and grow as a pizza a maker. They were lovely at making pizza. 5e is incredibly poorly written. In comparison to RPGs generally that are often badly written. If you’re having fun that’s cool and good but some people want games that work right out of the box that don’t require fixing at the table or homebrewing. Buying a working product isn’t some magical goal and you shouldn’t be defensive about people wanting basic quality control. No one is attacking your table. We just want better games. Shut the gently caress up you are dumb and not helping
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Oct 24, 2018 03:25
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koreban posted:More than anyone else, you and AlphaDog need to watch that Crawford interview where he discusses the core design philosophy of 5e being one of a minimal framework of rules to allow for maximum narrative possibility because the two of you get so hung up on the RAW as Canon problem that I can't imagine you would know how to have fun with a TTRPG unless it had a specific written rule telling you to do so. The thought of any edition of D&D, including 5e, being a "minimal framework of rules," is the funniest loving thing possible. How do you type that and then nod and go "yep, this is a good post full of facts and honesty!"
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Oct 24, 2018 03:38
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koreban posted:Help me out, then. How does another game handle a creature akin to the intellect devourer or werewolf situation appropriately? Genuine question. I don't have my PF1.0 bestiary nearby to check, and I'm not up to snuff on whatever they renamed the analogue creature to in order to check how they categorized a powerful, high level NPC's minion creature type that won't fail the same basic test of "here's a weak CR creature that's meant to be used as part of a much higher level encounter." In 3.5's Expanded Psionics Handbook, the intellect devourer is rated as a CR 7 creature, while a Mind Flayer (in the MM1) is rated as a CR 8 creature. In Pathfinder 1's Bestiary 1, the intellect devourer is rated as a CR 8 creature. 3rd Edition makes no assumption that the intellect devourers and the Mind Flayers need to be paired, and Pathfinder doesn't have mind flayers at all (copyright issues). If one were to use 3e's encounter building rules to pair-up an intellect devourer and a mind flayer, it is supposed to be an appropriate challenge for a group in the level 10 to 11 range:  These games "handled" the intellect devourer situation simply by not implying, as 5e does, that these creatures are supposed to go together, and then setting their CR ratings in such a way that one could inadvertently end up not pairing them together, while also sending the devourers against a party that's incapable of handling them at the level that their CR implies. EDIT: In 4th Edition, Mind Flayers are in the MM1, and they appear as either Mind Flayer Infiltrators, who are level 14, and also as Mind Flayer Masterminds, who are level 18 Elites. The "encounter groups" recommended for these include: quote:Level 13 Encounter (XP 4,200) so in none of these cases does the game recommend pairing up wildly level-disparate creatures together. The intellect devourer, on the other hand, does not show up until the MM3. There is a level 7 version, called the Ustilagor There is a level 14 version, called the Intellect Predator There is a level 21 version, called the Intellect Glutton In the flavor text, there is a passage that says: quote:Intellect devourers can be found wherever aberrant creatures gather, either among their own kind or in service to more powerful masters. Mind flayers frequently keep intellect devourers as pets and sentries. The largest intellect gluttons sometimes serve as steeds for mind flayers and other cruel creatures. And by MM3, the game no longer wrote-out "encounter groups", but it's rather plain to see that if the first possible encounter with a mind flayer can't/doesn't happen until the level 14 Mind Flayer Infiltrator, then any intellect devourer that's going to be "paired" with it should also be the level 14 Intellect Predator. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Oct 24, 2018 |
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Oct 24, 2018 03:38
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Xiahou Dun posted:If I ordered a pizza but then had to remove all the toppings I didn’t order, add the toppings I wanted and then bake it because they forgot, I would never go to that pizza place again. Don’t sign your posts.
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Oct 24, 2018 03:39
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Kaysette posted:Don’t sign your posts. Sir this is a Wendy’s drivethru? I too can not engage with points at all.
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Oct 24, 2018 03:43
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Can’t believe I didn’t come in with the hot take that 5e is bad, wow your angryposting added a lot to this terrible thread.
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Oct 24, 2018 03:56
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Double post
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Oct 24, 2018 03:57
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Koreban, on the ID thing... "Mind flayers breed Intellect Devourers to serve as roaming hunters of the underdark..." and "An Intellect Devourer typically uses its puppet host to lure others into the domain of the mind flayers..." How do you get "so obviously they should be part of the same fight" out of that? You don't. The MM entry literally tells you to use the ID as a roaming hunter that might try to lure prey back to mind flayer territory.
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Oct 24, 2018 03:58
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Kaysette posted:Can’t believe I didn’t come in with the hot take that 5e is bad, wow your angryposting added a lot to this terrible thread. I’m not angry this is just a bad game. What is your point? Why are you against making the game better?
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Oct 24, 2018 04:13
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https://twitter.com/bizmarkiedesade/status/1054931659257085952
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Oct 24, 2018 04:24
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koreban posted:Help me out, then. How does another game handle a creature akin to the intellect devourer or werewolf situation appropriately? Genuine question. This. This, right loving here, this is the loving problem. Other games handle the exact same narrative space of D&D with more finesse than D&D does at this point. There's a reason it's a cliche bit of advice that regardless of what you want out of TTRPGs there is probably a system that does it better than D&D. But... you and a shitload of other people in the hobby are seemingly aggressively, almost purposefully it feels at this point, ignorant of the fact that other systems even exist. Like gently caress. Just read up on Dungeon World, the core is free! Or stuff like Dungeon Crawl Classics if you're into the more old-schooly vibe! But just don't pretend like D&D is the best way to do things when you're completely ignorant of how other games do things.
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Oct 24, 2018 04:26
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gradenko_2000 posted:
Okay, I just looked at the Intellect devourer, and I'm kind of stunned by the scale of its terrible design choices. So as a CR 2 enemy, not only is it resistant to the nonmagical weapons the players are likely stuck with, not only does it have a better-than-half chance to remove a player from not just the rest of the fight but probably the rest of the entire game session, but as an added gently caress-you it's even within both its abilities and motivations to outright *kill* whoever it happens to mindbreak. Did I mention its stat block doesn't specify any time frame for recovering from ability damage? Like no clause like "recovers after short rest" or "recovers after long rest" or anything that might be within the means of a level 2 party; Lesser Restoration is both out of reach and completely useless, and Greater Restoration is a 5th level spell available to 9th level characters, so even if you're not technically dead, you might as well be. The werewolf is brutal for level 3 parties that in all likelihood lack magical weapons, but at the very least a fighter can physically prevent it from clawing up the squishy casters in the back by grappling and/or shoving it and holding it in place. The Intellect Devourer is just outright hostile to anything and anybody who made the mistake of thinking that being a weapons person was a cool, worthwhile, and well-supported role in a fantasy role playing game, a genre known for its abundance of weapons persons. I know 3.5 had That drat Crab as its poster child of absurd and broken monster design, but that was also one incident out of many, many years of monster design. The closest thing I can think of from the 3.5 MM1 would be the Allip, which was incorporeal and did Wisdom damage, but at the least you could say that a +1 weapon was within a 3rd level character's WBL in a game where magic items were strictly not optional, and it took a while before it killed anyone, and that you'd eventually heal off the ability damage after a few Long Rests. But geez, it's pretty clear that nobody looked at the monster entry for Intellect Devourer, asked what would happen if some well-intentioned DM saw the CR: 2 in its stat block, and accidentally sicced it on a level 2 party. lightrook fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Oct 24, 2018 |
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Oct 24, 2018 04:42
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Mcmccarthy posted:Has anyone here ever tried capping player levels lower than 20? There was an edit of 3.5 called e6 where you capped at level 6 and then gained feats with exp after this and i thought that would be a good place to start. One of my concerns is that without the plethora of splat feats the characters might all end up with the same powers or whatever. I don't need three melee dudes all with great weapon master, polearm master, sentinel, ect... I'm fine with just turning higher level class features into feats, but depending how long the game goes this might not be enough. Are there any good dmsguild feats? Is there anything i should specifically avoid from unearthed arcana? Most games end long before level 20 for a variety of reasons. Trying to do e6 in 5e isn't going to make the game that worse, but I also doubt it's going to make the game that much better. There just aren't enough feats and abilities that one can tap to expand their character's power the way you can in 3e/PF's e6, where getting a feat after every 1000 XP (or some similar milestone) means there's still a zillion other ways you can improve your character, however incrementally. Mcmccarthy posted:Also i was thinking about changing rules for healing someone at 0 hp. As it is it sorta feels like you should really wait to heal someone until they are unconscious to get the most use out of your spell slot. Attack and healing word for 4 hp and bringing someone back from 0 is better than wasting an action on cure wounds for 8. I figured i could treat them sort of like healing surges. Yeah there's definitely a problem in 5e where the healing spells are always action-inefficient. Your approach could work, but really I would just crank up the healing of healing spells dramatically.
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Oct 24, 2018 04:47
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Hey, I take offense to that. My Monk is good.
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Oct 24, 2018 04:56
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It's not so much that they suck to me as that they are either not very realized or badly so imo.
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Oct 24, 2018 05:03
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Xiahou Dun posted:Sir this is a Wendy’s drivethru? Your analogy was absolute trash. If you want an RPG experience handed to you with no input at all, have a video game. If you wanted to make a pizza analogy you could at least make the goddamn pizza yourself if you wanted to talk about how poo poo it is.
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Oct 24, 2018 05:24
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To be fair having the guy playing a Dex Battlemaster Fighter react to the abilities I'm getting/how many attacks I can do is pretty amusing. "I get to run up walls in a few levels." "WHAT?!"
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Oct 24, 2018 05:25
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gradenko_2000 posted:content Thanks for that. I suspect based on interviews I’ve watched from Mearls and Crawford that they were trying to change the math in ways that simplified the encounter design table from 3.5 and overtuned it to the point where ID type creatures were poorly representative of the CR they were given.
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Oct 24, 2018 05:28
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koreban posted:Your analogy was absolute trash. If you want an RPG experience handed to you with no input at all, have a video game.
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Oct 24, 2018 05:28
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koreban posted:Thanks for that. I suspect based on interviews I’ve watched from Mearls and Crawford that they were trying to change the math in ways that simplified the encounter design table from 3.5 and overtuned it to the point where ID type creatures were poorly representative of the CR they were given. If you wanna see bad, take a look at the Venom Troll. Sure hope you don't have a party that's got too many martials(or warlocks shooting EB...) Cause having 2d8 poison damage hit anyone in melee range on EVERY hit adds up quick.
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Oct 24, 2018 05:31
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Darwinism posted:This. This, right loving here, this is the loving problem. I never said D&D was the best system for anything. I’m aware of other systems having advantageous design choices and I’ve stolen some of those ideas for my own game that I DM. The inertia of D&D is hard to get people who are more casually invested in playing TTRPGs to overcome. I am not aggressively against other systems, I am trying to make the best out of the system that my circle of friends is dedicated to playing. I could step away from that group and try to play something else, which I’ve tried to do, and it ends up being one-shots and then these people say they’d rather just play 5e. So I steal good ideas and good design from other systems and slot it into my game whenever and wherever I can. I also don’t get hung up on the dumb poo poo that 5e does, because I can change it or apply some other system’s way of doing things to it and so far it doesn’t seem to break the core 5e system, and my players don’t tell me that they don’t like it or that they don’t feel like they’re playing d&d anymore. Maybe it’s so off-putting because I’m trying to approach the game as an optimist and not a cynical belligerent. I *want* it to be fun for me and for the people I play with, whichever side of the screen I’m on. And right now with the friends and gaming group I’ve got, I’ve got to make that work with 5e. Not because I necessarily want it to be, but because by group consensus, that’s the game we’re playing.
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Oct 24, 2018 05:36
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koreban posted:Maybe it’s so off-putting because I’m trying to approach the game as an optimist and not a cynical belligerent. I *want* it to be fun for me and for the people I play with, whichever side of the screen I’m on. And right now with the friends and gaming group I’ve got, I’ve got to make that work with 5e. Not because I necessarily want it to be, but because by group consensus, that’s the game we’re playing. What's off-putting is that when a problem is being discussed, instead of saying "I fixed it by making it go down instead of up", you say something closer to "siiiiigh I don't understand why you assholes are determined not to have any fun when it's obvious to everyone and their dog that up really means down, you must just really like being pedantic assholes, who even cares, certainly not funhavers like me" for 8 or 9 paragraphs.
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Oct 24, 2018 06:14
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koreban posted:I never said D&D was the best system for anything. You 'genuinely' asked how other systems handle creatures like werewolves as if it's some goddamn mystery how anything could be done other than the dumb simulationist-but-only-with-D&D-as-a-starting-point-for-the-simulation way D&D 5E handles lycanthropes or other things that have narrative weaknesses to certain materials/situations. But you're trying to hide being disingenuous behind, "Ohhh but I'm just trying to be an ooooptimist guuuuuys," like that's some kind of loving defense. Fucker, I've played 5E and had fun with friends having a good time. That has nothing to do with 5E being a shitshow of a system that assumes a level of system mastery to achieve a decent level of fun. D&D being good if you have a good group is not D&D's strength.
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Oct 24, 2018 06:16
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AlphaDog posted:What's off-putting is that when a problem is being discussed, instead of saying "I fixed it by making it go down instead of up" Maybe it’s because no sooner does a topic come up and you or Splicer or (formerly) Arivia show up to say “jeeeeesus christ 5e is so bad it does literally everything wrong” and any suggestion of doing that other thing to make it work is met with “that’s not the loving rules you dumb poo poo! I want it my pizza my way and the book says not that way!”
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Oct 24, 2018 06:25
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Maybe it turns out everyone in this thread is a bad poster. What's the best way to make a warlock viable in melee without going Pact of the Blade? I'd quite like to be a magic punch man if that's at all feasible, or at very least be able to tangle in melee if required without getting my poo poo pushed in, but not have some dumb magic haunted sword.
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Oct 24, 2018 07:13
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Bogan Krkic posted:Maybe it turns out everyone in this thread is a bad poster. If you want, can pick Hexblade as your patron without taking Pact of the Blade, since most of the important melee abilities are part of Hexblade and not Pact of the Blade. With this you get medium armor and shields, which is good enough pretty adequate as far as melee competence goes, and you'll have stuff like Armor of Agathys to pad out your bulk. The biggest thing you miss out on is Improved Pact Weapon, in case you wanted to use a two-handed weapon, but you're fine sword-and-boarding. Thirsting Blade at level 5 is the other one, but it doesn't do anything for your melee weapon cantrips, and those scale with character level anyways. Considering how little you actually get from Pact of the Blade, you're probably not missing a lot - choosing Pact of the Chain and having your familiar Help you on your attack rolls is probably more useful anyways. Pact of the Tome lets you snag Shillelagh, which can sorta replace Hexblade, but you also won't get proficiency with medium armor and shields, which is kind of what lets you be not dead in close quarters. If you'd like to bulk out a little more, you can start with 2 levels in Paladin for access to Heavy Armor, Holy Smites, and a Fighting Style. Pact Magic actually works pretty nicely with Holy Smites, since you can burn your Warlock spells to fuel Holy Smites. With Paladin you also have your pick of Pact and Patron, since you're no longer forced into Hexblade for the proficiencies. It's really up to you. I'm kind of tempted to play something like a Pal/Lock myself sometime in the future.
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Oct 24, 2018 07:46
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Bogan Krkic posted:Maybe it turns out everyone in this thread is a bad poster. Pact of the Tome, grab shillelagh and either green flame blade or booming blade, whack some motherfuckers with your magic stick. It's not incredible, but it'll get the job done. This matches thematically with the Archfey patron, what with the vine-covered wooden stick; GFB has that nice faerie fire feel, while Booming has a very trickster-like "I hit you and run, if you try to chase you get hurt" thing going. This also has the benefit of being entirely Cha-based, and can synergize well with being the party face. Grab Beguiling Influence if you want to have a wider range of skills, allowing you to focus your background/class skills elsewhere.
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Oct 24, 2018 07:55
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I think y'all are really underestimating the value of Eldritch Smite.
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Oct 24, 2018 07:59
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Turns out I was getting Hexblade and Pact of the Blade confused and it's Hexblade that's the weird haunted sword option. Eldritch smite looks sick as hell but I think narratively I like the idea of just hitting people harder than I should be able to with my staff and all the extra cantrips that come with the Tome better
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Oct 24, 2018 08:14
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Bogan Krkic posted:Turns out I was getting Hexblade and Pact of the Blade confused and it's Hexblade that's the weird haunted sword option. Eldritch smite looks sick as hell but I think narratively I like the idea of just hitting people harder than I should be able to with my staff and all the extra cantrips that come with the Tome better Magic hit people with stick. Magic throw rocks at people better than a sling. Magic bonfire.
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Oct 24, 2018 08:27
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