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Nehru the Damaja posted:Right but the standard is one main save, one obscure one. Wisdom/Charisma fits. I don't know how else to phrase this: classes not following a standard is how classes are distinguishable from each other
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Jan 15, 2019 06:49
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gradenko_2000 posted:I don't know how else to phrase this: classes not following a standard is how classes are distinguishable from each other At least kingcom made a case for it rather than somehow making a big reach and being pedantic about it at the same time. Nobody says "I want to play Paladin because I want that specific combination of saving throws."
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Jan 15, 2019 06:56
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Nehru the Damaja posted:At least kingcom made a case for it rather than somehow making a big reach and being pedantic about it at the same time. Nobody says "I want to play Paladin because I want that specific combination of saving throws." I mean, it was a "violation" of the "standard model" for the 3e Monk to have Good saves in Fort, Reflex, and Will, and yet that was part of the class's design - it was deliberately made that way, and I don't see why the Warlord can't be subject to the same.
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Jan 15, 2019 07:02
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the_steve posted:Is that Gunslinger homebrew class any good? The one based off of Critical Role or whatever that is? No; it's a worse Battle Master limited to using mediocre homebrew weapons.
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Jan 15, 2019 08:13
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the_steve posted:Is that Gunslinger homebrew class any good? The one based off of Critical Role or whatever that is? Its got uhh issues. One of the biggest is that its built from a pathfinder conversion and it means there is a very large number of levels of nothing before mechanics show up and even then there are some real problems with the class going forward if you're a little unlucky. kingcom fucked around with this message at 13:36 on Jan 15, 2019 |
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Jan 15, 2019 11:06
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Thought so. I suck at meta gaming and optimizing, but a friend mentioned the different guns, since I'm running Dragon Heist and was going to let my players learn how to use firearms from the DMG if they're inclined to burn the downtime days on it. She mentioned the homebrew class and the "better" gun options, but, I honestly didn't know if they were actually any good. Speaking of DH, are there any tips or suggestions on how to do the poltergeist in the beginning of chapter 2? I don't want my players to think killing it is the ONLY option, but I don't know how to communicate the idea that it can be appeased without outright saying it.
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Jan 15, 2019 13:21
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gradenko_2000 posted:I did write something about using carrots and sticks to prod players along without them taking too many rests. So I posted a little in the GM advice thread, but reading this sounds like another way to keep players from cheesing rests. Most of this post seems to be about 3e however, do you think it could be applied just as well to 5e? And if so, how well might it work when the "dungeon" is basically the open wilds between safe spots?
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Jan 15, 2019 14:07
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Arthil posted:So I posted a little in the GM advice thread, but reading this sounds like another way to keep players from cheesing rests. Most of this post seems to be about 3e however, do you think it could be applied just as well to 5e? And if so, how well might it work when the "dungeon" is basically the open wilds between safe spots? Applying a bonus to the enemy's rolls whenever the players bail out of a dungeon without completing it will work. Applying a multiplier to XP income ... can work, but it would require that you track XP in the first place, even if it's not in the RAW XP system/XP amounts. Applying a multiplier to gold income ... probably won't work, because there's not enough things to buy with gold for it to really serve as a driver. What you might want to do instead is to break the 4th wall a bit and promise more/better loot (and mean it!) if the players keep going. It can still work in a wilderness scenario: if the players go back to a safe spot before the current wilderness region is "cleared", then the penalty is applied/the bonus is removed. The longer the players stick around and keep working towards the objective of the region, the more of a bonus they start to gain.
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Jan 15, 2019 14:36
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gradenko_2000 posted:Applying a bonus to the enemy's rolls whenever the players bail out of a dungeon without completing it will work. That could be a great incentive on top of making long rests difficult to come by in the wilderness. Normally in my local event stuff gold isn't terribly useful since there's a rather annoying convention that you cannot allow players to buy ANY item that is above common rarity, but I'm gonna be making use of some of the construction elements from Strongholds & Followers so a multiplying amount of gold could be handy as another carrot. Said convention also applies to the crafting of items... all seems a little unnecessary, but I suppose when you are looking to not restrict how much gold is given out you try to make concessions elsewhere.
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Jan 15, 2019 14:42
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:So what's the solution? instead of a wind down how about a build up? every encounter type power you use builds up to your big finisher move and you can use that built up tension as a resource for things like rests
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Jan 15, 2019 15:02
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gradenko_2000 posted:Yes, 4e did something like that. If you did two encounters back-to-back without taking a Long Rest in between, you'd earn an Action Point, and Action Points would let you take an extra action in combat. IMO, that particular reward mechanic wasn't really strong, and it was still the larger reconfiguration of the gameplay mechanics (particular Healing Surges) that got people to stop resting so drat often. I thought of this but i don't use XP and having a general rule that if the party finishes the dungeon with no rests all the gold and magic items will get upgraded seems like it would break the verisimilitude more than i like. The monsters reclaiming the areas they cleared seems like it would eat too much into game time. I think the monsters fighting back and increased gold are good for situations where it makes sense (e.g. raiding a fence to get the loot before they ship it out), but having a humanity system seems like the most elegant solution. You can basically say "The curse-o-meter reads high in this area, so you have 3 days to do what you need to do in this spooky wood before you start to feel the effects of it". Kung Food posted:Have you ever played Darkest Dungeon? It has a similar system to what you are talking about where the more you adventure the more stress you accumulate. Once a character reaches a certain stress level they taken on a random character trait, mostly bad (think character PTSD) but sometimes they grow stronger through adversity and get a positive effect. A character that has really high stress beyond that will have a heart attack and die from the terror. It is supposed to account for the fact that going into dank pits and fighting deadly monsters is actually really scary and would mark anyone doing it. It would be a new mechanic that would immediately make sense without needing any sort of backstory. Fits with your res mechanic too because I imagine dying would be super stressful. I haven't played the game personally but that is basically what i was proposing. From what i understand a problem with that game was that you could get into failure cascade type scenarios where you'd lose your best guy then couldn't hope to complete it without going back and grinding up. That wouldn't be an issue with a GM having a greater control over things, and if someone did "die" they would roll up a new character at the same level. Rolling on a table of effects with some being positive sounds like it could be cool. Thinking about it more i think a part of the appeal of such a setting would be going insane or slowly transforming into a beast creature. I think the challenge is designing it in a way so that when you are healthy you see the curse as a bad thing but are willing to risk your health for a greater goal, but eventually you become too far gone and end up embracing it. Especially since opposing ideologies within a party can end badly.
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Jan 15, 2019 19:43
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My buddy is playing in a game ran by another of his friends. Said GM does point buy but allows them to spend points on a 1 to 1 basis. My buddy's human wizard has 20 int and 34 hit points at level 4 or whatever.
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Jan 16, 2019 01:48
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Elfgames posted:instead of a wind down how about a build up? every encounter type power you use builds up to your big finisher move and you can use that built up tension as a resource for things like rests gently caress yes! Inside each encounter that's great! What about between encounters though? Sounds like you'd be putting a hard limit on the "day" and if you're doing that anyway you can have limited resources and save up your nukes just fine. Like, "there's exactly 6 encounters before the boss, save your nukes" is no more or less narratively contrived than "after you build your nuke there's a boss fight".
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Jan 16, 2019 03:32
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kingcom posted:Its got uhh issues. One of the biggest is that its built from a pathfinder conversion and it means there is a very large number of levels of nothing before mechanics show up and even then there are some real problems with the class going forward if you're a little unlucky. Gunslinger is Real Bad in PF as well, because their implementation of guns is terrible.
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Jan 16, 2019 12:47
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:gently caress yes! Inside each encounter that's great! I don’t think it’s possible to avoid a trade off between the immediate experience and the experience over time in a TRPG that doesn’t let you save and restore. If you want the experience over time to be escalation or depletion, you have to accept that it may end with a poor immediate experience - a cakewalk for escalation or a meat grinder for depletion.
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Jan 16, 2019 14:02
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I think you are describing the Escalation Die concept from 13th Age, which should be pretty easily hotswappable into 5e since it’s d20 OGL.
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Jan 16, 2019 16:18
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I'm going to be starting my first "real" DMing this month, and while the guide to the Campaign Books in the OP is super useful, I had a related question: Geographically, what order of the campaigns makes sense? I'm starting out with Lost Mines of Phandelver, but from what I understand, that's close to/a bit east of Neverwinter, whereas a lot of the books eventually get you to and around Waterdeep, which I think is a lot further south? If I need to, I can make a bunch of homebrew material to close the traveling gaps, but I kinda want my groups's travels to make sense (for instance, not traipsing up and down an entire continent over and over). I know Curse of Strahd is an "oh, you got teleported to this realm!" deal that I can slot in wherever, and Tomb of Annihilation is in the deep south, and I probably won't throw that at them for a while anyway. edit: also, I figure Tales from the Yawning Portal can be slotted in between longer campaigns or even as diversions if they come up organically, but are they all in and around Waterdeep? 99 CENTS AMIGO fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Jan 16, 2019 |
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Jan 16, 2019 17:52
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I'd say don't get too bogged down in the mental geography and just fit adventures into surrounding areas that seem reasonable places for them to appear, but regardless here's a cropped map of the Sword Coast: Waterdeep is the closest city to Neverwinter along the Sword Coast, and going by the map's key it's 400 miles away (if you go by Lost Mines' 25 miles travelled per-day rule, it'd take 16 days on foot to go between Waterdeep and Neverwinter). If you want a logical campaign order, technically any other campaign can slot in after Lost Mines and I believe most of them are designed with that in mind. ToA is weird though since it's meant to be a world-affecting disaster, but it's designed for Level 1-11 play. If you jump in higher level you can breeze through Chult's jungles and dungeons (minus the titular tomb). Always rubbed me the wrong way. Blooming Brilliant fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Jan 16, 2019 |
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Jan 16, 2019 18:14
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How much you vibe with the campaign is a lot more important than how far apart things are - please don't choose one based on the latter.
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Jan 16, 2019 18:17
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99 CENTS AMIGO posted:edit: also, I figure Tales from the Yawning Portal can be slotted in between longer campaigns or even as diversions if they come up organically, but are they all in and around Waterdeep? The parts of TYP I'm familiar with are setting agnostic. White Plume Mountain actually has box text that says "plop this down wherever is convenient, even if not on Faerun" and then gives some suggested locations for it to be at in various settings.
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Jan 16, 2019 18:18
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That’s good to know about TYP, and that kinda solves all my other worries. I’m pretty set on doing Phandelver into Dragon Heist, then going from there based on what the group responds to the most. I just didn’t want to have to be stuck with “lots of random events” or “immediately close those 400 miles with a homebrew campaign” as my choices.
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Jan 16, 2019 18:30
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Sounds good. I think Dragon Heist is also intended for Level 1-5 progression the same way Lost Mines is, so maybe adjust some of the encounters accordingly if you follow up with it.
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Jan 16, 2019 18:33
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Blooming Brilliant posted:Sounds good. Oh, most definitely; one good thing is that I already did my first DMing in a one-off Christmas campaign I put together earlier this month (which wasn't that hard to do, actually, it was just a lot of "think of some North Pole ideas and rip through the Monster Manual and Volo's for fight palette-swaps") and since I had everyone roll level 15 characters, it gave me a really good sense of how to manage balance. That said, after allowing and helping one of my players roll an Artificer Kevin MacAllister from Home Alone, I'm going to be a bit stricter about non-properly-playtested classes. 99 CENTS AMIGO fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Jan 16, 2019 |
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Jan 16, 2019 18:39
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Yah, my first thought was that the sword coast goes all the way south to the mountain range south of Baldur's gate, too, and all these premades are supposed to cover a half dozen levels or so. Hoard of the dragon queen gets you from lvl 1-8 and takes you from southeast of BG to just a bit northeast of waterdeep and then through a portal to some other fun places to the east. This is my map from my dndbeyond account sub, I guess you shouldn't share this everywhere. 
ILL Machina fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Jan 17, 2019 |
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Jan 17, 2019 00:19
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Glory to Italia!
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When I was running Storm King's Thunder chapter 1 I decided it'd be fun to have them hang out with a dragon so I connected the mountain the chapter ends in with the middle section of Forge of Fury and we took a two session detour. It was awesome and they loved it. Unless you have someone who has an encyclopediac knowledge of Faerun (and who is also a jerk), you'll be fine. Do what works for your group! 
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Jan 17, 2019 01:28
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I've not really played in any of the official modules, but from little reading I've done on them they aren't really made to all be played one after another unless you'll be willing to do some big twisting around of XP/monster difficulty.
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Jan 17, 2019 05:30
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Arthil posted:I've not really played in any of the official modules, but from little reading I've done on them they aren't really made to all be played one after another unless you'll be willing to do some big twisting around of XP/monster difficulty. That’s exactly what I’m intending to do, with some little changes; I’ll be balancing XP rewards and encounters. On top of that, it’s a bunch of new players and one longtime player who hasn’t done many of the official modules, and I get the impression they’re all going to want to “retire” characters and experiment with new ones over the course of the different modules. Basically, balancing and tweaking and opening up the modules a little is less work than sitting down and making my own setting and characters. I’ll do that someday, but not today.
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Jan 17, 2019 13:52
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I think you're thinking waaay too far ahead of yourself. One of the published adventure modules can take a year of real life sessions to get through if you have a thorough adventuring party (even with multiple sessions a week). Combat in particular slows stuff down a heap as well so plan around that.
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Jan 17, 2019 14:27
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Also, just play milestone instead of XP. It's rad.
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Jan 17, 2019 14:30
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Nutsngum posted:I think you're thinking waaay too far ahead of yourself. One of the published adventure modules can take a year of real life sessions to get through if you have a thorough adventuring party (even with multiple sessions a week). Combat in particular slows stuff down a heap as well so plan around that. Oh, absolutely; I caught the D&D bug playing over the last 10 months or so, and while the scheduling of the campaign has been erratic at best, I’ve seen how slow stuff can go. We’ve got a great DM, but combat and the fact that there are 6 of us (3 of us being beginners) has kept us to 3 actual dungeons and a bunch of RP social city-exploring. Just having read Lost Mines of Phandelver, that might go for months based on how many of the leads they chase.
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Jan 17, 2019 14:36
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Toshimo posted:Also, just play milestone instead of XP. Agreed.
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Jan 17, 2019 14:36
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Toshimo posted:Also, just play milestone instead of XP. This. DnD is not a good system for XP leveling.
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Jan 17, 2019 14:39
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My group is going to fight a young adult white dragon. Assuming we win what can we harvest from the body and what can we use towards crafting(all about that monster Hunter life) So far here are thoughts. Dragon wings/membranes we can maybe make into cloak. Dragonhide we can make into hide armor or an underlayer or enhancement of plate armor? The scales we can make a shield out of/ also enhance armor or use as the base of armor. Turn the claws into weapons(swords and such) we can teeth into arrows and also weapons depending on size(daggers). Blood for potions. The heart, tongue, eyes, brain, Larynx(for doing dragon calls/to scare people), lungs, is there a frost sac or something it uses for its breath? Maybe we can harvest that and use it to upgrade a bow to shoot ice arrows?
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Jan 17, 2019 14:49
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My party did the same with a YA Black Dragon and that's everything we got out of it. Don't forget to turn its skull into a wall mounted trophy for your base.
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Jan 17, 2019 14:52
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I have one player who complains because I don't give out XP. He's...kind of an old school guy.
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Jan 17, 2019 15:03
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RC Cola posted:My group is going to fight a young adult white dragon. Assuming we win what can we harvest from the body and what can we use towards crafting(all about that monster Hunter life) My DM had this to say 'Also, I'm not doing the calculations to figure out how much scale, teeth, etc there is IF you can kill the dragon. If someone wants to do that go ahead just provide me with your calculations.' Any chance one of you has done something like this before and have numbers lying about?
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Jan 17, 2019 20:08
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XP made sense when classes leveled at different rates and you got XP directly from looting gold. Since D&D strayed from being a dungeon crawler, XP is cargo cult game design.
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Jan 17, 2019 20:12
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RC Cola posted:My DM had this to say I used a Wyrmling/Young/Adult/Ancient = 1/2/3/4 system. You can use the resources from each type to make exactly that many items of a particular type. e: Regardless of how my players wanted to get into the weeds about "well, he's got his wing leather and his torso scales, and his teeth can be used for..." arguments, I just set it at Wymrlings can be harvested to make 1 actual magical item. You can keep the skull, (or the entire skeleton for that matter) for a trophy separate from the physical item. But for an item that would have a way to influence combat or saves, 1 per wyrmling, 2 per young, 3 per adult, 4 per ancient dragon. Using the LMoP Breastplate as an example, you can make 1 piece of armor have advantage on saves against breath attacks made by dragons, or make one piece of jewelry have resistance to that specific dragon's breath element. Or make one weapon have an additional +1 against Dragon type creatures (So a +1 Longsword becomes +1 Longsword, +2 against Dragons.) If the materials were brought to a master weaponsmith or armorsmith, they could be fashioned into useable materials for future crafting and preserved (as long as the party had a bag of holding or a stronghold to store them in). Master smiths weren't found in provincial hoveltowns, they'd have to go to a proper city or castle of a noble to find a smith of sufficient skill (or have a party member with proficiency in smithing tools who would need to make a 15/17/19/21 test to succeed in working and preserving the materials from the associated level of dragon. koreban fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Jan 17, 2019 |
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Jan 17, 2019 20:31
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koreban posted:I used a Wyrmling/Young/Adult/Ancient = 1/2/3/4 system. This is incredibly useful and my DM loves you for it.
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Jan 17, 2019 20:37
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koreban posted:Using the LMoP Breastplate as an example, you can make 1 piece of armor have advantage on saves against breath attacks made by dragons, or make one piece of jewelry have resistance to that specific dragon's breath element. Or make one weapon have an additional +1 against Dragon type creatures (So a +1 Longsword becomes +1 Longsword, +2 against Dragons.) Typically, what I've seen of "XXX Slayer" items in 5E is that they are a flat +X but get xd6 bonus damage against the named foe.
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Jan 17, 2019 20:38
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