Nehru the Damaja posted:

I've got a one-shot tomorrow. Is there any kind of barbarian grappler build that will be worth a drat at level 5 rather than 6? I feel like the multiclass shenanigans don't pay off when I don't have multiattack because it's offset a level.

Sion posted:

Alas, we start at level 1 and things cap out at level 10 because no one likes running for higher than level 10s.

5E on Evard's posted:

Squirming, ebony tentacles fill a 20-foot square on ground that you can see within range. For the duration, these tentacles turn the ground in the area into difficult terrain.

When a creature enters the affected area for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there, the creature must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or take 3d6 bludgeoning damage and be restrained by the tentacles until the spell ends. A creature that starts its turn in the area and is already restrained by the tentacles takes 3d6 bludgeoning damage.

A creature restrained by the tentacles can use its action to make a Strength or Dexterity check (its choice) against your spell save DC. On a success, it frees itself.

5E on Restrained posted:

Your speed becomes 0, and you can't benefit from any bonus to your speed.

You have disadvantage on attack rolls.

Attack rolls against you have advantage.

You have disadvantage on Dexterity saving throws.

Ginger Beer Belly posted:

Evard's Black Tentacles question:


... and ...


The way we have been playing it is as soon as the spell is cast, everyone in the affected area makes a saving throw. But that then led to characters who had made their saving throw once the spell was cast having to make an additional saving throw once their turn started, and that just seemed off to us.

Should we have not had characters make their initial saving throw until the start of their own turn? How do others play this?

Secondly, to escape the tentacles, if a character uses DEX, my understanding is that it's a DEX check, not a saving throw, and therefore you would not have disadvantage, but you would also not get your proficiency bonus to a DEX saving throw, nor would you get your proficiency bonus to Acrobatics like you would if you were escaping a grapple.

inthesto posted:

SKT recommends reading the entire book before attempting to run it

I shouldn't actually do that, should I?

inthesto posted:

SKT recommends reading the entire book before attempting to run it

I shouldn't actually do that, should I?

Kaysette posted:

I’ve never run a book without reading it cover to cover first but ymmv.

inthesto posted:

I've only read the introduction and summary so I haven't really dug into the meat of the book yet, but I've heard both from this thread and reviews elsewhere that the first chapter of the book seriously lacks direction. Most likely, I'm just going to have the players make characters at 5th level and drop them straight into chapter 2.

Ginger Beer Belly posted:

Evard's Black Tentacles question:


... and ...


The way we have been playing it is as soon as the spell is cast, everyone in the affected area makes a saving throw. But that then led to characters who had made their saving throw once the spell was cast having to make an additional saving throw once their turn started, and that just seemed off to us.

Should we have not had characters make their initial saving throw until the start of their own turn? How do others play this?

Secondly, to escape the tentacles, if a character uses DEX, my understanding is that it's a DEX check, not a saving throw, and therefore you would not have disadvantage, but you would also not get your proficiency bonus to a DEX saving throw, nor would you get your proficiency bonus to Acrobatics like you would if you were escaping a grapple.

Kaysette posted:

I’ve never run a book without reading it cover to cover first but ymmv.

Azhais posted:

The 5/10 movement is how we've done it since 1st ed and was the actual rule till at least 3.5/pf

Besesoth posted:

As far as I know:

Yes, you should not have characters make their initial saving throw until the start of their own turn. Until then, they have neither started their turn (naturally) nor entered the square (the square came into existence around them, they didn't enter it).

Yes, it's a Str/Dex check, not a saving throw, presumably to avoid the situation where Dex-based characters have disadvantage and Str-based characters don't.

Toshimo posted:

Finally, my weekly Waterdeep Heist has come to an end. Thank gently caress.

It ended as it began, poorly.

Toshimo posted:

I just got told this in Discord, but it seems especially bad in 5E since there's no move action and you can just break up movement all day. (Also the fact that we've been playing this hardcover for months and it never came up until the last half of the last session of the whole thing.)

Infinity Gaia posted:

Oh man, please keep posting about your experiences. I'm also in a DMM campaign, recently started, just a bit ahead of you (we explored half (?) of floor 1 before getting a compelling reason to go to floor 2 early) so I'm interested in hearing how other parties deal with stuff. My party has me as a goblin cleric so most encounters with goblins tend to devolve into killing whoever is their boss for the moment and me convincing the enemy goblins to stop fighting.

Ginger Beer Belly posted:

His primary concern is that if the initiative order goes NPC wizard, party cleric, affected PC, then RAW would mean that the NPC wizard could cast the spell, the party cleric could cast dispel magic, and then the affected PC doesn't even need to make a saving throw and a 4th level spell was trivially negated.

Conspiratiorist posted:

Ginger Beer Belly posted:

His primary concern is that if the initiative order goes NPC wizard, party cleric, affected PC, then RAW would mean that the NPC wizard could cast the spell, the party cleric could cast dispel magic, and then the affected PC doesn't even need to make a saving throw and a 4th level spell was trivially negated.

I suggested that we could house-rule that the effects occur immediately, but that affected creatures wouldn't have to make an additional save upon the start of the turn as they've already done that. This would allow the damage at least to apply to those that failed their saving throw, and if the scenario of the cleric casting dispel magic, that at least the spell has had some affect.

We then pointed out how the affected characters would be able to use their action on their turn to attempt to break free, and he felt that it was unfair that someone could try to break free of an effect in the same round that they had failed their save to avoid that effect.

Conspiratiorist posted:

Tomb of Levistus renders you incapacitated, so drops your concentration.]

Ginger Beer Belly posted:

I chatted w/my friend, the DM, about this a bit tonight, and he seems to have also been discussing it with his girlfriend (the cleric in our party) after our IM exchange earlier in the day, and hoo boy ... did this turn into a bit of a can of worms.

His primary concern is that if the initiative order goes NPC wizard, party cleric, affected PC, then RAW would mean that the NPC wizard could cast the spell, the party cleric could cast dispel magic, and then the affected PC doesn't even need to make a saving throw and a 4th level spell was trivially negated.

I suggested that we could house-rule that the effects occur immediately, but that affected creatures wouldn't have to make an additional save upon the start of the turn as they've already done that. This would allow the damage at least to apply to those that failed their saving throw, and if the scenario of the cleric casting dispel magic, that at least the spell has had some affect.

We then pointed out how the affected characters would be able to use their action on their turn to attempt to break free, and he felt that it was unfair that someone could try to break free of an effect in the same round that they had failed their save to avoid that effect.

I argued that pretty much any other effect behaved that way ... if my character uses shove to knock someone prone, they don't lose their turn, and can stand up as soon as its their turn at the cost of half their movement, but at that point, I think I started to get the vibe that the conversation was verging on getting a little too adversarial and at the point, I just switched topics to something unrelated to the game.

I definitely don't want the game to turn into a rules squabble, and I've avoided some areas of disagreement (for example, he doesn't think that rogues should be able to get a second sneak attack per round with their reaction), so I haven't pressed that issue, partly because my swashbuckler is already the highest DPS in the group without that and don't want to further exasperate the optimization imbalance with the rest of the party.

I think that since we've been trying to rapidly tie up a lot of plotline loose-ends, most of the past few sessions have been 1-2 epic battles between the party and named PCs who have been recurring antagonists and the DM has a world he's been running since his teens that maybe we're just experiencing natural conflict from opposing sides being very invested in their characters and having ideas on how potent they should be and feeling resentful when certain abilities or encounters are countered easier than expected.

The fight with the wizard who was casting Evard's Black Tentacles included my swashbuckler jumping off a balcony to gank the wizard who had just riskily sent his skeletal warrior bodyguards up the stairs to engage the party. One natural 20 and a 37 point sneak attack later, and we had (or so we thought) just ended the big boss fight early.

We mopped up the rest of the undead, making some decisions that were more for fun than strategy (such as jumping from the ground floor up to the balcony while yelling "Parkour!" each time we rolled for an Athletics check), and I noticed that the DM kept making an extra roll during some of the NPCs turns.

I assumed at the time that he was rolling to see if the undead minotaurs that had been turned and ran out the door were engaged, stopped, turned around, etc, but no ... suddenly the wizard that my character had dropped stood back up, wheeled around, and got 5/6 of our party in a cone of cold, dropping 3 of us. Luckily the cleric was the one not in the cone, ran over, cast Prayer of Healing, and the monk sprinted out and took out the 1 HP the wizard had left. The DM had been rolling death saves for the wizard, and he succeeded all 3 rounds, stood back up, and tried to get one last bit of revenge. It made for a hilarious bit of tension after we thought the fight had gone into mop-up mode after my character dropped the wizard.

Anyway, this is a bit of a ramble, but I enjoy our group and wouldn't mind some advice on balancing when to say "well actually .." vs just rolling with what the DM wants, especially given that absolutely none of us have played 5e before this, and our most recent experience before this would be the DM and several others playing 2e, and me playing Pathfinder.

Proud Rat Mom posted:

People only get back up on a roll of a natural 20 for death saves.

canepazzo posted:

I'm running Lost Mines and planning to continue into SKT after they finish. Would like to tie the two modules together. Any suggestions?

Ginger Beer Belly posted:

His primary concern is that if the initiative order goes NPC wizard, party cleric, affected PC, then RAW would mean that the NPC wizard could cast the spell, the party cleric could cast dispel magic, and then the affected PC doesn't even need to make a saving throw and a 4th level spell was trivially negated.

gradenko_2000 posted:

This is actually perfectly fine:

1. The NPC Wizard casts a spell, costing them their action and a spell slot
2. The party Cleric casts Dispel Magic, costing them their action and a spell slot
3. Even Stevens.

(if anything, this sort of trade is actually skewed against the players, because that NPC Wizard is never going to need that spell slot ever again because it's going to die in this combat, but the Cleric blowing their spell slot is going to carry-over to the next 2-3-4 combats over)

Conspiratiorist posted:

Even better: have the enemy counterspell the player's counterspell.

My Lovely Horse posted:

To be fair a wizened old mage popping back up during the wind down phase like Jason Voorhees is almost hilarious again

e: my first DM was a "I've been running this world since my teens" type and I've learned since then to take that as a cue for running.

gradenko_2000 posted:

This is actually perfectly fine:

1. The NPC Wizard casts a spell, costing them their action and a spell slot
2. The party Cleric casts Dispel Magic, costing them their action and a spell slot
3. Even Stevens.

(if anything, this sort of trade is actually skewed against the players, because that NPC Wizard is never going to need that spell slot ever again because it's going to die in this combat, but the Cleric blowing their spell slot is going to carry-over to the next 2-3-4 combats over)

Admiral Joeslop posted:

Are there any non-mobile character builders worth a drat that aren't D&D Beyond? Orc Pub doesn't have non-SRD stuff anymore and I'm sure not paying Wizards more money for content I already have, or any money at all for their handling of the Zak S stuff.

I have a decent builder on my phone/tablet (Squire Pro) but I'd like something at my computer.

Conspiratiorist posted:

Even better: have the enemy counterspell the player's counterspell.