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One of my players made their character as a descendant of one of my PCs from a few campaigns ago. While I think it's awesome to have continuity like this, my character also never had a family (to the point where he was actually kind of known for it). Any creative ways to resolve this one?
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Mar 16, 2019 14:34
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inthesto posted:One of my players made their character as a descendant of one of my PCs from a few campaigns ago. While I think it's awesome to have continuity like this, my character also never had a family (to the point where he was actually kind of known for it). Any creative ways to resolve this one? He never had or wanted a family: 1) until he realized what he was missing 2) but his apprentice became like family 3) so he cloned his perfect self 4) and he adopted an orphan anyway 5) and was never interested in raising his bastard child 6) but was a proud and supportive uncle. 7) which is why that demonic contract for his firstborn was so convenient! 8) so why did he wake up in a reality where he was married with children? 9) but after becoming patriarch he was responsible for the entire clan 10) and he can't understand why this kid is pretending to be his child Just build on one of the character traits or backgrounds - certainly there's plenty of room for any character to have a legacy. Kaal fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Mar 16, 2019 |
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Mar 16, 2019 14:46
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shades of eternity posted:Question Sure if it’s for 5e  There’s also the GM thread if you want more general advice.
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Mar 16, 2019 14:48
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inthesto posted:One of my players made their character as a descendant of one of my PCs from a few campaigns ago. While I think it's awesome to have continuity like this, my character also never had a family (to the point where he was actually kind of known for it). Any creative ways to resolve this one?
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Mar 16, 2019 15:25
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Splicer posted:Tom Riker it. I do not know what this means
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Mar 16, 2019 15:33
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Splicer posted:Tom Riker it. inthesto posted:I do not know what this means https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Thomas_Riker Accident produces clone with diverging personality beyond the cloning point.
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Mar 16, 2019 15:38
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or just keep it simple? like, he still had sex even if he didn’t want a family, and ended up with a bastard child somewhere. there’s lots of background for the new character that can be built upon from there. maybe he had the mother sign a contract that she would keep quiet about who was the father, and payed a bunch to avoid paternal responsibility. and at some point she either told the child or the child found the paper themselves, or whatever certainly easier to build upon than “he did a convoluted cloning scheme” ulvir fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Mar 16, 2019 |
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Mar 16, 2019 15:40
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Wizard stole your gametes.
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Mar 16, 2019 15:43
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anyway the actual reason I jumped into this thread is, I’m a lvl 3 divination wizard with 18 int currently (super lucky with rolls + the gnome bonus) and next session we’re gonna level up to 4. I’m super torn on whether to go to 20 right away, or to hold that off till lvl8 and get either the Alert, Lucky or spellslinger feat instead. any suggestions? we’re doing a thing in Chult where we have to stop some death curse or whatever, and the rest are elf paladin, tiefling druid and halfling rogue, if that matters any
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Mar 16, 2019 15:55
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This is a parallel universe where he did have a family and this is slowly revealed to the players through various OOC Mandela Effects. At some point they visit the original timeline for an important maguffin. Similar to the above but the timelines are converging. The characters are from several conflicting timelines based on lynchpin decisions made in the previous campaign, part of their quest is to resolve the discrepancies to split off individual timelines. If one of them ever dies there's a horrible wrench in the fabric of the universe and a duplicate with a slightly different backstory takes their place.
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Mar 16, 2019 16:03
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Tell him no, it was your char. He should be a descendant of his own pc
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Mar 16, 2019 16:09
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mastershakeman posted:Tell him no, it was your char. He should be a descendant of his own pc
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Mar 16, 2019 16:12
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ulvir posted:anyway the actual reason I jumped into this thread is, I’m a lvl 3 divination wizard with 18 int currently (super lucky with rolls + the gnome bonus) and next session we’re gonna level up to 4. I’m super torn on whether to go to 20 right away, or to hold that off till lvl8 and get either the Alert, Lucky or spellslinger feat instead. any suggestions? Divination + lucky is an awesome combo I’ve done before and for Tomb of Annihilation you’ll want Lucky before you get into the final dungeon since you’ll be doing most of the counterspelling and dispelling. Either 4 or 8 would be fine to take it, then bump to 20 int on the other one. I’d probably get the 20 int first then fill in feats later but either way is fine.
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Mar 16, 2019 16:17
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Kaysette posted:Divination + lucky is an awesome combo I’ve done before and for Tomb of Annihilation you’ll want Lucky before you get into the final dungeon since you’ll be doing most of the counterspelling and dispelling. Either 4 or 8 would be fine to take it, then bump to 20 int on the other one. I’d probably get the 20 int first then fill in feats later but either way is fine. alright. I’m not sure how far away from the dungeon we are. but since we’ve only just got started on the main quest again after helping out our guide (haven’t done any main quest-related since we left Nyanzaru, and last session we crossed ataz muhahah), I’ll assume lvl 8 is still in the safe-zone wrt feats. does getting 20 in int do anything special other than increased dc and proficiency/skill checks and all that?
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Mar 16, 2019 16:32
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kingcom posted:I'd be careful of the Blood Hunter, its a hot mess of a class design and only works if you are doing specific things with it. I like the Blood Hunter aesthetic a bunch but in play I think it’s a little underwhelming. It’s made of glass but not really a cannon and there are a lot of class abilities that rely on specific circumstances to be useful. I assume that’s what you mean by your post but if you think the opposite I’m curious as to why.
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Mar 16, 2019 16:35
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ulvir posted:does getting 20 in int do anything special other than increased dc and proficiency/skill checks and all that? Nope, just makes you as good as you can be at hitting things and knowing things.
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Mar 16, 2019 16:50
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Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition: the avatar of Zargon(my dick god)
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Mar 16, 2019 17:17
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evol262 posted:Blood Hunter is actually very well balanced/written, at least. It is not. It's a poorly written, worse Hexblade.
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Mar 16, 2019 17:40
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MonsterEnvy posted:Zargon in older D&D media (He has not been officially updated for 5e yet) actually was not a particularly strong being. Fun fact. We ran the module. I was a cleric of Gorm. My family were members of the other God factions. All died in the continuous wars. I was angry about how Gorm didn't do poo poo(DM had the 3 gods as basically dead and forgotten when Zargon started taking over) When we (I) killed the priest of Zargon I converted from Gorm to Zargon since he promised power and revenge. I then corrupted the alters of Gorm, Mystra, and that third god I don't remember. My character is the only one that escaped. The big bad was a conquest paladin PC that stayed behind to conquer the city, murder the other PCs, and he gained control over Zargon's avatar somehow. I lead our party down to free my homeland once I realized that my god was actually an eldritch horror piece of poo poo who did not have my(or anyone's) best interests in mind. I had befriended a frost giant who mentioned Thrym. So spending my downtime, I learned of Thrym as the first not dead not eldritch horror god. As I prayed to him Zargon had been permanently taking away my spell slots and HP each time I cast a spell and praised Thrym. It made for a long but satisfying arc. We only played the Lost City up until we found the city itself on level 5. Any other content might be skipped since we and Thrym are now the saviors and owners of the Lost City. Oh and those three stone golems we fought were the remains of the 3 gods of the lost city.
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Mar 16, 2019 18:55
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Conspiratiorist posted:It is not. Which immediately puts it above 99% of home brew classes, which are poorly written X which is better than every official class in every way. Blood Hunter is better than PHB rangers and worse than hexblades or Eldritch knights, which is ok by me as a DM
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Mar 16, 2019 19:32
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Remora posted:Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition: the avatar of Zargon(my dick god) Mods please
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Mar 16, 2019 20:13
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evol262 posted:Which immediately puts it above 99% of home brew classes, which are poorly written X which is better than every official class in every way. Honestly though, PHB rangers are like my go to for "this is what a terrible Homebrew class that's written well looks like" So being better than that is a low bar.
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Mar 16, 2019 20:31
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shades of eternity posted:Question I don't see why not, but also we used to have a thread just for setting stuff and it was great. , you'll get plenty of participation either way.
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Mar 16, 2019 21:43
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Nasgate posted:Honestly though, PHB rangers are like my go to for "this is what a terrible Homebrew class that's written well looks like" I don't disagree (and I allow revised rangers everywhere), I just mean that Blood Hunter is miles better than a lot of the overpowered home brew stuff out there If players really want to play something that's weaker than an oath of redemption paladin or hexblade for thematic reasons, I'm not gonna stop them.
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Mar 16, 2019 21:46
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What does everyone think of the recently revised Artificer? https://media.wizards.com/2019/dnd/downloads/UA-Artificer-2019.pdf Been thinking about it a bit and it looks to be geared towards being a melee or ranged attacker (centered around arcane weapon) that gets some spells and a pet with a crafting bend. I was thinking buildwise if the DM allows magical ranged weapons to give their properties to their ammo, then crossbow expert + arcane weapon + a hand crossbow would be really powerful. Kind of like a better hunter's mark because you don't have to spend a bonus action switching between targets. Three 2d6 + dex +1 attacks per turn at level 5 if you also infuse your weapon. Crossbow expert seems required if you want to be ranged with it because otherwise you can't use your extra attacks because of loading. I kind of hate the crafting part because 5e is so lovely about giving out mechanics for crafting so why build a class around it?
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Mar 16, 2019 22:30
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Kung Food posted:What does everyone think of the recently revised Artificer? https://media.wizards.com/2019/dnd/downloads/UA-Artificer-2019.pdf General consensus here was that it’s all over the place and not an improvement on the pervious version. There were a few good effortposts about it on the date it dropped but I’m on my phone atm.
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Mar 16, 2019 22:33
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High school DnD trip report. With the various plot hooks I gave the group, they decided to help a wealthy human with a problem. They were promised gold so the more mercenary members of the group won out. I had several different ways this could turn out depending on how they approached things. The man turned out to be a fairly paranoid and delusional dude who swore he was going to be robbed. He had claimed he saw faces in the orchards behind his house. Thinking they had found an easy score they planned to show the guy a party member that had been shapechanged to prove they had caught the thief. The daughter of the man overheard and begged them not to take the job to kill the “thieves”. Very quickly they figured out it was her lover that was seen in the orchard and not a thief. Through some pretty impressive good cop/bad cop RP they got her to admit that the lover was a bandit who operated in the area. The girl didn’t trust the party because of their attitude toward her so she escaped to run off with the boyfriend. Father didn’t take this very well and threatened the group with death if they didn’t bring her back alive. They tracked her thanks to the ranger in the group and discovered the bandits holed up in an old abandoned windmill. After a brief fight the bard grabbed the daughter who had entered the fight and held a knife to her. Her lover immediately dropped his axe and the fight ended. The two actually did love each other. All of this meant nothing to the group. The two lovers couldn’t muster enough money to outpay her father’s reward money and the group didn’t trust the two to return with money. Back to the father. As soon as the two were taken back to her father he immediately fulfilled the promise of money and weapons. Then in full view of his daughter and the party he casually cut the throat of his daughter’s lover. The last thing the group saw as the session ended was an enraged girl being dragged back into her father’s house, swearing oaths to the gods that she would escape and kill them. As the doors to the house slammed shut they saw her eyes begin to glow blue and energy begin to crackle around them. They have made their first personal enemy. Nash fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Mar 17, 2019 |
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Mar 17, 2019 00:02
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Kung Food posted:What does everyone think of the recently revised Artificer? https://media.wizards.com/2019/dnd/downloads/UA-Artificer-2019.pdf As far as class design goes, it is pretty limited since it basically requires the player to take Crossbow Expert, the player can't make the class work without the DMG's magic item guide, and basically the entire class struggles to operate without heavy DM support. I have a player who transitioned over their Artificer because the Gunsmith didn't have enough going on, and while I'm down for helping him with it the whole thing is an overpowered mess of a class. And it's powerful because of some individually potent elements, rather than having any particular skill synergy. It tries to be everything to everyone, and frankly it's not any better than the version that came before it - just different. It feels like somebody saw the design documents for the technoranger that was the first full attempt, and instead thought it should be a crafting warlock. The crafting part is tricky, because on the one hand I agree that the crafting mechanics are vestigial at best, but they're also fundamental to the mechanist concept. I've been trying out the XGE Downtime Crafting rules to variable success. It seems to be making people happy but takes a lot of effort as a DM and I suspect remains fairly opaque to the players - not really ideal. I hope they make another attempt, because right now it seems hard to recommend over the homebrewed Improved Artificer class, which is equally overpowered but has much better design. Kaal fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Mar 17, 2019 |
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Mar 17, 2019 00:19
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I still prefer that homebrew artificer that pretty much let you be iron man. A few things needed to be de-powered but overall it looked like a lot of fun in a high fantasy Ebberon style campaign.
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Mar 17, 2019 05:11
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Crafting being integral sucks for the same reason Assassin sucks. The session halts and gets taken over so one person can use their unique abilities.
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Mar 17, 2019 15:48
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Nasgate posted:Crafting being integral sucks for the same reason Assassin sucks. The session halts and gets taken over so one person can use their unique abilities. Crafting, along with most (basically 1 player) downtimes should be done out of session imo. If it's integral to the plot it could be simplified. Same with going shopping or other more mundane tasks - they shouldn't take more than 5 minutes of gametime. If they require an adventure to complete you can at least grab the other PCs for that - retrieving some special components, or doing work for someone that they'll accept in lieu of payment, or things like that. You shouldn't have half or more of the table sitting there just waiting for you to wrap up what one person is doing... outside of scouting in a dungeon at least. Gotta let those sneaky-types actually scout!
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Mar 17, 2019 16:24
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So a player in one of the games I'm in is looking to start running his own campaign, but sort of has it in his head that 3 players is the ideal number (and yes I've talked to him about that; he might be consider allowing 4.) Anyways, what'd be a good 3-man party setup, to cover off most of the bases? I feel like Paladin is a strong contender as a hybrid tank, with either Cleric or Bard as hybrid main-healers, but what'd be an ideal 3rd? Wizard? Druid? Sorcerer (particularly as the party face, if you don't have a Bard)?
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Mar 18, 2019 02:26
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P.d0t posted:So a player in one of the games I'm in is looking to start running his own campaign, but sort of has it in his head that 3 players is the ideal number (and yes I've talked to him about that; he might be consider allowing 4.) Three players as a party means meeting once a month when it actually works out for everyone. Boo hiss. I have six players and I generally only get three or four players per game, but at least people can meet semi-regularly. As far as party composition goes: you want a warrior, a face, and a mage. Beyond that, you're fine.
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Mar 18, 2019 03:09
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P.d0t posted:So a player in one of the games I'm in is looking to start running his own campaign, but sort of has it in his head that 3 players is the ideal number (and yes I've talked to him about that; he might be consider allowing 4.) A polearm master Paladin in the heaviest armor possible basically has melee damage and tanking on lock. They also lend themselves well to being party faces, at least for those on the up-and-up. A Warlock with the right combo of boons and invocations can probably pull triple duty as ranged damage, lurker, and "bad cop". And bards are the ultimate support, but also have enough tricks up their sleeves to take center stage as well. All 3 of these options can do damage, and all 3 of them can talk, so you never really have an instance where one player is being crowded out by the other two.
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Mar 18, 2019 03:17
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Mentioning in passing related to that post, I started having a lot more fun playing D&D when I began talking to people even when my stats didn't support it. Failing a Persuasion or, crucially, an Insight check can lead to some very fun situations. Not for everyone though, I suppose.
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Mar 18, 2019 03:23
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P.d0t posted:So a player in one of the games I'm in is looking to start running his own campaign, but sort of has it in his head that 3 players is the ideal number (and yes I've talked to him about that; he might be consider allowing 4.) 3 is functional, but for D&D you kinda want 4~5 mostly in case people skip sessions. Anyhow, the elements you really want in your party are: - At least 2 decent/high AC characters who will be in melee - Someone who can cast Healing Word - AoE - Rituals And the rest are just kinda secondary considerations, though some stuff is nice like Lesser Restoration/Revivify, or diversifying proficiencies for skill check-type challenges Paladin is a good pick for a frontline character, possessing the mix of high AC, direct damage, good HP, Aura of Protection, and various other abilities plus casting. A second frontline character can be anyone with decent AC: Cleric, Bladesinger, Fighter or Hexblade dip multiclass, Valor Bard. The last one can be anything, but casters are better than non-casters for reasons I needn't explain. If I was composing a 3-man party, I think I'd do: Paladin (shield and stick with PAM) Bladesinger Lore Bard RE having a "face", kinda echoing the post above, I believe the concept of having a party member dedicated to social interactions is incredibly stupid - everyone who wishes to engage in RP should be able to. If you really, really want to involve the mechanics in it, then just have to people with proficiency in Persuasion assist each other to give advantage to the higher mod person, and let a high STR character use that for Intimidate or w/e.
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Mar 18, 2019 04:27
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Have kind of a narrow question I'm hoping someone can answer. Just started a game of the starter set, Lost Mines of Phandalen, this weekend and we're all playing the premades in the box. Thing is, the premades have lot of their decisions mapped out ahead of them, to the point of picking my fighter's level three specialty for him, and I really don't like it. So my question is: will the adventures balance be too severely messed with if I go Eldritch Knight instead?
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Mar 18, 2019 04:32
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Conspiratiorist posted:
speaking as someone who has done a lot more DMing than playing, I only ever asked for the dice rolls when I felt the character trying to persuade or intimidate or whatever didn't make a compelling case in whatever RP they did in their interaction to get the results they want. I mean, you should only be calling for dice rolls when there's a chance that the character will fail at what they are trying to do, right? unless they are dealing with an unreasonable person or are making unreasonable demands (which to me is the point of having high social skill stats, is being able to sometimes succeed at getting what they want while doing those things), there should be no need to bring stats into the equation
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Mar 18, 2019 04:38
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Baller Ina posted:Have kind of a narrow question I'm hoping someone can answer. Just started a game of the starter set, Lost Mines of Phandalen, this weekend and we're all playing the premades in the box. Thing is, the premades have lot of their decisions mapped out ahead of them, to the point of picking my fighter's level three specialty for him, and I really don't like it. The adventure is basically fine even if everyone is playing characters they rolled up themselves, so one small permutation is a complete non-issue. Games are meant to be fun, so try things that seem fun!
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Mar 18, 2019 04:39
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speaking as someone who has done a lot more DMing than playing, I only ever asked for the dice rolls when I felt the character trying to thrust or slash or whatever didn't make a compelling case in whatever RP they did in their conflict to get the results they want. I mean, you should only be calling for dice rolls when there's a chance that the character will fail at what they are trying to do, right? unless they are dealing with a far superior opponent or are making unreasonable maneuvers (which to me is the point of having high combat skill stats, is being able to sometimes succeed at getting what they want while doing those things), there should be no need to bring stats into the equation
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Mar 18, 2019 04:46
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