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Malpais Legate posted:How do y'all handle the inevitable progression to revolving-door afterlife? Like it really deflates the magnitude of the situation when the king's been assassinated and the party cleric goes "raise dead is like 500gp a pop guys" Either the assassin disintegrated the body, which makes it a lot more inconvenient to revive him, or they used some kind of soul-stealing black magic to make it impossible, or they Plane Shifted him into another dimension, or something. In a world where Raise Dead is a reasonably affordable commodity, you'd expect would-be assassins to put in some effort into having countermeasures, too.
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# ? Apr 22, 2019 06:06 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 09:04 |
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Malpais Legate posted:How do y'all handle the inevitable progression to revolving-door afterlife? Like it really deflates the magnitude of the situation when the king's been assassinated and the party cleric goes "raise dead is like 500gp a pop guys" In 4e, at least, it was suggested that the DM could restrict who could be brought back with the excuse that some NPCs had fulfilled their purpose and couldn't be resurrected. Those with an unfinished place in fate, such as PCs, could easily be brought back. Plus, 500 gp isn't exactly chump change to anyone who's not an adventurer who clears out dragon hoards on the reg. lightrook posted:Either the assassin disintegrated the body, which makes it a lot more inconvenient to revive him, or they used some kind of soul-stealing black magic to make it impossible, or they Plane Shifted him into another dimension, or something. In a world where Raise Dead is a reasonably affordable commodity, you'd expect would-be assassins to put in some effort into having countermeasures, too. Yeah, in a world where you can use Raise Dead, assassins would probably take the extra step of mutilating the corpse to make it more difficult to bring their target back. Raise Dead needs a relatively intact corpse, and removing its head would be enough to thwart it. It wouldn't stop a True Resurrection, admittedly, but good luck tracking down a cleric with a high enough level to cast that. In worlds that aren't so high-magic that you can't sneeze without hitting a high-level spellcaster, they could probably be counted on one hand.
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# ? Apr 22, 2019 06:24 |
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So I was taking a look at this DM Guild expanded weapons list, and while my initial takeaway from it was that it would be typical absurd weaboo nonsense, I actually rather like the variety of weapon traits. Increased strength requirements, advantages to sleight of hand or disarm saves, or expanded crit ranges make the weapons more interesting. Whether or not a 2d8 Nodachi with Reach is particularly balanced, it definitely made me once again wish that WoTC would put together some additional non-magical weapons and items into their next appropriate supplement. https://www.dmsguild.com/product/174973
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# ? Apr 22, 2019 06:47 |
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Mendrian posted:Campaign idea: ritual caster, except all the rituals are just apps.
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# ? Apr 22, 2019 06:59 |
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Mendrian posted:Campaign idea: ritual caster, except all the rituals are just apps. Reminds me a bit of the Laundry novels, where magic is done by solving multi-dimensional mathematical equations that burn your brain, so the safe way to do magic is to offload the actual spellcasting bit to a phone or other computer.
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# ? Apr 22, 2019 09:22 |
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Kaal posted:Interestingly, spiderwebs aren't particularly flammable. It's a common trope, but it's the dust that collects on old webs that actually ignites when burned. Technically, it'd be 2d4 per round that the fire burns and you're caught in it. The 5' web segments aren't dealing the damage, the fire is, and the fire deals 2d4 damage per round to each person caught in it. So if the fire spreads across the web and the huge guy can't get free, he'd take three rounds of burning for a total of 6d4 damage. The confusion is on account of the word "any" and the misapprehension that "any 5' cube of webs that burns away deals 2d4 fire damage" really means "every 5' cube...".
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# ? Apr 22, 2019 16:11 |
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Kaal posted:So I was taking a look at this DM Guild expanded weapons list, and while my initial takeaway from it was that it would be typical absurd weaboo nonsense, I actually rather like the variety of weapon traits. Increased strength requirements, advantages to sleight of hand or disarm saves, or expanded crit ranges make the weapons more interesting. Whether or not a 2d8 Nodachi with Reach is particularly balanced, it definitely made me once again wish that WoTC would put together some additional non-magical weapons and items into their next appropriate supplement. https://www.dmsguild.com/product/174973 I miss quirky weapons as well, but I do understand that it's very hard to balance all of that and, inevitably, some clearly more powerful options will appear and become the new standard.
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# ? Apr 22, 2019 19:14 |
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JustJeff88 posted:I miss quirky weapons as well, but I do understand that it's very hard to balance all of that and, inevitably, some clearly more powerful options will appear and become the new standard. Oh sure, just like new class builds have been erected out of the cantrip additions like Green-Fire Blade. But that's ok, it's interesting and adding new abilities (whether of the spell or weapon variety) keep the game fresh.
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# ? Apr 22, 2019 19:40 |
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JustJeff88 posted:
Yeah I remember that. If a member of the Royal Family is rezed the punishment is death for the caster and exile for the raised Royal. Malpais Legate posted:How do y'all handle the inevitable progression to revolving-door afterlife? Like it really deflates the magnitude of the situation when the king's been assassinated and the party cleric goes "raise dead is like 500gp a pop guys" To be exact you need a 500gp Diamond. Also it does not remove curses, magical diseases or creatures that were turned into undead. Also the body has to be reasonably intact, if parts needed for survival are missing the spell fails. So if the King had a curse that did damage to him, it says it would activate on rez and kill him again. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Apr 22, 2019 |
# ? Apr 22, 2019 20:15 |
Is there a D20 SRD equivilent like there was for 3.5 to look up the player's handbook rules for 5e online?
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# ? Apr 23, 2019 03:55 |
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Somebody fucked around with this message at 12:36 on Apr 23, 2019 |
# ? Apr 23, 2019 03:57 |
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Cuntellectual posted:Is there a D20 SRD equivilent like there was for 3.5 to look up the player's handbook rules for 5e online? 5e srd https://www.5esrd.com/ Is the option. Somebody fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Apr 23, 2019 |
# ? Apr 23, 2019 03:58 |
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Yeah, how has not been shut down? It's a great DMing resource and I've totally ditched my physical books when playing because of it, but they literally have everything
Somebody fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Apr 23, 2019 |
# ? Apr 23, 2019 04:54 |
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Running a game for the first time in forever, has anyone used one of those Rolled & Told one-shots? I'm curious if anyone has played one they really enjoyed.
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# ? Apr 23, 2019 05:20 |
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The Thunderlock Barcrawl was fun. I think it's the first one? Heavy on skill checks and light on roleplay, but it was a good way to introduce basic mechanics to people who'd never played before.
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# ? Apr 23, 2019 05:55 |
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change my name posted:Yeah, how has not been shut down? It's a great DMing resource and I've totally ditched my physical books when playing because of it, but they literally have everything It has been shut down like 5 times. They just move servers. There's actually like 3 live copies at the moment. Somebody fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Apr 23, 2019 |
# ? Apr 23, 2019 06:07 |
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I think the main thing is... Why is it okay to talk about this particular but in most other cases its verboten? As great as a resource it may be, and free stuff can often be really great resources. It still seems like something you ought naught to be openly recommending.
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# ? Apr 23, 2019 11:48 |
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just close the tab within 24 hours of your session and its fine (This could be a place where I "get real" and explain that are very much still against the rules but I don't personally have an ethical qualm with this one, I just don't want SA to get in trouble or lowtax to get angry letters. For better or worse, the site is no longer high profile enough that we're likely to get shut down as a file sharing hub because of a few stray links that are clearly signposted. Obviously post it at your own risk and Ettin could pwn you whenever, not up to me!) Jeffrey of YOSPOS fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Apr 23, 2019 |
# ? Apr 23, 2019 15:53 |
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We're doing a one-shot with a bunch of new D&D players this weekend and I'm wondering what the most useful class would be for someone who is trying to wrangle the newbies and keep the party alive. Paladin, so I can tank and DPS if needed or chase people around dropping heals? Trying to convince the DM to start at like level 3 or 5 but all the extra skills dumped on people who have never played/read the rules might be troublesome. Somberbrero posted:Running a game for the first time in forever, has anyone used one of those Rolled & Told one-shots? I'm curious if anyone has played one they really enjoyed. Inkspot posted:The Thunderlock Barcrawl was fun. I think it's the first one? Heavy on skill checks and light on roleplay, but it was a good way to introduce basic mechanics to people who'd never played before.
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# ? Apr 24, 2019 20:42 |
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lightrook posted:Either the assassin disintegrated the body, which makes it a lot more inconvenient to revive him, or they used some kind of soul-stealing black magic to make it impossible, or they Plane Shifted him into another dimension, or something. In a world where Raise Dead is a reasonably affordable commodity, you'd expect would-be assassins to put in some effort into having countermeasures, too. Or like, if you died and are now a petitioner on the Plane of Elysium, how much are you really wanting to go back to the Prime Material Plane?
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# ? Apr 24, 2019 20:55 |
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Pleads posted:We're doing a one-shot with a bunch of new D&D players this weekend and I'm wondering what the most useful class would be for someone who is trying to wrangle the newbies and keep the party alive. Paladin, so I can tank and DPS if needed or chase people around dropping heals? If you're starting at level 5, maybe you can go with Cleric to muck up the enemy front line with Spirit Guardians, and Healing Word in case things go exceptionally pear-shaped? I like Order domain in particular, with its emphasis on debuffs like Hold Person and Slow. Bards are also always Good and Fun and have a lot of ways to either support allies or get the job done themselves.
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# ? Apr 24, 2019 20:59 |
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lightrook posted:If you're starting at level 5, maybe you can go with Cleric to muck up the enemy front line with Spirit Guardians, and Healing Word in case things go exceptionally pear-shaped? I like Order domain in particular, with its emphasis on debuffs like Hold Person and Slow. How the poo poo did I forget about bards?!? But yeah I gotta make a push to start a bit higher level to open things up even if it's more confusing (and because why shouldn't a first-time player get to fire off a fireball without fully comprehending the effects of what they're doing?). There's gonna be a tremendous amount of looking stuff up anyways, what does it matter if it's level 1 stuff vs level 3/5. A higher level Cleric start also sounds good as some sort of shepherd holy man facepalming in the background as his flock murderhobos the village.
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# ? Apr 24, 2019 21:13 |
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Pleads posted:We're doing a one-shot with a bunch of new D&D players this weekend and I'm wondering what the most useful class would be for someone who is trying to wrangle the newbies and keep the party alive. Paladin, so I can tank and DPS if needed or chase people around dropping heals? At level 1, either a Wizard with Sleep (you can save the party by immediately neutralizing encounters!), or a Variant Human Paladin with Polearm Master going Shield+Stick. Since you're not getting to level 6 you don't need Charisma, so you can go ahead and max STR and CON, PAM gives you damage and shield+chain is about as good AC as you can expect at this level, and Lay on Hands gives you 5 uses of "Revive with 1 HP". Everyone will still be super flimsy, though. Level 1 is a game of killing things as fast as possible so they get less chances of having that one roll that knocks someone out and swings the fight. Oh, and tell people to buy Healing Kits. Everyone should have a Healing Kit.
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# ? Apr 24, 2019 21:19 |
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oops wrong thread
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# ? Apr 24, 2019 21:22 |
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If the DM doesnt want to do Level 3 or 5, you could just see about him adding + CON to HP instead.
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# ? Apr 24, 2019 22:19 |
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I keep reading about Sleep doing so much work, but I've never, ever seen it do a meaningful thing in practice. It's a shame.
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# ? Apr 24, 2019 22:22 |
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Toshimo posted:I keep reading about Sleep doing so much work, but I've never, ever seen it do a meaningful thing in practice. It's a shame. It was pretty clutch once in a tower filled with bats. Got the drop on them and was able to knock out almost all of them vs worrying about them making a racket and annoying the levels above. Works better the longer combat goes on, no save, and better the more injured things are, just falls off pretty fast.
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# ? Apr 24, 2019 22:26 |
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Toshimo posted:I keep reading about Sleep doing so much work, but I've never, ever seen it do a meaningful thing in practice. It's a shame. It's pretty powerful for extremely low level encounters with a swarm of crappy enemies. It's effectively useless for just about anything else.
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# ? Apr 24, 2019 22:28 |
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The funniest usage of Sleep I've seen was our head-in-the-clouds sorcerer accidentally putting exactly zero enemies and only himself to sleep in the middle of combat. That was 3.5, though--could that still happen in 5e (obviously if the caster is in the radius and has the lowest HP)?
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# ? Apr 24, 2019 23:22 |
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Sleep is extremely helpful against dangerous but low HP enemies like Kobolds and Hobgoblins. But people tend to be terrible at aiming it, and it also doesn't seem to occur to them that you can cast it *after* first softening up tougher targets, making it a no-save 5d8 HP finisher.
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# ? Apr 24, 2019 23:34 |
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Once we realized that a Half-Elf Paladin could keep on trucking while a Tiefling Wizard cast Sleep on a BBEG's minions, how could we not use it all the time?
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# ? Apr 24, 2019 23:38 |
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Sleep has been really underwhelming in 5E for me, too. They buffed low-end enemy HP so much that it doesn't get much work done. 3-4 Goblins or 1-2 Human Guards isn't very many, and an automatic crit doesn't even mean that much extra damage. The swarm of crappy enemies will have so many actions that wasting 3-4 on waking up sleeping guys (instead of rolling to attack and missing more often than not) isn't a big deal
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# ? Apr 24, 2019 23:40 |
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During our last big battle, the party’s tiefling rogue boarded the bad guy’s airship and set it on fire... only to be promptly put to sleep the next turn, wherein the airship crashed and she couldn’t do anything to escape
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# ? Apr 25, 2019 00:09 |
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I had my first session using my current draft of revisions for the Strongholds and Followers Warfare mechanic. I mentioned before I had a player who was not a fan of how overly simple and vanilla it was. I went about setting up a movement and range system, unit type effectiveness, and some other mechanics we haven't used yet (new Pike units for handling Cavalry, weather mechanics). The guideline is adding enough depth to be interesting while not going too ham (I played with the idea of expanding the weather to include wind directions but nixed it in favor of "bad weather kills movement and storms may hurt Aerial units). I was also able to take this chance to include a Warlord, mixing a little of Schwalb's class with a scaled back Volo's NPC block. Gave them a war mechanic where they can use Battle Commands to refresh a unit early. The player who wasn't feeling the basic Warfare was happier with this. There's still a bunch of work to be done on it, but I'm hoping to hear from the rest of my players about it soon and see how they are feeling. The campaign is leading to a period with a lull in warfare so I think I'll try to run one-shots to play in this space and feel out what works.
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# ? Apr 25, 2019 03:47 |
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Conspiratiorist posted:But people tend to be terrible at aiming it, and it also doesn't seem to occur to them that you can cast it *after* first softening up tougher targets, making it a no-save 5d8 HP finisher. This. An Arcane Trickster can be pretty effective packing a Sleep spell to use on a wounded foe. It can also be useful against an injured spellcaster who opts to go invisible. Target the correct area and you have a visible, prone, sleeping, low-hp caster who can be captured or polished off without much trouble. It's especially useful against a badly injured foe with legendary actions, because while asleep they can lose lots of actions. Cast at a higher level to hedge your bets.
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# ? Apr 25, 2019 05:38 |
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If I wanted to roll a Teenage Mutant Ninja Tortle, what would be my options? Monk seems like the best best, but maybe some flavor of Rogue would also work?
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# ? Apr 25, 2019 07:13 |
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:If I wanted to roll a Teenage Mutant Ninja Tortle, what would be my options? Monk seems like the best best, but maybe some flavor of Rogue would also work? Depends if you wanna be a leader, good with machines, cool but crude, or a party dude.
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# ? Apr 25, 2019 07:22 |
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:If I wanted to roll a Teenage Mutant Ninja Tortle, what would be my options? Monk seems like the best best, but maybe some flavor of Rogue would also work? Barbarian. Backstory is he lost a race to a rabbit once and has been pissed off ever since. Kung Food fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Apr 25, 2019 |
# ? Apr 25, 2019 08:29 |
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mango sentinel posted:Or like, if you died and are now a petitioner on the Plane of Elysium, how much are you really wanting to go back to the Prime Material Plane? Is the nature of the afterlife for beings from the Prime Material Plane(s) established in every setting to be like that from FR? The nature of post-death is very clearly dissected in the Realms, but I wasn't sure if that applies elsewhere. Krynn has been dead for years but that was never more established than "souls go to the outer planes" and, while it's been a while, the Dark Sun afterlife seemed to be grim and hopeless, which is fitting with the setting. I can't say anything for any other campaign worlds.
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# ? Apr 25, 2019 17:34 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 09:04 |
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JustJeff88 posted:Is the nature of the afterlife for beings from the Prime Material Plane(s) established in every setting to be like that from FR? The nature of post-death is very clearly dissected in the Realms, but I wasn't sure if that applies elsewhere. Krynn has been dead for years but that was never more established than "souls go to the outer planes" and, while it's been a while, the Dark Sun afterlife seemed to be grim and hopeless, which is fitting with the setting. I can't say anything for any other campaign worlds. They're not the same across all settings, FR is special due to Kelemvor clearing up Cyric's mess. (And what we think of as the Faerunian nature of the afterlife wasn't really cleared up until 3e, with the Fugue Plane brought into game terms.) A lot of settings (including Dragonlance) are covered in 2e's On Hallowed Ground for Planescape, which discusses what happens in the afterlife for any setting connected to the planes at large. For Eberron, you'd want Faiths of Eberron.
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# ? Apr 25, 2019 17:49 |