|
Verisimilidude posted:They openly read from the Tome of Strahd while resting in the giant tent in the camp, in front of Arrigal. I made it so they got ambushed in their sleep and Arrigal tried to make off with the tome, thinking it was of importance to Strahd. It turned into a chase scene where one of the players flew on their flying broomstick after Arrigal who was getting away on horseback. Wait, why would Kasimir attack them?
|
#
?
May 11, 2019 18:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 16:44 |
|
|
I've got a bit of a problem and I'd like to see if I can get some insight on whether this is going to be as bothersome an issue as I think it will be. I'm planning an upcoming 5th Edition homebrew game and I love using various 4th ed-style abilities and various NPC ideas (Giffyglyph etc.) to make memorable raid-style boss fights, but one of my players is wanting to play a multiclass "Hyper Assassin" Fighter/Rogue gish build designed to get like half a dozen free crits in the opening round of combat. I'm worried that if he plays this class it's going to result in a character that's either relatively useless in a fight or who single-handedly snipes and ruins an otherwise fun group encounter. Is the "Master Assassin" Fighter/Rogue class disruptive to group play? I don't have a huge frame of reference for these sorts of huge single-target nuke builds and I've always been a bit uneasy about gish classes. I've played with too many people whose view of maximizing efficiency also means minimizing the amount of cool poo poo, and I worry that having one character with the ability to just delete a boss in round 1 with ready action and action surge sneak attack crit cheese is going to make it less fun for the other players in the game who are playing relatively normal builds and classes. Am I worrying too much or should I say something to him about picking either Fighter or Rogue? I know that Assassinate is a normally bad ability and I don't mind setting him up with good situations to get off a good alpha strike, but going full ham with it and building literally his whole character around Round 1 of a fight worries me that I'm going to have a character who metronomes between ruining cool fights or having their one shtick ruined.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2019 21:55
|
|
|
Your problem is not a problem, and no combination of anything and Rogue can break the game. Even on crits, he won't be deleting bosses. It's basically the same as a Sorclock DPR-wise, and is likely to actually be much worse damage.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2019 22:12
|
|
|
Yeah it won’t be an issue. Like you say, let him have his fun killing the hell out of dudes occasionally when he gets the drop on em but it’s not going to break anything.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2019 22:22
|
|
|
If anything he will realize that it is way less effective in practice than what he is imagining unless you are very generous with granting the party Surprise. I have an assassin rogue in the party I DM and she is a first time player and I feel pretty bad every combat when she asks me “are they surprised?” and the answer is No 99% of the time.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2019 22:35
|
|
|
The crit is only going to be particularly huge for that first hit, and if they are leaning more into the extra attacks then it won't even be a huge burst for that one attack. Sidenote: I did learn while verifying that apparently there's nothing saying all the attacks after the initial strike aren't assassinations, so this is at least a bit more powerful than I thought. Still, that's only an extra 2d6 of crit on the first attack and then by the time you have all those Extra Attacks you'll be wanting to have that leg up.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2019 22:41
|
|
|
Did the changes to Forgotten Realms they did in like 4E (I don't remember what it was called, a star hit the earth and all the gods died?) get "whistled back" (as the kids say these days)?
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 02:28
|
|
|
Pussy Quipped posted:If anything he will realize that it is way less effective in practice than what he is imagining unless you are very generous with granting the party Surprise. If you feel bad about it, why do you keep doing it?
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 03:04
|
|
|
Fumbles posted:I've got a bit of a problem and I'd like to see if I can get some insight on whether this is going to be as bothersome an issue as I think it will be. You only get sneak attack once per turn, and action surge won't give you another (it's an additional action, not an additional turn). This combo isn't going to break anything unless you've got some really weird homebrew archetypes going on.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 04:23
|
|
|
Kaal posted:If you feel bad about it, why do you keep doing it? Fuckin'. THIS.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 05:26
|
|
|
Schadenboner posted:Did the changes to Forgotten Realms they did in like 4E (I don't remember what it was called, a star hit the earth and all the gods died?) get "whistled back" (as the kids say these days)? Sorta. Things are more like the pre 4e Realms, but the stuff in 4e still happened.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 06:54
|
|
|
Conspiratiorist posted:You only get sneak attack once per turn, and action surge won't give you another (it's an additional action, not an additional turn). He argues that if he uses action surge to ready an attack he'll get another assassinate sneak attack before they get to act since assassinate says round and sneak attack says turn. He ran some numbers and came out to like 200 something damage in a single turns worth of actions only using stuff he gets back on a short rest.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 08:15
|
|
|
Sneak attack is once per turn. You can't do it twice in a turn. Action surge does not give you an extra turn, it gives you an extra action on your turn. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 08:27 on May 12, 2019 |
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 08:19
|
|
|
Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Action surge does not give you an extra turn, it gives you an extra action on your turn. Ready Action uses your action on your turn and lets you do whatever on someone else's turn at the cost of your reaction. Fumbles posted:He argues that if he uses action surge to ready an attack he'll get another assassinate sneak attack before they get to act since assassinate says round and sneak attack says turn. He ran some numbers and came out to like 200 something damage in a single turns worth of actions only using stuff he gets back on a short rest.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 08:28
|
|
|
Yep, that works I guess. Can a creature be surprised if you've already hit it?
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 08:37
|
|
|
Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Yep, that works I guess. Assassinate doesn't require surprise, just that the creature hasn't acted in combat.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 08:39
|
|
|
mango sentinel posted:Assassinate doesn't require surprise, just that the creature hasn't acted in combat. The auto crit part requires surprise, doesn't it? E: doesn't matter though right? Once you're surprised you're surprised until it wears off. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 08:42 on May 12, 2019 |
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 08:40
|
|
|
Fumbles posted:He argues that if he uses action surge to ready an attack he'll get another assassinate sneak attack before they get to act since assassinate says round and sneak attack says turn. He ran some numbers and came out to like 200 something damage in a single turns worth of actions only using stuff he gets back on a short rest. If he uses one of his actions to ready yes he could get a second sneak attack. 200 damage... I guess we're talking here a level 20 build here then? 18d6 sneak attack crit, an additional 6d8 from booming blade and 2d8 from a rapier. Yeah, ~99+MOD on each of his two hits. That could do it. That's not a dozen free hits, though.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 08:50
|
|
|
I forgot the rider but my reading of "Surprise" is that it's persistent until that turn ends. Here is Mearls's idiotic rear end giving his "understanding" of the sacred texts: https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/713194584918990848?s=09
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 08:51
|
|
|
The way Surprise works is as a creature-specific condition that wears off once they get their first turn of combat. Correct. VV Conspiratiorist fucked around with this message at 09:07 on May 12, 2019 |
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 08:55
|
|
|
Conspiratiorist posted:The way Surprise works is as a creature-specific condition that wears off once they get their first turn of combat. quote:If you’re surprised, you can’t move or take an action on your first turn of the combat, and you can’t take a reaction until that turn ends. I know it's character specific but I thought the "no reaction" lasted until end of round. Looks like surprise lasts until their spot in the initiative order and their "can't act" turn. Edit: at any rate assassin is bad and that interaction is working real hard to do something that isn't even that good. mango sentinel fucked around with this message at 09:09 on May 12, 2019 |
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 09:04
|
|
|
Summarizing everything, I don't exaggerate when I say the stars need to align to properly apply Assassinate: 1) You need to engineer a situation where you can generate Surprise for the encounter. 2) You need to roll better Initiative than the target. 3) You must hit with your attack, which isn't guaranteed - even with Advantage - against the kinds of targets you'd want to Assassinate. 4) Optional: if you're level 17 and they fail a DC19 CON save, the damage doubles! But all that said, when everything works right, and you're also using a multiclass that seeks to maximize the effects, you... get to do as much damage as a Fighter or Paladin can do in two turns by spending their resources. Yay.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 09:21
|
|
|
(Edited) Oh okay. I just realized why I was so scared of this and shouldn't be. Assassinate automatically gives you advantage, and thus Sneak Attacks, on any target who hasn't acted yet and his hyper-nova dual crossbow readied action cheesy thing gives him 7 attacks, 2 of which get Sneak Attack, but the automatic critical hits are the thing that only works on Surprised. I was worried that he was going to be able to get off 7 free critical hits at the start of every single combat, with d6+5 base, +10 Sharpshooter, and whatever martial maneuver dice thing he has for damage. I guess I got worried because he rolled a bunch of theoretical dice in our discord server and came up with over 200 damage in one rounds worth of actions and only expending short rest resources, and was going on about getting 70+ damage alpha strikes at level 5.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 10:44
|
|
|
Fumbles posted:(Edited) Not sure if you caught this: he's not getting "free critical hits", he's getting any hit upgraded to a critical. He still has to roll to attack and he can still miss, even with advantage, especially if he's trading -5 hit for +10 damage with sharpshooter. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 11:23 on May 12, 2019 |
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 11:21
|
|
|
Crits also kind of suck because they can still easily roll lower than what you can do on a normal attack. Sure over a lot of rolls crits will do more damage than non-crits, but people love to go  OMG A CRIT when it usually isn’t a big deal. Like said above, I’d much rather have a normal fighter doing consistent damage than a janky rear end nova build that relies on every single attack hitting a creature while surprised.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 12:22
|
|
|
Kaysette posted:Crits also kind of suck because they can still easily roll lower than what you can do on a normal attack. Sure over a lot of rolls crits will do more damage than non-crits, but people love to go Toplowtech fucked around with this message at 13:16 on May 12, 2019 |
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 13:14
|
|
|
I don't think a 70 damage first round strike at level 5 if everything happens to be just right is a problem anyway. At level 5 a not-even-trying build like a 2 hander Champion with 16 str and no other bonuses could get max 60 (avg 36) damage in one round with extra attack / action surge without crits. (Help me out here if my tired brains are loving the math up but I'm pretty sure they're doing 1d12+3 per attack, they get 2 attacks per action, 2 actions from surge = 60 max damage). Plus I dunno, they get extended crit range too so that'd probably make the number go up too. I didn't think about feats or ASIs or race bonuses but you could get strength up to 18, which would bring the max damage up to 64 and the average to 40. e: This is making the same assumptions I think you made - that every attack will hit and do max damage. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 13:45 on May 12, 2019 |
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 13:31
|
|
|
Fumbles posted:(Edited) Ooooh, so that's what he's doing. No dude, don't worry about it. The CBE+SS Fighter 11 is the actual strong part of this build (because it is genuinely among the best damage setups in the system). The Rogue levels come in late and are a marginal contribution at best. As you said, first of all it needs Surprise, and also beat the enemy's Initiative (which even with DEX20 + Alert is a coinflip). And all it does is grant automatic crits on hit - what's a crit on a Hand Crossbow? It's just an extra 1d6 per hit, with maybe a 1d10 on top if he's a Battle Master burning his Superiority Die for pitiful extra damage. Also, something you and your player seem to be misunderstanding: when you Ready an attack, you don't get an Attack action. You get an 'attack', singular. If he spends his Action Surge to ready in order to obtain an extra Sneak Attack chance for the round, he is going to be losing the two additional attacks from Extra Attack 2. And lastly, did you know you can obtain additional damage comparable to this, without engineering surprise? Ranger or Warlock dip (Hunter's Mark or Hex add 1d6 per hit). It's super easy. In fact, the Fighter/Gloom Stalker combo is a way stronger "1st turn nuke" setup: eight 1d8+1d6+15 attacks, all with advantage, and two of them with an additional 1d8 on top. And you know what? That's perfectly fine - a focused, optimized level 14 archer should be good at its job. It's not going to break anything.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 17:15
|
|
|
Yeah, I was thinking of making a similar setup for an upcoming one-off adventure and added up the potential first round damage... it's not super great. Below is a Battlemaster 5/ Assassin 3 split with +4 to dex, sharpshooter and a +1 longbow, for instance: Attack 1: 1d8+5, +10 from sharpshooter, + 2d6 from sneak attack Attack 2: 1d8+5, +10 from sharpshooter, Action surge and repeat: 2d8+10, +20 from sharpshooter If all four attacks hit, that's only a maximum damage of 104. If you burn all of your superiority dice, that's only a potential max damage of 136, not accounting for crits, since surprise rounds are kind of hard to trigger. At level 8, you can probably take out a few monsters, but likely not a boss.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 17:25
|
|
|
Conspiratiorist posted:In fact, the Fighter/Gloom Stalker combo is a way stronger "1st turn nuke" setup: eight 1d8+1d6+15 attacks, all with advantage, and two of them with an additional 1d8 on top. And you know what? That's perfectly fine - a focused, optimized level 14 archer should be good at its job. It's not going to break anything. I DMed for one of these recently and was shocked by how much damage he shat out. I almost exclusively play casters so I didn’t realize how good the ranger + fighter synergy could be.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 18:02
|
|
|
I picked up the Heroes of BG PDFs since I’m potentially starting a campaign for some new players. I’ve started reading through it, but I have to admit I don’t particularly find it very interesting as of yet. It seems very rail roady. The chapters move somewhat linearly and it’s built in such a way that you don’t need to read ahead as a GM to understand how the game moves (which I like), but I’m not sure how I feel about it currently. I’m thinking of holding off on it since it might not be particularly good for very new players, but we’ll see.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 18:04
|
|
|
Conspiratiorist posted:Also, something you and your player seem to be misunderstanding: when you Ready an attack, you don't get an Attack action. You get an 'attack', singular. If he spends his Action Surge to ready in order to obtain an extra Sneak Attack chance for the round, he is going to be losing the two additional attacks from Extra Attack 2. I've read about Crawford's interpretation about this before, but I find it wholly unconvincing. It seems very grognardy, and would totally prevent any readied spellcasting except they carved out an exception so wide that they made it possible to use readied actions to make all your spells uncounterable. This sort of thing is really the weakest part of the 5e ruleset, and should be freely discarded by any DM that wants players to feel empowered rather than constrained by the system.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 18:55
|
|
|
So, I have a question to ask everyone. Is there any way that DnD can't be about colonial violence and taking and murdering other folks for their stuff? I saw this tweet and want to make sure that I am not doing this as much as possible: https://twitter.com/cali_keftiu/status/1126008719999885312
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 19:16
|
|
|
Kaal posted:I've read about Crawford's interpretation about this before, but I find it wholly unconvincing. It seems very grognardy, and would totally prevent any readied spellcasting except they carved out an exception so wide that they made it possible to use readied actions to make all your spells uncounterable. This sort of thing is really the weakest part of the 5e ruleset, and should be freely discarded by any DM that wants players to feel empowered rather than constrained by the system. Excuse me, what interpretation? Without getting into an argument of what should or shouldn't be, the rule on this is super clear because Extra Attack - You can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn. Josef bugman posted:So, I have a question to ask everyone. Either remove or change all the Always Chaotic Evil races, and have every humanoid species living side by side like brothers (unless you also want to insert social commentary on top). Little you can do about the murdering other folks for their stuff part unless you want a very dull game.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 19:27
|
|
|
Josef bugman posted:So, I have a question to ask everyone. I mean, she's not wrong I'm just in the camp of "ok, so what?" Verisimilidude fucked around with this message at 19:31 on May 12, 2019 |
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 19:27
|
|
|
If orcs don't want to get killed and robbed they shouldn't be full of meat and treasure, I say
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 19:38
|
|
|
Kaal posted:I've read about Crawford's interpretation about this before, but I find it wholly unconvincing. It seems very grognardy, and would totally prevent any readied spellcasting except they carved out an exception so wide that they made it possible to use readied actions to make all your spells uncounterable. This sort of thing is really the weakest part of the 5e ruleset, and should be freely discarded by any DM that wants players to feel empowered rather than constrained by the system. Not what you are talking about, but reading this gave me a thought. I didn't realize spellcasting could be worked around the same way as Hasted Sneak Attack. Normal rules is that you can't cast both an Action spell and a Bonus Action spell. However the wording states "on the same turn," so you could totally, for example, Bonus Action Healing Word and then ready an Action spell. This would, however, have to be done instead of something like Shield. Dunno if this is common knowledge but I've never seen anyone point it out.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 19:46
|
|
|
Conspiratiorist posted:Either remove or change all the Always Chaotic Evil races, and have every humanoid species living side by side like brothers (unless you also want to insert social commentary on top). Yeah I like to use the intelligent humanoid monster races for extra variety for peaceful people you find in towns and cities, as well as extra variety for bandits, evil minions, etc. all mixed in with the usual "pretty" races.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 19:50
|
|
|
I like the idea of stat bonuses in D&D being assigned to classes rather than races, and races having just the cultural differences that grant them specific bonuses, and maybe a special background that allows you to pick another race's cultural abilities since you grew up around a different culture. all classes can give +1 to 2 different stats fighter gives +2 to str or dex barb gives +2 to str or con cleric gives +2 to wis or cha druid gives +2 to wis or con rogue gives +2 to dex or int wizard gives +2 to int or dex warlock gives +2 to cha or dex sorc gives +2 to cha or dex monk gives +2 to dex or wis But also, like, in D&D (outside of normal real life interaction) we're strictly talking about different species, not races. I get it, but it's also kinda eye-roll inducing to be like "it's racist that elves are smarter than halflings"
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 19:50
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 16:44 |
|
|
Trojan Kaiju posted:Not what you are talking about, but reading this gave me a thought. It doesn't work because When you ready a spell, you cast it as normal but hold its energy, which you release with your reaction when the trigger occurs[...] You're still casting the spell on your turn, only delaying the effect taking place.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2019 19:51
|
|