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Firstborn posted:Nah. They all have back-up characters made, and I'm toying with the idea of either coming in with like 3/4ths of their current char's experience points or just party level. Nobody has actually died yet, and even the guy with one arm now wants to find a magic arm. We're playing Curse of Strahd, so I'm already stewing a couple of options. Considering having the character bitten by a werewolf to regenerate, then a quest to cure him. Show the one armed guy this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcWHCy825hg&t=3902s It's a classic. Guy with one arm fighting against vaguely racist caricature with extendo-arms. Entire movie is worth watching for that old school kung fu movie cheese, but that specific fight is great.
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# ? May 18, 2019 19:59 |
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# ? Jun 4, 2024 18:47 |
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My most recent experience was a guy in the group that thought he could just pull through playing a Cleric with his 11 11 12 9 13 7 (post racials). That was the best of 3 rolls. And he turned out not to be very good at playing Cleric, either; he wouldn't equip a shield so he could two-hand a spear, he'd spend his slots shooting and missing with Guiding Bolt, cast 2nd level Healing Words, sometimes do nothing on his turn but Disengage from enemies that walked up to him once he realized both his melee attack and AC were garbage. He'd say "I'm fine with dying" as the rest of the group bailed his rear end, on several occasions, and only finally retired the character when we hit level 9. Half-heartedly saying it was for RP reasons, but we all knew. Even the DM said "I feel bad for him, I should buff him somehow" while ultimately doing nothing. His next character, with 'a focus on staying alive' as he put it, was a CON 10 Wild Sorcerer without Shield. And this same group? They'd get mad at me for giving the guy advice like preparing Bless since it's stat-agnostic, or in combat telling him to not Cure Wounds and just pop a Healing Word in case I go down since he's before me on initiative, and that way his action is free to Toll the Dead or whatever else. "Just let him play his character." "How would your character even know he has those spells? Stop metagaming."
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# ? May 18, 2019 20:03 |
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Conspiratiorist posted:My most recent experience was a guy in the group that thought he could just pull through playing a Cleric with his 11 11 12 9 13 7 (post racials). That was the best of 3 rolls. And he turned out not to be very good at playing Cleric, either; he wouldn't equip a shield so he could two-hand a spear, he'd spend his slots shooting and missing with Guiding Bolt, cast 2nd level Healing Words, sometimes do nothing on his turn but Disengage from enemies that walked up to him once he realized both his melee attack and AC were garbage. Your group sounds awful,
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# ? May 18, 2019 20:10 |
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My recent party largely consists of members with rolled stats. Because that is what they wanted to do. No issues so far. I am just of the let the players do what they find fun, and they enjoy rolled stats.
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# ? May 18, 2019 20:14 |
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I saw an interesting suggestion elsewhere for if a group is really into stat rolling, where you have the players do the “4d6 drop the lowest” thing but only a total of 6 times (or 7 if you also want to drop the lowest roll of the whole set) and then every player uses that one set of 6 as a stat array. That way there’s rolling but all the characters are still balanced against each other. Personally I’m good with whatever the group decides re: rolling/array/point buy; it’s usually other stuff that indicates the DM or group is lovely and not worth playing with, rather than that one thing. I agree the randomness CAN have a pretty negative impact on one’s experience though, depending on the circumstances.
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# ? May 18, 2019 20:17 |
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Critical fumbles is the "put money on Free Parking" houserule of D&D.Kaal posted:Rolling for stats just causes bad feelings and encourages players to see their characters as being disposable. This is probably the end result I see most often with randomly rolled stats. People just stop caring about their character real fast. Turns out when you strip away player choice on what they're playing, players stop giving a poo poo.
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# ? May 18, 2019 20:18 |
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MonsterEnvy posted:My recent party largely consists of members with rolled stats. Because that is what they wanted to do. No issues so far. I am just of the let the players do what they find fun, and they enjoy rolled stats. Oh right you're my compatriot also going through DoMM, right? How deep in are you guys? My group is in the middle of being hugely indecisive about whether we should full clear the third floor or head down to the fourth, after having technically done like half of the fifth due to ~portals~. We're also rolled stat characters and besides myself (my character isn't even technically speaking weak, in fact he's one point above array) everyone rolled insanely well so we've not had much trouble, besides our newer player who is running a -1 CON Warlock getting pasted by an elder rune. She WAS warned against the negative CON, but went for it anyways. I leaned into my comparative weakness by playing my character as very insecure about his own skills and paranoid about the party ditching him due to it. It's kinda fun to play a really insecure character who constantly bites off more than he can chew in an attempt to impress. Infinity Gaia fucked around with this message at 20:27 on May 18, 2019 |
# ? May 18, 2019 20:22 |
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With all of the sound and fury about types of rests, is it becoming common practice at all to say "bugger it" and essentially play AEDU in all but name? It seems to me that that was the core design idea to a great degree, but the devs are desperately disassociating themselves from that because the vocal player base are assholes to a man.TotalHell posted:I saw an interesting suggestion elsewhere for if a group is really into stat rolling, where you have the players do the “4d6 drop the lowest” thing but only a total of 6 times (or 7 if you also want to drop the lowest roll of the whole set) and then every player uses that one set of 6 as a stat array. That way there’s rolling but all the characters are still balanced against each other. I like this. If everyone is gimp/average/quite good/monstrous the DM can adjust the campaign as needed. I am personally also in favour of giving more ability points, in whatever fashion, to characters that are highly dependent upon multiple scores.
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# ? May 18, 2019 20:40 |
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Infinity Gaia posted:Your group sounds awful, I did; I'm in a much better game now. "Oh, you're right... Critical Hits bypass the CON save zombies get. In that case you kill the zombie, and get an Inspiration." "I get Inspiration?" "Yeah - I have a pretty solid grasp on the overall rules framework, but sometimes the more specific CR and PC rulings slip past me, so as long as they aren't pricks about it I give people Inspiration when they spot stuff like that." Where has this guy been my entire life?!
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# ? May 18, 2019 20:50 |
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So this was mentioned in passing earlier, but do any of you have any thoughts about doing games with pre-gen characters? I've been bandying around the idea of setting up some sort of campaign with pre-made characters for the party to choose from, with the idea that they could be built into the central campaign narrative more easily, but I've been struggling to come up with compelling elements. At times it seems like it could be fun, and might encourage players to roleplay characters that they otherwise might not have; at other times it seems like it would come across as overly controlling and limiting - perhaps making players feel disassociated from the characters they are playing. What do people think?
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# ? May 18, 2019 21:30 |
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I wouldn't worry too much about disassociation- I've seen players get really into roleplaying the characters from Betrayal on the Hill. If you're worried, make two or three extra characters so no one feels like they're settling. As for elements to tie characters in, don't get too focused on the main story. Having indirect ties, like a relative in the area or a historical tie to the ruined dungeons, can still be very effective. Alternatively, let the character have a tie to another of the characters. I find that transactional ties ("I owe her my life, so I'm coming along as a favor" or "I've been hired to keep him safe" for example) work best.
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# ? May 18, 2019 21:41 |
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Gharbad the Weak posted:I'm glad you'll look over it. It's entirely possible that, for your table, this really is the best thing, and people straight up enjoy it (DARK SOULS). It's just never been that way in my experience. Today's session went pretty well, with the only critical failure being from a gargoyle that dove in on us and ended up digging a trench with his face when he critically missed me. Will continue to keep an eye on it though. I think I mentioned in here before that in playing a prior CoS campaign with my group, I critically failed two rolls for persuasion or deception checks in very important diplomatic interactions with civic leaders while acting as party face and essentially got our party run out of both Vallaki and Krezsk. Were these setbacks? Absolutely. Did I catch a lot of jibes for these failures moving forward? Yeah, yeah I did. It probably did negatively affect my fun in the campaign to an extent (certainly my enjoyment of the character), so that's something to consider. That said, it also made it feel really great when we managed to work around those failures and keep moving forward through the milestones of the campaign, knowing that we had really messed up some other potential allies or such. Not having read through the CoS campaign material myself, I'm not sure how much I really cost us in the end, or how much massaging / Rule 0 the DM may have done to offset any potential loss, but we managed to come out okay in the end. It seems to work for us, but there's likely always ways to improve it. Gharbad the Weak posted:-Fighters do more weapon attacks than most, and gain more attacks as they level. While it may seem rare, rolling a 1 isn't that uncommon when you're rolling four times. A level 20 fighter is much more likely to critically fail than a level 1 wizard in melee. A very good point and something worth looking into. Was def keeping an eye on this today with my multi attacks (4 in a round sometimes so far) and will continue to do so moving forward. Same with the point that someone brought up about how spellcasters often force other folks to roll, which insulates them from critical failures unless you make their saves able to somehow critically hit/fail etc. I liked the suggestion that a critical save fail might cause additional negative effects, while a critical save success can somehow rebound on the caster in some way, or enable the critical saver to insulate some of his brethren, etc. At the same time though, don't multiattack classes also have many more chances to critically hit? I think the thing about critical failures is that they round the edges off of critical hits. Critical hits are a big deal and make you feel awesome and powerful. Should there not be the chance on the other end that something bad happens (again, not too bad, you don't want to make it feel like a penalty, but rather just encompass the chaotic nature of battle and that even skilled warriors encounter unexpected difficulties in combat)? Perhaps this is a misguided old man relic attitude , which is why i'm trying to think about it objectively. I feel like a good compromise here might be like if a character critically misses an agile opponent, perhaps that opponent scores a quick small hit on them as they go by (just like a d4/d6 damage or such), or the the character critically misses, they overextend and pop a buckle on their armor, reducing their AC by 1 for a turn while they shift it back into position quick. Gharbad the Weak posted:-Anytime you force a character to potentially hit an ally when they don't intend to, you can build resentment. This goes double for things like "Ok, well, you missed, so you hit your ally, and he's in melee, so you have advantage, so with your sneak attack damage...", which is surprisingly common, though I'd suspect you don't do that one. It's a dick move, I very much doubt you are a full on dick. I certainly try not to be! When I'm DM'ing I usually envision the arrow going off half cocked and I usually just have it do like a d4 damage if it hits anyone at all. As often as not I'll have it do something environmental, like knock over a lantern, hit an innocent bystander (which can cause all sorts of issues after a fight), etc. More than a few barn fires have happened this way in my time as both a player and DM. Gharbad the Weak posted:-"Drop things you need" is actually ok, I'm behind that one. It's usually more fun when you drop something that's plot related, to make everyone panic, rather than have someone go "Well, I guess I don't do anything cool right now." This is one of my favorites when people critically miss, but you make an excellent point that I am def going to use DM'ing going forward (and also tried to incorporate into my example thoughts above), and that's not to do anything that costs them more entire actions moving forward. If they get their sword stuck/drop their focus, they can pull it out/pick it up as part of their next action but their next attack has -5 to hit or something of the sort because they're hurried. I appreciate these kinds of discussions because it helps me to file the burrs off my style that I've been doing for years that probably aren't fun for players in the end, so thanks for getting down to the brass tacks like this. Kaal posted:This is exactly how to do it. Critical successes and failures are good opportunities for narrative, but that narrative shouldn't be seizing agency from players or heavily penalizing them. The idea of DM saying "critical fail, you cut your buddies arm off lol" is just hosed up, and it's precisely the kind of adversarial behavior that should be avoided. The DM should be the lead storyteller, not the king of the hill. This is excellent and what I've always TRIED to do, but I realize I may not have always done as best as I could in that regard. Edit: BattleMaster posted:I don't like randomness in character generation so I prefer point buy or the standard array (which is a valid point buy choice anyway) but I'll let players roll if they really want. And not to be a jerk about it, but I prefer players to roll in front of me because I've seen many people show up with several 18s that they totally rolled. Also yeah - when you're rolling stats, they're in person, and observed. I can't imagine even letting people roll on their own. If you want to come to session 0 with your character completed, you're welcome to do the array for that, then roll to see if you get anything better. Marathanes fucked around with this message at 21:53 on May 18, 2019 |
# ? May 18, 2019 21:41 |
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When I'm running for new players at the table I'm happy to roll up characters for them based on what they want to play, but in my personal experience as a player it feels harder to get into character when I'm handed a pregen that I didn't have any input making. I think someone else here said that in a world completely under the control of the DM, the only thing a player can truly control is their own character, so taking away even a little of that agency can feel pretty bad.
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# ? May 18, 2019 21:49 |
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Yeah, I've never bothered to make Pre-Gens for even one-shot stuff personally, but I think it's perfectly okay there. It sort of came up in the current campaign I'm GMing in a sense, since one of my players wanted to change his character and rather than just make a new one he asked if he could play an NPC the party befriended. That's not really the same thing, since he made a conscious decision to do that, but I think it's still better than "here's a stack of pre-gens. Take one and that's your character for the campaign."
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# ? May 18, 2019 21:54 |
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JustJeff88 posted:With all of the sound and fury about types of rests, is it becoming common practice at all to say "bugger it" and essentially play AEDU in all but name? It seems to me that that was the core design idea to a great degree, but the devs are desperately disassociating themselves from that because the vocal player base are assholes to a man. There are a couple of semi busted things about doing short-short-rests but it really doesn't matter next to the benefit of just moving poo poo along. My players burn hit dice faster and our warlock is having more fun. I think the most egregious complications arise from multiclassed warlocks but ours is single class so I've never seen it.
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# ? May 18, 2019 22:04 |
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Firstborn posted:3d6 in order is classic Not calling you out, I just feel the need to correct this whenever I see it because it's a horrible myth that people keep repeating and it needs to be killed. 1st edition AD&D rules, straight from Gary fuckin Gygax himself in the chapter about generating ability scores straight up says "well you could roll 3d6 and assign the numbers to your stats, but you're likely to just have a terrible character when you do that so you should pick one of these other methods instead" including the 4d6, drop the lowest method.
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# ? May 18, 2019 22:12 |
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The real use of pregens is as examples on what characters should look like. Even if nobody picks one, it's valuable to have them to say "hey here's where your character should broadly be at." Likewise a system with terrible or nonfunctional pregens is a good warning sign, lookin' at you Shadowrun.
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# ? May 18, 2019 22:25 |
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So is a 5th Edition Rerelease or a 5.5 coming soon? Is now a bad time to pick up the 3-Book slipcase core?
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# ? May 18, 2019 22:41 |
KittyEmpress posted:I've never had anyone cheat at rolling stats in my time, and I've definitely gotten bad rolls many times. It's why if a game says it's going to have rolled stats, I will wait until I roll to pick a class. Getting amazing stat rolls and 4 rolls of 16-18 and being able to make a MAD build awesome is a really cool feeling. Wait, are you guys rolling for each stat individually? I'm one of those weirdos who loves to roll for stats, but if I'm planning to play a wizard and get something like 15/14/6/6/11/10, I'm not going to keep that 15 in strength and 6 in intelligence. I'll swap the two numbers around. I've always seen it done where once you roll the six numbers, you can put them in whichever stat you want. That way I do get some truly terrible stats that I get to roleplay with, but I'm also not forced to make myself sub-optimal. I've never really looked at point buy though since I stopped playing before it became a thing and am just getting back into DnD. Pregens I think are fine for a group who has little to no experience with DnD, or for a one shot. If I came in to a campaign and was handed a character sheet, I think I'd turn around a leave. Making the character is one of my favorite things to do. Hell, my boyfriend is planning on starting up a campaign "soon", and I've already got four different characters made depending on what everyone else makes. It's just fun for me to do. Soysaucebeast fucked around with this message at 22:51 on May 18, 2019 |
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# ? May 18, 2019 22:47 |
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Back when I actually played often (so, like, 2E era) We always did 4d6 drop lowest, arrange as desired, and if you wanted to play something like a Paladin you could use the generation table from the Paladin Handbook instead. That way there's still a random factor but it's less swingy and harsh?
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# ? May 18, 2019 22:55 |
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Gharbad the Weak posted:Again, not a huge thing against rolling for stats specifically, although, having played a character where I got really really high rolls, I do disagree with rolling for stats. I talked about it before; my experience is that more mechanically powerful characters tend to be pushed into more important story roles.
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# ? May 18, 2019 23:05 |
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Infinity Gaia posted:Oh right you're my compatriot also going through DoMM, right? How deep in are you guys? My group is in the middle of being hugely indecisive about whether we should full clear the third floor or head down to the fourth, after having technically done like half of the fifth due to ~portals~. We're also rolled stat characters and besides myself (my character isn't even technically speaking weak, in fact he's one point above array) everyone rolled insanely well so we've not had much trouble, besides our newer player who is running a -1 CON Warlock getting pasted by an elder rune. She WAS warned against the negative CON, but went for it anyways. Currently around the start of level 3. They are currently trying to figure out where to go based on the fake map they got from Copper Stoneforge. They skipped most of level 2, on the grounds that they have a lot of quests that lead to Skullport and want to got there. One of the players also discovered that he enjoys mapping and is currently mapping level 2 and 3 as he goes through it. Schadenboner posted:So is a 5th Edition Rerelease or a 5.5 coming soon? Is now a bad time to pick up the 3-Book slipcase core? If it was going to announced it would be this Sunday. But I doubt it. Wait to see what Sunday's announcement is, if it's not 5.5 then you are probably good to go on getting the Core. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 23:21 on May 18, 2019 |
# ? May 18, 2019 23:17 |
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MonsterEnvy posted:Currently around the start of level 3. They are currently trying to figure out where to go based on the fake map they got from Copper Stoneforge. They skipped most of level 2, on the grounds that they have a lot of quests that lead to Skullport and want to got there. Huh, our DM had us very quickly determine the map was fake as poo poo, as inaccuracies IMMEDIATELY started showing up. I guess he was being kind to us.
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# ? May 18, 2019 23:23 |
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Toplowtech posted:The way ASI or Feat in 5e works make it even worse because people who rolled really well will aslo get more feats than the people who need more attribute score improvements to keep up with you. An interesting way to do it would be to give everyone the top 3 scores from the array, then roll for the bottom three on 3d6 straight or even drop highest - then you get the three most important stats good, but your dump stats can be comically or character-informingly poor.
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# ? May 18, 2019 23:30 |
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Infinity Gaia posted:Huh, our DM had us very quickly determine the map was fake as poo poo, as inaccuracies IMMEDIATELY started showing up. I guess he was being kind to us. Well I gave them an actual fake map. So I am just waiting for them to realize that it does not match.
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# ? May 18, 2019 23:45 |
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Conspiratiorist posted:That's hilarious. Do you also make them start over at level 1 if they want to play something other than their now-crippled characters? We get it dude. You hate fun
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# ? May 19, 2019 00:27 |
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Does anyone know a solution to the whack-a-mole problem? I'm part of a table that takes it in turns to GM. As a player I've found that the GM can down a lot of us, and so long as someone can heal the big healer we'll all just get right back up again. Our current GM has said that this is a known issue known as "whack-a-mole" and I came here because, well... ...if it's a known issue, is there a known solution?
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# ? May 19, 2019 01:26 |
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Azza Bamboo posted:Does anyone know a solution to the whack-a-mole problem? Not rooting for a TPK?
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# ? May 19, 2019 01:28 |
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Azza Bamboo posted:Does anyone know a solution to the whack-a-mole problem? If a lot of players are getting to 1HP in a single fight, over and over, the fights are probably overtuned. Whack-a-mole is a symptom, not the problem. Adventuring days are supposed to have lots of mild encounters that drain a few resources, like a few spells and an action surge. Unless it's a boss fight or something dramatic, random fights shouldn't sap all the heals and HPs and Hit Dice from the group in one go. It's also possible the players are being stingy on their resources, not taking short rests, pushing on when they should have spent Hit Dice, etc. That's easier to fix. Just say hey you should rest, no really take a rest.
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# ? May 19, 2019 01:44 |
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What ritorix said. But also, one problem one of my groups had early on that was way less obvious to figure out than it should have been was that it's fairly easy for the GM to drop almost any PC by focuing on them. Once one PC goes down, the group's effectiveness goes down making it easier to drop the next PC, and so on. Most PCs have no way of de-focusing themselves or anyone else if the GM's intent on doing it. Unfortunately the only solution to that one is "stop doing it".
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# ? May 19, 2019 02:00 |
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I think it's fair to have "monster AI" that determines how they target. Smart enemies might go for spellcasters, mindless zombies might go for whatever is closest, rampaging brutes go for whatever hurt them last, and so on.
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# ? May 19, 2019 03:14 |
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Infinity Gaia posted:I think it's fair to have "monster AI" that determines how they target. Smart enemies might go for spellcasters, mindless zombies might go for whatever is closest, rampaging brutes go for whatever hurt them last, and so on. Mindless zombies might evenly mob the front line, for example, and even smart monsters with pack tactics should split their attention, rather than completely surrounding a single character to the exclusion of the rest. You could softball the game and have monsters use suboptimal tactics in the face of the PCs using more ruthless ones, of course, but it makes for better immersion if both sides "play by the rules" so to speak.
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# ? May 19, 2019 03:31 |
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Glagha posted:Not calling you out, I just feel the need to correct this whenever I see it because it's a horrible myth that people keep repeating and it needs to be killed. 1st edition AD&D rules, straight from Gary fuckin Gygax himself in the chapter about generating ability scores straight up says "well you could roll 3d6 and assign the numbers to your stats, but you're likely to just have a terrible character when you do that so you should pick one of these other methods instead" including the 4d6, drop the lowest method. Awright
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# ? May 19, 2019 03:44 |
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Marathanes posted:
I'm going to focus on this real quick, because I think I come across sometimes as not liking things to go bad. That's not true. But, there's some stuff about 5e, and D&D in general. Critical hit: roll your damage die twice, add modifier. On average, a little less than double damage. Critical miss: miss automatically. 0 damage. So, these kinda even each other out, because there are relatively few instances where you'd hit on a 2. But when you add additional penalties on top of it, it actually skews further. Critical hit: not quite double damage. Critical miss: 0 damage, and also (say) cutting the average damage of the next attack in half or so (if you need to hit on, like, 11+, now you need to hit on a 16+, so you'll hit half as much). The extra damage on a critical hit doesn't quite cover the 0 damage from the miss, and doesn't then cover the reduced damage due to lower accuracy on the next hit. By adding additional penalties, the math swings the wrong direction. Part of what's frustrating is that those things you're talking about are things I really like... in games designed to handle that. There are a lot of games out there with things like Fail Forward mechanics, or narrative tools where "Ok, you missed, and now your sword is stuck in the tree, what do you do now?" leads to genuinely interesting storytelling. So many of the things you say are things I like in games. I'd probably really like to play in your games! Interesting failures are great!... in games that are designed to handle them. But, as much as there's a push to see 5e as something that's Roleplay Heavy, it is, like all versions of D&D, a numbers based tactical combat simulator. The numbers are how you interact with the game. When you change those, there's unintended consequences. If you really want mechanical consequences for rolling a 1, I'd recommend a limiter of some sort. "You can only critically miss during your first attack during the round. Other than that, it's an automatic miss." At least that would mean fighters would get comparatively better at avoiding critical failures, on the simple basis that 1/2/3 of their attacks won't trigger any. Rolling that 1 during the first attack will be a bit more dreadful, and a lot of the sting of rolling a 1 on later attacks goes away because "at least it wasn't a critical miss."
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# ? May 19, 2019 04:12 |
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What appears to be rules for the Infernal War Machine have shown up. Not all the details are there however. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 04:39 on May 19, 2019 |
# ? May 19, 2019 04:34 |
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Gharbad the Weak posted:If you really want mechanical consequences for rolling a 1, I'd recommend a limiter of some sort. "You can only critically miss during your first attack during the round. Other than that, it's an automatic miss." At least that would mean fighters would get comparatively better at avoiding critical failures, on the simple basis that 1/2/3 of their attacks won't trigger any. Rolling that 1 during the first attack will be a bit more dreadful, and a lot of the sting of rolling a 1 on later attacks goes away because "at least it wasn't a critical miss." This is a great suggestion, thanks. I def still would like to use critical misses in some fashion, but I also don't want them to detrimentally affect certain classes (fighters, monks, sorc twinning gishes) more than others, so I feel like this is a decent way to accomplish that.
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# ? May 19, 2019 04:47 |
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Gharbad the Weak posted:I'm going to focus on this real quick, because I think I come across sometimes as not liking things to go bad. That's not true. But, there's some stuff about 5e, and D&D in general. I mean, if you're gonna go for crit fails you should go for more extreme crit successes. In my opinion, anyways. At the very least do what an old DM of mine did (which has also been suggested in this thread) and have the crits roll max damage + an extra roll instead of just doubling the rolls.
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# ? May 19, 2019 05:05 |
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Critical misses are bad rules that punish players and reduce drama. Players roll far more dice than any NPC, do they will have far more failures. They're heroes and protagonists, they shouldn't randomly bumble on accident - if they have a setback like dropping their weapon or getting knocked down, it should be the result of an obstacle/enemy causing it, not an inevitable event. If you want a house rule, let a player take a drawback like being knocked prone or disarmed when they roll a natural one, voluntarily, in exchange for inspiration. Or just normal fail, if they'd prefer. Also, yes, crit successes are way too lovely compared to typical crit fails. Adding maybe 33% extra damage (and no extra effect on non-attacks) is a small bonus. Losing even a single action is a way bigger penalty, let alone more substantial penalties like the cited crit failed social rolls in Strahd.
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# ? May 19, 2019 05:18 |
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Fumbles are bad and people who like them should feel bad. This is more directed toward whatever people were insanely supporting the idea of randomly losing a limb on a bad heal check, but like... would you make the wizard risk losing their spellbook if their target 20'd their save? If a fighter can fling/break their sword or severely injure themselves because one of the random multiple d20 rolls they made that turn came up a 1, then the wizard should risk blowing up their spellbook if someone rolls a 20 against their fireball. What's that? That's bad? The wizard would be useless without their spellbook? Correct. Don't do fumbles. They specifically gently caress up martial characters, and while I'm sure this has resulted in fun improv moments where someone was like "Oh I lost a limb but I grafted a cool weapon or something onto it and now I'm a anime" you could just like... not inflict that poo poo on people due to random luck. Maybe if someone wants an amputee character they could just like... do that, instead of just being like "Lol your character just got a major disability make up a funny reason to handwave it away with DM fiat or eat poo poo nerd"
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# ? May 19, 2019 06:22 |
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# ? Jun 4, 2024 18:47 |
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Soysaucebeast posted:Wait, are you guys rolling for each stat individually? I'm one of those weirdos who loves to roll for stats, but if I'm planning to play a wizard and get something like 15/14/6/6/11/10, I'm not going to keep that 15 in strength and 6 in intelligence. I'll swap the two numbers around. I've always seen it done where once you roll the six numbers, you can put them in whichever stat you want. That way I do get some truly terrible stats that I get to roleplay with, but I'm also not forced to make myself sub-optimal. I've never really looked at point buy though since I stopped playing before it became a thing and am just getting back into DnD. Nah, the rule (even way back when) has always been 'roll 4d6 drop lowest, assign where you want'. I just didnt rearrange the stats for the pretend fighter because I was being lazy As for not wanting to be a wizard: a bard, druid, cleric, or sorcerer or any other caster who can cast spells can work just as well for bad die rolls. If you really wanna be a fighter and hate the idea of being the most useful person in your party, idk what to say. And you guys make it sound like rolling for stats gets you subpar characters 99% of the time, despite the fact that the statistics say that it's more likely than not to give you characters *above* point buy values in 5e (unlike PF where the math makes rolling average out to weaker characters)
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# ? May 19, 2019 06:26 |