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My last group had a Kenku for a bit and the vocab thing was never an issue. It was less a restriction on what he was allowed to say and more an excuse for him to mimic the other players' voices as he repeated their phrases.
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Jun 18, 2019 17:42
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Nehru the Damaja posted:It's meant to be a little more harrowing. He's a ranger, he fights the undead, he was trained by the temple to speak Celestial. When you're rich and powerful you don't skimp on hiring an afterlife guide. Have his name be a beckoning jackal "yip yip" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wepwawet
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Jun 18, 2019 17:52
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I went with "Moz," as short for "mausoleum." Because I absolutely will not be a Liam.
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Jun 18, 2019 18:21
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If you want a crack at something different, "Par-djed" is the ancient Egyptian word for a fancy important tomb. It means "House of Eternity."
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Jun 18, 2019 18:45
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I really want to make a kenku bard who makes persuasion rolls with “gimme a kiss [kissy noises]” now
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Jun 19, 2019 01:38
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So to avoid my usual analysis paralysis, I'm polling opinions: I got an open invite to a group consisting of this:
paladin rogue ranger fighter (EK) Starting at level 6, Princes of the Apocalypse. Looking to add "a couple players," so they might end up with 6 or 7 PCs. Any suggestions for fun/interesting builds to compliment the group? Obvious Answer: Bard
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Jun 19, 2019 02:43
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P.d0t posted:So to avoid my usual analysis paralysis, I'm polling opinions: Bard is the obvious answer and literally never a wrong choice, but nobody's playing wizard/sorcerer yet so you could bring your favorite flavor of Wizard to the table.
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Jun 19, 2019 02:53
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That group seems like it'd benefit a ton from a wizard or bard and you even get to skip wizard's garbage levels. Conjurer would be my pick because Benign Transposition is awesome and recharges off the kind of support spells you'll want to be casting.
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Jun 19, 2019 02:57
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Yeah, there's so many martials there that a full caster would be a great idea. Heck, with that many PC's, you should use it as an excuse to make a character you'd fine fun as opposed to being necessarily min-maxed. It's the perfect opportunity for some of the less-than-optimal subclasses like Illusion (good, but needs a lot of imagination), Storm Sorcerer, or basically any non-hexblade/non-max-Eldritch Blast Warlock. Of course, you can also just go full optimal Whizzard or Lore Bard and outpace everyone else, but you've got options!
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Jun 19, 2019 02:58
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Yeah that's already a pretty balanced party that's light only in big area control, so you could really play pretty much anything, but a Wizard, Bard, or Sorc would probably be the best fit.
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Jun 19, 2019 08:07
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I'm trying to construct a solo encounter using giffyglyphs monster creator and I'm stuck at how to make the melee part of the fight interesting vs a party of 5 melee PCs. Adding cleave or a conal attack feels like it would just punish the groups composition, but just standing there and slugging it out wouldn't be much fun either. The only idea I have left would be to add a bunch of ranged minions?
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Jun 19, 2019 08:41
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Free Triangle posted:I'm trying to construct a solo encounter using giffyglyphs monster creator and I'm stuck at how to make the melee part of the fight interesting vs a party of 5 melee PCs. Adding cleave or a conal attack feels like it would just punish the groups composition, but just standing there and slugging it out wouldn't be much fun either. The only idea I have left would be to add a bunch of ranged minions? Movement abilities, and locations on the map where it's better or worse to attack or defend from - collapsing floors, gas clouds, etc - or places you can affect other peoples' attacks from. 5e isn't an amazing tactical movement game, but it's better than stand-and-bang..
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Jun 19, 2019 09:05
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Twinned haste will make you a lot of friends in that group make up.
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Jun 19, 2019 15:16
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Running the second half of Sunless Citadel this weekend for three 3rd level players. Paladin, rogue, and 'some kind of tank probably". They're about to star meeting the goblins. Should I beef up the encounters a bit?
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Jun 19, 2019 18:03
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Free Triangle posted:I'm trying to construct a solo encounter using giffyglyphs monster creator and I'm stuck at how to make the melee part of the fight interesting vs a party of 5 melee PCs. Adding cleave or a conal attack feels like it would just punish the groups composition, but just standing there and slugging it out wouldn't be much fun either. The only idea I have left would be to add a bunch of ranged minions? This is extremely level dependent. At party level 3, I'd give the solo a couple of Paragon actions, and no legendary actions/resistances (allows the creature to move or perform one action after another creature's turn - use this to perform a dodge action, or disengage early and then move after a second player's turn in the round. Attack back if the paladin tank comes up and smites the poo poo out of it). At level 5-7 I might give the creature a potion of greater invisibility that lasts maybe 3 rounds, max. Give them something to try and swing wildly at or allow the creature to reposition during the fight. I might also give it a legendary resistance on refresh of 5-6. Alternatively or also, give it a single-use dispel magic crystal so when they load up on heat metal, bane, slow, and entangle in the first round before the creature's initiative roll, it's not immediately defanged. Make sure you let the party know either as an arcane check from an arcanist, or afterwards when they roll the body that this particular crystal was a one-time use object and they might be able to formulate one, themselves at a later time. (Always try to allow players the ability to get any cool tchotchkes that you make for your BBEGs.) Solo's have a ton of HP in his monster maker, allow this. You'll be amazed how quickly a decently effective low-to-mid level party can chew through a couple hundred HP on a single creature. Finally, if the party still chews right through your HP sponge, I've often given a creature resistance to several forms of damage after a certain HP threshold (say under 25%) as well as it telegraphing some sort of rage/berserk, or cornered animal feature. If the fight is close, don't activate this. If the party is still >75-80% of their total HP and haven't blown even half of their spell slots, consider a berserker rage at 25/33/40% remaining HP and make it immune to control effects with resistance to all but (pick 3) types of damage (radiant/psychic/force, for example). Give players the ability if they insight, or arcana, or detect magic, or detect thoughts, or some sort of divination to figure out that the creature's vulnerable, otherwise, just play it out and make it a little more exciting for the party. I find that adapting the encounter to how the players approach it to ensure that it's challenging, not only to their HP pools, but also to their per-rest resources, and gives them the ability to intuit weaknesses or learn about new ways of approaching encouters other than face-first to be just as necessary (and rewarding) as being able to come up with novel scenarios, traps, and puzzles. e: The last solo BBEG encounter I ran for a party of 7 players at level 6, playing a weeky slow-grow game over the last 7 or 8 months who have gotten *really* good at working together. quote:Tarik The Betrayer koreban fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Jun 19, 2019 |
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Jun 19, 2019 21:40
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quote:Mearls: I can say purely from a tabletop space, one of the things we found was that the ranger character class, in tabletop players really felt the first couple of levels, they weren’t really making choices that they felt were having a real impact on gameplay... One of the things we learned is that we had some assumptions about how exploration would play out in the game back when we were developing 5th edition—we thought, “Oh, we’ll give the rangers some of these toys to play with because exploration is part of the game.” And we’ve just found that either a lot of DMs don’t use a lot of the sub-systems that those spoke to, or they weren’t really coming up on a level of play at the table that was actually impactful to the narrative. So Mearls is still doing things. Also maybe they're gonna graft on some Ranger improvements.
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Jun 19, 2019 23:42
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Wow they figured out that a smattering of noncombat QOL adjustments don't actually make a class interesting? Why the must have worked on that conundrum for 10 or more years ago!
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Jun 20, 2019 01:13
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I would rather a team that didn't have Mearls in it just did a full pass over the entire PHB but oh well
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Jun 20, 2019 01:19
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Nehru the Damaja posted:So Mearls is still doing things. Also maybe they're gonna graft on some Ranger improvements. LOL at thinking a feature that says "you can't get lost" doesn't lead to anything interesting. No poo poo, getting lost is the interesting thing that can happen.
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Jun 20, 2019 02:02
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I'm reminded of Cyberpunk 2020's Solos and their "you don't get into firefights" ability. Edit: or rather "Firefights end immediately"
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Jun 20, 2019 02:06
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Piell posted:LOL at thinking a feature that says "you can't get lost" doesn't lead to anything interesting. No poo poo, getting lost is the interesting thing that can happen. They should just shift it that Rangers get, like, some variation of Alert while in their preferred terrain I already like the sound of that, time to start brewing
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Jun 20, 2019 02:08
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I think a big misstep for 5e was the replacement of modifiers with advantage/disadvantage. AV/DV should be big boons/banes and reserved for exceptional cases, but boiling most modifiers down to AV/DV removes a lot of flexibility game design wise and makes class combinations less dramatic when all you need to do is apply AV to gain a tremendous benefit for the whole party, which can be done as early as level 1 in some cases. If I were changing things I’d return to modifiers and increasing values like AC and DC.
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Jun 20, 2019 02:32
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"I mean how do you even make a 'desert ranger' interesting?" <Makes a Barbarian only tangentially related to elemental principles>
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Jun 20, 2019 02:33
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There's nothing inherently interesting about living in a place. You gotta have more than that. Connections to a culture, local animals, druids. Or some other thing entirely. Just knowing poo poo about where you live isn't an identity, it's common sense. Which is one of the major identity issues with the Ranger class, they treat it like "You live in forests, but like...more" as a core feature.
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Jun 20, 2019 02:53
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Make it be like Mog from FF6, where you're all about manipulating terrain and changing up the weather to gently caress with your enemies. Get all the thematic spells like Snilloc's Snowball Swarm and Erupting Earth, you and your buds get to be immune to difficult terrain penalties, stuff like that.
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Jun 20, 2019 03:25
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The Gate posted:There's nothing inherently interesting about living in a place. You gotta have more than that. Connections to a culture, local animals, druids. Or some other thing entirely. Just knowing poo poo about where you live isn't an identity, it's common sense. Which is one of the major identity issues with the Ranger class, they treat it like "You live in forests, but like...more" as a core feature. You're right, but you just make poo poo up. That's my point. Magic lightning barbarian is no more or less plausible than 'desert ranger'.
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Jun 20, 2019 03:28
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Favored terrain was always weird to me. Either it's gonna come up a lot, and be weirdly good, or it's not gonna come up often, which is weirdly bad. Same general thing like Favored Enemies, too. It's hard to balance a class around "Is better at fighting a thing, without taking into account of often that thing shows up".
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Jun 20, 2019 04:26
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That's why forests are good as a favored terrain, what kind of D&D campaign doesn't have a forest. On the other hand, Favored Enemies doesn't give you a mechanical bonus to actually fighting the thing? You just know more about it, which I guess could help if you knew their weakness.
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Jun 20, 2019 04:49
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Also, our wizard finally summoned a familiar tonight, and went for a flying monkey. I was fine with it but realized afterwards that it has a carrying capacity of 130 pounds and he'll probably use it to pull off flying shenanigans.
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Jun 20, 2019 05:01
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Ranger is just a flawed class concept if you consider that navigation is by itself a very boring aspect of 5e.
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Jun 20, 2019 06:01
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The current iteration of Artificer is really kooky and fun at level 1. I cast Arcane Weapon as a bonus action and then shot a guy for 16 damage on a non-crit on my first round of combat ever. Rapidly falls off as the die on heavy xbow stops being so impressive, but lol
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Jun 20, 2019 06:05
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Honestly I would change the narrative of what a ranger is before I start fixing stuff. Make rangers very powerful ambushers Give them unique traps they can lay out Let them tame beasts half their level or lower Make them ranged-combat monsters who can ignore defenses of creatures they’ve fought before or studied
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Jun 20, 2019 06:07
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Verisimilidude posted:Ranger is just a flawed class concept if you consider that navigation is by itself a very boring aspect of 5e. Explicit exploration-pillar and social-pillar abilities are cool and good to give to players, it's just really really stupid that only a couple of classes/subclasses get them, and they get them instead of combat abilities. Also separately, a lot of the Ranger exploration abilities are boring and stupid. At least Druids can talk to animals and ghosts and poo poo that might be interesting.
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Jun 20, 2019 06:20
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The problem with Rangers is that there's just nothing about them that doesn't feel like a worse version of another class. Want to be the archer? Why not a Dex fighter for good DPR or Rogue for burst? Want to be a cool nature guy? Why not a Druid for better spells or Scout Rogue for better skill monkeying? Want to be a caster/melee hybrid? Why not a Paladin for better AC and utility or a Warlock for faster spell progression? The only reason to pick a Ranger is because they can do a little bit of all of that, but no one usually wants to have the star moments be them being "eh" at everything.
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Jun 20, 2019 06:42
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I mean sort of yeah but niche protection is already not present. All the arguments against why should a Ranger exist apply equally to Barbarians or Rogues. On its face neither "gets real mad" nor, "decent at locks, enjoys small spaces" meaningfully differentiated those classes from Fighters, either. There is nothing wrong with Rangers represeting some kind of archer/finesse survivorman but you have to make their abilities proactive and fun. They don't even need to be better than another class in terms of DPR or whatever (though if would be nice if they were designed to be fun and cool); they just need to have a unique, proactive feature and the closest thing they get is Hunter's Mark.
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Jun 20, 2019 06:50
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I disagree about Rogues - I think there's very much something to that class and archetype that isn't adequately represented by anything else in D&D and that they had some genuinely good ideas about in 5E (Cunning Action is cool) - but the overall point that niche protection isn't really a thing in D&D is valid. There's barely any class in the game that can't somehow be replaced by another, mechanically or thematically. Unfortunately, the Ranger kinda sucks mechanically and is kind of boring and unappealing thematically. If you rated each class on a 1-10 scale in each of those two ways, its combined score would almost definitely be the lowest in the game, granting how subjective the latter is. And it has been for a very long time, bar 4E where it was at least real good at murder. Baku fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Jun 20, 2019 |
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Jun 20, 2019 07:23
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What the Ranger is missing the most is the Woodsman and Streetwise skills. Being able to differentiate between scrounging up resources, tracking quarry, navigating quickly, or gleaning information in urban versus natural settings instead of “roll survival” is an oversimplification that went too far.
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Jun 20, 2019 09:27
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Free Triangle posted:I'm trying to construct a solo encounter using giffyglyphs monster creator and I'm stuck at how to make the melee part of the fight interesting vs a party of 5 melee PCs. Adding cleave or a conal attack feels like it would just punish the groups composition, but just standing there and slugging it out wouldn't be much fun either. The only idea I have left would be to add a bunch of ranged minions? Give him a cone, a cleave and a solo damage move then, warm them "he reads up his tail poised to strike, he leans back and takes a huge gulp of air." Type stuff so they're always on the move to avoid attacks.
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Jun 20, 2019 09:45
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No. 1 Apartheid Fan posted:I disagree about Rogues - I think there's very much something to that class and archetype that isn't adequately represented by anything else in D&D and that they had some genuinely good ideas about in 5E (Cunning Action is cool) - but the overall point that niche protection isn't really a thing in D&D is valid. There's barely any class in the game that can't somehow be replaced by another, mechanically or thematically. I was watching Matt Colville and he had an interesting take (from an even old gamer he knew) on how the introduction of rogues screwed up the game for everyone else. He said before the rogue, everybody would sneak around, and anyone could try to pick a lock. Then the rogue came along and turned everyone else into lumbering buffoons so that it could have its own niche. I don't know if I agree totally, but it does make sense.
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Jun 20, 2019 10:13
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I feel like ranger is an interesting idea marred by a combination of fear of martial power, and weird limitations. Favored terrain is neat and interesting, and it would be cool if it did some extra stuff mechanically. For instance, I gave a PC in a game I ran advantage vs poison, poison damage, poison spells, etc with their jungle ranger. I also gave him an equivalent of cunning action limited to his favored terrain, but limited to only being able to re-hide while in it during that extra action. It kept the other powers, which let it be an exploration power and a mechanical one that came up in combat. (It helped that I also had the campaign take place in jungles for 4/5ths of it) I don't think rangers need to all be battlemaster bow fighter level combatants with DPR, personally. Give them more neat hunting abilities. Let them negate the Resistances of things they are tracking. Give them access to unique traps. I dunno. But I think 'straight up add numbers so they shoot arrows as hard as a fighter' is a boring way to fix them.
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Jun 20, 2019 10:31
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