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The Dregs posted: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. It’s true. Thieves were originally introduced in a supplement to original D&D (Greyhawk, I think.) and the improvisational nature of OD&D plays pretty differently with or without them. There’s retroclones on either side of the issue and it’s fun to see how the game changes without a designated “trap guy.” In original/Basic thieves aren’t your only go to because they’re so bad at thief skills. You still end up bashing doors, forcing traps and poo poo. Thieves just do it quietly. In modern D&D just have a thief. It’s so ingrained and people need their own areas to shine in. Just make sure there’s traps and locks and poo poo for the thief to shine.
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Jun 20, 2019 12:00
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The Dregs posted: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. My only contention there is that characters like Bilbo Baggins and The Gray Mouser existed long before the Thief class did. The idea of a weak little guy who saves the day by outwitting and outmaneuvering all the proud warriors and mysterious, deranged wizards around him is an oldschool fantasy archetype, and one that's probably always had a lot of appeal to some of the nerdy people playing tabletop games. The Thief's defining qualities - helping the party deal with things like traps and puzzles you can't beat with force, hitting below the belt - fit right into that archetype. It was filling a logical design space, unless you just wanted D&D to have three classes forever. I think you could easily make the same argument about, for example, the Cleric. Because the Cleric exists, Fighters can't be effective combat medics and Mages can't cast healing spells. The only difference is that the Thief wasn't there right from the beginning, but at this point "the beginning" is so far back that suggesting there's some meaningful difference there seems academic. I'd definitely be willing to hear the argument out, I just like Rogues a whole lot.
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Jun 20, 2019 12:25
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No. 1 Apartheid Fan posted:My only contention there is that characters like Bilbo Baggins and The Gray Mouser existed long before the Thief class did. The idea of a weak little guy who saves the day by outwitting and outmaneuvering all the proud warriors and mysterious, deranged wizards around him is an oldschool fantasy archetype, and one that's probably always had a lot of appeal to some of the nerdy people playing tabletop games. The Thief's defining qualities - helping the party deal with things like traps and puzzles you can't beat with force, hitting below the belt - fit right into that archetype. It was filling a logical design space, unless you just wanted D&D to have three classes forever. In a non rogue-as-class word you'd have "He does Mundane But Cool stuff through intense training! She does it through innate strength! He does it through a pact with a demon!" etc. In a non rogue-as-class world the Fighter would be the Mundane Who Trains, and being the sneaky backstabby one would be something you'd choose by taking high dex and int and the burglar archetype and putting your expertise into stealth and sleight of hand and thieves tools. Meanwhile the current Fighter would be a Mundane Who Trains who takes a more sword to the face archetype, but still gets the expertises and other rogue level out of combat utility to put into something theme or background appropriate. Splicer fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Jun 20, 2019 |
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Jun 20, 2019 14:21
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I mean, that makes a kind of sense, but so does having "magic guy" be a class that casts spells, and you can choose what kind of spells you cast by picking your archetype or w/e (the same way you'd pick "sneaky guy" choices for your Fighting Man in that system), and all the stuff about being an arcane or divine caster is just fluff bc it basically already is. I dunno. It's obviously really stupid that (for ex) 3.X gave Fighters so few skill points and such a limited skill pool; there was absolutely no just mechanical or thematic reason for it.
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Jun 20, 2019 14:57
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The Dregs posted: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. I disagree a lot with Colville, but this is true. And it's not a good niche, either. Steering the conversation back to 5e, Rogues are a bad class - not as terrible as Rangers (who are filled with superfluous useless abilities and don't scale past 8), but Rogues boil down to being worse Fighters with a reliance on a bunch of superfluous mechanics that give them the illusion of being distinct, and for what? To have a couple more pluses on certain skill rolls? It's like whatever man.
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Jun 20, 2019 15:41
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another way to put it would be that Thieves were one of the first examples of that kind of design where representing something explicitly mechanically ended up (or perhaps was deliberately intended to) creating a restriction from everyone else from being able to simply say that they could the other big expression of this idea being feats
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Jun 20, 2019 15:53
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The flip side of this is that if you're a newbie or a player that isn't comfortable with the more improvisational aspects of the game, it can be a big comfort for the rules to say "here's a bunch of niches you can fill, each with their own selection of thematic abilities." A player who doesn't see their desired archetype in the PHB might just decide that it's not an option.
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Jun 20, 2019 16:47
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Thieves being bad in OD&D wasn't just a matter of them making certain actions exclusive, it was that they were then terrible at the things only they could do. A 1st-level thief had a 10-20% chance of success for anything that wasn't climbing walls, and if they were trying to sneak past some monsters they'd probably have to roll to both hide and move silently. In essence, they didn't just stop other classes from doing these things, they meant that no one could do them. That said, there's a lot of people who say that thief skills were meant for extraordinary circumstances: anyone could move quietly (and possibly be detected by someone listening), but a thief had a chance of denying any chance of hearing them; anyone could hide in cover, but a thief could hide anywhere without bright light; anyone could climb a cliff, but only a thief could climb a sheer wall. This might be how it was intended (and in that case it wouldn't really be taking abilities away from other classes), but if so the books didn't really convey it, and in the end enough people interpreted it the other way that it affected how skills were handled for pretty much every following edition.
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Jun 20, 2019 16:50
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KittyEmpress posted:I feel like ranger is an interesting idea marred by a combination of fear of martial power, and weird limitations.
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Jun 20, 2019 16:55
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Btw Curse of Strahd is really quite good.
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Jun 20, 2019 17:55
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:The flip side of this is that if you're a newbie or a player that isn't comfortable with the more improvisational aspects of the game, it can be a big comfort for the rules to say "here's a bunch of niches you can fill, each with their own selection of thematic abilities." A player who doesn't see their desired archetype in the PHB might just decide that it's not an option. 
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Jun 20, 2019 18:21
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Infinite Karma posted:Favored Terrain is cool when you're in your favored terrain, but when you're not, you might as well be a Fighter. Rangers should be the masters of natural terrain of all types and get to bonus action "use their environment" for stuff like snares, trips, and hiding. At the very least in natural terrain, but maybe in any situation* (with the asterisk that especially featureless places like a jail cell or a barren plain might not work). Basically, make all terrain favored terrain. Make every enemy favored enemy. Give them their special class bonuses as much as possible, that's the entire point of the class. I think that's kinda a boring solution as well, because favored terrain is boring as is imo. I prefer the solution of 'make favored terrains give bonuses that are thematic that work even outside of them, as a flavor choice'. Jungle favored terrain? Advantage on poison saves. Desert gets you fire. Etc. This doesnt prevent 'get more favored terrains as you level' from being a thing either, and makes them more distinct and actually have an impact.
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Jun 20, 2019 18:26
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Splicer posted:I want to play a spooky necromancer! I see a wizard, a sorcerer... Well that's all the magic guys, guess you can't raise skeletons in this game This kind of thing is I assume why they added a bunch of archetypes for each of the classes. Presumably you're at least going to read a little about each class in the PHB, and then you can see "oh, if I'm a wizard then I can be a blaster or an illusionist or a conjurer or etc." and fighters can be knights or gladiators or blah blah blah. You can then raise the counterargument of, okay, why isn't rogue one of the fighter or bard archetypes? And I don't really have a good answer to that.
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Jun 20, 2019 18:30
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Just putting together a 5th level Half Orc Eldritch Knight with Polearm Master feat. Can anyone give me advice how to deal with the somatic component while holding the halberd? Is it sufficient to release the weapon with one hand as a free action to cast (this makes logical sense to me), or do I need to drop the whole thing and use my bonus action to bond the weapon back?
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Jun 20, 2019 18:36
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Shuffling hands isn't even an action, you just do it.
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Jun 20, 2019 18:39
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Yeah, you get a free "interact with object" during your turn. It doesn't count as an action or even a bonus action. I guess that means you can't both cast a somatic spell and, say, open a door in the same turn, though.
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Jun 20, 2019 18:42
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:This kind of thing is I assume why they added a bunch of archetypes for each of the classes. Presumably you're at least going to read a little about each class in the PHB, and then you can see "oh, if I'm a wizard then I can be a blaster or an illusionist or a conjurer or etc." and fighters can be knights or gladiators or blah blah blah.
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Jun 20, 2019 19:22
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Relatedly, I just watched the Schwarzenegger Conan film (the first one) for the first time and Arnie and friends are identified as thieves more than anything else. Which they are, because of course a fantasy film from the 80s (based off pulp serials from the 30s, based off older stories still) isn't going to divide things into roles like that. Everybody does everything except magic, which is the domain of evil snake people and hermits who hang around ancient burial grounds. But I doubt muscleman Conan's the first thing anybody thinks of when they think of a "Thief."
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Jun 20, 2019 20:00
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Splicer posted:Yup. The whole point of this is that there should never have been a split between the guy good at fighting and the guy good at things that are not fighting. There should be no Fighter or Rogue. There should be a class called The Natural or The Professional with the starting description "The veteran soldier, the skilled burglar, the suave duellist; while mages and priests lean on their crutches of magic and miracles, the Professional needs only her wits, training, and physical prowess. With no borrowed power to buffer them from the trials of a life of adventure, a high level Professional can accomplish through "mundane" skill what the bathrobes would consider the provinces of the gods." Well, you call it the champion and it's up to you what it does, but everything it does is constantly useful and not "+1 to fighting green humans while in a desert. "
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Jun 20, 2019 20:01
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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. Right. Like, we can't mix our metaphors here. You like Rogue's implementation, which is of course valid, but their niche could absolutely be shoved into Fighter. So the issue is Ranger's implementation. It's a little more complicated than that because, I think, the Ranger concept is impossibly narrow but you could do something cool with it. People like buttons. The best classes have buttons to push. Passive abilities are fine insofar as they make those buttons more reliable or spectacular but Ranger is basically all passives, or at best, he's a Fighter with a dog. Geralt could be a Ranger. Build a Ranger that gets stronger as he stalks his foes, gains insight into both personal and categorical weaknesses, makes short lived buffs from plants and enemies, or learns minor tricks and magics from his targets - you stalk Fae primarily so you learn Misty Step for instance. Edit: basically build a Ranger that is the opposite of the Barbarian; where the latter is all impulse and brute force, the former accesses their best abilities when they have time to prepare, both at the daily level and the encounter level (a martial that grows more powerful as combat gets longer). Mendrian fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Jun 20, 2019 |
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Jun 20, 2019 20:29
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Mendrian posted:People like buttons. The best classes have buttons to push. Passive abilities are fine insofar as they make those buttons more reliable or spectacular but Ranger is basically all passives, or at best, he's a Fighter with a dog. This is good insight, but how do you set up Ranger buttons that are fun and thematic and also work well as part of a party and where the party may not necessarily control when or how they get into fights? I feel like the classic rangers (i.e. characters that people think of when you say "ranger") are Legolas and Aragorn, and they're basically just straight-up fighters that specialized in bows and swords respectively. Legolas barely has any nature connection outside of his backstory (he tracks the hobbits, and is able to walk on top of the snow; I think that's it?), and Aragorn is pretty much limited to having some athelas. So like, when you say the ranger should be a thoughtful and disciplined martial class, what does that look like? What are they doing during their turns that isn't just "I'm slightly better at X because of my passive class abilities"? How do they engage with enemies differently than a fighter or a barbarian does?
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Jun 20, 2019 20:38
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:This is good insight, but how do you set up Ranger buttons that are fun and thematic and also work well as part of a party and where the party may not necessarily control when or how they get into fights? Well you're asking me to theorycraft on a napkin. But here's just a little brainstorming: Combat: * Ability to create specially crafted traps the alter the battlefield akin to wall spells or similar. * Ability to craft potions or drugs that impose status effects. * Ability to select damage type through the application of oils. * The use of clearly magical abilities stolen from enemies - swapping places, creating magic barriers, and more. Interaction: * Detective-like ability to discern lies or tell when a person or object is important to a target. * Ability to discern age and purpose of most objects. * Ability to communicate with monsters. Just a few ideas, I would need like, a week, to properly iterate something.
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Jun 20, 2019 20:48
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:This is good insight, but how do you set up Ranger buttons that are fun and thematic and also work well as part of a party and where the party may not necessarily control when or how they get into fights? So a Ranger should also be an archetype for the Skilled Mundane class that gives some good tracking and foraging stuff, with their damage booster being Hunters Mark type stuff (you pick someone and hunt them until they die, as compared to the Rogue's opportunistic stabbing and the Soldier's tactical murdering)
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Jun 20, 2019 21:14
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I keep trying to set up social encounters and mysteries for my players and forgetting the cleric has Zone of Truth.
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Jun 20, 2019 21:19
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Bad Seafood posted:
It is super weird and why a lot of people were perplexed when Age of Conan launched and the Barbarian class was basically a rogue instead of the muscled killing machine you'd think of.
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Jun 20, 2019 21:21
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Splicer posted:All the real world and pre-D&D fictional "Rangers" are people who are responsible for dealing with large areas of territory by wandering over it looking for any trouble. Ranging. Usually on their own. Aragorn was called (a) Ranger because he wandered around the wilderness looking for bad poo poo going down and stopping it. They are, by definition, loners. Self sufficient. Yeah, this seems to be the big problem with rangers as anything other than just another martial subtype. They can either be thematic or play well in groups; doing both at the same time doesn't seem to work out. Lurdiak posted:I keep trying to set up social encounters and mysteries for my players and forgetting the cleric has Zone of Truth. Have a god of lying (or their worshippers) take an interest in the party and start interfering with the cleric's spells. "Okay, I cast Zone of Truth." "Alright. The NPC repeats what they said." <later> "But the NPC said X!" "Yeah, how about that?"
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Jun 20, 2019 21:24
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Have a god of lying (or their worshippers) take an interest in the party and start interfering with the cleric's spells. Hmmm, that could work. A strength and weakness of my party is that they were aware of the big bad from the very first session, when they met him and nearly got wiped by him, and they also know more or less the catastrophic extent of his goals. So there's a lot of sightseeing and negotiating and politics and shades of grey that sorta gets bypassed by "The Wight King is gonna kill all the gods' worshippers, and then the gods, unless you help us". It does help keep them on-task, though. But I can totally see certain entities wanting to risk putting their thumb on the scale, betting that the bad guy's plans won't work out regardless.
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Jun 20, 2019 21:31
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Lurdiak posted:I keep trying to set up social encounters and mysteries for my players and forgetting the cleric has Zone of Truth. Well, it's called a Zone of Truth, and not a Zone of the Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth, so it's still within your ability to give evasive answers and partial truths. Someone who knows Wheel of Time better than me can probably remember that quote about the priestesses who never lie being the most subversive and untrustworthy group to deal with.
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Jun 20, 2019 21:31
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Still though, zone of truth's potential to break narratives seems almost as high as Detect Evil's used to be. Especially the bit about knowing if the individual made the saving throw.
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Jun 20, 2019 21:35
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Something I've used in the past is populating areas with characters that have no reason to like or help the characters so if they get got in an interrogation or Zone of Truth they're immediate red herrings of non-information. Zone of Truth is a fine spell but if they start leaning on it then turn it into a disadvantage.
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Jun 20, 2019 21:43
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Mendrian posted:Well you're asking me to theorycraft on a napkin. But here's just a little brainstorming: Ranger's Intuition: Rangers get a number of intuition points equal to their proficiency bonus, which can be used to activate Ranger class abilities. On a short rest, all intuition points are recovered. Intuition abilities that have a save DC use 8 + the Ranger's Proficiency modifier + the Ranger's Dexterity modifier Ranger's Snare: The Ranger uses his bonus action and an intuition point to prepare a well-timed attack, a combat maneuver, or a makeshift trap, which he must Concentrate on, to a maximum of 1 minute. While concentrating, the Ranger can use his Reaction to snare any enemy moving within 30 feet of him. That enemy must succeed on a Dexterity save or be restrained. Once restrained, the creature makes a Strength save at the start of each of its turns to break the snare. Ranger's Sweep: As a reaction on an ally's turn, the Ranger can use an intuition point to assist his ally. One enemy within 30 feet must succeed on a Dexterity save or be knocked prone. Ranger's Stealth: As a bonus action, the Ranger spends an intuition point to kick up a cloud of dust, leaves, or uses a minor alchemical device, and causes a 10'x10' area to be heavily obscured until the start of his next turn. This ability has a range of 30 feet. For two turns after that, the area is considered lightly obscured and characters within it can make hide checks even while being observed. Ranger's Caltrops: The Ranger uses an intuition point and his bonus action to make a 20'x20' area into difficult terrain. A perception check at the Ranger's save DC is required to notice the difficult terrain or judge the limits of the area. This ability has a range of 60 feet. Stuff like that (these abilities haven't been balanced whatsoever, they're off the cuff) would give the Ranger a tactical niche that nobody else has.
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Jun 20, 2019 22:01
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Infinite Karma posted:It could be way simpler than that.
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Jun 20, 2019 22:14
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Splicer posted:Hmm... So the Mundane class gets Skill Points they can spend on activating abilities, some but not all of which are unique to their specialisation. What do you think surges, ki points, etc. are?
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Jun 20, 2019 22:24
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Okay friends. I'm going to play "Trent" the Minotaur fighter. Former gladiator slave. Giant douche bag. Most of his personality is being pissed off that Stacy cheated on him and he's a giant drunk dickhole. Help me come up with other douche bag traits and quirks?
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Jun 20, 2019 22:34
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Whenever someone fails a strength related check, go "bruh do you even lift?"
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Jun 20, 2019 22:37
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RC Cola posted:Okay friends. I'm going to play "Trent" the Minotaur fighter. Former gladiator slave. Giant douche bag. Most of his personality is being pissed off that Stacy cheated on him and he's a giant drunk dickhole. Help me come up with other douche bag traits and quirks? Always one-ups people's stories. Any time he overhears anyone telling a story, he's compelled to top it with one of his own. It might be true, or it might be embellished, or chances are it might just be completely made-up. Mino-splainer. Is convinced he's the expert in everything, ahead of everyone else, especially when he's completely wrong. Remember, the hallmark of a douchebag is they have to make everything about themselves.
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Jun 20, 2019 22:43
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I have no idea why people keep trying to shoehorn in "mundane" characters into a high fantasy narrative when half of the legends of these guys give them supernatural powers anyway. Aragorn is a ranger who can heal people because he's the rightful king appointed by God, Beowulf has superhuman strength and can fight underwater for arbitrarily long amounts of time, Conan is not an especially high level character and requires divine intervention to fight sorcerers in open combat. Achilles is literally invulnerable, Hercules is the son of Zeus, etc. People like to pretend their heavily armored warriors are hard working heroes unlike those stupid magic jerks, but the dirty secret is that having armor, weapons, and military training in that time period means your superpower is being rich instead of smart. Don't get me wrong, you should be able to play Lancelot in a fantasy game, but a lot of these mythological heroes are anything but mundane.
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Jun 20, 2019 22:47
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lightrook posted:Well, it's called a Zone of Truth, and not a Zone of the Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth, so it's still within your ability to give evasive answers and partial truths. Someone who knows Wheel of Time better than me can probably remember that quote about the priestesses who never lie being the most subversive and untrustworthy group to deal with. They also don't have to say anything at all, right? It's always seemed to me to be relatively easy to circumvent the spell by just refusing to speak.
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Jun 20, 2019 22:54
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Verisimilidude posted:Honestly I would change the narrative of what a ranger is before I start fixing stuff. I don't want any class based on setting up ambushes, they'll slow the game to a crawl trying to game that system. Traps? Yes. Yes to this. But specifically the WOW kind where you just throw them in a square during combat because again, I don't want the game bogged down by out of combat combat prep. Let them have a beast with flat stats based on their level so they don't have to (or get to) interact with this game's immeasurably hosed CR system. They can skin it to whatever they want. Just be like "also choose one of the following: Flying with Flyby Attack, Attacks knock enemies Prone, Increase AC by 5 and HP by 20" Hunter's Quarry Hunter's Quarry Hunter's Quarry. If it's too 4th editiony just make it apply to enemies they've already shot at once (whether they hit or not is immaterial). Keeps them from being useless for picking goblin in a kobold dungeon.
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Jun 21, 2019 00:26
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I had a ranger in a game I ran a few months ago, and his combat options were rather limited. Over the course of the adventure, I made a a new bow to give him more options in combat - It allowed him to 'aim' for one turn provided that he didn't move, and roll 2d20 for his attack on the next turn, provided he wasn't interrupted. It followed the normal rules for criticals, so if the total was above 20 it counted as a critical attack. He also had a pair of neat gloves that added +1 to either his attack or damage rolls, his choice. Mechanically it's not super interesting, but it did add the flavor of being a badass sharpshooter.
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Jun 21, 2019 00:56
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