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I bought the chessex pound of dice because I always end up hosting, and it's been just fine. I have a dip/veggie tray with separators and it works out that the dice fit in the middle and everyone gets a rolling area
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Sep 14, 2019 21:03
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Narsham posted:Splicer, are you playing in (or running) a 5E game right now, and if so, which of the above 6 choices applies to it?
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Sep 14, 2019 21:17
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I was thinking of playing a monk in a level 1-through-5 one shot, do they just suck at lower levels or am I missing something?
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Sep 14, 2019 21:19
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change my name posted:I was thinking of playing a monk in a level 1-through-5 one shot, do they just suck at lower levels or am I missing something? Splicer fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Sep 14, 2019 |
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Sep 14, 2019 21:24
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change my name posted:I was thinking of playing a monk in a level 1-through-5 one shot, do they just suck at lower levels or am I missing something? You'll be fine.
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Sep 14, 2019 21:24
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Splicer posted:They're a martial in all but name, so they suck if you're comparing them to a caster or half caster and I'd honestly say they're less good than a rogue. They're also MAD as hell unless you get shillelagh from somewhere and mainline wis I was going to play an astral monk so I get wisdom weapons at level 3 anyways, so it'll probably be fine
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Sep 14, 2019 21:27
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Gharbad the Weak posted:Oh man, you know those board games that have the dice under a little clear dome, and you push down, it pops up and all the dice roll around? I bet that's great for rolling fireballs You mean the pop-o-matic? Yeah, that does sound awesome. It's been like 30 years since I used one, but it should be doable to DIY one, I think. You'd need a platform mounted on springs, a removable plastic dome, and something to make the clicking sound when you push the dome all the way down (could just be two bits of metal striking each other). It'd take some fiddling to figure out how much spring force you need to get a good launch, but I can't imagine it'd be all that hard.
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Sep 14, 2019 21:28
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I would like to state for the record that my post from before was not a criticism of that person's gameplay style or of D&D but I just thought they sounded smug and pretentious.
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Sep 14, 2019 21:51
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change my name posted:I was thinking of playing a monk in a level 1-through-5 one shot, do they just suck at lower levels or am I missing something? I don't think they suck at all, but they lack the armor and HP of fighters and the damage of rogues as a martial, but they can be fun just because they just get to attack more than anyone else for a good long while, move quickly, and get some cute tricks, including stunning and tripping people a lot of you pick open palm (which you should). They're probably a little subpar compared to other classes but they do their job competently enough IMO, except for the aforementioned MAD issues.
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Sep 14, 2019 21:55
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MonsterEnvy posted:Out of curiosity. What issues do you think it has an introduction? Based on my thoughts and some negative experience stories that I read online that made me think "huh, this would never happen in a different system": 1. The rules are quite complex, mathy, and involve the possibility of optimization shenanigans. This is not necessarily a bad thing and as a veteran I like it, but for newbies it does mean that people have to get a grip on roleplaying, good practices and figuring out their style while grappling with the rules. 2. Because of the above, DM'ing is not easy, balacing encounters and adventures to avoid undesirable outcomes (no challenge / accidental TPK) takes some skill. I think people who are new to running RPG's ought to get a system that lets them quickly translate their cool ideas to a player experience without complex rules as a point of failure. 3. It's not flexible. This isn't inherently a bad thing at all, for example forums favorite Blades In The Dark is about criminals doing heists and you can't really make it do something else; but you're told that up front. Unfortunately, the D&D books mislead people into thinking it's more flexible than it is, and those new to the hobby can't know better, so I see how that can be harmful. It's good at the kinds of narratives where exceptional heroic figures solve problems through violence, and the kind of gameplay where a huge proportion of decisions are tactical. I want to run that right now, so I grabbed D&D and it works great, it's the right tool for the job. For most of my previous campaigns, it would have sucked. At the same time, the books and the cultural "default RPG" position suggest otherwise; that the DMG suggests "political intrigue, where dice may not be rolled the whole session" as a campaign option is just dumb. When I want to do that I'll run something that puts mechanical weight on character relationships and doesn't have hitpoint calculations, just as I wouldn't run a tactical combat game in FATE.
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Sep 14, 2019 21:57
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change my name posted:I was going to play an astral monk so I get wisdom weapons at level 3 anyways, so it'll probably be fine
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Sep 14, 2019 22:06
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I'm in the awkward place where few people in my local community want to play anything but D&D but the players I've ended up with lean toward the RP end of the spectrum. It's fun but I realized I hosed up when their response to a contact getting killed by a sniper before spilling the beans was to flee and then try to figure out how to find some way to cast speak with the dead. Luckily they didn't find a way because magic short circuiting the whole mystery was the one response I wasn't prepared for and now I'm kind of dreading having to try to find a way to tell a story as they level up more. I'm okay with just playing this as a tabletop Final Fantasy Tactics, that's easy, but having to figure out how to provide the mystery they want when they can snap their fingers to bypass it is new territory for me edit: this isn't a mismatch between players and GM, either; I'd love to be able to tell this kind of story. It's a mismatch between the players and the system. I guess that's what happens when "murderhobo: the game" is expected to be mashed into everything and no one wants to do anything else BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Sep 14, 2019 |
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Sep 14, 2019 22:16
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mango sentinel posted:Lol if you think as a DM that Patron won't come a-ringing just because someone only has 2 levels of Warlock. Oh I see it's balanced because the DM can then troll the player, which definitely ever happens and is good design if it does
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Sep 14, 2019 22:24
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BattleMaster posted:I'm in the awkward place where few people in my local community want to play anything but D&D but the players I've ended up with lean toward the RP end of the spectrum. If you're looking to make a mystery game with lots of talking, immediately ban Zone of Truth. Or at least make it clear there are functional and accessible ways to get around it in that world. As far as designing a mystery goes, less is more. There should be at least a skeleton of events for whatever your group is looking to figure out but the majority of the game should be them discussing events, that builds the sense of mystery far better than you could ever hope to do on your own. And sometimes the most effective way to do a mystery is just sprinkle in side content. Going after a serial killer (or a fantasy world equivalent) means you get to do lots of little side scenes that you'll steadily get better at. As far as if they're looking to gather clues, feel free to get incredibly detailed with scenery and encourage them to rummage around. And the number one rule of mysteries is that the audience needs to know all of the rules or at least be given the ability to find all the clues. If they're chasing after some weird monster causing problems, at least hinting at such a thing happening or giving them foot prints or something to detail is also good.
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Sep 14, 2019 22:25
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Ramos posted:If you're looking to make a mystery game with lots of talking, immediately ban Zone of Truth. Or at least make it clear there are functional and accessible ways to get around it in that world. Thanks, this is good stuff. I've been doing a bit of it so far - I just have a vague outline of where things could lead and I've been reacting to what players are interested in and using those things for clues or otherwise connecting those things to the mystery. I think I'm going to try to avoid situations where people are directly involved who can be manipulated with magic, at least until they crack the mystery open. My plan is that the cult they're chasing is right on the cusp of being powerful and influential enough to operate in the open so they "go loud" once their secrets are out. My world follows most of the standard D&D logic but would it be too much of a change if I just said that once you're dead your soul evaporates and there's no resurrection or talking to the dead? I don't mind stuff like zone of truth since people exposed to it can always be like "whoa wtf I'm not going to say anything if you're going to be weird about it" but I would like NPC death to actually mean something.
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Sep 14, 2019 22:40
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Yeah, if you're doing anything that involves death, dropping resurrection and speak with the dead would probably be a good idea. Or at least make it incredibly hard to access, a la True Resurrection plus a few extra annoying hooks to go with it. Justifying it is probably pretty easy too, you just need to explain to your group what you're going for and giving them an easy way out of a situation would probably tear a hole in the story every time. Not to mention, it gives a bit more stress to life or death scenarios.
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Sep 14, 2019 22:45
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Both resurrection spells say "If its souls is free and willing", you could easily have some kind of McGuffin where souls of the dead either aren't free or aren't willing to come back. That might go over better than telling players they can't use certain spells.
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Sep 14, 2019 22:53
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You can also declare things like "there are special weapons that prevent souls from coming back". Feel free to put constraints on it (like, the kill must be made within an hour of the enchantment being cast on the weapon, or it only works for the first kill and then has to be re-enchanted, or whatever), but it's absolutely the kind of thing that assassins would invent in a world with relatively easy resurrection. Stephen Brust's Taltos novels involve organized crime in a fantasy world with resurrection, and the protagonist explicitly notes at one point that getting assassinated is a warning to butt out. If you don't heed the warning, then they kill you again with the weapons that eat your soul so you can't come back.
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Sep 14, 2019 23:02
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Guildencrantz posted:Words. This post is interesting to me. I like 5e because it's both super simple and adaptable in my experience. It's definitely flawed, I'll freely admit that. But making combat encounters is super easy, and the way the game is composed as a whole it's extremely easy to just add, re-work, or remove/ignore various systems. I view dnd a lot like Skyrim in terms of videogames. Pretty boring vanilla, but it's extremely easy to mod, even if you don't know how to make mods yourself.
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Sep 14, 2019 23:32
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Nasgate posted:This post is interesting to me. I like 5e because it's both super simple and adaptable in my experience. It's definitely flawed, I'll freely admit that. But making combat encounters is super easy, and the way the game is composed as a whole it's extremely easy to just add, re-work, or remove/ignore various systems. I view dnd a lot like Skyrim in terms of videogames. Pretty boring vanilla, but it's extremely easy to mod, even if you don't know how to make mods yourself. I’m curious what other systems you’ve tried running because all of this has been maybe 10x more true for every PbtA game I’ve played/run versus D&D.
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Sep 14, 2019 23:37
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The wheel turns, and the edition wars continue. Seriously half the 5e haters usually start whining about how 4e did X better, so I'm confident that whenever we get 6e MonsterEnvy or whoever will lead the charge against whatever new mechanics abomination Mike Mearls puts out.
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Sep 14, 2019 23:38
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:The wheel turns, and the edition wars continue. This page has been a good conversation until this shitpost 
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Sep 14, 2019 23:43
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Kaysette posted:This page has been a good conversation until this shitpost This is what I get for not realizing all the "5e masters HATE it" discussion is on the previous page.
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Sep 14, 2019 23:50
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Fateforge, a weird kinda 5e adaptation/setting/??? thing has resurrection type spells basically only work on players to sidestep issues with just bringing NPCs back to life who are supposed to be murdered or whatever because in that, PCs are basically chosen by fate and are "special". That's kinda/sorta a thing in D&D already in that PCs are different than NPCs in terms of what they can do and what sorts of power are available to them, so you could easily do the same sort of thing in your campaign as well. For clarity, in Fateforge you're not "the chosen one" or anything and prophesized to save the word, just that you're kind of favored by fate and have heroic potential in you. People like that exist in large enough numbers that it's A Thing that people in the setting understand, and chosen people die without accomplishing anything all the time as well, so you don't necessarily have to put your players on a big pedestal for that. Just that whatever forces exist in your setting are willing to give your players a second chance for one reason or another.
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Sep 14, 2019 23:51
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Glagha posted:Fateforge, a weird kinda 5e adaptation/setting/??? thing has resurrection type spells basically only work on players to sidestep issues with just bringing NPCs back to life who are supposed to be murdered or whatever because in that, PCs are basically chosen by fate and are "special". That's kinda/sorta a thing in D&D already in that PCs are different than NPCs in terms of what they can do and what sorts of power are available to them, so you could easily do the same sort of thing in your campaign as well. For clarity, in Fateforge you're not "the chosen one" or anything and prophesized to save the word, just that you're kind of favored by fate and have heroic potential in you. People like that exist in large enough numbers that it's A Thing that people in the setting understand, and chosen people die without accomplishing anything all the time as well, so you don't necessarily have to put your players on a big pedestal for that. Just that whatever forces exist in your setting are willing to give your players a second chance for one reason or another. Some good responses to that issue and I like this one the best. I'm okay with players being metaphysically different from the rest of the world even if there's no deeper lore reason. But maybe I can think of a good explanation, too.
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Sep 14, 2019 23:55
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Circumventing spells like speak with the dead with magic soul killer bullets feels like it's shutting down players who picked an RP spell over a combat one when it should be their chance to shine. For instance, the antagonist probably didn't dictate their entire plan to their victim/disposable minion. They might be able to tell when they died and whether the murder was a low-level crook (who you can then track down) or a masked cultist, or what particular orders they received, but not the entire plot. If they knew the full scheme they wouldn't be dead. Speak with the dead, as a lower-level option than spells like raise dead and resurrection also has a couple of DM RP options: In addition to only getting five questions, "Answers are usually brief, cryptic, or repetitive, and the corpse is under no compulsion to offer a truthful answer if you are hostile to it or it recognizes you as an enemy." As a final means of ensuring someone remains dead all options require access to the body, so there are plenty of more mundane solutions. There's always plane shenanigans to get around that, but if you're solving a locked door mystery by using 7th+ level spells to steal souls from satan you've probably created more loose ends than you tied.
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Sep 15, 2019 00:04
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Also yeah with the other spells just going to your players and spelling out "Hey, I don't want you using Zone of Truth so I'm banning it" I think they'll understand. Don't sneak that up on people so they feel bad having their cool roleplay spells pulled out from under them, just let your wizards and clerics and poo poo know up front you don't want them for reasons.
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Sep 15, 2019 00:17
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Sodomy Hussein posted:Oh I see it's balanced because the DM can then troll the player, which definitely ever happens and is good design if it does I'm not talking about bullying players, I'm talking about actually interegrating the patron into the character's story so it's not just a vestigial limb from a dip. I'm not gonna have a Patron show up for a Pal/Lock and demand they start murdering babies but there's still gonna be interplay between serving two masters. Just like someone with a 2 level Rogue dip is likely to have something from their street urchin days become relevant even if they're currently a cleric. Also Conspiratorialist is capable of being both correct and huge rear end in a top hat at the same time.
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Sep 15, 2019 01:50
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If a player told me he wanted to dip into warlock and flavoured it as his paladin god granting him a cool angel blade, that's fine. If he wanted to play up serving two masters with a warlock patron, that's fine too. It depends on your table, i guess.
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Sep 15, 2019 02:31
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Splicer, Gharbad, Marathenes, Conspiratorist and Narsham collectively made the best effort posts this thread has seen back there on page 195. Narsham, remember, No means Yes 
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Sep 15, 2019 03:18
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BattleMaster posted:It's fun but I realized I hosed up when their response to a contact getting killed by a sniper before spilling the beans was to flee and then try to figure out how to find some way to cast speak with the dead. Luckily they didn't find a way because magic short circuiting the whole mystery was the one response I wasn't prepared for and now I'm kind of dreading having to try to find a way to tell a story as they level up more. quote:My plan is that the cult they're chasing is right on the cusp of being powerful and influential enough to operate in the open so they "go loud" once their secrets are out. Here you go: One of the first powers the cultists got from their evil deity was immunity to truth spells. This is a major reason the cult has been able to grow in power so much without being discovered. And when they kill people, they use dark magic to deliver the souls to that deity. Those souls are trapped by him (her? it?) and can neither be communicated with nor brought back with a simple resurrection spell. If the citizens in the location where the murder took place are used to speak-to-dead and resurrection spells, they are especially frightened because this is the first time they’ve experienced that magic failing. The citizens may not know about the truth spell immunity yet but if the adventures ever gain access to a truth compulsion spell you should give them the opportunity to spot contradictions (like Phoenix Wright!) ... such as “hmm... we used the truth spell on this guy and he said X... but we know it’s really Y... what the heck is going on here?” This way you can still have all those spells without banning them, but there is an “in-campaign” reason why they don’t always work... and it’s completely tied the plot/mystery they are trying to solve. nelson fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Sep 15, 2019 |
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Sep 15, 2019 03:52
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Guildencrantz posted:Based on my thoughts and some negative experience stories that I read online that made me think "huh, this would never happen in a different system": I couldn't agree more about these points. I'd also say that a good half of the 4e/5e edition war is between people who on the 4e side want D&D to focus on what you describe it doing well and on the 5e side who think that D&D should be a generic "default" RPG in which they want to run anything.
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Sep 15, 2019 04:24
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:
I tend to enjoy most things. So I imagine I will enjoy 6e whenever it comes out. Not a big fan of hating on games. Besides when I last heard D&D Designers talk about a hypothetical 6e, they stated they want it to be more like the jump from 1e to 2e, more a refinement with some backwards compatibility.
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Sep 15, 2019 05:04
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Kaysette posted:I’m curious what other systems you’ve tried running because all of this has been maybe 10x more true for every PbtA game I’ve played/run versus D&D. Admittedly mostly D&D. 3.5, 4 Pathfinder 1, Call of Cthulhu, Deathwatch. So mostly combat oriented, and 5e is definitely the easiest in that regard. While I'd love to try out less combat oriented games, I've rarely had players interested in such.
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Sep 15, 2019 05:26
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People under the effect of Zone of Truth don't have to blurt out truthful answers to questions, they could just clam up, or be evasive, or have their answers only tell half of the truth. It isn't just a 'make the DM tell us the plot secrets' spell.
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Sep 15, 2019 07:17
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clusterfuck posted:Splicer, Gharbad, Marathenes, Conspiratorist and Narsham collectively made the best effort posts this thread has seen back there on page 195. Narsham, remember, No means Yes TooMuchAbstraction was the one who knew it was a Pop-O-Matic, not me.
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Sep 15, 2019 07:30
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nelson posted:Here you go: Personally if I was a player in a campaign that did this, I would be really annoyed because I might have given up another spell just to pick Zone of Truth, or built my character around it somehow because I knew this was a mystery focused campaign (though I don't know how much one could optimize around such a spell). It should really just be disclosed upfront that banning a few divination spells like Zone of Truth or Speak with Dead is necessary because they would ruin the fun. That way there's no feelings of being cheated or having class features etc. taken away arbitrarily. If it just pops up later with a handwave-y explanation, people will feel like their characters are being nerfed unfairly.
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Sep 15, 2019 07:37
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Bogan Krkic posted:People under the effect of Zone of Truth don't have to blurt out truthful answers to questions, they could just clam up, or be evasive, or have their answers only tell half of the truth. It isn't just a 'make the DM tell us the plot secrets' spell. Literally part of the spell discretion. Zone of Truth posted:An affected creature is aware of the spell and can thus avoid answering questions to which it would normally respond with a lie. Such a creature can be evasive in its answers as long as it remains within the boundaries of the truth. Similarly Speak with Dead does guarantee info. Speak with Dead posted:Answers are usually brief, cryptic, or repetitive, and the corpse is under no compulsion to offer a truthful answer if you are hostile to it or it recognizes you as an enemy. This spell doesn't return the creature's soul to its body, only its animating spirit. Thus, the corpse can't learn new information, doesn't comprehend anything that has happened since it died, and can't speculate about future events.
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Sep 15, 2019 07:41
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Can you zone of truth a speak with dead
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Sep 15, 2019 07:43
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MonsterEnvy posted:Literally part of the spell discretion. Do you mean does not? It sounds like it can but doesn’t have to from that.
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Sep 15, 2019 08:07
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