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MonsterEnvy posted:Danse Macabre allows you to quickly get some dead bodies off the ground for an hour. Get the bodies off the floor Get the bodies off the floor Get the bodies off the floor
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Sep 16, 2019 16:51
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homullus posted:Get the bodies off the floor This dude knows what's up
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Sep 16, 2019 17:07
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Gharbad the Weak posted:This dude knows what's up Them bones, them bones, them dead bones.
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Sep 16, 2019 18:38
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I think this thread could get a lot of use out of reading this: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/43568/roleplaying-games/game-structures-addendum-system-matters It's an article on how the actual advice of how to run and play D&D has fallen out of the game, and why it's so hard to figure out how to appropriately do things in modern D&D or clone systems. It's obnoxiously frustrating that 5e doesn't actually teach you what to do in a dungeon, 4e told you what to do in a combat but not much outside of that, and 3e deliberately tore away that advice during the edition's revisions.
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Sep 16, 2019 19:18
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3e is weird because the designers just blatantly assumed that everyone was familiar with the 2e paradigm and no one would ever deviate from it. I love the edition to death, but most of its glaring problems stem from the fact that if you don't play blaster wizard or healbot cleric the game looks rather different, and God help the unprepared who run into a pit fiend who spans mass hold monster on the wing rather than sticking around to melee the fighter, rogue, and cleric. Thus I can't tell if the 3e designers assumed everyone knew what to do or just knew they were unqualified to give advice.
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Sep 16, 2019 19:51
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:3e is weird because the designers just blatantly assumed that everyone was familiar with the 2e paradigm and no one would ever deviate from it. I love the edition to death, but most of its glaring problems stem from the fact that if you don't play blaster wizard or healbot cleric the game looks rather different, and God help the unprepared who run into a pit fiend who spans mass hold monster on the wing rather than sticking around to melee the fighter, rogue, and cleric. https://web.archive.org/web/20080221174425/http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?mc_los_142 Neither: they intended people to figure out how to play the game by themselves.
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Sep 16, 2019 20:07
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:3e is weird because the designers just blatantly assumed that everyone was familiar with the 2e paradigm and no one would ever deviate from it. I love the edition to death, but most of its glaring problems stem from the fact that if you don't play blaster wizard or healbot cleric the game looks rather different, and God help the unprepared who run into a pit fiend who spans mass hold monster on the wing rather than sticking around to melee the fighter, rogue, and cleric. Part of the problem was that 3e was also a moving target. 3.0 is a bunch of inherited gameplay from 2e, assuming everyone was playing the game that way. By the time 3.5 came out, Wizards knew they weren’t playing it that way any more, and so the rules changed. In particular 3.0 still has the necessary components for a dungeon crawl - it talks about encounter distances and random monsters and dungeon design - and 3.5 instead leans hard on set piece dungeon design. The audience for 3.0 is very different than the one for 3.5.
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Sep 16, 2019 20:53
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I just finished running Wild Sheep Chase for my group, with some spectacular derailment*. I'm pretty comfortable adapting and running existing adventures, but I'd prefer to not have to come up with something whole cloth. What are some published one shots or short adventures you've liked that would fit a level 5 party? I'm less of a fan of long adventures, but I'll still hear out any strong recommendations. If it helps, the party's current goal is to hit the big city, fence their stolen good, and avoiding getting too many of their joints smashed by the bank. *For those familiar with the adventure, the party had to beat a hasty retreat from their first visit to the wizard's tower. For their second visit, I added the complication of a debt collection squad going after the apprentice's student loans, and the adventure concluded with everyone but the players dead. They ended up pocketing the dangerously-modified and now-defunct wand of True Polymorph, and a bag of gold that belongs to the bank, so there's no shortage of directions to pull the story. lightrook fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Sep 16, 2019 |
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Sep 16, 2019 21:15
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Arivia posted:Part of the problem was that 3e was also a moving target. 3.0 is a bunch of inherited gameplay from 2e, assuming everyone was playing the game that way. By the time 3.5 came out, Wizards knew they weren’t playing it that way any more, and so the rules changed. In particular 3.0 still has the necessary components for a dungeon crawl - it talks about encounter distances and random monsters and dungeon design - and 3.5 instead leans hard on set piece dungeon design. The audience for 3.0 is very different than the one for 3.5. They really didn't. The druid got buffed in 3.5 despite being probably the best class in the core book (thanks, Ed Stark!). They didn't do anything to make fighters able to stand toe to toe with hydras and giants, and actually nerfed a lot of warrior prestige classes in the 3.5 rereleases in Complete Warrior. Monks didn't get fixed, etc. Look at any 3.5 book that gives character building advice, it is almost always wrong. I'm also convinced that the ivory tower game design is ipso facto rationalization given that none of the sample NPCs look anything like what people actually played. But going back to the original point, it's no wonder 5e collapses out of combat because no one has been able to define what a social challenge looks like mechanically, and we can argue about this all we want, but ultimately the root cause is that for the last 3 editions the designers did not understand their own game.
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Sep 16, 2019 22:47
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:But going back to the original point, it's no wonder 5e collapses out of combat because no one has been able to define what a social challenge looks like mechanically, and we can argue about this all we want, but ultimately the root cause is that for the last 3 editions the designers did not understand their own game. Pretty much every edition of D&D is bad at out-of-combat, out-of-dungeon stuff and few people seem to want to admit it. Most people don't use whatever rules for that stuff actually exist to begin with, as it's the least interesting, the part they least want to deal with, and from that they have their own tribal approach for how it is handled. Meanwhile, designers do not necessarily have the expertise, interest, time, or money to study what actually occurs in play (this is an industry with one foot still in physical publishing after all) and rely too much on presumption of shared experience among the playerbase.
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Sep 16, 2019 23:42
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:I'm also convinced that the ivory tower game design is ipso facto rationalization given that none of the sample NPCs look anything like what people actually played. Everything I've ever heard suggests it was. Ivory Tower Game Design and all that chuff about System Mastery was Mr. "The Moon" Cook trying to recast their stupidity as malice. I think you got it in one, they designed 3e entirely within the paradigm of 2e and didn't realize until way after the fact what kind of game they actually had created.
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Sep 17, 2019 01:48
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Oh yeah, the Ivory Tower design poo poo is just about intent. They themselves absolutely had no idea how their game actually worked.
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Sep 17, 2019 02:07
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Omnicrom posted:Everything I've ever heard suggests it was. Ivory Tower Game Design and all that chuff about System Mastery was Mr. "The Moon" Cook trying to recast their stupidity as malice. I think you got it in one, they designed 3e entirely within the paradigm of 2e and didn't realize until way after the fact what kind of game they actually had created. TheGreatEvilKing posted:I'm also convinced that the ivory tower game design is ipso facto rationalization given that none of the sample NPCs look anything like what people actually played.
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Sep 17, 2019 07:37
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:I'm also convinced that the ivory tower game design is ipso facto rationalization given that none of the sample NPCs look anything like what people actually played. they kinda got better at it by the time 3.5's PHB 2 rolled around and the builds advised for classes actually looked like what you might see at a table with a player at least mildly interested in optimization, but Ivory Tower was absolutely covering their rear end after they realized something like Toughness was completely indefensible another bugaboo I have in this respect is the steadfast refusal to consider a class, feat, spell, etc., to be deprecated. Like, there's no reason for a Fighter to continue to exist once you finally have a Crusader and/or a Warblade available, but the game still assumes that they should be capable of co-existing alongside each other and to bring this back to 5e... the stock Ranger just shouldn't be a thing anymore.
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Sep 17, 2019 07:58
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Splicer posted:Why not both? 5e is assuming you use point buy or standard array for character gen neither of which allows for an 18 at chargen. I work weird hours so the only system I still play is 5e because adventure league rules are built around it being easy to jump in and play. I really like the stat generation for Pathfinder 2.0 it's meant to start you out with an 18 in your main stat and still give you a spread of not garbage stats. It's a shame they doubled down on caster supremacy.
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Sep 17, 2019 08:21
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rodbeard posted:5e is assuming you use point buy or standard array for character gen neither of which allows for an 18 at chargen. I work weird hours so the only system I still play is 5e because adventure league rules are built around it being easy to jump in and play. I really like the stat generation for Pathfinder 2.0 it's meant to start you out with an 18 in your main stat and still give you a spread of not garbage stats. It's a shame they doubled down on caster supremacy. e: holy loving lol they gave him archery fighting style and a longbow (yes) and a god damned greatsword as a backup weapon. Splicer fucked around with this message at 08:40 on Sep 17, 2019 |
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Sep 17, 2019 08:35
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gradenko_2000 posted:and to bring this back to 5e... the stock Ranger just shouldn't be a thing anymore. It could make sense as a fighter subclass, sure. Eldritch Knight keyed to Wisdom with a spell list that isn't garbage (and fixing Hunter's Mark to be a class feature instead of a spell so the whole concentration issue isn't one). Archery or Two-Weapon Fighting at first level if you want to go there, even. I've been intending to mess with a homebrew EK as a Death Knight, getting necromancy and another school instead of abjuration/evocation. Probably easier to just do EK + Wizard though. What would y'all think the other school should be? Abjuration, Enchantment, and to a lesser extent Evocation seem fitting. An argument could be made for any of them. Hell, could just change the EK to have access to a limited Wizard spell list: universals plus two schools of your choice. How much would this break, if anything?
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Sep 17, 2019 08:36
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:But going back to the original point, it's no wonder 5e collapses out of combat because no one has been able to define what a social challenge looks like mechanically, and we can argue about this all we want, but ultimately the root cause is that for the last 3 editions the designers did not understand their own game. What are you talking about? 5th Edition is the most D&D D&D that ever D&Dd, and everybody knows that how exploration and interaction work in D&D is that there aren't any rules for them and the DM just makes something up and asks for rolls that don't mean anything! It's like you skipped right over the introductory example of play.
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Sep 17, 2019 10:49
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Splicer posted:Why not both? D&D pregens are built wrong on an almost purposeful Kung Pow level, I would guess on the assumptions that: 1) Very inexperienced and young players will have a worse time with a character built to do "one thing," even though they are still terrible at stuff outside their class design 2) When you bring your pregen in to game night at the shop and sit next to a book character who is much more effective than you and wields more powers even if it's from the same class, that serves as an ad for the book. I think (2) is much more unlikely to happen in 5E and that's generally good.
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Sep 17, 2019 11:44
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gradenko_2000 posted:and to bring this back to 5e... the stock Ranger just shouldn't be a thing anymore. I love that they came out with the UA Ranger and everyone gushed about how it was such an improvement and hoped it would be in a splat book to be 100% official and AL legal. Then Mearls came right out to stomp that hope into the ground, stating that it would never replace the book Ranger.
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Sep 17, 2019 13:50
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tag urself
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Sep 17, 2019 14:48
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Kaysette posted:tag urself I'm the ice devil.
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Sep 17, 2019 15:04
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Admiral Joeslop posted:I love that they came out with the UA Ranger and everyone gushed about how it was such an improvement and hoped it would be in a splat book to be 100% official and AL legal. Then Mearls came right out to stomp that hope into the ground, stating that it would never replace the book Ranger. Crawford in that case, right? Didn't Mearls come out to say "We're making big changes to the ranger because of Baldur's Gate 3!" just for Crawford to tweet "no we aren't" almost immediately?
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Sep 17, 2019 15:21
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IIRC it was indeed Mearls.
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Sep 17, 2019 15:25
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Was it Mearls decision or was he just the messenger?
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Sep 17, 2019 15:45
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Mearls is the project lead for 5e.
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Sep 17, 2019 15:47
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theironjef posted:Crawford in that case, right? Didn't Mearls come out to say "We're making big changes to the ranger because of Baldur's Gate 3!" just for Crawford to tweet "no we aren't" almost immediately? I did some googling and that was definitely a thing that happened around June/July but the thing I'm thinking of was earlier in the year or last year. I'll take a look when I'm home if I remember. Could've been Crawford in that case as well. Edit: It was Crawford. https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/1023352291837935616 Admiral Joeslop fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Sep 17, 2019 |
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Sep 17, 2019 16:00
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Yeah Crawford has largely been the one who is against changes like that. Anyway I own Baldur's Gate Descent now. Anyone have any questions about it?
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Sep 17, 2019 20:49
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MonsterEnvy posted:Anyway I own Baldur's Gate Descent now. Anyone have any questions about it? can i be a cavalier fighter that jousts devils on a hell motorcycle?
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Sep 17, 2019 22:05
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Admiral Joeslop posted:I did some googling and that was definitely a thing that happened around June/July but the thing I'm thinking of was earlier in the year or last year. I'll take a look when I'm home if I remember. Could've been Crawford in that case as well. In a lot of ways I think this is a bigger problem with Monte Cook-style design than slightly OP characters produced by optimization/multiclassing. Those are only a problem if the build consistently overshadows other players, and are simple to fix by DM ruling. On the other hand there are a large number of underpowered or downright bad options that have a ton of flavor but will never be used. Beastmasters are a classic RPG archetype but no one is going to play one because it takes the worst class and gives them a CR 1/4 puppy that saps their action economy to do anything. And this is much harder for a DM to fix because not only do they need to invent, balance, and test an entire class but communicate to their players that it's an option.
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Sep 17, 2019 22:06
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Microcline posted:In a lot of ways I think this is a bigger problem with Monte Cook-style design than slightly OP characters produced by optimization/multiclassing. Those are only a problem if the build consistently overshadows other players, and are simple to fix by DM ruling. Yes, but playing as the lovely beast ranger is your passport to real roleplaying. I assume because you've got nothing else to do.
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Sep 17, 2019 22:38
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Did a quick scan of Avernus. Looks... okay? The first few hours in Baldur's Gate looks real generic, but it appears to pick up proper after that. So much of the book is a useless gazette of how to run Baldur's Gate/what is Baldur's gate, and then a ton of concept art. Lots of pages devoted to try to make mechanical sense of devil deals and ramming stuff with hellcars when it seems like it'd be real easy and more fun to just make it up. Lots of pages devoted to rewriting the never-used "traits" that come with backgrounds, with a ton of alternate ones. One new background that lets you have an alter-ego Batman style but also tries to make it thematically more like Arya's faceless thing. The actual hell stuff is pretty tame and whatever you were thinking it was is probably cooler than what it ended up being. Typical 5e official path stuff where the overview doesn't really help you actually run the game, along with the pretty useless timeline stuff from Storm King's Thunder, very few useful inserts and it's that thing where you have to read the entire text to make sense of anything. I really wish the official 5E stuff would catch up in design and playability to some of the indie offerings. You don't need to do the OSR horseshit of "terse, short descriptions" where it's 5 words to sum up a whole scene or location, but the alternative of having to read 5 pages and try to parse what is useful and what is garbo is slightly aggravating. So many throw away characters. So much window dressing no player will ever ask or care about. Much like Strahd, lots of camp. You get something cool like "all food tastes like ash in hell, wine tastes like spoiled milk, you have to go to the only restaurant in hell for good tasting food", then the menu has loving Minsc's giant mini space hamster on it. Edit: The huge section on how to run Baldur's Gate is also kind of weird considering every step of the way you are railroaded, with the actual consequence being execution for failing to comply. Characters would have to nearly derail the campaign for this to be useful. Firstborn fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Sep 17, 2019 |
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Sep 17, 2019 23:24
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I know they've said they're hesitant to go back and redo stuff like Ranger or add spells to Sorcerer origins because it's "hard" to change stuff in books that are already out which I can understand to an extent but also maybe you guys should be putting out real actual digital copies of your game because it's 20fucking19
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Sep 17, 2019 23:29
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It's okay if they add some splatbooks like they had in previous editions, and power creep the shittiest archetypes. Print more subraces for the shittiest races. Create some new martial classes that people can use instead of the bad ones. A new Sorceror origin can have spells added, and a non-ranger Avenger class can fix the Ranger.
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Sep 17, 2019 23:36
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Yeah you can't change stuff in print books, but back when print books were essentially 100% of everything that didn't stop them from putting out a 3.5E to (somewhat) unfuck stuff. I've said it a lot but I really want a 5.5E by a competent team that takes into account nearly a decade of player experience. There's no impetus to do so, though, because of how wildly popular the current product is and how widely it's uncritically accepted. edit: I'm often pretty harsh toward 5E but that's because it's frustrating; I think there are a bunch of good core ideas in the edition but the design team wasn't quite skilled enough to pull it off (not to mention the whole vibe of "no you shut the gently caress up dad" about lessons learned from 4E) and doesn't understand their own system well enough to pull off a good 5.5E. BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Sep 17, 2019 |
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Sep 17, 2019 23:40
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I'm a player in Storm King's Thunder. Spoilered just in case. In this adventure we're invited to a tower floating on a cloud where we're greeted by its literal "giant" owner, Zephyros. Our ambitious rogue Cobbort, who has been thinly impersonating nobility this whole time, has used a ball bearing to do a basic health and safety check on the cloud. He checked to see where exactly the cloud underfoot stops being a surface you can walk on. As it turns out there's about 5ft of cloud overhanging the edge which you can fall right through if you're not careful. Zephyros, this cloud bearded giant wizard who I can only imagine as looking like Zeus from Disney's Hercules, offers us a ride to the town we are headed toward. Being able to travel "as the crow flies" on this sluggish skycastle actually cuts our journey time in half. Wonderful! Before you know it we're about 10,000ft up enjoying the view of the land slowly crawling underneath us. Halfway through the journey some armored fellows riding on large black birds land on the cloud. They demand an audience with the "lord of the tower". We all have a chat, Zephyros eventually joins, but it quickly becomes apparent that the mounted warriors are all part of some very unsavory sounding cult. While we haven't engaged in any hostility, Zephyros has left to perform some kind of scrying ritual while we're supposed to just chat with the increasingly unwelcome guests. The feeling is that it is becoming time to make a move. My character, the noble high elf wizard Thalachon, casts message to say what has become his catchphrase at this point. "I have a plan..." I ask Cobbort to steal something, anything, from one of the cultists. He asks our goliath, Kastaness, to regale the guests with the (lengthy and boring) tale of his origin. While the cultists are distracted by the monotony of this dreary tale, I have cast levitate on myself but have not yet ascended from the ground. Cobbort successfully places a religious emblem from the pocket of one of the cultists into my hands. I stand by the door. "Well this is rather interesting." I gesture, making the token in my hand obvious. The cultists pat down their pockets, and one is particularly offended. "Hey, that's mine!" Playfully running to the outside I cast minor illusion just to give the overhanging cloud an extra 5ft through which you can fall. I push myself 10ft away from the edge, still levitating, ensuring it appears as though the cloud is entirely solid and that I have walked this far. We were at the end of this session, and we will resume next week to begin combat just after the offended cultist has fallen through my illusory cloud. Azza Bamboo fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Sep 17, 2019 |
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Sep 17, 2019 23:50
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Clever. 
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Sep 17, 2019 23:58
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Kaysette posted:can i be a cavalier fighter that jousts devils on a hell motorcycle? Yes. Firstborn posted:So many throw away characters. So much window dressing no player will ever ask or care about. I like this stuff. It's nice to have it all fleshed out. Plus the Gazetteer for the city is cool and useful for a Baldur's Gate Campaign. It does not have to be used with the adventure. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Sep 18, 2019 |
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Sep 18, 2019 00:12
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That's cool and fine to have that. It's not even the first to do that with Baldur's Gate, though. "Murder in Baldur's Gate" had just as many if not more pages devoted to it. It's just fluff, which is fine, but seemed a little out of place here. I still plan on running it, but with heavy modification as I always do to all the official path stuff. There is some good stuff here, but I just find it very underwhelming that they keep falling short in the same areas over and over. If only the guys from Mothership or something were contacted to make a book that functioned as a DM's aid in addition to being reading material. The penchant for writing these things like fantasy novels instead of resources is just so tedious.
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Sep 18, 2019 00:20
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Azza Bamboo posted:Zephyros, this cloud bearded giant wizard who I can only imagine as looking like Zeus from Disney's Hercules  But some fanart totally does for some reason. 
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Sep 18, 2019 00:21
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