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lightrook posted:What are people's experiences with using monsters with broad-spectrum spell resistances? Stuff like clay golems that are at least resistant to nearly every damage type and have advantage on all spell based saves? I was looking for a construct to throw at my party and considered the clay golem, but it has a ton of resistances and my party is mostly casters, so I thought at worst it would be a brutal wipe against a monster they can't meaningfully hurt, and at best a slow and unexciting grind against a huge pile of hitpoints, and in the end I went with a Shield Guardian instead. I guess I could have introduced more environmental elements that would help damage it, or give them an alternate win condition that doesn't involve destroying it, but without tailoring an entire encounter around it, it seems like there's a lot of ways the encounter could go wrong, and not necessarily in a fun or interesting way. My last session involved a fight with four snow golems. They were immune to nonmagical physical attacks, as well as charm/fear/necrotic damage (and probably some others that didn't come up). They also healed from cold damage and absorbed electrical damage to use on their next melee attack. Couple that with high HP and AC and it was a really long grinder of a fight during which our rogue was completely useless as he literally had no way to hurt them. No magical weapon, and while he's an Arcane Trickster his attack cantrips were Frostbite and Shocking Grasp. Whoops. He could have taken the Help action I guess, but being a rogue he had zero interest in being in melee range...and in fairness, everyone else was trying to stay as far away as possible too. (We also have a tagalong NPC with class levels who was useless, as his only means of magical attack was Charged Missile...which deals 5d6 electrical damage) So yeah, I recommend balancing encounters around your party composition.
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Nov 25, 2019 06:13
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No. 1 Apartheid Fan posted:Yeah, "class-exclusive" spells in 5E really aren't. Apart from the Bard's Magical Secrets there's all that stuff - domains, patrons, Circles, Oaths, and so on - that grant access to abnormal spells within a class, as well as AT and EK being able to grab any Wizard-exclusive spells with their "free" choices and various other edge cases. Grease, for example, is just on the Artificer list. No, but it is useful when you're a prep caster to think about what isn't likely to get brought to the table if you don't bring it. I want to stress the extreme value of Prismatic Wall again. It can be especially devastating in naval combat. Wait until a ship is under full sail and drop the wall in front of it, sweeping the deck. Or break up a cavalry charge. Most enemies past CR 2 can survive the other damaging wall spells, but the Prismatic Wall is going to shred almost anything that lacks resistances or immunities to a bunch of elements. It's too bad most campaigns will end before you get it.
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Nov 25, 2019 06:25
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lightrook posted:What are people's experiences with using monsters with broad-spectrum spell resistances? Stuff like clay golems that are at least resistant to nearly every damage type and have advantage on all spell based saves? I was looking for a construct to throw at my party and considered the clay golem, but it has a ton of resistances and my party is mostly casters, so I thought at worst it would be a brutal wipe against a monster they can't meaningfully hurt, and at best a slow and unexciting grind against a huge pile of hitpoints, and in the end I went with a Shield Guardian instead. I guess I could have introduced more environmental elements that would help damage it, or give them an alternate win condition that doesn't involve destroying it, but without tailoring an entire encounter around it, it seems like there's a lot of ways the encounter could go wrong, and not necessarily in a fun or interesting way. In theory if the gang has a pile of summons/Tensers transformation they'd be able to handle this encounter. In practice most people don't tend to do this and you're have a bad time if you have evoker squad: the moderate damaging.
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Nov 25, 2019 07:48
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change my name posted:I was thinking of rolling up a strength-based war cleric with a few levels of (revised) ranger, at least enough to get colossus slayer, maybe double attack without nerfing my spell splots too hard. Is this a supremely bad idea? It's not a particularly good idea, no. Consider a full Tempest Cleric with Booming Blade (via Magic Initiate or begging the DM) instead?
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Nov 25, 2019 08:04
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Conspiratiorist posted:It's not a particularly good idea, no. Seconding this. Tempest clerics are a) Output ridiculous damage b) a cleric and c) awesome fun. Go Booming Blade (I suggest asking your DM if you can swap out Sacred Flame for it) and by lvl8 you will be doing 1d8+strength melee attacks+ 2d8 thunder damage on your turns whilst hitting with Spiritual weapons for 1d8+Wisdom force damage and concentrating on Spirit Guardians which will blend everything and everyone in the room you dont like. Your DM will hate you for a little while before they cotton on to trying to break your concentration somehow but thats half the fun.
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Nov 25, 2019 10:52
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Narsham posted:No, but it is useful when you're a prep caster to think about what isn't likely to get brought to the table if you don't bring it. That's why Wall of Force at level 5 is better, despite requiring concentration. Ten 10x10 panels a quarter of an inch thick? Stop the other boat outright or cut it in half lengthwise as it crashes into it. Or shear off the deck/masts, lots of options. It does have to be a contiguous and flat surface, so you can't do both necessarily, but both are going to lead for huge problems for the crew of that ship. Unless they've got Counterspell or Disintegrate prepared, they're boned. You might even be able to get away with using it to block off their ability to attack you while leaving their boat exposed to attack, as it's a solid surface. Come to think of it, what level are the PCs intended to be when the Mad Max section of Avernus comes into play? Because if it's 9+ that seems like a solved problem. stringless fucked around with this message at 11:10 on Nov 25, 2019 |
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Nov 25, 2019 11:07
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DnD has a few races that are basically just a variety of the race but EVIL, such as drow (elves) and duergar (dwarves). I thought I might make something similar but for halflings. The idea is to make them slightly evil as a gag to make fun of this overdone concept. They might always invite themselves to your home, drink all your beer, are always late, talks behind your back and insults you, etc.
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Nov 25, 2019 12:19
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Ah, Kender
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Nov 25, 2019 12:37
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Midig posted:DnD has a few races that are basically just a variety of the race but EVIL, such as drow (elves) and duergar (dwarves). I thought I might make something similar but for halflings. The idea is to make them slightly evil as a gag to make fun of this overdone concept. They might always invite themselves to your home, drink all your beer, are always late, talks behind your back and insults you, etc. Just grab the Kender but don't pretend they're anything but a blight upon society. They're kleptomaniacs that steal everything you own for kicks, they'll insult you left and right, and the idea of staying focused on something is totally foreign to them because they've got fantasy ADHD. edit: gently caress, beaten
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Nov 25, 2019 12:41
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Funny that your examples are Underdark, but the Underdark Gnomes (Svirfneblin) are generally neutral good. Anyway, Kender are fine as long as they aren't allowed as a player character option.
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Nov 25, 2019 12:45
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So in building this artificer I realized that I just ended up building Iron Man as a D&D character. Deploys two gun cannons, wand pops out of prosthetic arcane arm, the arm itself detaches and punches people at a distance then returns, has flying boots, a large amount of HP, an outrageous AC, and is the smartest guy in the room. All the spells are basically crazy things Tony's armor could do in different situations if you think of it like that. I took belt of giant strength as one of my infusions because every now and then you gotta hulkbuster.
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Nov 25, 2019 17:35
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Use the Pictsies from the disk world series: https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Nac_Mac_Feeglequote:The Nac Mac Feegles' skin appears blue because it is heavily tattooed and covered with paint, and all have red hair. The tattoos identify a Feegle's clan. Wings or similar features of any kind are out of the question. Their blue appearance, bearded leader and dramatically skewed sex ratio is obviously a parody of the Smurfs. Pratchett has said that they are "like tiny little Scottish Smurfs who have seen Braveheart altogether too many times." They talk what can only be described as some sort of variation on the Scots language, usually Glaswegian in the clans encountered so far, although William the Gonnagle (from a different clan) has a softer, Highland accent. They are notably strong and resilient, which comes in handy given that male Feegles (almost all of them) tend to be notoriously rowdy as a lifestyle.
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Nov 25, 2019 17:38
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FFS I was just joking with evil halflings, but DnD already did it. How am I supposed to top that? Evil owlbears?
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Nov 25, 2019 21:12
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Another UA. I heard y'all liked psionics. Let's have some psionics. https://media.wizards.com/2019/dnd/downloads/UA-PsychicSoulPsionics.pdf Psychic Warriors, Psionic Wizards, and the dreaded soul knife. Also some more psionic spells and two new feats. Also a lot of borrowing mage hand ledgermain from arcane tricksters and awakened mind from goolocks. Oh also one of the two new feats is a mage hand ledgermain that can shove people prone for some reason.
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Nov 25, 2019 21:22
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Well, my 1.5 year old druid got merked yesterday by a spell ported from Flame Princess, Hateful Defecation. It's like a really low powered PW: Kill with some added flavour about guy biology. Not even mad, I mostly clowned on the boss as a big rear end elk. Gonna miss the dude but now I'm rolling a warforged paladin 
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Nov 25, 2019 21:23
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Midig posted:FFS I was just joking with evil halflings, but DnD already did it. How am I supposed to top that? Evil owlbears? Get this. Humans... but evil!
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Nov 25, 2019 21:23
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Kung Food posted:Get this. Humans... but evil! Akshully, orcs are humans but good.
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Nov 25, 2019 21:26
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Kung Food posted:Get this. Humans... but evil! DND 3.0 has you covered say hello to Vasharans.....http://dnd.arkalseif.info/races/book-of-vile-darkness--37/vashar--37/index.html
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Nov 25, 2019 21:31
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lightrook posted:Akshully, orcs are humans but good. Orc's are generally better than Humans as a whole in Eberron.
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Nov 25, 2019 22:07
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Eberron Orcs saved the world from demons and have stood guard at the edge of civilization for thousands of years beating back monsters from the underworld, about which humans don't even give a poo poo. They rule.
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Nov 25, 2019 22:19
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Madmarker posted:DND 3.0 has you covered This is some prime late 90's edgelord horseshit. I love it.
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Nov 25, 2019 22:21
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tanglewood1420 posted:Eberron Orcs saved the world from demons and have stood guard at the edge of civilization for thousands of years beating back monsters from the underworld, about which humans don't even give a poo poo. They rule. I thought it was Aberrations, the Coutal saved the world from Demons.
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Nov 25, 2019 22:22
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I guess one of my other co-workers is looking to run a bi-weekly game of 5th, set in the Ravnica setting (because everyone else is a bunch of MtG nerds, and might as well cash in on that crossover). All I know about the party is one person is thinking of doing a Simic ooze-person-thing, but I don't really know too much else (not even starting level, tbh). So I was thinking either Gruul (anti-civilization) Barbarian or some sort of Boros Legion (generic soldier/guard guild), maybe a Cleric, maybe a Paladin, not too entirely sure yet. Now, I know there's been a ton of  about all three classes, but I don't have search on the forums, so if someone wouldn't mind just linking a few posts for each of the three classes, just as a general "start here" kinda guide, it would be appreciated.
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Nov 25, 2019 22:57
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For the new year I'm planning on establishing a noob Adventurer's League table at the local shop with the specific intention of (1) bringing in new players to a low stress table and (2) getting some more DM experience myself. Anyone have experience doing this, maybe have some favorite simple AL modules to run, and methods to keep ultranerds/rules lawyers from making GBS threads up the table?
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Nov 25, 2019 23:00
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MagusDraco posted:Another UA. I heard y'all liked psionics. Let's have some psionics. https://media.wizards.com/2019/dnd/downloads/UA-PsychicSoulPsionics.pdf Whatever happened to that mystic class? Psionic wizard sucks and I hate it, thanks.
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Nov 25, 2019 23:24
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MagusDraco posted:Another UA. I heard y'all liked psionics. Let's have some psionics. https://media.wizards.com/2019/dnd/downloads/UA-PsychicSoulPsionics.pdf What the gently caress is this Id Insinuation spell? Incapacitation and ongoing 1d12 psychic damage? As a 1st level spell? Sure, it's concentration, but this is seriously just Better Tasha's in every way.
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Nov 25, 2019 23:29
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Mind sliver looks fairly ok with multiple CC guys.
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Nov 25, 2019 23:32
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Whatever happened to that mystic class? About a year after the last Mystic, the 3.0, UA went out Mearls commented on them on his stupid Happy Fun Time Hour with Mike Mearls thing where he stumbled through trying to build subclasses. He said something along the line of changing how they were doing it, he tried to come up with some ideas for subclasses for a Psion. Basically saying no more Mystic, it will now be a Psion, and a bunch of the possible builds would instead be subclasses for other classes. Like the Immortal Mystic would instead be a Barbarian subclass, which of course didn't make any sense at all but hey it is Mike Mearls he doesn't know how to design games. But yeah he "designed" subclasses on Twitch or something where he through stuff at the wall to see what sticked and took in ideas from people in his steam, and no actual real feedback or design process. A number of subclasses he had designed during those streams did get UA releases. Some of which have since been retired from Beyond. Also annoyingly enough the Brute has been retired from Beyond and I still see idiots thinking it was overpowered on their forums. I feel like it has been about a year since the Mystic was broken down and made into new subclasses ideas on Happy Fun Time Hour with Mike Mearls. Looking at this UA. So far I hate the Psychic Warrior. I just cannot believe how terrible it is. Soulknife is pretty mediocre as well. So far it looks like they took Mystic subclasses, or possible ideas, and split them from an actual psionic class and nerfed them heavily and just threw 5 minutes of work out the window as an attempt at "psionic" subclasses. The Psionic Tradition is eh. At least it has a vaguely interesting feature, even if it isn't usable very often. But yeah this UA was just disappointing in general.
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Nov 25, 2019 23:49
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Hi I'm Mind Thrust, excuse me while I jam myself into your spellbook
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Nov 26, 2019 00:06
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Psionics sucks and I hate it, thanks.
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Nov 26, 2019 00:34
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Infinity Gaia posted:What the gently caress is this Id Insinuation spell? Incapacitation and ongoing 1d12 psychic damage? As a 1st level spell? Sure, it's concentration, but this is seriously just Better Tasha's in every way. I am glad to see 5th edition continuing the proud tradition of psionic attack forms being overpowered as gently caress.
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Nov 26, 2019 00:42
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A few pages back, I asked the thread why psionics is always either useless or overpowered, but got no answer. There never seems to be an in-between; why is that?
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Nov 26, 2019 00:43
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:A few pages back, I asked the thread why psionics is always either useless or overpowered, but got no answer. There never seems to be an in-between; why is that? Because proper balancing of new element in an unbalanced system is impossible, and even if it wasn't would take a lot of time iteratively playtesting, which takes resources D&D is not willing to commit.
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Nov 26, 2019 00:46
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Wow, that section in the Psionic UA about "Psionic Spells" is the laziest goddamned poo poo... "Hey, you want psionics in your campaign? Just pick spells and re-flavor them, dummy!" In less terrible news, the ToA campaign I've been running has been going well, just wanted to share some of the tweaks and background stuff I've come up with: So, first of all, I've completely removed the module from the Forgotten Realms setting (Because seriously, the Forgotten Realms is the most boring campaign setting of them all) and have instead thrown it into a loosely defined setting we're fleshing out as we go along. There were still a bunch of "Forgotten Realms"-isms in the module I had to tweak, but I'm pretty happy with what I came up with: - First of all, I've removed everything related to Artus Cimber and that damned Ring of Winter since it has no bearing on the main plot of the module, exists only as an overwrought cameo for the handful of people who read a particularly obscure Forgotten Realms tie-in novel from several decades ago, and if Cimber ends up travelling with the party he ends up being a textbook "Over-powered friendly NPC who completely overshadows the actual player characters and hogs the spotlight" that plague the Forgoten Realms. - Instead of the party trying to help Syndra Silvane (A random NPC the party may or may not even give a poo poo about), I had them work together to create an NPC that several of their characters have a direct connection to to take Syndra's place. Thus, instead of helping "random lady who heard we were adventurers and decided to hire us to save the world", they're now trying to save the kindly old Dragonborn alchemist lady who served as a mentor to two of the characters in their youth. I've also made the nature of The Death Curse (Renamed "The Wasting" because reasons) a lot more mysterious. The party just consulted with the spirit Naga at Orolunga last session and got confirmation that The Wasting wasn't actually a disease but something sucking the life energy from nearby living things. - The encounter with Volo in Port Nyanzeru has instead been replaced with an encounter with a fellow named "Monster Manuel", who introduces himself as a famed monster-ologist hanging around Chult to study the local wildlife and document them in a book he's working on. Manuel intends this book to be a complete catalog of all of the various wildlife and monstrous creatures in the world (a veritable manual of them, in fact!), which is why he has titled the book "Monster Manuel's Book What Has All the Monsters in It". The players even bought a copy of his book and can consult it about the creatures they find on their travels, for which I have worked out some simple mechanics: While the book is very thorough and contains entries for every creature that exists in Chult, Manuel seems to have only ever had animals vaguely described to him secondhand. To reflect Manuel's...strange level of knowledge, whenever the players consult the book I make a secret roll of 2d6: If the roll totals 6 or less, Manuel's entry is hilariously, catastrophically wrong ("Getting between a mother cave bear and her cubs will cause her to immediately surrender and give you money!"); on a 7-9, Manuel isn't necessarily wrong, his observations are just focused on the most weirdly specific details ("Cave bears are known to live in caves!"); on a roll of 10+ there are some actually useful tidbits of information mixed in with Manuel's weirdness ("Cave Bears mostly live in caves along the Southern coast and don't like it when you pick up their cubs and give them airplane rides. They will keep hitting you with their claws until you put their cub back down and apologize!"). I explained the basics of these mechanics to the players when they bought the book, so they know to take its information with a grain of salt. Consulting the book about every new creature they discover to see what weird nonsense Manuel wrote about it has become a recurring practice. I've also gotgot something fun in the pipeline for one of the players, which I will spoiler in case he stumbles onto this thread: One of my players is running a homebrewed Shardmind Mystic, but has just multi-classed into Warlock. While searching for inspiration for patrons he came across the Forgotten Realms wiki article on Dendar The Night Serpent (Not realizing a cult trying to summon her is part of this very module) and thought it sounded like a cool idea for a patron. Not only does this make my life real easy since I get to directly tie his class backstory into the module, he's also been playing his character in a really fun, goofy way (He's basically an anthropomorphic New Age healing crystal) so I'm planning on having the Night Serpent enlist his aid to stop Ras Nsi's cult from trying to summon her because she's trying to sleep and their constant rituals are the supernatural equivalent of a telemarketer who keeps calling at 2:00 in the morning. If this keeps going on for much longer she's not going to be able to get back to sleep and will probably end up eating the sun because what else is she gonna do?
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Nov 26, 2019 00:54
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PaybackJack posted:So in building this artificer I realized that I just ended up building Iron Man as a D&D character. Deploys two gun cannons, wand pops out of prosthetic arcane arm, the arm itself detaches and punches people at a distance then returns, has flying boots, a large amount of HP, an outrageous AC, and is the smartest guy in the room. All the spells are basically crazy things Tony's armor could do in different situations if you think of it like that. Needs a repulsor shield.
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Nov 26, 2019 00:55
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:A few pages back, I asked the thread why psionics is always either useless or overpowered, but got no answer. There never seems to be an in-between; why is that? This may not be immediately 5e, but one big problem is that the psionic classes tended to have completely new resource systems. To pick on 4e, they introduced a power point system for psionic classes in the 3rd handbook, vs the other classes having at-will, per encounter and per day abilities. You could use points to increase the power of at-will attacks. As you leveled, you could replace low level moves with high level moves, but the cost of augmenting attacks went up. Fortunately, you also get more power points per level. Which works right up until some smart person goes "hey, this low level power scales really well! What if I kept it forever, and used my now huge pool of points to spam cheap but effective augmented attacks? " To bring it back to 5e (and 4e and 3.5 and 13th Age and), it's really hard to make a class with entirely at-will abilities balance with classes that have daily abilities, so on and so forth. So, if they stay away from adding even more resource systems, I'd say that's actually better design.
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Nov 26, 2019 01:13
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I would argue another major problem with psionics is extremely niche design space. Wizards already do everything, and enchanters exist. So no matter what your resource system ends up being, "brain wizard" already exists. The systems are almost never designed with psionics in mind so they tend to be lazily implemented. "Brain Wizard" implies mind control and disabling powers so either it's op or you overshoot and it sucks. Even if you could overcome all of that (and you could) the Warlock is already a better designed Psionic than any Psionic in D&Ds history. This is not high praise for the Warlock.
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Nov 26, 2019 02:09
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Ok, I need some advice on elves. I think I have avoided this for last when it came to humans, dwarves, halflings, etc. because honestly, they have a very big chance of being boring and a lot of fantasy settings have a tendency to in some ways make them way too important in some aspects and not nearly important enough in others. They are important to the story, but should not be the center of the world, but a relic or preservers of the past. I thought elves settled the land by the aid of their goddess, who helped them escape an old land that was befallen by evil. The land was filled with mist and darkness. They were, however, masters of magic, and would eventually connect the moon and the sun with their realm/land, etc. In this way, the sun and the moon are not necessarily existing orbiting mass. But a sort of phase of magic through another realm concentrating power. Same with the stars. The realms connect to these powers through constructs, huge towers hidden by old magic of mist obscuring and protecting it. They shaped the world as they liked and they approved of it as well as their patron gods. They were kind but cautious of new races such as dwarves and humans. But humans were seen as a threat and through their experiments with magic to combat them, came upon foul magic through their not so noble intentions to wipe out humans. Dwarves also used foul magic and when war broke between them many catastrophes happened as demonology, necromancy, genocidal mass destructive magic was made (like an arms race) which lead to mass decline of high elven society. As such, the elves understood that they needed to change. Where they start to separate into wood elves, half-elves, keepers, etc. as their differing ideologies on how to solve the problem. Wood elves: Nostalgic of the time before moon and sun. Wants to live in harmony with nature and preserve the ancient and mythical. They are still fiercely against the societies of man as they see it as just a more unstable form of the former high elf rule. But their distaste of unnatural magic means they are mostly unsuccessful at fighting humans. Half-elves: Those who decided to live among mortals, giving up their worship of their patron gods and instead of acting as demi-gods. Their age and other features has declined over the years. Still, a half-elf can choose to become a full elf if they choose to join other elvish societies. Most do not, however. Now, most half-elves are either nobility or outcasts in various empires. But some human kingdoms do not mesh well at all with high elven culture. Keepers: Uninterested in the politics of the world, guards the towers connecting them to the moon and sun. Will kill any non-elves on sight if you are in their territory. They are ruthless and guard their secrets by any means.
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Nov 26, 2019 02:15
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MagusDraco posted:and the dreaded soul knife. Yeah, yeah, the soul knife. We've all seen it.
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Nov 26, 2019 02:20
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One of the things that makes elves boring is a lack of a real culture. Culturally they tend to be "humans, but aloof" or "humans, but haughty" or occasionally, "humans, but with better set designers." It's rarely clear what they consider tabboo or where their culture causes friction with others. To avoid making them boring do something that makes them at least a little alien and fallible; avoid the "aloof and withdrawn from the world" trope because it's just an excuse to show less of them.
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Nov 26, 2019 02:21
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