|
Moose King posted:Wouldn't this effectively just make long rests 9 to 11 hours instead of 8? If you have 8 hours to rest, you probably have 11 as well, and the sorcerer who blew all their slots on the bugbears two hours ago is gonna be whining for a rest that whole time. Not if you also establish that short rests can only happen every three encounters. Basically firm up the short rest / long rest balance. I agree that players should have a lot of declarative power via skills though. Stuff like "hey I want to ______" and rolling a skill check during combat should be totally a normal use of a free action. It's tough that those declarations are going to be a lot more DM reliant than spells, but that gets into the whole "don't have adversarial DMs" situation. If a DM isn't enabling players, and indeed expecting players to come up with novel solutions to adventure conflicts and planning accordingly, then they're probably doing it wrong. In the last dungeon I put together each encounter is designed to test different players, and there's a couple ways to basically just ignore half the defenses and go directly to the final boss provided they can social or explore well enough - at which point I'll upgrade the boss difficulty to a deadly encounter so they'll still have a good fight. I liked how Xanathar's Guide expanded on skill checks a bit, and it would be good if they continued in that vein. If everyone can do heroic poo poo, then it's not as big a deal that Wizards are ultimately slightly better at it. Kaal fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Mar 2, 2020 |
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 17:52
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 21:53 |
|
|
As a dm you can do extra work and make a list of standard things people can do with checks attached, but you shouldn’t have to, and itd be homebrew by definition
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 18:20
|
|
|
please knock Mom! posted:As a dm you can do extra work and make a list of standard things people can do with checks attached, but you shouldn’t have to, and itd be homebrew by definition I mean to me that just seems like totally normal and expected DMing. It doesn't seem like extra work or homebrew to me any more than providing players with a map or having a coherent narrative. It's an inherent part of the role.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 18:25
|
|
|
Kaal posted:Not if you also establish that short rests can only happen every three encounters. Basically firm up the short rest / long rest balance.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 18:27
|
|
|
Splicer posted:The question though was how to bring martials up to casters. Skills are available to casters and martials, but casters get skills AND spells. "A good DM"ing skills won't bring martials to parity because casters will still be all that, AND spells But it won't matter as much because everyone is able to do that sort of thing. And it's a lot easier to say "Hey, anyone can do creative stuff with skills" than to rewrite the entire PHB to achieve class/sub-class parity. Making sure that every dog has a stick is more important than making sure that every dog has the same number of sticks. Kaal fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Mar 2, 2020 |
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 18:33
|
|
|
I suspect there are far more DMs who are uncomfortable making judgement calls than you think. While it's good that the PHB/DMG encourage you to change any rules you don't like, the simple fact of the matter is that plenty of people will think "no they wrote the rules this way for a reason, if I change them then I'm going to make the game worse." Maybe it'd be helpful if there was some big important part of the game whose resolution mechanic was explicitly undefined, and the DM was forced to make up a rule for it? Kick them off the road so they have to blaze their own trail, kind of thing. In any case the rules as written should give every class a more or less equal opportunity to shine.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 18:43
|
|
|
TooMuchAbstraction posted:I suspect there are far more DMs who are uncomfortable making judgement calls than you think. While it's good that the PHB/DMG encourage you to change any rules you don't like, the simple fact of the matter is that plenty of people will think "no they wrote the rules this way for a reason, if I change them then I'm going to make the game worse." I'm sure you're quite correct about all of this.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 18:47
|
|
|
I've always made short rests a 5 minute breather instead of an hour long meal. This makes warlocks awesome and really fucks with balance if somebody is doing some messy warlock multiclass fuckery but for the most part it merely makee classes like monk or battle master very good, which is fine by me.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 18:52
|
|
|
Kaal posted:But it won't matter as much because everyone is able to do that sort of thing. And it's a lot easier to say "Hey, anyone can do creative stuff with skills" than to rewrite the entire PHB to achieve class/sub-class parity. Kaal posted:Making sure that every dog has a stick is more important than making sure that every dog has the same number of sticks.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 18:58
|
|
|
Splicer posted:The question is what needs to be done to bring martials up to casters. "Nah don't bother" and "A good GM!" aren't actually answers. I mean if you want to have Perfect Equality then just hand out magic items until everyone is where you think they should be. The question was how to tweak the rules to favor martials without redoing casters entirely, and I don't think saying, "It's impossible, play some other game" is a particularly good answer to that.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 19:03
|
|
|
Kaal posted:I'm sure you're quite correct about all of this. I'm glad we agree.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 19:03
|
|
|
Kaal posted:I mean if you want to have Perfect Equality then just hand out magic items until everyone is where you think they should be. The question was how to tweak the rules to favor martials without redoing casters entirely, and I don't think saying, "It's impossible, play some other game" is a particularly good answer to that. Splicer fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Mar 2, 2020 |
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 19:07
|
|
|
Alternatively, run a high magic campaign and hand out cool magic items more often to buff martials. I played in a game up to 12th level where my battlemaster fighter pretty well outshined the druid and the warlocks, due mainly to his +2 everything and pile of utility items.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 19:47
|
|
|
I have occasionally mused that it might work well to say e.g. "for every martial level you take, you can attune to .5 magic items; half casters get .25 and full casters get 0", or something along those lines (probably you'd start out being able to attune to 1 item). But this is of course heavily reliant on DMs handing out sufficient quantities of useful magic items.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 19:55
|
|
|
quote:Clash with the gods of Theros in this campaign sourcebook for the world’s great roleplaying game.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 21:37
|
|
|
Pretty lame they’re reprinting subclasses
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 22:27
|
|
|
Arrgytehpirate posted:Pretty lame they’re reprinting subclasses Those subclasses have never had an official printing. That's like complaining they put Artificer in the Eberron book.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 23:15
|
|
|
Pumped for satyrs and you should be too
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 23:30
|
|
|
Kaal posted:Basically those rules empower classes that run on long rests, use spells for healing, and don't worry about encumbrance. So the Wizard. Alternatively, lean into HARDCORE MODE feel and grab a warrior: the party could use a Paladin with Inspiring Leader or even better pick a Battlerager Barbarian and be the Dwarven Suicide Squad non-optimized liability that you know in your heart everyone deserves. This is more the sort of stuff I was after. Battle rager sounds thoroughly silly, though a paladin or wizard would certainly be more useful considering what the rules are. Some of this talk about blade singers the other day and then just roleplaying it as a rager could be good flavour. The dm is happy to workshop it with me, since I'm the most experienced player, before we actually start the game though so I'll sus out why he wants to do this and see what I can fix. Longer short rests aren't terrible if it's planned from the start, but hit dice long rest hp is very lame. Thanks for the advice so far.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 23:44
|
|
|
Official Satyr race is rad and I'm looking forward to it/hoping it isn't bad.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 23:48
|
|
|
Vahtooch posted:Longer short rests aren't terrible if it's planned from the start They are if the other, less experienced players don't understand what it means to have less access to short rests, and find themselves playing way less fun characters.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2020 23:57
|
|
|
FrozenPhoenix71 posted:Official Satyr race is rad and I'm looking forward to it/hoping it isn't bad. It’s the only thing I care about in there so I might wait for the reprint in the inevitable Feywild book. Or perhaps buy it piecemeal on D&D Beyond.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2020 00:06
|
|
|
disaster pastor posted:They are if the other, less experienced players don't understand what it means to have less access to short rests, and find themselves playing way less fun characters. Why do so many dm's feel the need to crap on rests? I don't get why it seems to be a thing. Let folks spam their cool poo poo. There's a reason Deadfire moved away from "Rests" to just a per-encounter system.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2020 00:08
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Why do so many dm's feel the need to crap on rests? I don't get why it seems to be a thing. Let folks spam their cool poo poo. There's a reason Deadfire moved away from "Rests" to just a per-encounter system. Per encounter is probably the best way to actually balance things game-wise. Just as first person shooters transitioned to recharging health and limited equipment management, so to will RPGs and other games. It's just that there's a real simulationist heritage in D&D that is largely more fun to theorize about than to actually play. The idea that you need to manage supplies and resources and do logistical stuff scratches a certain itch - often the same sort of itch that causes people to be DMs in the first place. When I was a kid, all of my D&D was free-form imagining based on wandering in the woods and talking to different creatures. There was hardly any actual combat, and I'm sure it would drive me up the wall now. But it was all very much oriented around the idea of simulationist survival - something that just can't happen when resource shortages don't really exist.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2020 00:19
|
|
|
Kaal posted:Per encounter is probably the best way to actually balance things game-wise. Just as first person shooters transitioned to recharging health and limited equipment management, so to will RPGs and other games. It's just that there's a real simulationist heritage in D&D that is largely more fun to theorize about than to actually play. The idea that you need to manage supplies and resources and do logistical stuff scratches a certain itch - often the same sort of itch that causes people to be DMs in the first place. When I was a kid, all of my D&D was free-form imagining based on wandering in the woods and talking to different creatures. There was hardly any actual combat, and I'm sure it would drive me up the wall now. But it was all very much oriented around the idea of simulationist survival - something that just can't happen when resource shortages don't really exist. To add to this: There are basically three roads (aside from rear end in a top hat which is kind of - let's give DMs the benefit of the doubt here) to the 'rests are stupid' mindset. The simulationist model holds that if a resource is limited, why is it limited to several hours rather than per day? This kind of model is basically built around tummyfeels and what 'makes sense' i.e., if you can only hit someone extra hard with your sword once in a while, it 'makes sense' for it to be after a long night's sleep than after a five minute breather. Both short and long rest abilities are silly game kludges that are obviously divorced from reality but whatever nerds gonna nerd. The next are challenge DMs who are obsessed with providing 'challenging' gameplay and I know their heart is in the right place but they seem to be under the impression that an encounter is 'challenging' when you either have to choose between doing something cool or not, or being unable to do something cool in the first place. This is because 5e is developed around the opposite theory as a videogame is; when the chips are down you probably have less to do, not more. Then you have your hardcore story DMs who just hate the degree to which players poo poo all over their story and the only way to ensure that doesn't happen is to rob players of cool things. These generally tend to hit martials more than casters because for many kinds of DMs, martials more transparently engage with the combat mechanics and can and do often destroy encounters by engaging with the mechanics - by dealing massive HP damage or locking down monsters or doing other things that upset the DM's vision of how an encounter is supposed to go. On the other hand casters tend to poo poo on encounters by not engaging with the mechanics and creating an alternate story altogether. For some reason the former tends to strike DMs as 'imbalanced' or 'disruptive' in a way the latter is not.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2020 00:27
|
|
|
FrozenPhoenix71 posted:Official Satyr race is rad and I'm looking forward to it/hoping it isn't bad. It's going to be +2 in one stat, +1 in another stat, proficiency in dancing, and advantage on checks involving alcohol. No I'm not salty about Loxodons
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2020 00:39
|
|
|
I think it also "helps" that magic has no basis in RL for comparison. You can make any rules from magic you want, from full-on Vancian systems to "roll 1d20 and say a rhyme", and everyone'll generally shrug and figure that's just how magic works. Add in a physical human body, however, and a DM has reason to suddenly go "wait that doesn't work like that." Its an understandable impulse. We wouldn't have half the great Murphies in that thread if we didn't have a real life view to compare their absurdity to. But it also means that, when it comes to game balance, its really hard to reconcile "quasi-realistic human body" with "literal reality bending."
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2020 00:45
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Why do so many dm's feel the need to crap on rests? I don't get why it seems to be a thing. Let folks spam their cool poo poo. There's a reason Deadfire moved away from "Rests" to just a per-encounter system. DnD had a pretty good per encounter system with 4e. Everyone*, including martials, had powers they could use: At-will, like the cantrips spellcasters get in 5e Abilities they could use once per encounter And abilities that could be used once per day. Buuuut, for some reason people shat all over 4e because Vancian casting and lovely martials after 5-8th level is baked into many peoples opinion on what DnD should be. 5e has plenty of merits, but moving away from the power structure of 4e is definitely a negative. Oh and if you think caster supremacy is bad in this edition, just play a game of 3.5 with experienced players. I have played a thrallherd Psion with a druid and a cleric as my thralls. Imagine being 3 characters all of which are more powerful than a 5e wizard, and that wasnt even the most powerful build you could be by a longshot whereas a fighter/ barbarian could just attack things with decreasing accuracy a few times. *not including psionic classes and essentials classes, which had their own weird systems. Madmarker fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Mar 3, 2020 |
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2020 00:47
|
|
|
please knock Mom! posted:It's going to be +2 in one stat, +1 in another stat, proficiency in dancing, and advantage on checks involving alcohol. No I'm not salty about Loxodons Loxodons are fine. What gives?
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2020 00:55
|
|
|
Do any martial classes get anything of substance after like... level 12? It always strikes me as odd how frontloaded a lot of classes are.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2020 01:00
|
|
|
Toshimo posted:Loxodons are fine. What gives? I think they wussed out on making them Large. Excellent opportunity to create the first Large race with all the balancing difficulties it entails, but they just created an 8ft tall, 400lbs heavy Medium creature instead.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2020 01:02
|
|
|
When I see things like altered rest mechanics, they tend to come along with other things like limited magic items, lower levels, and such. It tends to come from the idea of the PCs being less powerful than the (not quite accurate) traditional idea of high fantasy, like characters having artifacts while teleporting across the continent. To hop on what others have said: changing rests is a simple (though foundational) change. 1 hour becomes 4 hours. Done. You can long rest once a week, bam, done. No weapons over +2 or whatever. Everyone is hit equally, but the consequences are lopsided. But, for a low magic setting (as an example), it's a bit more complicated to pin down, say, slower spellcasting progression. Going "wizards gain half of their spell progression" feels like you're targeting one class, which makes you feel like you need to go further into design. Do paladins get half spell progression? Do wizards get extra stuff to make up for it? If they get more skills, does that trip over rogues? Should rogues get more stuff then? And so on. Admittedly, 5e could just go "only half your levels can be full spellcaster", but that kind of change FEELS more complicated, fiddly and targeted than "can't short rest often". Anyway. "Change rest hours" is simple and feels fair, even if it isn't.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2020 01:03
|
|
|
Mendrian posted:Do any martial classes get anything of substance after like... level 12? It always strikes me as odd how frontloaded a lot of classes are. In theory, that's because 99% of games never make it past level 10. But, yeah, there are plenty of rad things after 12. Cavalier and Thief come to mind.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2020 01:04
|
|
|
Gharbad the Weak posted:When I see things like altered rest mechanics, they tend to come along with other things like limited magic items, lower levels, and such. It tends to come from the idea of the PCs being less powerful than the (not quite accurate) traditional idea of high fantasy, like characters having artifacts while teleporting across the continent. I mean if I was serious about a 'low magic' setting I would: *Remove Sorcerers as a playable class. *Possibly remove Cleric and Druid as playable classes. *Make Wizards rare. Treat spell drops as comparable to +1 magic weapons for everybody else. Burden them with other restrictions too, probably, like needing to learn new spells and not getting any free spells from leveling. Of course 'low magic' tends to just mean 'some magic, but only for one or two PCs.' A setting where only Ranger, Rogue, Fighter, and maybe Paladin were playable would be... interesting, at least.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2020 01:08
|
|
|
Mendrian posted:Do any martial classes get anything of substance after like... level 12? It always strikes me as odd how frontloaded a lot of classes are. Low level play is more supported because most games are low level. Most games are low level because that's what's supported. Edit: your low magic ideas are good, and already require way more thought and feel way more targeted (and so "unfair") than "change rests and fewer magic items". Gharbad the Weak fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Mar 3, 2020 |
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2020 01:21
|
|
|
Madmarker posted:DnD had a pretty good per encounter system with 4e. Everyone*, including martials, had powers they could use: I remember that my 3.5-playing friends back around 2008 or so had a campaign where only "Tier 3" classes (I believe) were allowed. Everyone loved it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2020 01:40
|
|
|
Are there any good tools for doing D&D combat in three dimensions? My aarakocra kensei monk is starting to cause math to happen at the table and that's somewhat frowned upon. We're using a dry-erase grid, usually in 5' block increments.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2020 01:41
|
|
|
If you're looking to play a gritty, low-magic campaign then you're probably not looking to play Dungeons and Dragons at all and are better suited to playing something that's meant to be gritty and low-magic (coughWFRPcough) rather than radically changing resting rules and forbidding half the classes
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2020 01:47
|
|
|
Like, D&D in every edition other than 4e starts as medieval survival horror, then it transitions into medieval heroic fantasy, then it transitions into medieval superheroes. If you don't want a game that does that and stays tonally consistent as players progress and accumulate power, you don't want Dungeons and Dragons.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2020 02:03
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 21:53 |
|
|
JustJeff88 posted:I remember that my 3.5-playing friends back around 2008 or so had a campaign where only "Tier 3" classes (I believe) were allowed. Everyone loved it. That is absolutely the way to go. Though, I like 3.5 when it comes to this, because it's a really clear case where the best things to ban to maintain balance are the PHB classes. Along the same lines, I hear pathfinder does pretty well if you limit yourself to the magic classes that go up to 6th level. Gharbad the Weak fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Mar 3, 2020 |
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2020 02:10
|
|