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SilverMike posted:If they want War Caster AoOs to work that way, maybe they should write the book in a way that supports their intent instead of, you know, not. https://company.wizards.com/content/contact-us
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Mar 21, 2020 20:56
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also like it makes sense, as it's not like using a whip makes your personal influence range any larger, It just means you can attack from further away. It should definitely be written better(5e.txt) but when you cast a spell the spell is still(unless it says otherwise, like with Booming Blade) coming from you and not the weapon. The bugbear thing is more bullshit imo. They should just always have 10ft reach.
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Mar 21, 2020 21:02
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Working on making the jump to DnD 5th. Planning on combining Guide to Ravnica with the Faerun setting. It sounds like Waterdeep is a good choice for a Ravnica Embassy/Outpost but I am not clear if Waterdeep has a separate sourcebook/writeup for 5th or if the Dragon's Heist book has everything you need. Or does 5th just not do location sourcebooks?
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Mar 21, 2020 21:03
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Pakxos posted:Working on making the jump to DnD 5th. Planning on combining Guide to Ravnica with the Faerun setting. It sounds like Waterdeep is a good choice for a Ravnica Embassy/Outpost but I am not clear if Waterdeep has a separate sourcebook/writeup for 5th or if the Dragon's Heist book has everything you need. Or does 5th just not do location sourcebooks? There is no specific location source book. I think the Waterdeep info chapter of WD:DH has some general info about it, but nothing specific. As well as the book in general having information you get given throughout the story about some specific areas.
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Mar 21, 2020 21:17
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Dexo posted:It should definitely be written better(5e.txt) Also, yes. The bugbear thing is extremely bullshit. Like, why bother to make that specification? What does it break?
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Mar 21, 2020 21:23
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Hmmm. OK, any setting sourcebooks for 5th (or any edition really I guess) recommended? Players want to be Guildmembers and I need a reason for them not to immediately be at each throats. I figured having them assigned to rep Ravnica in a foreign city is good incentive, but I need a quality write up to take some of the pressure off of running DnD for the first time.
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Mar 21, 2020 22:51
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I guess I don’t see the appeal of mashing up Ravnica with FR. Just run in the ravnica setting as established? Is there a reason you want to port guilds into Waterdeep? If it’s because you want more existing lore, just use the setting books from earlier editions.
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Mar 21, 2020 22:55
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The 5e Facebook group has such great examples of how not to DM: The maze engine fight in OotA is pretty cool but he wants to do this instead.
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Mar 21, 2020 22:59
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Kaysette posted:The 5e Facebook group has such great examples of how not to DM: So if I'm reading this right, they have to solve the maze out of character, and every 5 minutes it takes (of real world time), there's a fight? This sucks rear end
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Mar 21, 2020 23:01
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change my name posted:This sucks rear end
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Mar 21, 2020 23:03
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The facebook DMing groups are constant sources of horror to me. Here, lemme just pop one open... "How do I make my players lose?" "Name things for me!" "Come up with my plot for me!" "Come up with my NPC motivations for me!" "Come up with encounters for me!" "How do I undo my players' accomplishments?" "Check out this rule about making long rests take a week for extra grit!" "Create my setting for me!" "Come up with plot hooks for me!" "Come up with NPCs for me!" "How do I make my players take fewer rests?" Tons of roll20 questions, unusually but unsurprisingly. Oh, there's a weird racist joke buried in the comments. I'm sure there's more than one, but I'm skipping them on purpose. Oh, there's the ever popular "Should I nerf this non-RAW thing I gave to my players?" That's about five minutes of scrolling, and that's more than enough.
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Mar 21, 2020 23:12
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Kaysette posted:I guess I don’t see the appeal of mashing up Ravnica with FR. Just run in the ravnica setting as established? Is there a reason you want to port guilds into Waterdeep? If it’s because you want more existing lore, just use the setting books from earlier editions. We did dragon heist with ravnica guilds, just mashed it straight up, and it was a blast. Ravnica is a lot more interesting than the bland fantasy of waterdeep imo.
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Mar 21, 2020 23:25
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Kaysette posted:I guess I don’t see the appeal of mashing up Ravnica with FR. Just run in the ravnica setting as established? Is there a reason you want to port guilds into Waterdeep? If it’s because you want more existing lore, just use the setting books from earlier editions. Just trying something different than my last campaign. I ran a group through Black Crusade, the Warhammer 40k rpg, where the PCs need to choose gods to follow and found people having people playing differing factions that have in-canon reasons to oppose each other was more headache than I wanted. It was the first game I DM'd, so some of that was inexperience, but with the next player group I decided DnD. Naturally we have enough MtG fans that someone brought up Ravnica and they all want to play as different guilds. Which I am not opposed to, but I wanted to promote PC cohesion instead of resorting to magical compulsion, which is the only reason my Black Crusade campaign lasted more than two sessions. I was thinking that if I changed the setting, at least at the start, it would basically require the group to work together since they can't go running back to the guild for support and then, once they've in-character formed bonds, have them go back to Ravnica. sebmojo posted:We did dragon heist with ravnica guilds, just mashed it straight up, and it was a blast. Ravnica is a lot more interesting than the bland fantasy of waterdeep imo. You are correct, but I am new at this. Bland is kinda what I want. I went too big on my previous effort so this should allow me to focus more on running a good play session instead of think about how to move the players to the next story point.
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Mar 21, 2020 23:52
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sebmojo posted:We did dragon heist with ravnica guilds, just mashed it straight up, and it was a blast. Ravnica is a lot more interesting than the bland fantasy of waterdeep imo. Yeah so just... do a heist in ravnica? Skip all the FR stuff entirely if you don’t want the high fantasy archetypical D&D stuff.
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Mar 22, 2020 00:36
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I am using this social isolation period to hone my craft and homebrew world. For now I want tokens for all my monsters, cards for all sorts of equipment and items. Spell cards etc. I hope initiative tracker apps are good. Anything to basically prevent having to look up my book. Maybe I will print out pages from my monster manual and cut them out as cards to have on the side. Any advice for efficency to make combat fast and fun would be nice. That is usually the part that can suck up a lot of time.
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Mar 22, 2020 05:37
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The whole pandemic thing has kicked up interest in running a game for 3 friends. They have no RPG exerpience outside of Skyrim and final fantasy when they were kids. I have recently-ish played Only War and Dark Heresey and played Hero Quest and DnD as a kid. I have never DM'd but I am literally the only one who has every played a tabletop RPG. I'm looking for a good one-shot that is friendly to new DMs and new players. I was going to run Curse of Stradh because one of them is a girl who likes vampires and I think the gothic setting would be pretty cool. I also really enjoyed it when I played it years ago but I'm worried it may be too much for literal first time players. I need something compelling enough to keep them interested without being too complicated that we aren't lawyering the whole time. In the threads opinion what are some good one shots or intro campaigns for new players?
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Mar 22, 2020 14:57
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Waroduce posted:The whole pandemic thing has kicked up interest in running a game for 3 friends. They have no RPG exerpience outside of Skyrim and final fantasy when they were kids. I have recently-ish played Only War and Dark Heresey and played Hero Quest and DnD as a kid. I have never DM'd but I am literally the only one who has every played a tabletop RPG. Death House is set in Barovia and works really well. It’s fun for both the DM and the players. I would move it to a country farmhouse on the way into the first town, though. Have the howling wolves and mist coax them onto the grounds and then use the children to convince them to go inside. Lost Mines is also pretty good, though the first combat can straight up kill the party if you don’t use the average roll/disable crits for the goblins/give the players 15-20 extra HP (choose 1-2 of those). I haven’t played the new Starter Set adventure but I hear it’s better than Lost Mines.
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Mar 22, 2020 15:12
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Kaysette posted:The 5e Facebook group has such great examples of how not to DM: "I have a greataxe" Maze solved.
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Mar 22, 2020 15:57
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change my name posted:So if I'm reading this right, they have to solve the maze out of character, and every 5 minutes it takes (of real world time), there's a fight? This sucks rear end In addition, if I am interpreting it correctly, he is potentially giving them a maze that's unsolvable?
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Mar 22, 2020 16:07
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Kaysette posted:Yeah so just... do a heist in ravnica? Skip all the FR stuff entirely if you don’t want the high fantasy archetypical D&D stuff. Have the heist being done at the behest of Jace himself. The characters operating under the direction of the living guild pact should supersede any petty rivalries between the guilds. Or have their guild masters cooperating against a guild or two that isn’t represented by a player.character. If you want to share what guile’s your players are part of, I could help suggest some hooks.
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Mar 22, 2020 16:20
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I've reserved moaning about little 5e design flaws, and whilst I am not experienced with game design a whole, there are so many little things in this system which just seem needlessly fun deflating or baffling in design to me. Why does Shield Master have to resolve its entire attack action before being able to push? Why did Martial Adept get errata'd so that its superiority dice don't scale with the rest a Battle Fighter gets? Why does Crossbow Expert not actually allow you to use a crossbow with a weapon in another hand, beyond pogoing said weapon against the floor so you can reload said xbow? Why is the interaction between Somatic Components, Arcane Foci and having a weapon sword+board so needlessly complicated? What also doesn't help is that the encounter/class balance is this horrible trainwreck in of itself. The 6-8 encounter DMG suggestion is naturally meant to be a maximum and not constantly applied, but in a post CR world it's really clunky and potentially quite limiting. I appreciate that 5e was made first and was also designed to be a Dungeoncrawler but it forces more narrative based games to either live with the floors present in small encounters (Long Rest classes reign supreme), hitch up the difficulty of fewer fights (Begets either a TPK from bad dice rolls or DM fudging), or take rules like Gritty Realism (Short Rest 8 hrs, Long Rest 7 days) which lurch too far to the other end and make the time you want to do a Dungeoncrawl completely awkward and potentially enviable unless it's short. Speaking of class balance, it feels that people miss the point of its issues. I know this subforums outlook and preferences so this is preaching to a choir but in other places the amount of times you see suggestions to 'Martial is boring' which boil down to "Just do creative description/Non Standard action," is maddening. Unless the DM makes allowances for it, it has no bearing on the outcome of the dice roll or attempts something disallowed by the structure of actions; the disappointment sinking in either way. People act like that fighters have no martials on their abilities or that casters need to have their resources spent, and whilst that is true in a clinical combat balance situation, it ignores a lot of the context as to why they're seen as limiting. Skills aren't unique to to martials and even if spells are finite, Cantrips certainly aren't, and the amount of creative little things you can do with just Prestidigitation and Minor Illusion dwarf whatever some fighter could still be doing after spell slots would have otherwise been drained. People often say that martials have been their most creative characters and I wonder if that's because you have to lest you completely have your mind numbed by boredom. To be honest the worst offenders to this are always the racial features. Kenku particularly are literally presented as having no creativity on top of their forced mimicry. Beyond the horrible problems of a sentient being being unable to think of anything original, you now have tons of people asking if they can learn spells or other skills. It's 99% the case that they can but who in their right mind thought that making a species literally incapable of basic mental functions was a fun idea? It's bad enough that they made previous PC monster race (Gnolls) magically evil in the midst of declawing the worst excesses of alignment, or that they have monsters with negatives in stats, or initially felt the idea of a beast race was just "Add y body attack', but I've never seen a race get so hosed like Kenku did. I know it's a case of 'They're bad designers' or 'Just change it' but that feels like an absolute copout. I know this is basically 'Baby's first 5e flaw rant' but I just wanted to unload on this system I've dealt with for several years. For anyone whom is actually looking to play this system with a newfound or recently moved group, please don't let me put you off.
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Mar 22, 2020 17:06
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Open Marriage Night posted:Have the heist being done at the behest of Jace himself. The characters operating under the direction of the living guild pact should supersede any petty rivalries between the guilds. Or have their guild masters cooperating against a guild or two that isn’t represented by a player.character. If you want to share what guile’s your players are part of, I could help suggest some hooks. These are good suggestions and I might try the guildmaster alliance one. I've got someone who is pretty settled on Gruul and someone else deciding between Boros and Azorius. And we have a Simic and the last one is still making up their mind. My issue is that Ravnica as a setting emphasis the idea of a city divided so much I think the players will wind up taking that to heart. So my thinking was move those characters outside Ravnica, working to represent Ravnica as a whole, and, if the group lasts, drop them back into Ravnica and see what kind of affect that has on them. And yeah, any suggestions, please throw them up.
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Mar 22, 2020 17:51
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Pakxos posted:These are good suggestions and I might try the guildmaster alliance one. I've got someone who is pretty settled on Gruul and someone else deciding between Boros and Azorius. And we have a Simic and the last one is still making up their mind. My issue is that Ravnica as a setting emphasis the idea of a city divided so much I think the players will wind up taking that to heart. So my thinking was move those characters outside Ravnica, working to represent Ravnica as a whole, and, if the group lasts, drop them back into Ravnica and see what kind of affect that has on them. And yeah, any suggestions, please throw them up. The Gruul is the only one that you'd have to come up with a good reason to work with the others. Azorius, Boros, and Simic are all generally on decent terms. Could do something relating to the Orzorv, Golgari or Rakdos. Dexo fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Mar 22, 2020 |
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Mar 22, 2020 18:13
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Me and some friends have decided that the whole working from home (or some not working at all) makes for an excellent opportunity to run a campaign again, only we'll have to do it digitally for the next couple of weeks of course. Is roll20 the best way to go about this, or is there a better option? If so, should we get a subscription? Or just the DM? I have to DM and since we want to start playing next thursday I want to start prepping the first session, so I'm going through the tutorial now. It seems decent enough, and I don't need it to be super pretty or anything (especially at first) but if there's better options out there I'd rather find out now before I put too much time into learning roll20.
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Mar 22, 2020 19:17
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Pakxos posted:These are good suggestions and I might try the guildmaster alliance one. I've got someone who is pretty settled on Gruul and someone else deciding between Boros and Azorius. And we have a Simic and the last one is still making up their mind. My issue is that Ravnica as a setting emphasis the idea of a city divided so much I think the players will wind up taking that to heart. So my thinking was move those characters outside Ravnica, working to represent Ravnica as a whole, and, if the group lasts, drop them back into Ravnica and see what kind of affect that has on them. And yeah, any suggestions, please throw them up. Gruul: Brought on as a body guard, or as a guide through the more feral parts of the city. Simic: Brought on (or asked to join) in order to collect data, or samples, or to recruit for the Guardian Project. Boros and Azorius could easily be set up as a good cop/bad cop. Azorius and Simic could easily be set up as a Mulder/Scully relationship. Perhaps the Boros is an arbiter between Azorius and Simic, who might both be looking for the same territory, or have conflicting policies/procedures for how it should be used.
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Mar 22, 2020 19:30
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Taeke posted:Me and some friends have decided that the whole working from home (or some not working at all) makes for an excellent opportunity to run a campaign again, only we'll have to do it digitally for the next couple of weeks of course. Personally, and dependent on how many folks you have, what the situation is as regards everyones internet etc. I'd just do a video link over face book and run it as if you are in the same room. Have the rolls be done on roll20 if you want to do it that way too.
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Mar 22, 2020 20:42
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My group switched last week to online for obvious reasons and we were able to adjust to it pretty well, though it helped that our DM had experience with it since it requires more effort from them. Free version seemed fine to me.
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Mar 22, 2020 21:00
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We're going to use it as a battle mat, mostly. All the extras like keeping track of characters and stuff aren't really necessary, since we can do that using good old pen and paper. So far it seems pretty good, moving tokens around and being able to attach status effect icons to them and stuff seems handy. Look like most of the time will be put into preparing some acceptably crummy-looking maps and deciding which tokens to put into my library for easy access, aside from all the prep work outside of roll20 of course. There's 6 of us, if that makes any difference. (Party of 5 + 1 dm)
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Mar 22, 2020 21:18
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change my name posted:Everyone should post the character art they commissioned while stuck inside and moving over to digital Not commissioned, but I've been making movie posters of our party for each story arc, which has been roughly every 4 levels:  
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Mar 23, 2020 00:32
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Aww, now I wanna know what happened to the kitty and potion guy.
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Mar 23, 2020 00:53
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PeterWeller posted:Aww, now I wanna know what happened to the kitty and potion guy. The tabaxi sorcerer was played by my wife, she had to drop out of the campaign for irl reasons. The potion guy on the other hand... he was a criminal redemption paladin who never quite managed his redemption. The motherfucker decided to betray the party and join the BBEG by killing his own god in a big ol twist of fates, and now he's a DM PC that we're actively working against. The player replaced him with the dragonborn rune knight, who was killed in our latest session after having his max HP reduced to zero, which meant we couldn't revive him, which in turn led to the bard who failed to revive him leaving the party. So now we've got almost an entirely new cast!
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Mar 23, 2020 01:06
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Now that this thread has me thinking about the Ravnica stuff again I still wonder about some of the guilds. Someone said Gruul were the only ones you'd have to come up with a good excuse for them to cooperate with the party (being that they're pretty hostile to the rest of the guilds) but I also wonder about Rakdos. I mean they're still part of the social order and all but... c'mon it's a guild of murder clowns. Although I could see a job where Rakdos decides to send a representative for this cross-guild alliance and no one wants to refuse because they figure bringing them along is better than risking them having a carnival instead.
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Mar 23, 2020 01:39
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Glagha posted:Now that this thread has me thinking about the Ravnica stuff again I still wonder about some of the guilds. Someone said Gruul were the only ones you'd have to come up with a good excuse for them to cooperate with the party (being that they're pretty hostile to the rest of the guilds) but I also wonder about Rakdos. I mean they're still part of the social order and all but... c'mon it's a guild of murder clowns. Although I could see a job where Rakdos decides to send a representative for this cross-guild alliance and no one wants to refuse because they figure bringing them along is better than risking them having a carnival instead. Blood Bards. They could be seeking out current events/info/gossip/rumors. Maybe just as inspiration, maybe for satire, maybe for dissemination. Could be they are joining to cope out new potential performance locations, acts, or performing talent. Maybe they heard others were edging in on their territory or role and want to quash it. Maybe they are using it for advertisement. Maybe they are involved for personal reasons ("e.g., "Begng from Rakdos doesn't matter, that was my brother who was killed!"). Maybe a higher up Rakdos is loaning out a lower-ranked member to accrue favors. Maybe the group thought they needed a 'party face' who was more personable than the hard-edged Boros or bland Azorius.
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Mar 23, 2020 01:49
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SkySteak posted:I've reserved moaning about little 5e design flaws, and whilst... Is it, though? I was fairly certain that's the expected daily encounter (not combat) for every day. I mean, it's dumb, but it does put value on Swinging A Sword All Day.
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Mar 23, 2020 04:23
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change my name posted:Everyone should post the character art they commissioned while stuck inside and moving over to digital  Bosco Choodles, lizardfolk artificer (archivist) Retired chief of Waterdeep's sewer maintenance, currently in Chult trying to reconnect with his parent's homeland.
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Mar 23, 2020 04:56
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Jonas Albrecht posted:
Ah, another Sanitation Inspector! Always nice to meet a colleague! (that's awesome art btw)
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Mar 23, 2020 05:01
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Glagha posted:Now that this thread has me thinking about the Ravnica stuff again I still wonder about some of the guilds. Someone said Gruul were the only ones you'd have to come up with a good excuse for them to cooperate with the party (being that they're pretty hostile to the rest of the guilds) but I also wonder about Rakdos. I mean they're still part of the social order and all but... c'mon it's a guild of murder clowns. Although I could see a job where Rakdos decides to send a representative for this cross-guild alliance and no one wants to refuse because they figure bringing them along is better than risking them having a carnival instead. Mana color identity isn't communicated in the D&D book but Black as a color in MTG is still a color concerned with order and control. As red/black, Rakdos as a guild is about controlled chaos, they're not jugglos. You'll still have some reckless folks being dipshits all the time but as a gestalt they are concerned with bread and circuses. You throw a party or put on a show as a release valve for pent up aggression, emotion, and energy, and you buy a much longer period of complacency and submission to authority. For the actual performers you don't give it away for free all the time, to any passerby, you want an audience, a critical mass to make maximum impact with your performance or carnage. Think of Rakdos in this ebb and flow between chaos of performers and rabble to the order of bookers and organizers who coordinate events and deal with interguild business.
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Mar 23, 2020 05:07
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Bogan Krkic posted:Ah, another Sanitation Inspector! Always nice to meet a colleague! This is the artist. https://twitter.com/darkstar_child/status/1215275155737452545?s=19
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Mar 23, 2020 14:35
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Gharbad the Weak posted:Is it, though? I was fairly certain that's the expected daily encounter (not combat) for every day. I mean, it's dumb, but it does put value on Swinging A Sword All Day. From what I understand, the idea of every encounter is that it must expend resources in some way; combat and traps being the often mentioned ones. This leans into the idea of allowing short rest classes to shine, long rest classes to have to think on resources, and to up tension through scarcity. The 'adventuring day' itself is merely a time between two long rests as opposed to actual days, and iirc the DMG uses the terminology that a party can 'handle' 6-8 on one of those adventuring days. Now a lot of people also mix in easier days because it allows for both casual narrative stuff to happen, whilst also allowing the players to feel powerful. In that horrible rant my point on that wasn't so much that swinging a sword all day has no mechanical value, more that it misses the actual problem with martials (though mostly Fighters) wherein they don't really have much they can do in terms of narrative effect on the world (without magic). Skills are good but not unique, most combat abilities are useful but only are applicable to combat etc. It's not a cut and dry case and I think Monks and Rogues get the best of it, but when you look at what can be done beyond merely combat encounters, I feel martials fall short.
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Mar 23, 2020 14:37
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I recently joined an online group that organizes one-shot adventures for D&D 5e on Discord. I wanted to do that for a few months now and discovered all the glory that D&D Beyond, Roll20 et al. are. I'm playing a Dwarf Cleric of the War Domain. What would be the ultimate guide to play that? I know I must boost Wisdom and Constitution and Strength (in that order of priority) and I'm pretty happy with my stat allocation. I'm more looking at a play guide, like what are the most useful spells (on average - I realize specific campaigns or adventures will require specific spells). I'm just looking at general advice on what usually works best. There are so many guides like this on YouTube and I have no idea which ones are good and which ones aren't.
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Mar 23, 2020 16:01
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