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neonchameleon posted:
Objection! These were actually both in. (And if you say they weren't, the Slayer didn't count as one either, because it got encounter powers) For both the fighter and the wizard you could take generic "just deals XdY damage, maybe with miss: half or reliable" attacks at, as far as I can recall, every single new encounter power/new daily power level. You did have to decide whether you wanted to hit the enemy with your full strength or whether you wanted to hold back on a given turn, but that's not actually a decision anyone gets to opt out of, even in earlier editions of D&D once you got limited-use magic items or similar. Trojan Kaiju posted:Based on this, would the 4E DMG be worth a read for someone who is probably never going to run 4E? Both 4E DMGs were great and contained a lot of system-agnostic game advice. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Jul 25, 2020 |
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Jul 25, 2020 17:04
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I'm running Saltmarsh right now (mostly as a backdrop, they're going into the first adventure next session as level 5 characters) and I feel like the adventures aren't really appropriate for level 10+ characters. You can upgrade the encounters as you wish, but you're still dealing with a story about smugglers and stuff that, especially the first couple of adventures, aren't all that enticing to such high level characters. It's pretty hard to justify why the bad guys at that level would be doing what they're doing, you know? So you'd have to adapt a lot to make it work. Still a cool backdrop with fun characters and an enjoyable story, but it's definitely designed for level 1 characters that would be level 10ish (I think) at the end. For level 10 characters you could use drop them in the middle of the story, skip the first few adventures (maybe things went bad so now the have to save the town) and instead of a full campaign treat it as a fun story for a smaller number of sessions. Curse of Strahd, due to the supernatural nature of the story, seems to be much easier to adapt for higher level characters. Like, a ghost in an adventure designed for levels 1 to 3 could easily be much stronger, you don't really have to justify anything. A bunch of smugglers strong enough to pose a challenge to level 10 characters wouldn't be smugglers in a backwater town, they'd be feared pirates scourging the seas.
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Jul 25, 2020 17:09
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Taeke posted:Curse of Strahd, due to the supernatural nature of the story, seems to be much easier to adapt for higher level characters. Like, a ghost in an adventure designed for levels 1 to 3 could easily be much stronger, you don't really have to justify anything. A bunch of smugglers strong enough to pose a challenge to level 10 characters wouldn't be smugglers in a backwater town, they'd be feared pirates scourging the seas. you would think so, but from experience i find that it works the worst. high level dnd is a game where you have a plethora of tools at your disposal to solve problems, and the challenge comes from choosing the correct one. a horror game is one where you have a limited number of options. at high level dnd, there is a very different response to seeing a vampire -- fight or flight becomes quite literally just fight. while humour and horror go together exquisitely, power and horror do not. granted, i love DUSK(and everyone should play it, one of my favourite horror inspired shooters of all time) but once you get a bunch of weapons the horror fades away and it just becomes a badass action game where you run around really fast, shoot cool monsters, and metal music is playing in the background
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Jul 25, 2020 17:49
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mind the walrus posted:I have a general DM question that I'd trust to be answered here more than say... reddit or the DNDBeyond forums. I think you need to look at the story and mold it to your players' influence. If a group of nation-level adventurers (level 10-13 in FR would be about this) roll up to a new area and start clowning on the ongoing plots, the movers and shakers are going to take notice and re-orient around that. You may want to write your party into some of those campaigns "in progress". Maybe a lower-power NPC party has started following some of the hooks but are seriously in over their heads and gladly pass the buck to someone at a higher tier. Maybe the good guys want to bring in some pinch hitters for the final confrontations. An alternative might be to "speedrun" some of the buildup sections where your party just rolls over the challenges in 1-2 sessions, and in doing so completely shift the response so the bad guys pull out proactive higher-level people to counter your influence. Here's some examples: Ghosts of Saltmarsh - the entirety of the first part of this adventure is just too low-to-the-ground for a 10-13 party. I would start at an upgraded The Final Enemy and maybe instead of a scouting mission that has influence on the battle after, your party is the vanguard of the forces in a more overt manner. If you want to play some of the earlier buildup you'd have to condense it a lot, but it just seems too low-down to play for the most part. Tammeraut's Fate and The Styles can probably be played straight with upgraded monster stats but if the party is starting to veer into 14th/15th level that will be harder to do. Actually, The Styles has a particular tone and idk if I recommend it as part of a very large campaign. Out of the Abyss - My opinion is the strong part of this campaign is the first half where you're escaping the Underdark, which I don't think I'd run for experienced adventurers. The second half (starting at Chapter 8 / level 8) would be more suited to your party and if interested you should read it over to see if you want to adapt it - I don't particularly like the narrative but it's the perfect kind of adventure a strong party could plausibly tackle without feeling like they're level 1 again. I'd probably speedrun the buildup/diplomacy part and get to stuff like the Maze Engine sooner rather than later. If you do run this, I found this guide to be particularly good on suggestions to smooth things over. Frankly of the 4 you've listed this is probably the easiest to adapt close to "as written". Waterdeep: Dragon Hest - Gonna be hard to run a 1-5 adventure for a 10-13 FR party. Maybe run this as a 2-of where you fight the dragon (I don't recall the statblock but maybe de-leveled?) and then the fight through a massively-uptuned beholder's lair. Rime of the Frostmaiden - it's another 1-12 so although we don't know much about it yet I'm willing to bet there's a bunch of low-level stuff that your party can't really do and you'd have to jump in at some point a little past halfway where the full stakes are obvious You didn't mention Curse of Strahd but like, if you only take the high-level stuff, up-leveled a bit, it's probably decently challenging. It definitely requires a different mentality to DM though and if your party is about dungeon crawling or location exploration I would say a lot of the book is iffy, and you'll want to focus on things like the Amber Temple, Berez, and Castle Ravenloft itself, just to name a few examples. If you do this I would warn your players that Strahd feels completely different if played normally from level 1 (or 3) and they shouldn't let your version color that experience. TheDemon fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Jul 25, 2020 |
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Jul 25, 2020 18:28
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Thanks for the 4e chat. For some reason I have the impression that to play 4e you really need some online tool that doesn’t exist anymore? And the rule books as originally published got so errata’d that they aren’t really useful to play with? What books should I be looking for if I wanted to play the ‘final’ version of 4e? (Or is there a 4e thread where I should take this?) 4e pretty much requires an electronic character builder. In 2008 Wizards of the Coast produced an offline character builder which did its job. In 2010 they replaced it with an online character builder in Microsoft Silverlight (we guess developers were cheap) and that you lost access to when you cancelled your D&D Insider subscription. This is the online tool that has recently been cancelled. However the old offline tool was opened up and kept up to date and does everything the online tool did and more than a few it never did. The main downside of the character builder is that there are far too many feats; 4e by the end of its run (and it's all in the 4e character builder) literally had more official feats published for it than 3.5 did and they are all in the character builder. Of course the character builder probably counts as Files. As for which books, the Monster Vault is, athough relatively short and heroic tier focused, IME far the best basic monster manual to exist in any edition of D&D. What it does that monster manuals in no other edition really do is presents multiple types of monster of different types and with it implicit organisation. Your basic kobold isn't the kobold slinger - it's the kobold tunneler who ... probably shouldn't be in combat and will be killed by any PC in one hit. Kobold slingers, quickblades, and dragonshields are all veteran types and all show what the kobolds focus on. For an example of casters, for example, the Goblin Hex Hurler uses nasty spiteful spells like blinding hex, stinging hex, and vexing cloud that are entirely different from those of the orc storm shaman's lightning strike and vengeful whirlwind. This both makes the races presented much more interesting, and having a mix of NPC types makes the combats inherently much more interesting with both more variety and more tactics on the table. That it's almost effortless to use because they put the heavy lifting of encounter balancing and how hard to make monsters onto the XP track rather than onto any CR rating makes it a joy to use. There are three other late 4e monster manuals that are probably better than anything any other edition has: Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale is a great sourcebook for a poorly explored post-apocalyptic either Mad Max or Keep on the Borderlands style setting, complete with both e.g. bandit organisations and local weirdness. The Dark Sun Creature Catalog is full of Dark Sun monsters, and the Monster Manual 3 is full of really interesting monsters that weren't important enough to go in the MM1 or MM2 (Monster Vault is a reboot of the MM1). The only downside is that the guidance is clear enough that a lot of 4e DMs, after learning good 4e monster design, use the Monster Manual 3 on a business card and create what they need on the fly. Because 4e characters (monster and PC alike) have a lot of forced movement, pushing each other around, it makes the backgrounds feel real and leaves large setpieces in other D&Ds feel as if they are acted against a green screen; if you have a fight on a bridge in 4e at the very least someone is going to be hanging on to the bridge by their fingertips. This means that a 4e DM can on the fly come up with a scenario that's more alive and interesting than the best setpieces in any other edition, which frequently end up looking as if the characters are fighting against a green screen. For other books, the players need a book to go with the character builder - I'd recommend Heroes of the Fallen Lands which contains almost fully errata'd rules and some classes (including the simple fighter that was missing from 4e at launch) - but in practice using the character builder. For DMs it's probably the Rules Compendium which isn't the most inspiring but has everything errata'd in one pocket sized volume. The harder part is published adventures; the other really big problem 4e had at launch is that Keep on the Shadowfell may just be the worst adventure ever written for any D&D. The opening couple of sessions are fine - but once you reach the keep itself it's 17 straight fights in more or less featureless rooms without much to do between them. 4e combat is slightly slow - but if you put it all in small almost featureless rooms it's going to be slow and boring.
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Jul 25, 2020 18:41
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Thanks for the 4e chat. For some reason I have the impression that to play 4e you really need some online tool that doesn’t exist anymore? And the rule books as originally published got so errata’d that they aren’t really useful to play with? What books should I be looking for if I wanted to play the ‘final’ version of 4e? (Or is there a 4e thread where I should take this?) I'm going to second what some other people said and say the Rules Compendium is the up to date rules, and the Monster Vault has updated, solid monster math for a lot of iconic D&D monsters. Otherwise yeah go find that offline character builder (which will by default list EVERYTHING, including like, content posted in Dragon Magazine and poo poo which might be a little much) but honestly, you can really get by with the PHB(and/or PHB2/3) classes and races just fine. Creating characters on paper is 100% possible but it's kind of a pain because essentially every character has an extensive spell list and several feats over their career. I'd just use the updated monster math to streamline combat. The "Heroes of the X" books are part of the Mearlsization of the game and there's good stuff in them but like, I'm strongly against the simple fighter. Also don't use skill challenges they don't make sense and are mathematically stupid, go look up someone who thought of better group skill checks. Edit: Also unrelated TotM chat, I'm going to say again that D&D has never supported TotM. You can do it but you can do whatever you want because anyone can just ignore the rules and do whatever they want. If they wanted you to use TotM they wouldn't always put examples of grid combat in the game and measure ranges on things in precise increments of 5 feet. 4e is just the first one that stopped pretending the alternative was actually an option. Edit2: It's like complaining that a new printing of Monopoly doesn't support putting money on free parking. It's never been a rule, and it's not a valid criticism to say a game doesn't support your weird house rule especially when it actively makes the game worse. Glagha fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Jul 25, 2020 |
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Jul 25, 2020 19:06
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There is actually one edition of D&D ever that has been built for and to support theatre of the mind combat: AD&D 2e, which was actually the most story-focused the game has ever really been. It's notable for NOT having examples of grid combat. Seconding the general advice about playing 4e. Note that there are physical errata documents for stuff like the 1e PHB, it's that they're freaking huge. And sometimes updates for stuff to make it work with Essentials are in separate Dragon magazine articles. But 4e is a great edition and very much worth playing if you can find the right pieces.
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Jul 25, 2020 19:30
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Azza Bamboo posted:I wasn't a huge fan of 4e. I still had a lot of fun but I felt like the combat may as well have been from a video game with how regimented everything was. Also I got in pretty early on 4e and the games we played, combat went on for hours becase (as others have mentioned) things were just big sacks of HP and often given ways to heal. As always, there's nothing in 5e that you can't just also do in 4e. Wanna "pull someone's trousers down?" First of all, don't. That's impossibly lame. But fine, tell your DM, check page 42 of the DMG, or roll a skill check. The belief that you can't just make poo poo up in that edition is born of the aforementioned Pathfinder fight.
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Jul 25, 2020 19:38
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Can you use a magic item as a spell focus? For instance, if I wanted to cast scrying (requires a 1,000 gp focus, such as a crystal ball), could I use a professor orb? It’s just a giant hunk of magic crystal, after all.
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Jul 25, 2020 19:41
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change my name posted:Can you use a magic item as a spell focus? For instance, if I wanted to cast scrying (requires a 1,000 gp focus, such as a crystal ball), could I use a professor orb? It’s just a giant hunk of magic crystal, after all. I'd allow it. It's an orb with a value 5x that of what the spell listing asks for.
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Jul 25, 2020 20:16
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change my name posted:Can you use a magic item as a spell focus? For instance, if I wanted to cast scrying (requires a 1,000 gp focus, such as a crystal ball), could I use a professor orb? It’s just a giant hunk of magic crystal, after all. Sure, why not? It is what it says the spell requires. Final call is up to your DM though. Glagha posted:Also don't use skill challenges they don't make sense and are mathematically stupid, go look up someone who thought of better group skill checks. What are some group skill check options that folks recommend for mixing into 5e? The default of "everyone makes the skill check, if >50% succeed the group succeeds" works okay for stuff like stealthing or climbing or whatever but isn't great for more involved things.
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Jul 25, 2020 20:25
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Trojan Kaiju posted:Based on this, would the 4E DMG be worth a read for someone who is probably never going to run 4E? I'd say if you have a free evening and access skim it and the DMG2 and see if they give you any ideas, but not worth buying separate for that purpose (mainly due to the price of those books and my personal reluctance to tell anyone to spend money on anything they might only use once). Even things that didn't work like skill challenges the idea is sound (that you can have rolls accumulate toward success rather than pass/fail, turning a check into an event that everyone might contribute to) and was novel for D&D editions at the time, the problem was that all the examples used the same format so all future examples tried to force it into that format and the math didn't work and they kept trying to "fix" it without stepping back to an abstract design idea. E: mentioning skill challenges reminds me that one of the books was the first D&D book to talk about fail-forwards story design and avoiding "roll to either continue the story or just go home" situations and BOY HOWDY did some people have a problem with that. Bruceski fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Jul 25, 2020 |
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Jul 25, 2020 20:26
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I need recommendations. we are in a small book club, and we are starting a new campaign in the Baldur's Gate area. What is the best stand alone / first book in a forgotten realms setting?
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Jul 25, 2020 20:34
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CoolHandMat posted:I need recommendations. are you looking for a supplement to use for playing an RPG, or a novel to read?
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Jul 25, 2020 20:39
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Arivia posted:are you looking for a supplement to use for playing an RPG, or a novel to read? not really supplemental, just something to immerse ourselves in the Forgotten Realms worlds, its been a while for most of us, and for others, they havent read anything FG. personally i read all of Drizzt's books, Time of Troubles, and a few others, but most of those were longer series.
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Jul 25, 2020 20:46
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CoolHandMat posted:not really supplemental, just something to immerse ourselves in the Forgotten Realms worlds, its been a while for most of us, and for others, they havent read anything FG.
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Jul 25, 2020 21:07
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CoolHandMat posted:not really supplemental, just something to immerse ourselves in the Forgotten Realms worlds, its been a while for most of us, and for others, they havent read anything FG. Honestly? My recommendation would be to read Elaine Cunningham's Elfsong. It's in the area, a good book, and stands alone. The novels that actually occur in Baldur's Gate are usually pretty bad (especially the novelizations of the video games, don't read those). Gobbeldygook posted:There's nothing to really immerse in, Forgotten Realms is just a generic high-fantasy kitchen sink setting. don't listen to this person, they're obviously uninformed and incorrect.
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Jul 25, 2020 21:13
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I thought Elaine Cunningham's Harper focused Songs and Swords was pretty good and stands up as an adult better than most of the other books I voraciously consumed at 14, but if you just want some exposure to the setting maybe one of the short story anthologies would be better. Edit - Elfsong is the second book in Songs and Swords - Elfshadow is the first. Elfsong is readable standalone tho, and it's better, so I agree that if you're gonna do just one book that's a good option.
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Jul 25, 2020 21:15
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neonchameleon posted:[*]Missing playstyle: the simple "I hit it" fighter that didn't have to think much about tactics wasn't in the PHB - and wouldn't turn up for two years (the Slayer in Heroes of the Fallen Lands in 2010). For the burninate spellcaster PHB1 War Wizard does exactly what it says on the tin, as does the Infernal Warlock. e: I should clarify things like "War Wizard" are not obscure in-group terms for builds or something, they're right in the PHB Splicer fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Jul 25, 2020 |
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Jul 25, 2020 21:26
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Azza Bamboo posted:I wasn't a huge fan of 4e. I still had a lot of fun but I felt like the combat may as well have been from a video game with how regimented everything was. Also I got in pretty early on 4e and the games we played, combat went on for hours becase (as others have mentioned) things were just big sacks of HP and often given ways to heal. The irony here is that 4e actually provides tools to be creative with the environment you are given in ways that other editions of D&D simply don't. If you are fighting at night with the camp fire then the optimal thing to do in damage terms is work out how to simultaneously beat the monsters down and push them into the camp fire. In just about any other edition you have exceptionally limited ways of doing this without giving up your attack in favour of something like a Bull Rush (in which case that camp fire had better do more damage than a direct hit or it really isn't worth it). Likewise if you're fighting the bad guys on the top floor of an inn then in 4e part of the fun is pushing them down the stairs if they start within 10ft of the stairs - and you can do this because you've abilities like Tide of Iron that don't force you to give up your attacks to knock them down the stairs. This means that whereas combat in every other edition the way of finding "I do the thing that's mathematically best to do" in other editions of D&D is using your main attack or picking the right spell for the enemies in 4e "the thing that's mathematically the best to do" is to look at the map, to look at the scenery, and to find how to exploit that - something which should be different almost every fight because your environment is different almost every fight. Veteran players will of course realise you don't always need damage or even throwing the enemy into something unpleasant (throwing a raider off the docks into the harbour won't actually do damage - but it's going to be a problem for the raider). With several PCs almost always throwing out AoEs teamwork means your best choice at some point might be just to force that NPC a square back and to the left because that will put them in a perfect position for the wizard's AoE - but again this is situational and depends on where exactly the NPCs and the terrain are. It's very clear that WotC did not realise what makes 4e combat varied and interesting at launch; Keep of the Shadowfell has a grand total of three out of about eighteen combats where the terrain is actively harmful (and that assumes you can throw the summoner into their own circle) and otherwise it's almost all either impassable or open. There's one other thing that makes 4e combat much more interesting than any other edition, and that's the risk/reward choices it invites. If, as a fighter, you have an attack that attacks all enemies around you how hard do you work to hit as many foes as possible if you expect many of them to survive; the more you hit the more damage you do but the more risk you take. This is a choice as far as I'm aware no 5e fighter or AD&D fighter can make. A 3.X fighter was given this choice after spending five feats (dodge, mobility, spring attack, expertise, whirlwind attack) so it becomes their big signature thing. Meanwhile in 4e it's a simple third level encounter power(Sweeping Blow) so a lot of fighter ask this sort of question. Also there's the "Provoke tactics" built into 4e; the basic idea is "if the fighter gets a free swing on their target if their target takes their eyes off them to attack someone else then if as a rogue is it a good idea to moon the fighter's target so he swings at me meaning the fighter gets a free swing on him?" Deliberately giving the enemy free extra attacks is always a risk that you have to judge based on the situation on the ground. Again this sort of risk/reward just didn't happen in earlier editions - and also wasn't something the 4e writers actively suggested. As for "I pull their trousers down so they trip", to quote some very old advice from GURPS "if sand in the eyes worked every time fighters would give up carrying swords and start carrying around bags of sand". Ferrinus posted:Objection! These were actually both in. (And if you say they weren't, the Slayer didn't count as one either, because it got encounter powers) For both the fighter and the wizard you could take generic "just deals XdY damage, maybe with miss: half or reliable" attacks at, as far as I can recall, every single new encounter power/new daily power level. You did have to decide whether you wanted to hit the enemy with your full strength or whether you wanted to hold back on a given turn, but that's not actually a decision anyone gets to opt out of, even in earlier editions of D&D once you got limited-use magic items or similar. That depends on whether you mean they were in conceptually (in which case yes they were) or whether they were in practically. You can't just say "I hit him" with pre-Slayer 4e martial characters - instead you start out with four different ways of hitting someone at first level (two at wills, an encounter, and a daily). If you just want to hit someone this is a high and annoying overhead that the slayer just doesn't have, especially as the way their options were split out meant that at any time they were only making a simple choice (leaving in stance, deciding who to hit, then deciding whether to do extra damage). I've seen switching over to a scout completely revolutionise how fluidly someone was playing and how much fun they were having - just because they could stay in a single stance and only have to decide who to attack.
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Jul 25, 2020 21:41
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Thanks for the 4e chat. For some reason I have the impression that to play 4e you really need some online tool that doesn’t exist anymore? And the rule books as originally published got so errata’d that they aren’t really useful to play with? What books should I be looking for if I wanted to play the ‘final’ version of 4e? (Or is there a 4e thread where I should take this?)
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Jul 25, 2020 21:55
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Splicer posted:It's extremely easy to build a PHB1 only Fighter that's just "Run up to a guy and hit them until they fall down". Grab a two handed weapon and take all the powers with high damage and no effects. Run up to a guy, hit him until he dies, then pick a new guy. The only complexity would be saying "I hit this guy extra hard" and then ticking off an encounter power, and if the guy tries to run away then you get to hit him for wincing. You can also play a PHB1 no-brainer Ranger, take Two Weapon Fighting and all the "Hit a guy twice" powers, run up to a guy and hit them twice until they die. Remember to say "He's my Quarry" beforehand. Again (we cross-posted) you can play the thing conceptually - but mechanically there is a significant difference in the complexity of the elementalist sorcerer and the war wizard. Mechanically the elementalist has a grand total of two attack spells, both cantrips (and gets their third at ninth level). The first we're going to call Super-Firebolt. It's basically a firebolt if firebolt did as much damage as a raging barbarian with a greataxe. Simple and effective. The second we're going to call mini-fireball. Targets everyone in a 15 foot diameter (so nine squares) and does only slightly less damage than the super-firebolt. (If these numbers seem high remember we're dealing with a pure glass cannon here - the elementalist can take a hit about as well as a wizard). Super-firebolt and mini-fireball are the only attack spells the elementalist gets. We also can enhance them (1/short rest at L1, 2 at L3, and 3 at L7). An enhanced version does an extra 1d10 damage and hits an extra target; for a mini-fireball it has to be a target next to the mini-fireball while a super-firebolt gets an extra target within 25 feet of the main one. That is all the attack spells a level 8 elementalist gets. They also get two utility spells and fire resistance. In my experience just about everyone can remember "Firebolt or fireball" and "Boost?" It really is simple. Even when you add a third spell at level 9 (the other fire option tries to burninate everyone around you for getting too close) it's easy. Meanwhile by comparison a level 8 war wizard focussed on burnination is likely to have two combat cantrips (one being a weaker mini-fireball, and the other probably being thunderwave), as short rest attacks Burning Hands at L1, Fire Shroud (a 15 foot radius enemies only attack centered on the wizard) at L3, and Fire Burst (an almost-fireball) at L7 - and as 1/day combat spells Flaming Sphere and the full sized Fireball. This is, I agree, not a complex loadout - but it's not an especially simple one that most people can use while barely thinking about things either.
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Jul 25, 2020 23:07
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Arcsech posted:Sure, why not? It is what it says the spell requires. Final call is up to your DM though. Don't listen to that person, skill challenges are fine. Set the difficulty of the challenge based off how many successes the party needs, 3 is easy and 9 is very difficult. Failing 3 times fails the skill challenge. Class abilities and spells can be used in lieu of a skill for an automatic success, but only once per 'round' for the party as whole. They must be proficient in the skill, someone can aid in it if they too are proficient but they forgo their turn. Nothing about that is complicated, and if the DM is doing it right the scene overall is very narrative focused as you encourage the players to describe what they are doing with the skill.
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Jul 25, 2020 23:08
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So I just learned Contingency, what are some clever ways of using it so it becomes like my de facto class feature? So far I am mainly considering ways of protecting my wizard from harm, but open to suggestions that could be useful for the party. So far the main thing I appear to be missing is something to kick in if I hit 0 hp, I have written down False Life if I take lethal damage but not sure how else to handle a situation where I might die and want to hit the eject button. Other possibilities: 1. Banishment if planeshifted against my will to another plane. 2. Fly if sent high into the air. 3. Water breathing if submerged underwater. 4. Nondetection if scryed. 5. Polymorph if polymorphed against my will. 6. Dispel Magic if Unable to cast spells? Is there a 5th level or lower version of freedom of movement? 7. Gaseuous Form if about to get smushed by falling rocks. 8. As mentioned, false life if taking lethal damage or reduced to under half hp. 9. If the target of a spell, breath weapon, or about to fall onto spikes, or into lava or acid, or hit by an object of medium size or larger, resilent sphere. 10. Mirror Image, Blink, or Misty Step or similar if attacked? I have alert, so I can't be surprised, and I'm a divination wizard, so I can potentially fudge some rolls. Ideally I'd like a "oh poo poo I'm about to die" get out of jail free card contingency combination. I think I also want some kind of contingency in the case I am mind controlled/dominated in addition to paralyzed/hold personed. Is the material component cost just once, so once I have a 1500gp little statue of myself I can reuse it for a bunch of contingencies every 10 days? Any ideas?
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Jul 25, 2020 23:56
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FWIW, if you want to learn more about 4E and how it works, we do have a thread for that. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3605446
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Jul 26, 2020 00:04
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Got a ruling question since I'm brainstorming a Crusher + Mage Slayer Drunken Master Monk build. Firstly, when does reaction on Mage Slayer trigger? It says when a spell is cast, so do I make a reaction attack before or after the spell is cast? Secondly, Crusher's forced movement effect is once per turn. Does that mean I can Crusher on my reaction attack, along with Crusher on my turn as well, or can I only Crusher one my actual turn/once during the entire round? To basically lay out what I'd hope is possible: Drunken Sway next to a Mage, reaction attack a Mage that attempts to touch spell me, I Crusher them away eating their action since they're now out of range.
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Jul 26, 2020 00:07
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I don't think people are getting my point. Codifying moving people around and putting it within the abstract of tiles doesn't make it natural. If you're playing with the kind of group who'd see a one off bag of sand incident as a precedent to throw bags of sand at every opportunity because it proves mathematically useful, I can see why you need your combat rules to nanny trickery. For me the ideal combat is one that doesn't make me feel like I'm hitting a sack of HP and moving people about a grid (including others forcefully). If I wanted that, I'd play one of the countless turn based JRPGs on offer. What I liked about the Next playtest, and what I think got lost in the final release somewhere, is that they seemed to be moving in the direction of "do what you want and let the GM decide a roll for it or advantage/disadvantage for it". Yeah a bold GM could do that with 4e but with everyone having codified tricks you can bet someone's going to start moaning that an ability they chose will be duplicated for free in the creative application of "gently caress it, do what you like" and they'll start moaning. That's where 5e hosed up: they gave too many people too many codified ways to create advantage and disadvantage, and while I can see how it makes sense from a gameplay point of view it completely ruins where it was at in the playtest: the ability to actually reward people for flying completely out of the codified actions and doing something novel instead. Pushing someone into a bonfire isn't interesting if the bonfire was blatantly there to push people into. If chandeliers were made to swing from, there'd be less fun in swinging from them. 5e was inches away from saying "instead of defining the bonfire object, here's a framework for what you can do if someone generally employs novel ideas" and they blew it by saying "and here's a button someone can press to gain the same effect, and the button is much more reliable." Can't you guys see it. I'm not looking for more codified avenues to walk down, which I'll agree 4e gives you in droves compared to 5e. What I'm looking for is a game that encourages its players to be creative in ways that aren't predetermined. A game that allows people to define what they're doing rather than have specific actions defined for them (in little green, red and black cards), and 5e came painfully close to that before completely tearing it down. Azza Bamboo fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Jul 26, 2020 |
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Jul 26, 2020 00:41
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Raenir Salazar posted:Is the material component cost just once, so once I have a 1500gp little statue of myself I can reuse it for a bunch of contingencies every 10 days? You can reuse it for one contingency every ten days. From the spell description: "You can use only one contingency spell at a time. If you cast this spell again, the effect of another contingency spell on you ends."
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Jul 26, 2020 01:05
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Reveilled posted:You can reuse it for one contingency every ten days. From the spell description: "You can use only one contingency spell at a time. If you cast this spell again, the effect of another contingency spell on you ends." Oh no! There goes my plan to have a contingency for every possible circumstance.  It's kinda weird, is this a misconception a lot of people have? Reading random contingency threads on reddit and the oots forums I don't get the sense they think it can only be cast once. Well, in this case what's the best contingency use case?
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Jul 26, 2020 01:10
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Azza Bamboo posted:Can't you guys see it. I'm not looking for more codified avenues to walk down, which I'll agree 4e gives you in droves compared to 5e. What I'm looking for is a game that encourages its players to be creative in ways that aren't predetermined. A game that allows people to define what they're doing rather than have specific actions defined for them (in little green, red and black cards), and 5e came painfully close to that before completely tearing it down. You don't want to be playing D&D at all. You certainly don't want to be playing 5th edition. You might want D&D to be different than it is, and you definitely think D&D was different than it actually was back in previous editions, but in general, if what you want is that most turns are stuff like "I kick a flooboard so the other end nails the pirate in the junk" and so on, D&D can do it, but it isn't the core focus of the game. You've fallen for one of the silliest traps in game design discourse, one that was very popular when the edition wars weren't largely settled, which is that less tools = more roleplay. It's not true. There is basically nothing in 5th edition that you couldn't do in 4th (including the very simple "make something up" move equivalent). quote:Yeah a bold GM could do that with 4e but with everyone having codified tricks you can bet someone's going to start moaning that an ability they chose will be duplicated for free in the creative application of "gently caress it, do what you like" and they'll start moaning. Consider the alternative. You're effectively proposing that every player should have every move if they are creative enough in description. In D&D, a game about a party comprised of unique toolkits that players take time to design and earn new tools for, other players just duplicating your moves (without spending resources to boot) would lead to bad feels, yes. Is it objectively bad though? No, it just wouldn't make sense in any D&D edition ever. There are however other games where it would work just fine. Does that also mean that in D&D there's no good excuse to try stuff? No! If your character kicks over a boiling vat of tanning acid to stop the pursuit of some city guards, it could potentially resemble in function some blast spell the wizard might have, because it's a one time event that follows rule of cool. theironjef fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Jul 26, 2020 |
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Jul 26, 2020 01:39
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There's nothing specific you can do in 5th that you couldn't do in 4th, but 4th nails more things to the floor and that makes it harder to move them. So of course you're going to say "name something specific you can do in 5th that you can't do in 4th" instead of understanding that I'm talking about creating incentives for nonspecific novel actions. You could do something novel in 4th, but there's no incentive to, and 5th came close to doing that with the ways it envisioned advantage/disadvantage and skill checks in its early days before it came out with class abilities. Amounting that to giving everyone every possibility is a weak slippery slope argument. Sure you can apply the rule of cool, but what I'm talking about is an incentive to do that on a novel basis rather than creating chandeliers that are designed to be swung from (such as your acid vat). Azza Bamboo fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Jul 26, 2020 |
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Jul 26, 2020 01:51
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Azza Bamboo posted:There's nothing specific you can do in 5th that you couldn't do in 4th, but 4th nails more things to the floor and that makes it harder to move them. So of course you're going to say "name something specific you can do in 5th that you can't do in 4th" instead of understanding that I'm talking about creating incentives for nonspecific novel actions. You could do something novel in 4th, but there's no incentive to, and 5th came close to doing that with the ways it envisioned advantage/disadvantage and skill checks in its early days before it came out with class abilities. I understand what you're looking for and it is absolutely not modern D&D. Good luck!
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Jul 26, 2020 01:56
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Azza Bamboo posted:I don't think people are getting my point. Codifying moving people around and putting it within the abstract of tiles doesn't make it natural. If you're playing with the kind of group who'd see a one off bag of sand incident as a precedent to throw bags of sand at every opportunity because it proves mathematically useful, I can see why you need your combat rules to nanny trickery. That said, in 4E this was the purview of page 42 which provided guidelines for improvised actions, including two damage tables each with low, medium, and high values per level. The idea being that a repeatable improvised attack action should be better than an at-will but worse than the player's highest encounter power. This meant it was still worth doing because you get a better effect than an at-will while still having all your encounters and dailies left to spend, but paid for buttons were still better button. A "limited", or hard to repeat, attack action (like dropping a chandelier on someone) could be set as equal to or even better than using the button, since this is a once off effect. In that case what the guy who paid for the button gets out of it is reliability. Now it was far from perfect; fundamental flaws in the 4E skill scaling made target numbers real screwy as you got to higher levels, and it didn't really cover anything but damage, but it showed how you could have both improv actions and paid for buttons without them stepping on each others' toes. It does rely on everyone having some kind of repeatable and non-repeatable buttons though, which is why the 3.x and 5E fighter style of "You can do one thing but you can do it as much as you like" doesn't allow for it. It needs multiple axis. e: Azza Bamboo posted:There's nothing specific you can do in 5th that you couldn't do in 4th, but 4th nails more things to the floor and that makes it harder to move them. So of course you're going to say "name something specific you can do in 5th that you can't do in 4th" instead of understanding that I'm talking about creating incentives for nonspecific novel actions. You could do something novel in 4th, but there's no incentive to, and 5th came close to doing that with the ways it envisioned advantage/disadvantage and skill checks in its early days before it came out with class abilities. Splicer fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Jul 26, 2020 |
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Jul 26, 2020 01:59
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How’s everyone like the Theros book. I’ve been having a lot of fun with it after watching Clash of the Titans. And the two new subclasses seem pretty cool.
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Jul 26, 2020 01:59
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What I've found from Pathfinder onward is that the play style I'm describing is generally how people start out on DnD until a bad GM has crushed their dreams by saying various disguised forms of "no" until they eventually just hold dogmatically to the actions they have specific rules for. Playing in that game is so boring. Having a chandelier that's designed to be swung from is a plaster over the issue Imo. When we played the DnD Next playtest we handed out Advantage/Disadvantage like candy and it got nuts what people were thinking of to try and turn the tides in their favour. We had people divebombing off balconies and putting low obstacles down to create difficult terrain and where it exceeded previous editions is that this incarnation of the advantage rules made it a useful thing to do. Admittedly this was also around the time where Pirates of the Carribean was hot in everyone's minds so that may have had an influence.
Azza Bamboo fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Jul 26, 2020 |
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Jul 26, 2020 02:01
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Azza Bamboo posted:There's nothing specific you can do in 5th that you couldn't do in 4th, but 4th nails more things to the floor and that makes it harder to move them. So of course you're going to say "name something specific you can do in 5th that you can't do in 4th" instead of understanding that I'm talking about creating incentives for nonspecific novel actions. You could do something novel in 4th, but there's no incentive to, and 5th came close to doing that with the ways it envisioned advantage/disadvantage and skill checks in its early days before it came out with class abilities. 4e is literally the only edition of D&D that gives incentives for novel actions. It does it by having guidance for improvised actions (DMG p42) and it does it by providing XP rewards for PC plans (via the skill challenge mechanics). And advantage/disadvantage is no different from the DM's best friend being +/-2 as outlined in the 4e DMG other than that 4e lets you stack bonuses. As someone who's DM'd both 4e and 5e extensively those round things in the floor you're looking at? They aren't nails - they are lego studs that enable you to attach things much more easily. What you are looking for is a game that doesn't start the players off with a 320 page player-facing manual, and the GM off with another separate DM facing manual that's about the same size. Instead you're looking for something more like Fate, Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, or possibly even classic Fudge (just to name a few relatively major indie games).
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Jul 26, 2020 02:08
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Honestly I'd kill to get my table to play Fiasco just once let alone a better system for longer stories, but the other side of that 320 page guide issue you've rightly pointed out is that now this is a table of sunken costs fallacies. They came close to using their brand recognition to move in the right direction and they just let out a fart.
Azza Bamboo fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Jul 26, 2020 |
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Jul 26, 2020 02:11
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neonchameleon posted:It does it by having guidance for improvised actions Which are never as useful as just keeping to your action cards, unless there's an acid vat that is specifically designed to be. neonchameleon posted:providing XP rewards for PC plans We milestone. The guys never liked keeping track of another arbitrary number. neonchameleon posted:no different from the DM's best friend being +/-2 We've been doing this since 3.5, and the GM has always been encouraged to set DCs according to a difficulty chart, but 5e's balance seems to make advantage much more significant. neonchameleon posted:stack bonuses Which brings us onto the other reason why advantage owns. You don't have to bring an abacus for each attack. 5e doesn't remove that problem entirely, and 3.5 was by far the worst offender for this, but I hate the conversations of "where's that +2 coming from ?" and "wait don't you get +1 to that because I activated my aura of dfapduojhzsdlkjvasdeaaaargh. Our group always used the coloured rings from under the cap of 2l bottles of fizzy drinks to mark status effects that applied to creatures we were fighting. 5e doesn't remove this issue at all, but 4e always came out looking like a ringtoss, and the effects stacked so we have to go "hold on let's get the calculator out". Azza Bamboo fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Jul 26, 2020 |
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Jul 26, 2020 02:18
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I think a good example to support Azzo's argument is the dive attacks from Dark Souls. There's no mechanical advantage, not even attacking at advantage, to jump up to a big height and jumping down pointy end of my stick first and landing it. Similarly, there also seemed to be no mechanical reason to climb onto the back of a dragon I'm fighting, even if it takes no special effort to fling you off. It doesn't get any easier to fight the dragon, and doesn't constrain its ability to attack you.
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Jul 26, 2020 02:30
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Regarding advantage/disadvantage, I kind of feel SotDL goes a better route with the Boons/Banes system. It helps get rid of -all- fiddly little bonuses (no proficiency), but also still allows multiple sources to stack or to cancel each other out. The overall average from advantage and disadvantage isn't that impressive, it isn't a 5 like most people think, it's closer to a 2.5. Only really making a big effect negatively if the player has a low number for the skill being rolled. I do try to be really open about what I let my players get away with though. While I'm not going to let people just cast spells willy nilly, if someone comes up with something they wanna try I'll let them! Does the barbarian with the strength of damned hercules wanna try to push a crumbling pillar onto a monster? Do It! Does the slippery rogue want to pull some acrobatics to get them into a place they can hide? Please, Do It. Nothing disappoints me more than having every round essentially amount to "I attack, damage. Done." When I am so willing to let my players do cool stuff.
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Jul 26, 2020 02:35
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