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I think if you find it fun you should do it. The best class to play is the one you enjoy most and if that character sounds fun to you then you should try it out! The one shot is there for that purpose and if you don’t like it, great, you pick something else. It might seem sub-optimal to your group mate (and it seems to some of the posters here) but if you’re able to contribute to the party and have a good time with the flavor of your character, who’s to say you’re wrong? Seems like damage won’t be an issue in your group anyways. Don’t let people tell you something is mandatory to take. That’s their prerogative for their own characters and style of play, not yours.
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Sep 6, 2020 09:55
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I have a party about to trek down into the dark depths of a forbidden research facility in the depths of the Mournlands (Eberron poo poo ya'll) group c read no further Basically, they are heading into the depths of the place where the Mourning was accidentally triggered, after almost a week of traveling through the Mournlands (no hit dice gain, magical healing is halved), and then through a nightmare city full of gently caress, so they are running a bit ragged. Also they are being hunted by angels but thats a different problem not immediately relevant. I don't want to run this as a super traditional dungeon (since they are about to go to space), maybe a fight or two tops, but what I DO want to do is play up some surreal/nightmare aspects of 'this is the place where the worst thing ever was triggered'. I've already hit upon plenty of monster/body horror tropes on the lead up to this (fused corpses screaming war tunes, flesh centaurs, gasping ever-living bodies, etc), so I was thinking something a little 'eye of the storm' to cap off the whole journey, and wanted to solicit some ideas! If it helps, one of the PC's parents were the researchers who probably caused the whole drat thing to begin with, and I *definitely* want to put them in a horrible situation before they get out of this place.
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Sep 6, 2020 10:24
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I'm late to orcmage chat but: Knock: A big kick Irresistible Dance: dance off bro Summon Elemental: it's a real elemental but they're just good friends Tenser's Transformation: he just starts hitting you very hard Splicer fucked around with this message at 11:28 on Sep 6, 2020 |
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Sep 6, 2020 11:24
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For tenser's transformation, he just stops pretending to be a wizard for a bit.
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Sep 6, 2020 11:34
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Raenir Salazar posted:What you say about damage is true, but I question why I should be the one dealing that damage; and most importantly if I don't really have a good grasp in 5e combat, even more so because I'm clearly shouldn't be the one expected to contribute in that regard, because I don't feel like I'm really going to be able to accurately determine a good moment when to use an AoE damage dealing spell, especially since I'm going ham on "clever" utility spells I have even fewer slots available for them. Wanting to do more damage is the only good mechanical reason to be a sorcerer over the better caster options (wizard/bard) but if the fluff is more important to you then go for it.
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Sep 6, 2020 12:28
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Kaysette posted:Wanting to do more damage is the only good mechanical reason to be a sorcerer over the better caster options (wizard/bard) but if the fluff is more important to you then go for it. If you want to be a buffer, twincast haste etc. are pretty good reasons to have a few sorceror levels.
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Sep 6, 2020 12:31
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:If you want to be a buffer, twincast haste etc. are pretty good reasons to have a few sorceror levels. The only good use for sorc spell slots is turning them into spell points to burn in the quickened eldritch blast engine  But yes, twinned healing word or buffs are good.
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Sep 6, 2020 12:46
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i think worrying about the meta too much for casters makes them all play about the same anyways, so idk do what you like with your spell list the guy who keeps saying poo poo like “mind shunt is better than hold person” and “we’re gonna ignore you if you switch characters” and is now telling you how to pick your spell loadout seems really, really loving annoying; i feel like any halfway decent dm will let you respec if your character is a liability or if you’re just not having fun playing them, and it’s not your fellow PCs job to tell you how to play the game
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Sep 6, 2020 14:57
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Declan MacManus posted:i think worrying about the meta too much for casters makes them all play about the same anyways, so idk do what you like with your spell list The fact that they give you poo poo for being both overpowered and underpowered means they're kind of just being a complete prick. Taciturn Tactician fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Sep 6, 2020 |
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Sep 6, 2020 15:39
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Taciturn Tactician posted:The fact that they give you poo poo for being both overpowered and underpowered means they're kind of just being a complete prick. "anyone better than me is tryharding and hogging the spotlight. anyone doing worse than me is dragging the team down. anyone just as good as me needs to back off my niche. amen." - dnd fuckhead prayer
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Sep 6, 2020 15:45
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Farg posted:
I'm not familiar with Eberron, so this may not be an accurate suggestion, but: have you played Bloodborne? There's a zone in that game where something Very Bad(tm) happened, and you see the remains of townsfolk who tried to flee. "statues" of people trying to climb walls, lifting up children to be saved by others, skeletons fused into walls reaching out desperately for help that will never come. That sort of thing, a petrified monument to something extremely evil.
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Sep 6, 2020 16:13
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My wizard player sent me a 20 point question list last night (mainly questions about some world stuff, magic item crafting, and some downtime side hustle ideas), but he also included a list of 4th level spells he was interested in taking and wanted to find either in the wild or at spell scroll shops. I basically told him that anything over 3rd level would probably be hard to come across in stores (although not impossible, and sent him the spell scroll cost list) and that wizards are pretty much the best class and limiting the way they can add extra spells is just mechanical balance. How does everyone else handle this? So far they've definitely come across scroll shops and looted spellbooks, it's a high magic setting, but obviously players shouldn't be able to just randomly find whatever they want, right?
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Sep 6, 2020 16:14
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change my name posted:My wizard player sent me a 20 point question list last night (mainly questions about some world stuff, magic item crafting, and some downtime side hustle ideas), but he also included a list of 4th level spells he was interested in taking and wanted to find either in the wild or at spell scroll shops. I basically told him that anything over 3rd level would probably be hard to come across in stores (although not impossible, and sent him the spell scroll cost list) and that wizards are pretty much the best class and limiting the way they can add extra spells is just mechanical balance.
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Sep 6, 2020 18:08
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Alright my DM didn't like the idea of letting me take Psychic Blast from UA but seems like they'll let me take Fireball/Lightning bolt but deals Psychic Damage instead so that works for me. I would've figured since there's like nothing in 5e that lets you resist psychic damage that would've been a no go but I guess not!
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Sep 6, 2020 18:10
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Aren't a lot of constructs and undead immune to psychic damage? Also stuff like slimes and gelatinous cubes and so on. I'd still overall call it a buff to Fireball, but not so much that I'd have serious concerns about the game.
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Sep 6, 2020 18:20
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Aren't a lot of constructs and undead immune to psychic damage? Also stuff like slimes and gelatinous cubes and so on. Seems like gray ooze isn't immune, a golem definitely is, but undead don't appear to be immune. But constructs like that also strike me as unlikely to be enemies that appear in groups.
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Sep 6, 2020 18:25
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Isn't fire the second-most commonly resisted damage after poison? Seems like a pretty good buff
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Sep 6, 2020 18:27
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Declan MacManus posted:the guy who keeps saying poo poo like “mind shunt is better than hold person” and “we’re gonna ignore you if you switch characters” and is now telling you how to pick your spell loadout seems really, really loving annoying; i feel like any halfway decent dm will let you respec if your character is a liability or if you’re just not having fun playing them, and it’s not your fellow PCs job to tell you how to play the game There's a difference between giving advice to inexperienced players and making everyone play the optimal party. This guy sounds like he's the latter. Maybe tell him to play his own character (I bet it's a real try hard race/class combo) and if that doesn't work, give him a wedgie before booting him from the game. We had a super try hard cool guy in our group once, and we just went nuts until he settled down. He was the only medium sized character in the group, so we would insist on going to the bar in the gnome district for quests, and reminding him how uncomfortable he was in a little bar. We also had a disguise for when we needed to go elsewhere, and it was our gnome in a trenchcoat sitting on the shoulders of our kobold doing a "big person" impression. This really defeats the try hard mentality. I like playing a character that can do stuff in combat, but this elf game is mostly an excuse to hang out with the boys, and I wouldn't want to play with someone who didn't value me as a member of the group over a member of the party.
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Sep 6, 2020 18:30
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Yeah I have a problem sometimes because I'm by far the most analytical-minded person in my playgroup, so I have a natural tendency to want to rewrite everyone's characters for optimal play, especially when some folks are like forgetting to take new spells when they level up and the like (our bard didn't realize he had access to 2nd level spells for like four sessions, until I told him; this was especially funny because the same thing happened with our warlock, after two sessions, and the bard was present). What I try to do is just make a few suggestions here and there and then I shut up and move on. Sometimes they take the suggestion (our halfling gunslinger now rides a dog pretty regularly) sometimes they don't (our warlock decided repelling blast and hex weren't what she wanted). Either way's fine and good, I just want to make sure people know what the good options are. And I make drat sure to SHUT UP and not try to push anyone into any choices. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Sep 6, 2020 |
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Sep 6, 2020 18:36
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Farg posted:
Real poo poo, look at the Dark Falz fight from Phantasy Star Online. The actual fight starts out in this peaceful meadow with nothing but a shrine in the middle, then once someone touches it the facade drops, and you're now walking on the remains of the fused souls of the people that came before you. If you want, have the shrine be the parents (or what's left of them) being stretched between the floor and ceiling via body horror poo poo, have them be so far gone they don't even recognize their child and be the penultimate fight, hiding what really has been in the Mournlands that is attracted to the sounds of fighting after so long...
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Sep 6, 2020 18:51
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah I have a problem sometimes because I'm by far the most analytical-minded person in my playgroup, so I have a natural tendency to want to rewrite everyone's characters for optimal play, especially when some folks are like forgetting to take new spells when they level up and the like (our bard didn't realize he had access to 2nd level spells for like four sessions, until I told him; this was especially funny because the same thing happened with our warlock, after two sessions, and the bard was present). I mean, that sounds super reasonable and something everyone should do. If that happened in my group (someone forgetting to get their new spells when leveling up) I'd feel like I dropped the ball as a DM if I didn't remind them. That's totally different from badgering people because you think they made wrong choice. You're just reminding them they forget something important.
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Sep 6, 2020 19:51
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah I have a problem sometimes because I'm by far the most analytical-minded person in my playgroup, so I have a natural tendency to want to rewrite everyone's characters for optimal play, especially when some folks are like forgetting to take new spells when they level up and the like (our bard didn't realize he had access to 2nd level spells for like four sessions, until I told him; this was especially funny because the same thing happened with our warlock, after two sessions, and the bard was present). I 100% feel this. I have to actively resist getting info on others build choices. From some rough maths from rolls I'm pretty sure my group's druid has a 12-13 in Wisdom, an 18 in Strength, and mainly uses a crossbow in combat despite a 10-11 in Dex... but if I don't know for sure what's on the sheet, it can't hurt me.
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Sep 6, 2020 20:14
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If we're talking character building I always ask "what do you want to do" and try to use their answer as constraints for any suggestions I make. If I read the room and feel I'm intruding I stop, but some people want to know what their options are for the character they want to play. Just depends on the context and if you push it in a bad way.
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Sep 6, 2020 20:30
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Yeah 100% that I think giving helpful advice, reminding people that have various abilities, especially when its life or death matters, and especially if they ask for advice all of this is fine. The advice of, "Drop everything you want to do to play according to your desired theme and play only according to what's optimal for our squishy party" well it isn't my fault they're so squishy! I was debating playing my martial blood hunter character instead or my monk because everyone seemed so squishy but the DM said the comp was fine so I'm sticking to my caster. Like advice that goes, "given that you're playing a "clever" character with this particular theme, here's what I suggest..." like some of y'all have done is great. But I'm not really getting that from the group I'm playing with.
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Sep 6, 2020 21:14
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cleric is so fun to play in 5e, I got the chance to play one in a new group. I really like it.
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Sep 6, 2020 22:51
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Do we have more info on the subclasses coming with the new book? I think the UA twilight domain cleric seems cool. 
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Sep 6, 2020 22:55
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poor life choice posted:Do we have more info on the subclasses coming with the new book? I think the UA twilight domain cleric seems cool. THIS!!!!
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Sep 6, 2020 23:16
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IMHO, cleric is the gold standard for D&D classes. The base class has really solid mechanics, the different domains offer a lot of variety and support a ton of different playstyles, and the religious aspect of your powers gives players the perfect starting point for roleplaying or integrating a character into a setting.
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Sep 6, 2020 23:38
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Tenik posted:IMHO, cleric is the gold standard for D&D classes. The base class has really solid mechanics, the different domains offer a lot of variety and support a ton of different playstyles, and the religious aspect of your powers gives players the perfect starting point for roleplaying or integrating a character into a setting. Yeah, It's probably my favorite way to engage the game so far. I get to be helpful and cool.
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Sep 6, 2020 23:45
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Man there's so many classes/characters I've got ideas for and I want to play but my schedule is so weird I can't actually play all that much. I'm super lucky I've got a group of friends that are willing to put up with my weird scheduling poo poo so we've got a good thing going, even though often we only have like 2 hours for a session and sometimes it's literally weeks in between sessions. It does help I'm the DM though, and I'm not the only one with a weird schedule, but it's still a drag. The story I envisioned is like half way from what I thought it would be at this point. Maybe I should look into playing with randoms or goons, because I really want to play a character instead of being a DM, but being in a EU timezone and not being available most weekends, as well as sometimes having to cancel at the last moment is kinda prohibitive...
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Sep 7, 2020 00:38
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah I have a problem sometimes because I'm by far the most analytical-minded person in my playgroup, so I have a natural tendency to want to rewrite everyone's characters for optimal play, especially when some folks are like forgetting to take new spells when they level up and the like (our bard didn't realize he had access to 2nd level spells for like four sessions, until I told him; this was especially funny because the same thing happened with our warlock, after two sessions, and the bard was present). I have the exact opposite problem. Everyone at our table is some combination of wargamers, game QA testers, or the computer programmer in the group. Except me, the rube. We're all pretty good at finding the numbers but I find myself asking sometimes "why are you trying to cast that big spell on the minions and not the boss? No, not you the player, you the dwarf in the fantasy world. Is he some kind of Diviner given godly knowledge on the existence of legendary resistance?" I have to keep my mouth shut because they enjoy the mathematical challenge and knowing they threw everything they had at a fight. It's a way of thinking that I can do but it doesn't come as naturally as just imagining the room and what my character would do in it.
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Sep 7, 2020 00:49
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah I have a problem sometimes because I'm by far the most analytical-minded person in my playgroup, so I have a natural tendency to want to rewrite everyone's characters for optimal play I got hung up on just this part of your post. Why does thinking analytically automatically lead to craving optimized characters? I have two friends who are math PhDs and they both just build their characters around a story or concept without worrying that some selected option will be suboptimal or situational. It's just a very annoying personality trait people should repress unless it's asked for by others, there's nothing analytical about it. Optimizing in 5e at the levels most people play at is just as shallow as it is boring, which is to say very
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Sep 7, 2020 01:00
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please knock Mom! posted:I got hung up on just this part of your post. Why does thinking analytically automatically lead to craving optimized characters? I have two friends who are math PhDs and they both just build their characters around a story or concept without worrying that some selected option will be suboptimal or situational. It's just a very annoying personality trait people should repress unless it's asked for by others, there's nothing analytical about it. Optimizing in 5e at the levels most people play at is just as shallow as it is boring, which is to say very I don't just do it with D&D, I do it with pretty much all games, it's just how my brain approaches them. I end up writing a lot of Steam guides because it's hard for me to play an RPG without ending up writing a guide. I start by making a few notes to organize my thoughts, the notes get more complex as I play, end of the day I find out I've written a guide. See, e.g., https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198024054503/myworkshopfiles/?section=guides D&D 5e is a lot simpler than most computer RPG's but it's just a habit I have at this point. I try really hard not to push it onto other tabletop players unless they ask though. It's not about any particular brain skill set -- everyone in my playgroup is a practicing attorney and they're all quite smart. It's just I have this habit from playing too many RPG's over time. When I say "thinking analytically" I mean "reflexively analyzing any game system I run across." Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Sep 7, 2020 |
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Sep 7, 2020 01:11
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Just mentioned it because I've seen statements like that one quite a bit, and I don't want people to think that this way of thinking about/approaching a game is an inherent curse of the analytical mind you just have to deal with, just like how it's a hangup which people who wouldn't classify themselves that way can have.
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Sep 7, 2020 01:14
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please knock Mom! posted:Just mentioned it because I've seen statements like that one quite a bit, and I don't want people to think that this way of thinking about/approaching a game is an inherent curse of the analytical mind you just have to deal with, just like how it's a hangup which people who wouldn't classify themselves that way can have. Oh no it's a habit I've acquired, absolutely. I mean, it's fun for me and I enjoy it. But it's something I know can overwhelm more casual peeps so I work hard to keep it in check unless requested.
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Sep 7, 2020 01:20
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Farg posted:I have a party about to trek down into the dark depths of a forbidden research facility in the depths of the Mournlands (Eberron poo poo ya'll) The researchers couldn't be bothered to take notes so they bottled some copies of their memories/thoughts using basic magic. The party finds a bottle, where you get to see through the guy's father's eyes. In the memory he tinkers with some minor element of the project, and he throws a bottle like this one into a suction tube that combines the researchers' memories into a single knowledge vat. "If anyone finds that vat after this," he says, "destroy it." The party later come upon the vat, but warforged have decanted a large portion of the glowing memory juice into their mind jars. Killing them lets the juice out, and it evaporates. They're constructing something that looks like the research project from the father's memory. They use the power it has in its incomplete form to fight the party. It's horrid and blights the landscape as it's used, tossing the ground and the bones once buried under the dust like a salad. The horror isn't so much in body horror, but the fact that the character has to think about burning this collection of his parents' memories. If they do, the glowing memory juices form the ghosts of the research workers for just long enough to hear a cacophony of their thoughts blaring simultaneously. In amongst this they have a chance to pick out the people saying "I hope we kill it." "We need to kill it." "This had better work." If they don't, they have preserved the knowledge of a Doomsday device, and will be hunted to the ends of the universe. If they try to consume the knowledge, they get an appropriate amount of psychic damage and a curse along the lines of "I can see infinity" also they learn the encode thoughts cantrip. Azza Bamboo fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Sep 7, 2020 |
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Sep 7, 2020 01:39
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please knock Mom! posted:I got hung up on just this part of your post. Why does thinking analytically automatically lead to craving optimized characters? I have two friends who are math PhDs and they both just build their characters around a story or concept without worrying that some selected option will be suboptimal or situational. It's just a very annoying personality trait people should repress unless it's asked for by others, there's nothing analytical about it. Optimizing in 5e at the levels most people play at is just as shallow as it is boring, which is to say very To this point, I think this depends on some factors. Like, even if the DM is only slightly playing encounters "optimally", but even if the DM has each encounter hostile rolling randomly or based on "threat", because a lot of the numbers are visible and you can infer more numbers that you can't see, you're incentivized because since you don't want your character you're invested in to die. So naturally strategies for encounters are going to slide towards minimizing risk. If you're starting at level 1 I think it makes more sense that maybe your inexperienced characters wouldn't know except by training, i.e maybe the fighter. So those early encounters paradoxically where it makes the most sense to play inoptimally from behind the "veil of ignorance" are also where you are REALLY incentivized not to since crits can kill you easily. But by level 10? I think you probably have an idea that the caster is squishy and the big armoured dude knows his way around a heavy pointy metal stick. Ironically partly due to my own inexperience and partly due to just how encounters are setup, I just naturally play the way you're talking about here. I don't know who the ideal target is, even at higher levels. So I'm the one in the party not playing optimally because I'm not sure which of the tokens are what kind of creature or class unless its really obvious if they have a sword or something. So I think a good DM and some effort and you can probably simulate that experience fairly well. Like don't say what creature is attacking you, make the party roll checks to identify them if they aren't obvious PC races, and so on. Hide who the casters are until they cast a spell, etc.
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Sep 7, 2020 02:15
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Tenik posted:IMHO, cleric is the gold standard for D&D classes. The base class has really solid mechanics, the different domains offer a lot of variety and support a ton of different playstyles, and the religious aspect of your powers gives players the perfect starting point for roleplaying or integrating a character into a setting. I feel the exact opposite. With everything tied to long rests and little else to do without expending major resources, I often feel like I'm playing "how long can I wait to pull the trigger simulator."
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Sep 7, 2020 03:13
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Toshimo posted:I feel the exact opposite. With everything tied to long rests and little else to do without expending major resources, I often feel like I'm playing "how long can I wait to pull the trigger simulator." That feels like an indictment of all full casters though? They're all long rest based and yet wizard consistently wins the "best class" competition. Clerics may not have the sheer versatility of a wizard, but they get front-line survivability and more reliable access to spells. I think there's a pretty good argument to be made that if you took a party without a cleric and replaced any of the members with a cleric, the party would at minimum not be weaker.
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Sep 7, 2020 03:27
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:That feels like an indictment of all full casters though? And most non-casters have an extremely limited number of "triggers" to pull in the first place, especially at the levels where casters actually have to ration their spells (a 7th level Cleric has 4/3/3/1 for slots; that's enough spells for a couple of encounters).
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Sep 7, 2020 04:00
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