|
Declan MacManus posted:beating a dead horse here but i'm helping someone build a ranger and god rangers are built really poorly to expand on this a bit, i think the problem is having affirmative vs determinative abilities rangers just don't get a lot of choices for combat, and most of their "cool" abilities are actually spells, so they have a severe resources crunch since they're only a half caster. paladins, for comparison, outside of spell slots have stuff like divine sense, lay on hands, channel divinity, etc. that give them meaningful choices to make outside of casting spells or attacking. also, all the cool spell stuff from rangers are tied to concentration, which means you have to pick and choose what you're good at and are bound to your spell slots rangers, in turn, can't use their bonus actions for mobility or anything like that, and they're not the best at any particular ability. it's mostly passive benefits and ribbons. it's just not fun unless you want to roleplay yourself and also a fun animal companion which is just mechanically weaker than most classes also primeval awareness is loving garbage, thank you i surrender my time Declan MacManus fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Oct 18, 2020 |
#
?
Oct 18, 2020 23:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 05:37 |
|
|
change my name posted:Some of the new psionic subclasses coming in Tasha's next month seem interesting (I thought soul knife was underwhelming before realizing rogues mainly deal damage through sneak attack) Which Psionic Subclasses are those? Not any of the ones that they put in UA after they decided to abandon the Mystic? Because all of those were absolutely garbage.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 00:02
|
|
|
I like the Psionic Soul in UA though some of its kit is a little underwhelming.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 00:06
|
|
|
I must admit, 90% of my interest in psionics is related the Dark Sun setting
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 00:16
|
|
|
AnEdgelord posted:I must admit, 90% of my interest in D&D is related the Dark Sun setting
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 00:23
|
|
|
I thought Kimmuriel Oblodra was kind of a cool cucumber in the Faerun books, and then the Yuanti books with the psychic snake girl and the main character who did snake yoga were fun books.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 00:32
|
|
|
Eberron eberowns. I’ll never run a campaign in the setting but have got mountains of ideas from the book.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 02:12
|
|
|
Shoutouts to the insane dwarf in today's session who rolled a -2 on his active perception check vs. our rogue's stealth check. That -3 modifier to WIS checks kinda sucks, doesn't it?
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 02:15
|
|
|
What. How do they have a -3 to Wisdom checks? Are you not using Point Buy? Because the game is designed, as much as there is any design at all in 5e, for Point Buy not Rolled Stats.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 02:44
|
|
|
This was an NPC with the WIS score of presumably 4. I don't think anyone in our party has a worse ability score than 8.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 02:47
|
|
|
A friend of mine is putting together their first DnD game, a modified Curse of Strahd campaign set to start this coming halloween night, and recently shared a document full of homebrew rules they plan to use for the campaign. Here are some of the rules: - Death saves are rolled in secret by the DM, so no one knows if they are close to death or not. Also, a failed medicine check to stabilize grants a failed death save. - All players must roll for HP. The DM also rolls for HP in secret, and players may choose to use the secret DM roll instead. Wearing any armor (including leather) during a long rest incurs exhaustion. - Remove Curse only removes "minor" curses, and needs to be cast at 5th level to remove "Major" curses or 7th to remove "ancient" curses. The definition of each type of curse seems to be duration, with "minor" curses being temporary and "ancient" being indefinite, which to me, is most curses? - "Alternate death rules" that are unexplained as of yet. - No multiclassing unless it is story appropriate somehow - "Initiative crits", a nat 20 means you get another Action, a 1 means you can only use an Action or a Bonus Action and lose your reaction. - If you hit 0 HP or take an attack that reduces your HP by >50% of your max, you need to roll a con save and on a failure, you have to roll on a "lingering injury table" which includes things like losing eyes, limbs, becoming disfigured or gaining severe mental problems. The DM promises there will be "ways" to fix these problems but will not elaborate further. There's some more, like we are all granted a free "race appropriate" feat (i.e. racial feat but for the races that don't have those we have to argue why we'd get the feat), but these are the ones that are giving me the biggest problem. I am not crazy for thinking this sounds like an incredibly brutal, miserable session, right? The DM keeps promising me that it isn't that bad and I need to trust them that my worst fears will not come true. when I posited a situation where someone would, due to bad rolls, be stuck limbless, burned, and with no eyes, they said I was catastrophizing and that it was very unlikely to happen. Another friend in the group is also repeatedly assuring me that it won't be a meat grinder and I need to trust our mutual friend, but I feel extremely uncomfortable with both the narrative and mechanics of my character having their eyes melted out or limbs chopped off. Many of the changes just seem extremely unfun and stressful to me. Both my friend and the DM keep insisting it's just for the tone of Curse of Strahd and it's a much smaller deal than I'm making out of it and the worst situations are unlikely to happen. Am I making a big deal over nothing? Should I just suck it up and deal? I've never played in a campaign with rules like that before and have typically avoided them because they sound like a level of stress that I don't really want to deal with from a game I'm playing for fun, but I seem to be the only one in the group with this problem, so I would appreciate getting an outside judgment to see if it's really as bad as I'm fearing.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 02:52
|
|
|
Isaacs Alter Ego posted:A friend of mine is putting together their first DnD game, a modified Curse of Strahd campaign set to start this coming halloween night, and recently shared a document full of homebrew rules they plan to use for the campaign. 1) this rule is actually good 2) terrible rule. no good. its not even like anything i can talk about. its just not good 3) i dont like this one but i can see the argument for it under the vein of ("sleeping in armour only punishes strength builds"). 4) this is fine actually because there are plenty of narrative curses in many good games that exist for sensible reasons(namely, curses are cool and if you can just cure them with a 3rd level spell whats the point) and instead of doing arbitrary narrative restrictions, having actual mechanical rules is neat. this stops being fine if strahd randomly puts a curse where the fighter cant attack or some obnoxious crap like that 5) have to see the rules to see 6) as long as the story appropriate is not terribly restrictive this can be very good, but any dm making some sort of ruling like this is not likely going to be the kind of permissive DM that says "okay you cant just give yourself levels in sorcerer willy nilly. work with me and lets make this part of the story" 7) this loving sucks rear end and you need to talk to your dm about this. any sort of critical fail is terrible as it significantly weakens martials, especially monks, and critting to get another chance to hit and missing is the least fun thing in the game. this breaks the game balance in so many ways and makes the game much less fun 8) this could get into ableist territory real quick but lingering injuries are fine if the group likes that sort of thing
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 03:02
|
|
|
Isaacs Alter Ego posted:A friend of mine is putting together their first DnD game, a modified Curse of Strahd campaign set to start this coming halloween night, and recently shared a document full of homebrew rules they plan to use for the campaign. these are all ginormous red flags, and here’s the thing: your friend is the dm, and they need to understand that “very unlikely to happen” doesn’t mean the same thing as “won’t happen”. as the dm, they’re in charge of shepherding your fun, and not expounding on any of the details about this world are concerning. assuming that you specifically mentioned rolling for hp, you’re playing at level 1, which means death house, which is already plenty deadly without all these crazy maiming rules the most important thing for dnd is communication; if everyone wants to play a meat grinder, that’s fine, but it’s up to the dm and the players to mutually decide how the want the campaign to go. if it doesn’t sound fun, it’s probably not going to be fun.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 03:03
|
|
|
Isaacs Alter Ego posted:A friend of mine is putting together their first DnD game, a modified Curse of Strahd campaign set to start this coming halloween night, and recently shared a document full of homebrew rules they plan to use for the campaign. That all sounds horrible...I kind of get the remove curse thing if it that was the only homebrew rule. However this just seems like a DM who wants a "gritty" "realistic" campaign and trying to fit that square peg in the round hole of 5e DND. I'd just be honest about your problems with the DM, which it sounds like you have been, and if they aren't willing to budge I would just say this isn't the campaign for you.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 03:05
|
|
|
Isaacs Alter Ego posted:A friend of mine is putting together their first DnD game, a modified Curse of Strahd campaign set to start this coming halloween night, and recently shared a document full of homebrew rules they plan to use for the campaign. Ew. Bail. Even if you talk to this dude he is incurably grogged and this poo poo will just happen without your consent in the middle of the game anyway. Incidentally, multiclassing is always going to be story appropriate, because the players are telling stories as well. What he really meant by that was "I read about a few powerful combos (almost assuredly involving perennial albatrosses paladin and warlock) and need a reason to ban them." theironjef fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Oct 19, 2020 |
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 03:21
|
|
|
theironjef posted:Incidentally, multiclassing is always going to be story appropriate, because the players are telling stories as well. unfortunately this is not the case. but i doubt the awe inspiring forums sensation isaacs alter ego is trying to win dnd, however there are in fact people that have no interest in anything but being the best at dnd and tune out the narrative and collaborative aspects completely
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 03:28
|
|
|
A game with this many significant homebrew rules is going to be very reliant on your DM being highly responsive to players. I've DMed a fair amount and I wouldn't want that kind of responsibility, because I think it would be super easy for individual players to leave the table feeling unhappy each session. For a first time DM, it sounds like a hot mess express - they should be trying this stuff in a one-off and getting player buy-in, not beginning a long-term campaign without any feedback. I'd suggest giving it a couple tries, and if it doesn't seem to be working for you then I'd just tell them that it isn't a good fit for you.
Kaal fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Oct 19, 2020 |
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 03:31
|
|
|
pog boyfriend posted:unfortunately this is not the case. but i doubt the awe inspiring forums sensation isaacs alter ego is trying to win dnd, however there are in fact people that have no interest in anything but being the best at dnd and tune out the narrative and collaborative aspects completely If he's got some power combos to ban, he should ban them. That would make a good initial rule. He didn't though, he said it was a story thing. So either he's telling the truth (in which case get ready for it to be a bunch of old poo poo about paladin moral tightropes and god business) or he's lying. Either way, bailing remains the right call. And I know there's a few king DPR options in this game, but outside of Warlock/Paladin most of them are fairly straightforward. That one too unless you've still got old edition fever and you think that Paladins gotta tithe and poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 03:36
|
|
|
If the "alternate death rules" are the ones from the Adventurer's league Curse of Strahd season, then they're pretty cool, and hopefully the DM is just keeping them secret so as not to spoil you on them (though clearly the more sensible thing to do if that is what they're doing would have been to just not tell you there are alternative death rules until somebody dies). Rolling for HP is loving garbage and adding a guessing game to the mechanics is the exact opposite of an improvement. How the heck does "initiative crits" work? Like, if you roll a 20 do you get an extra action every turn for the rest of the combat? Or only on the first turn? It's dumb either way but one's a hundred times worse than the other. Having listened to an actual play podcast that uses an injury table, my subjective experience of it is that until the party gets magic that just heals injuries, it's main effect is to make a character suck for several sessions when they get unlucky. Philosophically, I consider it cowardice on the part of the DM--DMs implement injury tables because they don't like the way 5e combat can encourage characters not to bother healing anyone before they hit 0 hitpoints, which is really only a problem if the DM is too scared to actually have enemies attack downed PCs. Those DMs aren't willing to shoulder the guilt of having killed someone's character, so they offload the guilt they feel for loving up someone's character onto a table they make the player roll on. Now when something bad happens to you, it's your fault for rolling bad. "It's not my fault the spellcasting PC has a broken jaw and can't cast any spell with verbal components", thinks this DM, while that player sits through three sessions unable to do 90% of what their character is good at. Reveilled fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Oct 19, 2020 |
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 03:36
|
|
|
theironjef posted:Ew. Bail. Even if you talk to this dude he is incurably grogged and this poo poo will just happen without your consent in the middle of the game anyway. lol if this person is an actual friend you can maybe try talking to them about the bad stuff before you declare that you are refusing to play D&D with them for being "incurably grogged"
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 03:38
|
|
|
Isaacs Alter Ego posted:A friend of mine is putting together their first DnD game, a modified Curse of Strahd campaign set to start this coming halloween night, and recently shared a document full of homebrew rules they plan to use for the campaign. IMHO, all of these are pretty big red flags. Not having transparency on rolls and rules just makes outcomes feel arbitrary and hostile. - I can see the reasoning for things like secret death saves increasing tension, since the recovery rules for 5e are very easy to take advantage of, but not allowing people to take smart risks is just going to encourage the silliness as players become conservative due to a lack of information. - Rolled HP generates statistically unlikely outliers that 5e isn't balanced for. If your group has a player that gets unlucky, or one that gets very lucky, then your DM will have to adjust their encounters around it, which means the rest of the party is now faced with poorly balanced odds. This isn't an actively hostile homerule, it just demonstrates a misunderstanding of the underlying mechanics for balancing the game, and a weird obsession with a design ethos that doesn't mesh with the rest of 5e. Edit: Now that I think about this more, the less I like the idea of the DM holding the alternative roll as secret information. It just feels like a skeevy grognardy situation where they want to know more than the player, and watch them squirm as they think about something. - I knida get this, but a rule like this is only necessary if curses are frequently used, which means that they'd have to be systematized in a way that they are not currently. The DM should probably just say "players can't cast Remove Curse," so they can come up with whatever cool narrative they want when a curse is deployed, instead of making a curse taxonomy for something that is only relevant like, 3 times per campaign. - Mechanical transparency is important. Not explaining custom rules for something as narratively impactful as a character's death is not cool. - This is fine, as long as the DM accepts pretty much anything as a reason for multiclassing. Otherwise it just becomes weirdly paternalistic. - Like the forced rolled health, "initiative crits" shows a poor understanding of 5e's mechanical balance. I understand wanting to make a nat-20 seem cool, but this is doing it in a way that can make some very swingy combats. - This seems like it can get into some bad territory very quickly. Either the DM gets into some weird ablest situations, or the "lingering injuries" have no impact on the game, and only serve to slow-down the game at a moment it should be fast and dramatic. Tenik fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Oct 19, 2020 |
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 03:39
|
|
|
theironjef posted:If he's got some power combos to ban, he should ban them. That would make a good initial rule. He didn't though, he said it was a story thing. So either he's telling the truth (in which case get ready for it to be a bunch of old poo poo about paladin moral tightropes and god business) or he's lying. Either way, bailing remains the right call. i am giving the dm the benefit of the doubt because op clearly said the dm is a friend of theirs, and taking the most uncharitable reading of the rules and telling them to go flip off their buddy nathaniel and say "some guy on the internet says your dm style is poo poo" is not the move
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 03:39
|
|
|
Baku posted:lol if this person is an actual friend you can maybe try talking to them about the bad stuff before you declare that you are refusing to play D&D with them for being "incurably grogged" Suit yourself but he asked and that is a loving lot of writing on the wall. I mean how much obvious bullshit you wanna wade through to play a game just because a friend is running it? If I get invited to Monopoly night but the host has rewritten the game to be about libertarianism and bitcoin I'm ... I'm gonna say no to that friend. Also I'm not telling the guy to go insult his friend. It's not like I wanted him to print my post and nail it to the dude's house. I'm just saying "That looks like a bad time." I trust he would, upon potentially taking the advice, filter it through his word brain into a less direct statement.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 03:41
|
|
|
theironjef posted:If he's got some power combos to ban, he should ban them. That would make a good initial rule. He didn't though, he said it was a story thing. So either he's telling the truth (in which case get ready for it to be a bunch of old poo poo about paladin moral tightropes and god business) or he's lying. Either way, bailing remains the right call. Oh to clarify: They did call out Hexplade/Paladin as specifically being unacceptable regardless of story circumstance. Which I get, I suppose. On their own any one of these rules I think wouldn't have killed the game for me (except maybe the lingering injury rule? I was planning on playing a paladin and the idea of tanking while going to zero has potentially permanent consequences is not super fun, and I don't really want to roleplay my suave idiot paladin getting his legs hacked off or whatever) but looking at a huge page of them just makes me want to run screaming, which is rough because I am good friends with the DM and everyone else in the session, we've all played DnD together before with someone else DMing so I feel like I'm ruining the group's fun if I drop when I'm the only one who seems to have a problem with the rules. Seeing here the reactions to them are mostly negative does help to make me feel less like I'm crazy for finding them to be red flags though. I don't want to issue an ultimatum or anything, but I do think I need to say to the DM I just can't find myself playing in a session with all this going on. What I don't get is that they keep telling me I'm making a bigger deal out of it than it is, and all the things I fear going wrong probably won't go wrong, but if that's the case, why have these rules in the first place if you're just sort of assuming they won't really be used against the players? My friend (not the DM, other friend in the group) insists they're just to scare us and set the tone, but I dunno. Edit: And yeah I've tried talking it out with them quite a bit, they seem confident that I'm making mountains out of molehills and that I just need to trust them. Not sure there's much more to be negotiated there. Isaacs Alter Ego fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Oct 19, 2020 |
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 03:45
|
|
|
Reveilled posted:Philosophically, I consider it cowardice on the part of the DM--DMs implement injury tables because they don't like the way 5e combat can encourage characters not to bother healing anyone before they hit 0 hitpoints, which is really only a problem if the DM is too scared to actually have enemies attack downed PCs. Those DMs aren't willing to shoulder the guilt of having killed someone's character, so they offload the guilt they feel for loving up someone's character onto a table they make the player roll on. Now when something bad happens to you, it's your fault for rolling bad. "It's not the my fault the spellcasting PC has a broken jaw and can't cast any spell with verbal components", thinks this DM, while that player sits through three sessions unable to do 90% of what their character is good at. Absolutely baffling take imo. The 5E healing rules are insanely weird, as has been repeatedly discussed in this thread, producing bizarre situations from a narrative perspective and a kind of weird minmaxing in which everyone who has the opportunity to take the level 1 spell Healing Word always should (and never, ever take any other numerical heal basically). A DM not wanting to "shoulder the guilt" of having killed a PC randomly in combat is sane and normal; most people would rather their character have a -2 to Int checks for a session than have their head caved in by a mace because someone rolled bad/good. Having enemies beeline for downed foes, aware they must strike them a couple of more times to Ensure a Kill, even when live opponents continue to threaten them, also produces bizarre narrative situations and mechanical choices on the part of enemies. There's all kinds of potential for weirdo problematic outcomes on injury tables and stuff, I guess. Is it better or worse than psychoanalyzing complete strangers on the Internet based on a dumb houserule they have in their D&D game?
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 03:48
|
|
|
Isaacs Alter Ego posted:Oh to clarify: They did call out Hexplade/Paladin as specifically being unacceptable regardless of story circumstance. Which I get, I suppose.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 03:51
|
|
|
Baku posted:There's all kinds of potential for weirdo problematic outcomes on injury tables and stuff, I guess. Is it better or worse than psychoanalyzing complete strangers on the Internet based on a dumb houserule they have in their D&D game? 10 dumb houserules, give or take. And really the core problem with injury tables is that over time they are bad for the PCs. Who gives a poo poo if you knock off a goblin's arm in the grand scheme of the game, that goblin was gonna be gone at the end of the fight either way. But eventually the numbers game will catch up to PCs and inflict damage that will last longer than one encounter and it'll just be a bad time for everyone. Granted that is for long form games where this just sounds like a night. The best thing to replace them with if you just want more gore in the game is just a "You killed a guy, roll on this table to see what cool way their body 'sploded."
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 03:54
|
|
|
Isaacs Alter Ego posted:Edit: And yeah I've tried talking it out with them quite a bit, they seem confident that I'm making mountains out of molehills and that I just need to trust them. Not sure there's much more to be negotiated there. For what it's worth, I'd say that one thing you could do is take these houserules into consideration when making a character. Like most house rules, most of these things don't impact mages very much, so just be some flavor of wizard that you haven't tried already. The Chronurgy Wizard is new and a class with a bunch of rerolls will probably be clutch in this sort of environment. If the DM only wants PHB subclasses, then just do a Divination Wizard, which is basically the same idea. Kaal fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Oct 19, 2020 |
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 04:01
|
|
|
Baku posted:Absolutely baffling take imo. The 5E healing rules are insanely weird, as has been repeatedly discussed in this thread, producing bizarre situations from a narrative perspective and a kind of weird minmaxing in which everyone who has the opportunity to take the level 1 spell Healing Word always should (and never, ever take any other numerical heal basically). A DM not wanting to "shoulder the guilt" of having killed a PC randomly in combat is sane and normal; most people would rather their character have a -2 to Int checks for a session than have their head caved in by a mace because someone rolled bad/good. Having enemies beeline for downed foes, aware they must strike them a couple of more times to Ensure a Kill, even when live opponents continue to threaten them, also produces bizarre narrative situations and mechanical choices on the part of enemies. it doesnt break the narrative for downed players to be targeted against intelligent enemies that exist in a world where healing exists. you would be foolish not to double tap enemies if you are fighting to kill and know they can heal and pop their squad up. but i do like lingering injuries as a rule if its less focused on permanently screwing over player characters and exists in a less structured game where the party can stop what they are doing to find someone that can make them a cool prosthetic arm or whatever
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 04:10
|
|
|
Is your buddy on like the 5e Reddit threads or something? Has he been a DM for a long time but just not in D&D? I'm just trying to figure out why a first time D&D DM in 2020 has a houserule list that looks like it should be on dot-matrix printer paper from 1994. I mean none of the houserules are totally busted, but they definitely say something as a gestalt, and the thing they say is "Steal some of your dad's ouzo, because this isn't your little brother's game for babies, nerd" and I'm trying to figure out why. Oh and I'm not just being hyperbolic and colorful. This is direct experience from a lovely Ravenloft game I played in 1994 where we didn't get to know our stats because "real people don't know their exact dexterity" and we had to roll our stats and HP and stuff with a hand that was on the other side of the DM screen. It in fact also featured a ban on multiclassing, along with a ban on halflings and gnomes (Iittle idiot races for babies), a ban on druids (true neutrality is impossible bullshit), and a gory crit table that required a d1000. Gonna be the ghost of Christmas past here and say the only part of that night that was any good was Mario Kart related. theironjef fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Oct 19, 2020 |
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 04:26
|
|
|
Isaacs Alter Ego posted:I am not crazy for thinking this sounds like an incredibly brutal, miserable session, right? Your character will most likely die. Just accept that now and you’ll be a lot less stressed about it when it happens. But since this is Strahd on Halloween you may get to come back as vampire or something. E: As far as the initiative crit thing, I think most of the reactions here were people thinking it was for every attack. My interpretation was it was just for the first round of combat based on the initiative roll, which would be fine. nelson fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Oct 19, 2020 |
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 04:34
|
|
|
theironjef posted:Is your buddy on like the 5e Reddit threads or something? Has he been a DM for a long time but just not in D&D? I'm just trying to figure out why a first time D&D DM in 2020 has a houserule list that looks like it should be on dot-matrix printer paper from 1994. I mean none of the houserules are totally busted, but they definitely say something as a gestalt, and the thing they say is "Steal some of your dad's ouzo, because this isn't your little brother's game for babies, nerd" and I'm trying to figure out why. I have no idea. It seems sort of out of character, quite frankly. We've only played in one other session together before and she played a fairly un-optimized character; a fey warlock that primarily used a bow. I took this as her valuing RP over mechanics, which is fine and good (and it worked out in-campaign because we didn't get into many combats) but that kind of value of narrative over mechanics seems at odds with her current DM style of brutally unforgiving difficulty; when I brought up how playing a paladin who rolled all 1's for HP might feel pretty bad, she said I just don't value low HP characters. I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. Maybe I am too stuck on mechanics and "powergaming"? But if mechanics don't matter, I don't understand why you'd have these rules in the first place. She did bring up an example of having played in another Ravenloft campaign that used the lingering injury table and that her character lost their foot and it didn't bother her, so I am guessing she has played in other campaigns that used these rules and that's why she's so confident the rules are fine? Also just to be clear, this is for something that'll be a long, ongoing campaign; if it was a one-shot I'd just suck it up for a night, but for something that could go on for months, it'd be miserable. Edit: As for my character dying...Honestly, that doesn't bother me as much as the idea of them becoming permanently blinded/delimbed/horribly disfigured etc.? If it were a straight meatgrinder where we were just up against monsters out of our league, I could deal, but the idea of getting stuck as a paladin with permanent disadvantage on charisma checks and attacks, with only one arm and one leg is not really something I'm up for. I'd rather just roll a new character every session than have to deal with mounting permanent negatives. Isaacs Alter Ego fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Oct 19, 2020 |
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 04:47
|
|
|
Isaacs Alter Ego posted:I have no idea. It seems sort of out of character, quite frankly. We've only played in one other session together before and she played a fairly un-optimized character; a fey warlock that primarily used a bow. I took this as her valuing RP over mechanics, which is fine and good (and it worked out in-campaign because we didn't get into many combats) but that kind of value of narrative over mechanics seems at odds with her current DM style of brutally unforgiving difficulty; when I brought up how playing a paladin who rolled all 1's for HP might feel pretty bad, she said I just don't value low HP characters. I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. Maybe I am too stuck on mechanics and "powergaming"? But if mechanics don't matter, I don't understand why you'd have these rules in the first place. You are not stuck on mechanics and powergaming. She is stuck on an old-fashioned belief that you can have good stats or RP potential, but not both. It's bullshit from a while ago, and it almost certainly is just some OSR forum she found somewhere talking. That game really doesn't sound fun, and neither does whatever source she seems to have latched on to.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 04:53
|
|
|
change my name posted:Alright, first Frostmaiden game is a go and we even got to level 2 halfway in then in our first combat a hidden crag cat pounced, knocked me over, bit me and I was immediately downed Game two. This happened again and I failed 2 death saves before being stabilized
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 04:54
|
|
|
"sorry dude your paladin has 4 hp that's just how the dice fall buddy i hope you're ready to roleplay the world's most infirmed holy crusader for an hour before the specter on the third floor skullfucks you in one round"
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 05:01
|
|
|
A friend at my group's table has had really bad experiences with Chaotic Neutral players in previous groups, and I wanted to show him how to be CN without the Stupid. So I'm playing a Gnome Wizard who's getting up there in years and has had her life reset a couple of times because she cannot stop loving around with time: Her first go round she invented something to help stop the spread of a plague, but her family was kidnapped by some brigands looking to profit from her device, and they were killed in a rescue attempt. So she adventured to find a spell to reverse time, and she sabotaged her invention to avoid being a famous target, only to have her family die anyway because the plague spread to their town. So at the time of our game, she starts as a low level Chronurgy Wizard, not yet convinced to stop making her own life a Butterfly Effect hell. She's starting to lose some sanity as a result of repeated tragedy, but she's convinced herself that she can't kill anyone to atone for causing lots of deaths from the plague she could have stopped. So I only have one damaging cantrip and a series of spells designed for utility, which means I try to turn encounters into a fun puzzle for myself to figure out how to do things with as little murderhoboing as possible. And again, to prove you can be Chaotic Neutral without being an rear end in a top hat to your friends (except the DM  ) So far her shenanigans include:-There was a dragonborn working for his white dragon father to collect tribute from villages, she used illusion magic to make his chest look like a mimic when he opened it, causing the crowd to freak out and flee -Using Chronal Shift, which Chronurgy Wizards can use to make people reroll things, to turn an enemy's crit into a fumble, so I described it as pulling the enemy from a timeline where he hadn't actually drawn his weapon yet (DM lets us help with the narrative on crit rolls and fumbles) -Using the spell Immovable Object to put a chain in a doorway above her own head (she's a gnome) and then Minor Illusion to make the door look normal, then taunting a normal sized humanoid enemy to chase her, causing him to knock himself out running into the chain at neck length -Using the Sleep spell on herself to get out of listening to yet another of the Odin worshiping Fighter's lectures -We added a player in the third session, and his intro was being sent to stop us by the white dragon mentioned earlier. She took the initiative and tried to make him a counter offer, promising him a magic item. He being lawful good asked "Are you trying to bribe me?" to which she responded, "Yes, I was hoping your morals were as dubious as mine!" Then, him, being magically inclined, which I did not know, asked to see the item, so she showed him a Veteran's Cane, which is a magical cane that turns into a mundane sword if you say a command phrase. So he confronted her on the item being nearly worthless, to which she responded, "I already said I have dubious morals!" Fortunately, he wasn't exactly keen to work for a white dragon and we were able to convince him to join us by pointing out the previous tribute demands we'd already witnessed. -Convinced an orge to leave us alone by promising him that he could eat her thoughts, assuring him that they were very delicious and would help make him smarter, then proceeded to use Encode Thoughts and Prestidigitation to make a very tasty ribbon of thought
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 05:21
|
|
|
Isaacs Alter Ego posted:I have no idea. It seems sort of out of character, quite frankly. We've only played in one other session together before and she played a fairly un-optimized character; a fey warlock that primarily used a bow. I took this as her valuing RP over mechanics, which is fine and good (and it worked out in-campaign because we didn't get into many combats) but that kind of value of narrative over mechanics seems at odds with her current DM style of brutally unforgiving difficulty; when I brought up how playing a paladin who rolled all 1's for HP might feel pretty bad, she said I just don't value low HP characters. I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. Maybe I am too stuck on mechanics and "powergaming"? But if mechanics don't matter, I don't understand why you'd have these rules in the first place. so uh, this is bad. i love some OSR from time to time but this isnt good. playing a long form narrative heavy campaign like curse of strahd and being shackled to a lovely character is miserable
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 05:24
|
|
|
I’m playing in a 5e Star Wars campaign with a new group. I’m pumped to play and sent pictures of my stats sheets to the dm the other day. He said everything looked good but my weight was off. I had just put in appropriate numbers for the height/weight for my race. I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. Apparently I hadn’t followed the formula for rolling height/weight and my weight was off. I had randomly said 60 pounds instead of doing the formula. The correct weight was 64 pounds. He said I really needed to correct the issue. I am now a bit worried about how this is all going to go down. One of the players is having his 11 year old son play as well. In session zero the kid seemed impatient, stand-offish about criticism and very easily frustrated. I hope I’m not seeing a train wreck in my near future.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 06:14
|
|
|
Nash posted:I’m playing in a 5e Star Wars campaign with a new group. I’m pumped to play and sent pictures of my stats sheets to the dm the other day. Look Star Wars had a number of scenes that famously hinged on the exact weight of several of the characters, and not a single Star Wars film has ever been made worse by the presence of an 11 year old so I don't know what you have to worry about here.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 06:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 05:37 |
|
|
B...but what if the bridge can only take 200 lbs of weight, and those 4 pounds are the difference between life and death?
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2020 06:26
|
|
