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TheGreatEvilKing posted:We're talking past each other. I'm not saying don't take cleric and wizard, I'm saying divination CC wizard and forge cleric will do the team a lot better than evoker and life cleric trying to fight the game's busted math and smash numbers. When my current table rolled their characters, a couple people were really invested in who was going to be the tank and who was going to be the healer, and I had to talk them through tanks not really being a thing and dedicated healers being possible but entirely unnecessary. Thankfully they listened, and now outside of class features that give healing, we only have one player who feels it necessary to even keep healing spells around, and that's more of an anxiety thing than anything else. Aside from letting them buy level appropriate healing potions in Waterdeep between modules, I haven't had to do anything different to account for it. There have been plenty of situations where one less person dealing damage and instead trying to heal would have made the encounters more difficult and I'm struggling to think of a time when having a dedicated healer would have been truly advantageous.
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Jun 8, 2021 19:42
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Infinite Karma posted:The worse your party optimization is, the better a Wizard casting Magic Missile/Fireball/Chain Lightning is. And when your "strikers" can actually do a lot of damage that can scale up even better in good circumstances, that fixed Fireball damage looks a lot worse by comparison. At that point, spellcasters are playing support, trying to game the action economy, and beating exploration challenges (or if they're on edge cases, trivializing combat by using exploration mechanics like Fly vs. a Grizzly Bear). But what Wizards aren't doing in a well optimized party is the most damage. Blasting spells are a real threat in my current campaign, partly because we're not optimized class-wise but also due to unusual circumstances. Last session we were escorting around a group of a dozen thri-kreen and ended up in a scrap with a sizeable number of thugs backed up by some sort of blaster mage. We'd trained up the thri-kreen a bit and when we got attacked I told them to form a defensive line, so that the injured members of the team could take cover behind them. This was a tactical error, because enemy spellcaster flanked the line and got ready to cast a lightning bolt. If our evoker hadn't been able to counterspell it the entire line of thri-kreen would have been devastated and probably wiped out by the end of the round. Later, our evoker was able to fireball most of the enemy thugs without hurting the thri-kreen line with their subclass ability, which put the thri-kreen at huge advantage and they were able to wipe out the mob without any losses. We're level 12 characters and I suppose normally spells like fireball and lightning bolt are considered underpowered by this point but in our circumstances they're brutally effective at the moment.
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Jun 8, 2021 20:07
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Where do you all find games other than on here? I live out in the sticks, the closest town of more than 10k people is about an hour and a half away, so in person is unlikely to happen. I had a game for a couple sessions earlier this year but IRL drama ended it quickly. It's a shame, I was really enjoying playing a charisma-based character for the first time ever and having only played by post before the creativity seemed much higher playing over voice chat. I was looking forward to trying to play a good-aligned Oath of Conquest paladin with the philosophy "if you can make your enemies immediately poo poo their pants and surrender there's less bloodshed." i just recruit posting allies who have the inclination and open mindedness enough to play, and then they recruit their allies who fit the vibe when stories of sessions get passed around and they want in. i also only play online
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Jun 8, 2021 20:16
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Azathoth posted:When my current table rolled their characters, a couple people were really invested in who was going to be the tank and who was going to be the healer, and I had to talk them through tanks not really being a thing and dedicated healers being possible but entirely unnecessary. Yeah, being purely dedicated to healing is entirely unnecessary in 5E. And even characters focused primarily on healing should stick to Healing Word in combat so they can keep doing damage as well as healing. But along those lines, I do think it's a good idea to make sure the party includes at least one character who can and will learn/prepare Lesser and Greater Restoration. I've DM'd and played in a few parties that could wade through any amount of damage but got hosed the minute they suffered some long-lasting status effects. Filthy Hans posted:Blasting spells are a real threat in my current campaign, partly because we're not optimized class-wise but also due to unusual circumstances. Last session we were escorting around a group of a dozen thri-kreen and ended up in a scrap with a sizeable number of thugs backed up by some sort of blaster mage. We'd trained up the thri-kreen a bit and when we got attacked I told them to form a defensive line, so that the injured members of the team could take cover behind them. This was a tactical error, because enemy spellcaster flanked the line and got ready to cast a lightning bolt. If our evoker hadn't been able to counterspell it the entire line of thri-kreen would have been devastated and probably wiped out by the end of the round. Later, our evoker was able to fireball most of the enemy thugs without hurting the thri-kreen line with their subclass ability, which put the thri-kreen at huge advantage and they were able to wipe out the mob without any losses. Yeah, AOE's effectiveness depends largely on what kind of encounters you have. I like to include a healthy amount of "boss+horde of minions" encounters, and those keep AOE blast magic pretty viable.
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Jun 8, 2021 20:23
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I prefer playing offline but I also live in a country the size of a postage stamp
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Jun 8, 2021 20:27
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:We're talking past each other. I'm not saying don't take cleric and wizard, I'm saying divination CC wizard and forge cleric will do the team a lot better than evoker and life cleric trying to fight the game's busted math and smash numbers. And I'm saying with all due respect who cares? Are the divination wizard and the forge cleric stronger than the evoker and life cleric? Probably - in fact almost certainly. Are the divination wizard and forge cleric going to be viable in games where the evoker and life cleric aren't or are they going to snap games over their knee that the other two would be fine in? No. In the old 3.X tier list terms they'd all be in the same tier. And people in my experience want to blow stuff up and heal people. It's a strong character concept decently implemented. I've had people say they want to be healers (admittedly fewer than have played them in the history of D&D) but can only ever once recall someone who tried to play a forge god cleric unprompted. I've seen more people want to burninate than to divine. And the subclasses do their jobs well enough even if there's a slight power gap.
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Jun 9, 2021 03:41
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neonchameleon posted:And I'm saying with all due respect who cares? Are the divination wizard and the forge cleric stronger than the evoker and life cleric? Probably - in fact almost certainly. Are the divination wizard and forge cleric going to be viable in games where the evoker and life cleric aren't or are they going to snap games over their knee that the other two would be fine in? No. In the old 3.X tier list terms they'd all be in the same tier. And people in my experience want to blow stuff up and heal people. It's a strong character concept decently implemented. I've had people say they want to be healers (admittedly fewer than have played them in the history of D&D) but can only ever once recall someone who tried to play a forge god cleric unprompted. I've seen more people want to burninate than to divine. And the subclasses do their jobs well enough even if there's a slight power gap. You don't see a problem with the classes people want to play being weak? Because blasting is probably the weakest its ever been with the poor scaling of those spells and the HP bloat of monsters. Yes, you can make an evoker or life cleric that secretly uses the game's good spells, but then you're just throwing your subclass in the trash.
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Jun 9, 2021 16:05
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So I'm an idiot and joined a game as a planar traveler with a revolver. I've been told I have to figure out how to maintain the gun and make more ammunition in a world that is definitely not advanced enough to have firearms yet. I'm thinking I could probably find some dwarves and give them a few bullets to try and figure out how to make more? The party is in the Underdark at the moment so that shouldn't be too much of a stretch. Any smarter suggestions are welcome. ninja edit: I get 10000g to equip myself with so I'm thinking I probably allot like 8000 of that to bullets and come strapped to the gills.
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Jun 9, 2021 16:19
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Mr. Humalong posted:So I'm an idiot and joined a game as a planar traveler with a revolver. I've been told I have to figure out how to maintain the gun and make more ammunition in a world that is definitely not advanced enough to have firearms yet. I'm thinking I could probably find some dwarves and give them a few bullets to try and figure out how to make more? The party is in the Underdark at the moment so that shouldn't be too much of a stretch. Be a warlock, flavor it as a spell focus, cast eldritch blast through your revolver.
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Jun 9, 2021 16:24
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Mr. Humalong posted:So I'm an idiot and joined a game as a planar traveler with a revolver. I've been told I have to figure out how to maintain the gun and make more ammunition in a world that is definitely not advanced enough to have firearms yet. I'm thinking I could probably find some dwarves and give them a few bullets to try and figure out how to make more? The party is in the Underdark at the moment so that shouldn't be too much of a stretch. Find an artificer to infuse it with repeating shot, then you won't need ammo anymore
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Jun 9, 2021 16:27
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change my name posted:Find an artificer to infuse it with repeating shot, then you won't need ammo anymore one of the other party members is an artificer  CaptainPsyko posted:Be a warlock, flavor it as a spell focus, cast eldritch blast through your revolver. I'm a samurai Also taking suggestions for any neat realms I may have been to before coming across the party. I was going to just be from the Shadowfell but the DM preferred I be a planar traveler to explain having a gun so here we are with me scrambling to find all the realms in 5e/Faerun. Mr. Humalong fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Jun 9, 2021 |
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Jun 9, 2021 16:44
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Mr. Humalong posted:
how very sakamoto ryoma of you maybe you were in some kind of analogue of bakumatsu era japan at one point in your planar travels? or are you just using the class features of samurai but not necessarily the japanese thematic aspects
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Jun 9, 2021 16:49
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Mr. Humalong posted:one of the other party members is an artificer Oh, if you’re in the FR finding gunsmiths becomes a lot easier. You’re looking for a priest of Gond, god of artificers - they can make guns, bullets, and the FR equivalent to gunpowder, smokepowder. If you’re using anything more advanced than an arquebus you’ll need to give them some ammo to figure out how to duplicate though.
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Jun 9, 2021 16:53
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Mr. Humalong posted:So I'm an idiot and joined a game as a planar traveler with a revolver. I've been told I have to figure out how to maintain the gun and make more ammunition in a world that is definitely not advanced enough to have firearms yet. I'm thinking I could probably find some dwarves and give them a few bullets to try and figure out how to make more? The party is in the Underdark at the moment so that shouldn't be too much of a stretch. Is the DM allowing you to start with a bullet mold? I also have no idea what skill chemistry is under because DM empowerment but I'd grab that. Proficiency with alchemist tools maybe? You don't have to go all in on modern metallurgy and cordite and stuff, but black powder should be pretty easy to make and you can cast lead bullets.
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Jun 9, 2021 17:00
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Mr. Humalong posted:So I'm an idiot and joined a game as a planar traveler with a revolver. I've been told I have to figure out how to maintain the gun and make more ammunition in a world that is definitely not advanced enough to have firearms yet. I'm thinking I could probably find some dwarves and give them a few bullets to try and figure out how to make more? The party is in the Underdark at the moment so that shouldn't be too much of a stretch. A blacksmith can make the bullets and bullet casings. You can make gunpowder with sulfur/charcoal/potassium nitrite. You should be able to obtain sulfur and charcoal easily enough in a middle ages society, and you can obtain potassium nitrite from pee! There are places called Fulleries in the middle ages where clothes are cleaned with pee, this is where you can obtain potassium nitrite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45fNvmdUrI8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObdCgc3gY2c Gunpowder and bullets will get you up to the tech level of a muzzle loading revolver. If you want proper cartage you will need to be able to make primer. Thats a little more challenging with middle ages tech. You will need to synthesize mercury Fulminate. For this you need Mercury, Ethanol, and Nitric Acid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrheYRcrKvE It should be easy enough to get mercury and ethanol in the middle ages but you will have to make the nitric acid yourself. You can do this by the oxidation of ammonia from your pee supply. For this process you will need a platinum catalyst. This might be hard to find, but you can always pay a wizard to cast Creation to make a temporary platinum catalyst: https://www.technology.matthey.com/article/11/1/2-9/ Rutibex fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Jun 9, 2021 |
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Jun 9, 2021 17:19
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Mr. Humalong posted:So I'm an idiot and joined a game as a planar traveler with a revolver. I've been told I have to figure out how to maintain the gun and make more ammunition in a world that is definitely not advanced enough to have firearms yet. I'm thinking I could probably find some dwarves and give them a few bullets to try and figure out how to make more? The party is in the Underdark at the moment so that shouldn't be too much of a stretch. Maintaining a gun just means keeping it oiled and swabbing out the barrel and chamber to prevent corrosion. The most that should require is getting some rags, a brush of the proper diameter, and some oil. Your character should probably be assumed to carry this stuff, just like the fighter is assumed to carry a rag and oil to keep their sword in shape and the wizard's component pouch is assumed to contain whatever basic components their spells need. Rutibex breaks down what goes into making bullets in good detail; the short form is that bullets don't take much more than materials, hand tools, and some basic "alchemy". I'd say that if you're an intentional planar traveler, you'd probably know that bullets aren't readily available on all planes and carry with you the necessary tools to make them. Maybe if you intent to share or use that knowledge beyond just shooting your own gun, I'd make you take a tool proficiency as part of your background. Mr. Humalong posted:one of the other party members is an artificer As Arivia points out, Faerun makes finding a gunsmith a lot easier. Heck, the artificer might already be a Gond worshiper who can cover you. You can kinda combine the Shadowfell and planar traveler ideas by saying you got the gun in Ravenloft's Lamordia. That's the not-Frankenstein domain that the new book updated to be spooky steampunk land. 5E has continued 4E's mashup of Spelljammer and the Astral Plane, so maybe you picked up the gun while crewing for the Giff captain of a spelljammer. A precision mechanical device that revolves could very well come from Mechanus. Maybe you did some modrons a great service and they repaid you with a gun. The original premise of the Forgotten Realms is that they were connected to our own world by portals that we (aside from a Canadian librarian) forgot. Maybe you got the gun here on our dumb Earth.
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Jun 9, 2021 17:27
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Also there is basically a giant no one wins lore fight over whether gunpowder works in the Forgotten Realms at all, or if you need specifically smokepowder to do it. Don’t be a dick, just go with what your DM decides.
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Jun 9, 2021 17:46
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PeterWeller posted:The original premise of the Forgotten Realms is that they were connected to our own world by portals  This is canon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHnsMKQJBDA
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Jun 9, 2021 17:51
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PeterWeller posted:The original premise of the Forgotten Realms is that they were connected to our own world by portals that we (aside from a Canadian librarian) forgot. Maybe you got the gun here on our dumb Earth. Which librarian would this be? Ed?
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Jun 9, 2021 18:12
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Drewjitsu posted:Which librarian would this be? Ed? Eh'd.
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Jun 9, 2021 18:18
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Mr. Humalong posted:one of the other party members is an artificer Have you given thought to how you do your planar traveling? Shipwrecked Spelljammer is cooler than portal hopper, if only because you get to explain how you stole your gun from a Giff because the Giff are the coolest dumbest race in all of D&D. (19th century imperial British(/German depending on which source) hippo men)
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Jun 9, 2021 18:29
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CaptainPsyko posted:Have you given thought to how you do your planar traveling? Shipwrecked Spelljammer is cooler than portal hopper, if only because you get to explain how you stole your gun from a Giff because the Giff are the coolest dumbest race in all of D&D. Easy - considering that Hippos can run faster than a human, and swim faster than a human, the character beat the Griff in triathlon with an excellent time on the bike section.
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Jun 9, 2021 18:39
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The best part about the Giff is arguing whether it's pronounced giff or giff
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Jun 9, 2021 18:41
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Drewjitsu posted:Easy - considering that Hippos can run faster than a human, and swim faster than a human, the character beat the Griff in triathlon with an excellent time on the bike section. Lmaooo Hell yes. And the 'Giff is training for a rematch!
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Jun 9, 2021 18:46
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Drewjitsu posted:Which librarian would this be? Ed? Correct.
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Jun 9, 2021 18:50
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All of this is amazing and I’m stealing it. Except the Ed Greenwood stuff. Thanks all! Mr. Lobe posted:how very sakamoto ryoma of you Yeah think more “blatantly cribbing notes from The Gunslinger, except an elf woman” than Japanese warrior.
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Jun 9, 2021 20:15
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:You don't see a problem with the classes people want to play being weak? Because blasting is probably the weakest its ever been with the poor scaling of those spells and the HP bloat of monsters. Yes, you can make an evoker or life cleric that secretly uses the game's good spells, but then you're just throwing your subclass in the trash. That depends what you mean by "weak". Perfect game balance with any asymmetry at all is literally impossible and there will always be some classes that are weak and others that are strong. When you say that the 5e cleric or evoker are weak we're not talking 3.5 rogue or fighter weak. We're not even talking 4e binder weak tbh. And that's why I say who cares - especially when how bad evokers are depends a lot on your enemy types; Bounded Accuracy is ridiculous and means that evokers are really the class for burning up swarms of enemies that are more threatening than other editions. Also I don't think that evokers or life clerics are even that close to the bottom of the heap although Tasha's did a lot to fix the ranger and the sorcerer.
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Jun 9, 2021 21:56
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Specifically, the issue with divination versus evocation isn't that evokers are weak (they're fine) or that evocation magic is weak (it usually is, but can be great in certain kinds of encounters). The issue with divination versus evocation is that even if you want to play as a blaster wizard who throws around flashy evocation spells, you're probably better off taking School of Divination so you can get those sweet Portent rolls after each long rest.
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Jun 9, 2021 22:14
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At the end of the day, an evoker and a life cleric are still full casters in 5e, so balance-wise they're doing just fine. And their big class abilities (evokers being able to drop AoEs on top of party members without hurting them, life clerics getting a big heal) will come in handy often enough that the player will feel like they're getting value out of their subclass. So I really don't see a problem with those. Something like an illusionist wizard is a dicier proposition; illusion magic already depends on DM fiat, and the first two powers granted by the subclass are pretty anemic. But even then, you're a full caster, you'll be fine. You just might wish you'd chosen a different subclass.
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Jun 9, 2021 22:15
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Yeah, the absolute worst full caster is still easily above the best pure martial, so you know, that's balanced I guess?
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Jun 9, 2021 23:11
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The only full caster who isn't doing just fine (although an Illusionist with the wrong DM sucks) that I can think of is the Sorcerer, especially if you aren't using Aberrant Mind or Clockwork Soul. If you, for example, try to go a sorcerer blast mage with one evocation spell per spell level (which sounds a reasonable plan) that leaves you with just one other spell per spell level. My other problem with the Illusionist is that they might come awesome at level 14 but the Warlock has been playing Mysterio since level 2 with Silent Image as an at will ability, minor illusion to provide sound effects, and possibly disguise self at will. It's a pity they can't cast Major Image at level 6 (making it permanent) because Mystic Arcanum's silly and can't get Programmed Illusion but for the first ten levels the warlock's probably a stronger illusionist. Edit: I'm not sure that a badly built evoker sorcerer isn't weaker than some pure martials. More importantly almost all the spellcasting subclasses (with the strongest counter-example being the fixed vs non-fixed sorcerer) aren't perfectly balanced but the difference isn't overwhelming and they are pretty fluffy and feel as if they are doing stuff. It only truly matters when the difference is overwhelming. neonchameleon fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Jun 9, 2021 |
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Jun 9, 2021 23:21
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It's all so reliant on which monsters your DM is using (and whether they're even stock monsters at all) that it's pointless to talk about. Maybe if you for some reason play in a game where the encounters and challenges aren't designed with the PCs in mind, but I don't even want to think about that
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Jun 9, 2021 23:46
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Most players play the stock adventure books as-is, hth.
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Jun 10, 2021 00:51
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PeterWeller posted:Specifically, the issue with divination versus evocation isn't that evokers are weak (they're fine) or that evocation magic is weak (it usually is, but can be great in certain kinds of encounters). The issue with divination versus evocation is that even if you want to play as a blaster wizard who throws around flashy evocation spells, you're probably better off taking School of Divination so you can get those sweet Portent rolls after each long rest. Also Divination magic is one of those schools of magic that is moreso dependent on the GM being willing to play ball with you on what you're able to do with it. With bad DMs just coming up with excuses to outright block divining magic on the extreme end of things. Granted, portent is really loving strong even if the DM blocks all the other major uses of divining magic. Also *most* divination magic is pretty explicitly non-combat and has the smallest amount of dedicated spell choices among pretty much all of the other specialties. That being said, yeah, like a dedicated Illusionist does need help especially in comparison to hard illusionist Warlocks, but it also does get access to some spells that Warlocks won't necessarily get in their base kit (Phantasmal Force, Phantom Steed, and phantasmal killer come to mind among other things) and you still have the depth of spell slots of being a dedicated wizard. I wouldn't even necessarily say like Divination is the end all be all either, because most of the specialties have something really rad as gently caress in them, be it enchanters just redirecting attacks as reactions and locking down enemies with minimal limitation, conjurers getting uninterruptable concentration spells, abjurers having a rechargeable pool of temporary hitpoints and being able to counterspell / dispell with a turbo steroid.
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Jun 10, 2021 01:30
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DeathSandwich posted:Also Divination magic is one of those schools of magic that is moreso dependent on the GM being willing to play ball with you on what you're able to do with it. With bad DMs just coming up with excuses to outright block divining magic on the extreme end of things. Expert Divination almost seems designed specifically to address this. "Welp, the DM was very unhelpful when I cast Locate Object, so I guess I'll just recharge a slot for Slow."
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Jun 10, 2021 01:43
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PeterWeller posted:Expert Divination almost seems designed specifically to address this. "Welp, the DM was very unhelpful when I cast Locate Object, so I guess I'll just recharge a slot for Slow." I cast Mind Spike. I cast Mind Spike. I cast Mind Spike. I cast Mind Spike. I cast Mind Spike.
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Jun 10, 2021 02:02
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Clerics get Aura of Vitality with Tasha's, and going from healing 2d6 ten times to 2d6+5 ten times with Life cleric seems pretty nice. An average of 120 hp with a level 3 slot is frankly insane, even if other clerics can do 70. Though this is all out of combat of course.
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Jun 10, 2021 04:47
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One of my players dropped. After last week's session we had a private conversation where he told me he wanted out. He just wasn't having enough fun to justify the time investment, especially because he's got a Shadowrun campaign he's DMing (and I'll be a player in.) It's fine and the campaign will continue, and it'll probably be better for the group. There were basically two big issues preventing him from having fun. The first was his character. He played a warlock but we had a bard in the group that became the face of the group, so half of his purpose was gone. I tried to mitigate it by having his be the first character to be really tied into the overarching story but that wasn't enough, I guess. Second was combat related. He had very little to except eldritch blast twice, and sometimes but rarely cast something different. Because of the playstyle and size of the group (5 players) this meant that he would be waiting between his turns and because we're playing online he just couldn't be engaged. I'm sure it would've been different if we were playing at the table. Oh well...
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Jun 10, 2021 17:50
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You could offer him to switch to a new character, which would address both of these issues. But don't push it too hard, he might just not be into the game anymore regardless.
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Jun 10, 2021 18:32
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Yeah, he's just done with the game for now. Like I said, he's going to DM a Shadowrun campaign which we're all very excited about and he wants to put a ton of effort, and with that and just life stuff it's not worth the effort and time anymore. I respect his decision and it's not like we won't be playing games together anymore or whatever. E: the upside is that I got to make it into something cool. The party was about to fight a legendary spider to get her poison that they need to kill a Formian queen. I manouvred things so that his character was caught and killed by the spider, only because he was in his form of dread (undead patron) as he died his body sucked out all the poison from the spider leaving her weakened enough to be an easier kill for the rest of the party. Now the party has to figure out a way to use his poisonfilled body. Gruesome but in a fun way. Taeke fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Jun 10, 2021 |
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Jun 10, 2021 18:47
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