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I'm gonna keep using the Anbennar Gnolls who are demon-worshipping raiders, but mostly due to their cultures as those raised in, say, the Jaddari Empire aren't that. Also there's the demon cocaine snorting pirates of Mykx.
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Jun 8, 2022 04:05
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My online group was talking about a 5E game, but I'm trying to reign in caster supremacy while still making taking on a prepared mage a dicey proposition. Also, it seemed to me like mages can really unbalance the action economy (to be fair, it was a much greater problem in 3E and before, where high level mages would cast a time stop like spell, and get a whole bunch of spells off before anyone can act). Combine that with that mages can just cast all their highest level spells round after round without any deleterious effect (especially when they talk in game how draining casting high level magic is). Not to mention the Vancian system can be a pain. So I'm noodling my brain to try to change around wizards/sorcerers (probably fits better with sorcerers but it's what I'm working with right now. If it works, it'd replace mages/sorcerers in my world) My current brainwave: Instead of certain amount of spells per level, Magic Users will have a total daily spell pool= the number of levels they can cast in a day. For example, a 9th level wizard has 4 cantrips, 4 first, 3 second, 3 Third, 3 Fourth, 1 Fifth. Under this system, cantrips wouldn't change, but they would have (4x1) + (3x2) + (3x3) + (3x4) +(1x5)= 36 spell levels to cast in a day. Of course, this would mean that a mage could theoretically cast seven fifth level spells in a day, so there has to be a more limiting factor, and what I came up with to add to this was a limit of spells that can be cast at any one time, I call it "The Ready Pool", where a character has ready access to only a number of Spell Levels=to the highest level they can cast. So the above 9th level wizard has a Ready Pool of 5. This ready pool only regenerates one point per round of combat, so if you cast a 5th level spell to start combat, you have used up all the points in your Ready Pool, gain 1 point at the end of the round and only be able to cast 0-level (Cantrips) or a 1st level spell for the next round. I haven't decided whether to make it a hard limit, or to allow people to push through (taking on fatigue for example, costing extra levels from their daily spell pool or taking HP damage), but a mage can set up a power focus to improve their Ready Pool refresh (current thought is to make it the equivalent of a magic item that they would have to attune to.. also gives the players something to spend money on making). That's why mages are exceptionally dangerous when you try to take them on in their own domain.. they've spent time familiarizing themselves with the magic flow in a specific area, and aspected it to best serve their own needs.) I'm sure that folks will have a million reasons why this sucks and won't work, so that's why I brought it up here. SirFozzie fucked around with this message at 08:15 on Jun 8, 2022 |
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Jun 8, 2022 08:08
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SirFozzie posted:My online group was talking about a 5E game, but I'm trying to reign in caster supremacy while still making taking on a prepared mage a dicey proposition. Also, it seemed to me like mages can really unbalance the action economy (to be fair, it was a much greater problem in 3E and before, where high level mages would cast a time stop like spell, and get a whole bunch of spells off before anyone can act). I've got a better idea, get rid of at-will cantrips and ritual spells. Make casters memorize specific spells every morning instead of casting whatever they want on the fly. Also, give lots of magic items to everyone who isn't a caster.
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Jun 8, 2022 08:14
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Rutibex posted:Also, give lots of magic items to everyone who isn't a caster. One thing that I was also noodling about is that instead of finding magic weapons willy nilly, that magewrights can take any mastercrafted weapon and infuse it with crystallized mana (like a metal in this game world, temporary name: Manatite) through a ritual to make it magic. It's not cheap, and in most cases, not permanent (I'm talking weeks/months before it fades and needs to be reapplied, not days/hours), but it allows someone for example, to carry their family heirloom blade throughout a whole campaign, changing it as they need throughout the career (as the DM allows, of course). It's also used in minor applications, like the "elite" King's Guard (who are really a bunch of slumming second sons and spoiled brats) to have their house's Magewright apply a minor cleaning/mending spell to their armor so it always appears polished and parade-ground gleaming without having to actually you know, ruin their hands maintaining it, like the commoners do.
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Jun 8, 2022 08:23
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SirFozzie posted:One thing that I was also noodling about is that instead of finding magic weapons willy nilly, that magewrights can take any mastercrafted weapon and infuse it with crystallized mana (like a metal in this game world, temporary name: Manatite) through a ritual to make it magic. There is an old spell called Permanancy that is used to created semi-permanent magic items like you describe. They are not true magic items, if the spell is dispelled they won't function any more. This is a 5e version: https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Permanency_(5e_Spell)
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Jun 8, 2022 08:26
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I kinda like that, but again, caster supremacy rears its head. If you have let's say as +2 flaming long sword, having a mage able to shut it down for good with a third level spell seems a bit unbalanced. But yeah, that would work for minor things like the armor and the uses on that homebrew page.
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Jun 8, 2022 08:30
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SirFozzie posted:I kinda like that, but again, caster supremacy rears its head. If you have let's say as +2 flaming long sword, having a mage able to shut it down for good with a third level spell seems a bit unbalanced. But yeah, that would work for minor things like the armor and the uses on that homebrew page. Make Rods of Negation cheap and accessible to everyone, maybe let people put a negating effect on their weapons too? Lots of options!  https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/rods/rod-of-negation/
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Jun 8, 2022 08:34
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Concentration is a fairly brutal caster nerf. Make sure they roll the check every time they get hit
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Jun 8, 2022 08:41
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Change full casters to d2 hit-point dice and call it a day.
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Jun 8, 2022 08:41
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nelson posted:Change full casters to d2 hit-point dice and call it a day.  but make it 1d4-2 to simulate the bad health effects of brewing potions in unventilated towers. Every level you can gain +1-2, nothing, or lose a hitpoint permanently. if you roll a 1 during character creation your wizard master sacrificed you to a demon
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Jun 8, 2022 08:57
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For the longest time, when people talked about running a low-magic campaign, I assumed that just meant no full casters in the party, and I mean, that doesn't sound like an awful way to have a campaign go. A party full of arcane tricksters, rangers, maybe a warlock if you want to stretch it? I might propose that at the next table and see if that changes the type of story we tell.
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Jun 8, 2022 09:36
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El Fideo posted:For the longest time, when people talked about running a low-magic campaign, I assumed that just meant no full casters in the party, and I mean, that doesn't sound like an awful way to have a campaign go. A party full of arcane tricksters, rangers, maybe a warlock if you want to stretch it? I might propose that at the next table and see if that changes the type of story we tell. That was going to be my serious post. It sounds like fun to me too.
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Jun 8, 2022 09:39
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Seriously. They're even pretty well specialized in their magical niches. The question is how far does the ban go? Is it just wizards, druids, and clerics? What about bards, warlocks, and artificers? How much magic is just taking the piss?
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Jun 8, 2022 09:45
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I'm not gonna lie 5e making bards into full casters was it's best design decision
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Jun 8, 2022 12:58
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Can anyone break down the math on if it's better to have 2 attacks / action or booming blade at level 5 if the character is fighter / arcane knight? No I don't want to hear why warlock 2 / paladin 3 would be a better choice, arcane knight is part of the problem I'm trying to get my head around.
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Jun 8, 2022 13:18
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Can anyone break down the math on if it's better to have 2 attacks / action or booming blade at level 5 if the character is fighter / arcane knight? 2 attacks is much better. You have to use an action to cast Booming Blade
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Jun 8, 2022 13:21
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Can anyone break down the math on if it's better to have 2 attacks / action or booming blade at level 5 if the character is fighter / arcane knight? math for 2 attacks: (.65*8.5)*2=11.05 math for booming blade .65(8.5+4.5+2.25)=9.9125 Note the above math did not assume a relevant fighting style. Madmarker fucked around with this message at 13:43 on Jun 8, 2022 |
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Jun 8, 2022 13:33
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Speaking of high magic and low magic setting, my group is currently portalling around and have landed in my test campaign setting, so it will take at least 5+ sessions to really finish it. Serendipitously, the group are all martials or fight heavy, no casters. In the setting it's low level but it's filled with a magical crystal akin to coal/uranium, so it's a crude source of power and the world is in the infancy of industrial and electronics systems. It's basically the source of any afflicted magic user in the world (a new player entered in as an in world artificer character) and their study of these crystals has resulted in the loss of a hand and reduction of max hp. However, this messing around with the crystals gives more positive mutations the higher the Con of the character - the afore mentioned character has gained a psychic scream blast on knockout and a few extra low level spell slots. It's essentially a simple roguelike system with some mutation tables. Currently greater restoration will remove all good and bad afflictions (aside physical changes, and this knowledge isn't known yet, nor are the players high enough level!) so this is a choice a player will have to make once they start snorting it all. But the rolls can be quite bad so there's a sense of risk and reward according to some stats and specific qualities of the Magicite used, sometimes it's temporary, sometimes it's permanent, again according to exposure and 'grade', which is all just stuff they'll have to either research, or figure out with some self-destructive testing. I'm quite happy with it, and i'm enjoying this higher tech, lower magic world. Fishbus fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Jun 8, 2022 |
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Jun 8, 2022 14:23
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SirFozzie posted:My online group was talking about a 5E game, but I'm trying to reign in caster supremacy while still making taking on a prepared mage a dicey proposition. Also, it seemed to me like mages can really unbalance the action economy (to be fair, it was a much greater problem in 3E and before, where high level mages would cast a time stop like spell, and get a whole bunch of spells off before anyone can act). the easiest and most precise way to address this is to have more encounters per long rest op. if you are only doing one or two encounters per long rest at higher levels the casters get to use all their good stuff all the time. aside from that, i also recommend just creating more magical weapons and items. the solution is actually to give more abilities to martials but whenever they do this someone complains its power creeping wizard or whatever
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Jun 8, 2022 14:25
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That's a really good point, a lot of the people who boast about how OP their caster is are also people who assume they'll be taking a short rest after every encounter and are constantly taking long rests. If your casters are becoming a problem, then have them pursued so that they take rests when you say, not when they say. They'll soon learn to conserve spell slots.
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Jun 8, 2022 14:38
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Rutibex posted:I'm not gonna lie 5e making bards into full casters was it's best design decision I think it overpowered them some, especially when combined with charisma caster supremacy. Bards should be 2/3rds casters that use intelligence like in 2E 
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Jun 8, 2022 15:05
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PeterWeller posted:I think it overpowered them some, especially when combined with charisma caster supremacy. No, Clerics get to be full casters and also good in combat and other perks. It's only fair, the Bard is the arcane cleric.
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Jun 8, 2022 15:16
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Rutibex posted:No, Clerics get to be full casters and also good in combat and other perks. It's only fair, the Bard is the arcane cleric. Bards should be the arcane druid imo, being of Celtic origin. A bit like how they were in 1st edition I guess
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Jun 8, 2022 15:19
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Reveilled posted:Bards should be the arcane druid imo, being of Celtic origin.  Dear God no, the Bard should not be like 1st edition Giving them some druid spells is alright, but I kinda want a more generic bard. Too much theme in the base class makes it hard to reskin.
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Jun 8, 2022 15:22
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El Fideo posted:Seriously. They're even pretty well specialized in their magical niches. The question is how far does the ban go? Is it just wizards, druids, and clerics? What about bards, warlocks, and artificers? How much magic is just taking the piss? Anyone who bans wizards, druids, and clerics and then allows someone to play an Eloquence Bard is getting what they deserve. I second the “make long rests less frequent” suggestion if you think casters are too powerful. And/or, give additional abilities and powers to non-casters or half-casters to compensate. Dungeons with wandering monsters and environmental dangers that make players nervous about even taking a short rest are just one option: having any kind of time pressure that limits a particular expedition to a single day is useful as well. That can be a dictated limitation (“trial by dungeon: if you emerge alive before the sun sets, you will be freed”) or situational (this floating dungeon was just discovered and they have to loot it before it floods and sinks beneath the sea forever/fills with lava/Brigadoon’s back to the Astral sea/floods with poisonous gas) or driven by events (“they’re going to execute your friend tomorrow at dawn”). Creating additional limits on how casters recover spells is also an option. Maybe recovering spells of L4 or higher has a specific requirement: clerics must pray at a temple of a certain size; wizards must be in a lab or library; druids must be in a grove where a wellspring of natural power exists: bards must perform successfully before an audience of a specific size; sorcerers must meet a requirement based upon their archetype. In hex crawls or dungeon crawls, you can thus make the discovery of a location suitable for a single PC to recover higher-level spells a major objective. You may need to limit teleportation magic at higher levels or make it more risky to use, at least if it’s two-way (like Teleport) and not one-way (Teleportation Circle out of a dungeon/wilderness or Plane Shift).
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Jun 8, 2022 15:23
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Go full hardcore, short rests may only happen in civilized areas and Long Rests are litteraly a week long vacation.
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Jun 8, 2022 15:26
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Rutibex posted:
Well, I don't mean like "make them take six levels in fighter and five levels in thief first"! I've never been too keen on reskinning personally, I'd rather more classes with stronger themes over more generic ones that can feel like poor fits or lackluster in achieving a particular fantasy. That said, at some point I plan to make a Bard in one of the games I'm in that really leans hard into the College aspect, which I hardly ever see bards in play lean on. Gonna insist everyone addresses me as doctor and try to settle every argument with "Excuse me, but which one of us went to College?"
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Jun 8, 2022 15:32
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Reveilled posted:Well, I don't mean like "make them take six levels in fighter and five levels in thief first"! I've never been too keen on reskinning personally, I'd rather more classes with stronger themes over more generic ones that can feel like poor fits or lackluster in achieving a particular fantasy. See I'm the complete opposite, I MUST reskin, and restrictions on that make me chafe. Yes my Reborn Lineage Echo Knight/Barbarian isn't actually a "Fighter/Barbarian," but is an undead being whose soul is so loosened from its body due to repeated deaths that it manifests outside it. My Barbarian doesn't rage, just becomes inured to pain due to the centuries of repeated tortuous deaths. My Hexblade Warlock is no such thing. He is just some guy who bonded with a symbiotic organism, that absorbs weapons into his body and is able to manifest powers through the symbiote to create effects, though at a terrible cost to his stamina. His Tentacle lash (Eldritch Blast) is him extending out the protoplasmic form of the symbiote like a whip and lashing out at his opponent. My swords bard would laugh if you called him that, not that he isn't personable and could play an instrument or 2, but really he's just a scoundrel who is decent with a blade and took really good notes on how allies cast spells. Whenever he casts a spell he uses an invocation one of his previous allies, or enemies, used previously to create the effect. SO he may call on Selune for a Fairy Fire, but he is just as likely to invoke Shar for Invisibility, or read some strange arcane mathematical formula to make himself teleport (misty step from fae touched). My Oath of Ancients paladin isn't some Oath driven warrior of nature, but just a friendly retired old drunkard who loves the theater and art shows, who wields an enchanted giant calligraphy brush (a glaive in game) as a weapon. He wants everyone to be happy and smile, and lord help you if you screw with the lives of the artists who make his life worth living. Heck whenever I play spellcasters, I usually go through and rename each and every spell I have to better fit the theme of my character. For example my Dao Genie Warlock didn't Misty Step, he used Sand Stride, to turn into a a stream of sand particles to move from one place to another. He didn't cast Create Bonfire, but used his Magmatic Geyser to create an area of fire damage. My Aberrant Mind Sorcerer never cast haste, but manifested two tentacles to inject two party members with a strange stimulant cocktail. Madmarker fucked around with this message at 16:07 on Jun 8, 2022 |
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Jun 8, 2022 16:01
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Rutibex posted:Go full hardcore, short rests may only happen in civilized areas and Long Rests are litteraly a week long vacation. No wonder you don’t enjoy 5E much if you keep insisting on house rules that make the game profoundly unenjoyable.  Making short rests more important makes classes that rely on them more (especially monks and warlocks) work better. They need the help. But if you’re going to do that, think seriously about modifying the Barbarian class abilities, like allowing them to recover at least 1 use of rage per short rest. I have played a L7 cleric in a game where we spent over nine sessions without a long rest opportunity, and when we got into the situation that made resting impossible I’d already expended over half my spells in combats. Circumstances allowed me to play mostly as a bad fighter with a few cantrips, but it was pretty frustrating because it was a combat-heavy environment. I think it’s better to give other classes more to do than to undercut how casters work. That, or have intangible factors that benefit non-casters, including getting serious about downtime and insisting that most casters have things they have to do during downtime to maintain their power (praying, meditating in a natural place, studying and researching). Allow non-casters to craft magic items instead of limiting that to casters. A fighter with psionic powers or a barbarian surrounded by the spirits of his ancestors should be more than capable of enchantment. Give fighters and rogues friends and connections and guilds they can draw upon. Make the barbarian or the ranger local heroes of the populace.
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Jun 8, 2022 16:45
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Can anyone break down the math on if it's better to have 2 attacks / action or booming blade at level 5 if the character is fighter / arcane knight? https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/melee_cantrips/ this is a very detailed calculation... depends on how reliably you can trigger the rider
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Jun 8, 2022 16:50
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Narsham posted:I think it’s better to give other classes more to do than to undercut how casters work. i believe in this fully and encourage every DM to challenge themselves by taking this approach. it isnt even homebrew -- the dmg tells you to do it! use alternative rewards and boons and buff the hell out of your martials to make them fun. buffs are better than nerfs because you wield infinite power and it doesnt matter if your PCs are overpowered, so long as they all get moments to shine
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Jun 8, 2022 17:02
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Can anyone break down the math on if it's better to have 2 attacks / action or booming blade at level 5 if the character is fighter / arcane knight? Two attacks are always better than one; the cantrip scaling is more a consolation prize if your build delays or forgoes Extra Attack entirely, or if you can use it on an Opportunity Attack via War Caster. Unless, of course, you're a Bladesinger wizard, in which your identically-labeled Extra Attack feature works completely different from every other identically-labeled Extra Attack feature, and you actually can use a cantrip as part of your Attack action, in place of one of your normal swings. Because why shouldn't wizards have their cake and eat it too?
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Jun 8, 2022 17:23
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The the books claim a standard adventuring day of 4-6 encounters per day, and doing it that way does shift the balance. They don't all have to be combat encounters, but still that's not how most people play. A dungeon crawl, or a varied campaign that includes dungeon crawls, can get you more encounters per day and rebalance the classes. You can only have one long rest per 24 hour day. So if your day starts at 8 am and the casters have blown all their spells by noon, they can't just go back to bed because that would be absurd. It is a long day, so allow 3 short rests per day. Casters have to make hard decisions about when to blow their spells. Going nova in the first fight of the day is expensive. Meanwhile Fighters hit with their sword just as good all day long -- and since action surge and second wind recharge on short rest they can use them almost every fight. It also tweaks the balance between the martial classes because Ki recharges on a short rest but Rage does not. So your angry bois can run out and have to be careful where they spend that last rage, while the punch mans are throwing out stunning strikes all day. This way no one feels like they are being singled out for being nerfed, everything is proceeding exactly as it is supposed to in the books. But something like a Rune Knight is relatively a lot more powerful than usual.
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Jun 8, 2022 17:39
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Facebook Aunt posted:The the books claim a standard adventuring day of 4-6 encounters per day, and doing it that way does shift the balance. They don't all have to be combat encounters, but still that's not how most people play. A dungeon crawl, or a varied campaign that includes dungeon crawls, can get you more encounters per day and rebalance the classes. Six to eight medium or hard encounters, not 4-6. Note also that this is in the "Creating a Combat Encounter" section, as are the tables for what constitutes an easy/medium/hard/deadly encounter. It's fairly clear that the 6-8 encounters refers to combat encounters. DMG posted:The Adventuring Day N.b. that there is no guidance anywhere for giving experience for encounters other than totaling up the exp values of the creatures in the encounter. One oddity here is the "monsters and other opponents" phrasing, but that's probably just using "monster" in a less expansive way than the MM definition ("a monster is defined as any creature that can be interacted with and potentially fought and killed").
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Jun 8, 2022 21:48
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SirFozzie posted:My online group was talking about a 5E game, but I'm trying to reign in caster supremacy while still making taking on a prepared mage a dicey proposition. Also, it seemed to me like mages can really unbalance the action economy (to be fair, it was a much greater problem in 3E and before, where high level mages would cast a time stop like spell, and get a whole bunch of spells off before anyone can act). I will inform you that there is no real need to do this. While Magic users are better come the high levels, the differences are not as massive as before, and it requires the game making it to those high levels. Plus unless they are super good optimizers, there should not be too much outshining from my experience. Also on the fluff said I am pretty sure that it being draining using their highest level spells is why they can only use their highest level spells once or twice. I still don't recommend nerfing the casters anyway, it's better to buff the other people instead. Maybe use a few houserules like flanking giving a +2 to attack rolls, but I would recommend starting largely using the rules normally, and see how it goes, before deciding if you want to change certain things. What party do you think you are going to have. And could you elaborate on the unbalancing the action economy thing.
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Jun 8, 2022 23:19
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The real answer is you can't balance D&D in a frictionless vaccum. Too much depends on what is happening at your individual table. You have to just start playing, and if the people at your table are finding casters too powerful you can adjust things on the fly.
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Jun 8, 2022 23:28
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Yusin posted:I will inform you that there is no real need to do this. While Magic users are better come the high levels, the differences are not as massive as before, and it requires the game making it to those high levels. Plus unless they are super good optimizers, there should not be too much outshining from my experience. Also on the fluff said I am pretty sure that it being draining using their highest level spells is why they can only use their highest level spells once or twice. I'd say lack of optimisation actually widens the gap between casters and martials. On the caster side you just need to take good, or at least decent, spells and you're most of the way there. Martials need feats and most likely multiclassing (and if you don't know what you're doing it's easy to end up with a multiclass build that ends up being worse than if you had stuck to one class).
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Jun 8, 2022 23:42
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D&d 5e is balanced fine as it is, so long as you stick to the level range most people play at (3-12)
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Jun 8, 2022 23:57
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I don't really understand by why the aversion to higher level play? If its balance issues, is it a problem to basically accept you're basically demigods doing stuff out of the Epic of Gilgamesh?
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Jun 9, 2022 02:21
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Raenir Salazar posted:I don't really understand by why the aversion to higher level play? If its balance issues, is it a problem to basically accept you're basically demigods doing stuff out of the Epic of Gilgamesh? I have no aversion to it myself. Just have not seen many games get there.
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Jun 9, 2022 02:55
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