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Tomb of Annihilation is great if you streamline the navigation stuff, which you can fix by just giving someone a compass or granting Keen Mind to someone. Everything in the overworld is cool and rewarding to explore and the encounter table is pretty deep. The tomb itself, though, a different beast. It is much much bigger than it would first appear - I think it took me 2-3x as long as I thought it would when I ran it. You will spend more time in the tomb than you did trying to find it. There is also a mechanic on the bottom floor to access the final boss that probably 95% of all parties will not be ready for and will feel shortchanged once they see it. The module includes a mechanic to handwave that final test because it's a pure "cool on paper, not in action" thing.
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Oct 28, 2022 22:48
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I honestly quite like Wild Beyond the Witchlight. One of the books for next I am honestly really looking forward to is the Phandelver Campaign which will expand Lost Mines into a full campaign.
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Oct 29, 2022 00:39
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Rutibex is right in part that Tomb has a lot of great ingredients with which to cook up a good campaign, but Toshimo is right in that it takes a lot of work to do that cooking. My group is having a great time with Tomb right now, but that's in large part because I've put in the effort to string all those cool locations together into a coherent adventure.
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Oct 29, 2022 02:00
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I managed to wrangle at least four players. I was thinking of doing the first adventure, but it is spooky season, maybe I should do one of the spooky one shots. But we wouldn't be starting for like 2 weeks (session 0 next week, proper session week after that). Hrm.
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Oct 29, 2022 02:19
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Candlekeep has some fun low level one shots. Shemshime stands out.
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Oct 29, 2022 02:27
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Almost all the pre-Tomb content in the campaign is locked behind these hirable jungle guides, who all know different locations in the jungle and can either lead the PCs to where they need to go (The Tomb) or lead them to completely unrelated, overall irrelevant side-quests. There's a coherent path in TOA as written that gets you from Port Nyanzaru to the Tomb, it's just a relatively thin quest chain that you can very easily miss if you don't pick the correct jungle guide (Azaka)at the beginning of the campaign. And picking that "correct" jungle guide also means that you'll probably miss the only dragon in the whole campaign, which is similarly hidden behind another jungle guide (Hew) in town that you can very easily just not pick. The campaign's content itself is a lot of fun, but the actual structure that the book provides leaves a lot to be desired.
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Oct 29, 2022 02:33
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It's not quite the same, but the board games where you build out the dungeon from a deck of tiles are pretty competent and a good introduction to the settings and concepts
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Oct 29, 2022 02:36
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Chronojam posted:It's not quite the same, but the board games where you build out the dungeon from a deck of tiles are pretty competent and a good introduction to the settings and concepts Donjon has a dungeon generator mode where you can tell it to make dungeon tiles. It puts entrances in 4 identical spots in each dungeon block, so you can make rotatable dungeon tiles and print them yourself. It's really fantastic, you can make any size or shape tiles want https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/
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Oct 29, 2022 07:19
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Figured yall would appreciate this. My buddy gave me this gavel as a wedding gift for all my DM rulings and domestic disputes: I have already used it many times (for DMing)
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Oct 29, 2022 14:22
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I too would like a hammer to hit players with.
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Oct 29, 2022 14:35
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I recently played 5e for the first time, and we enjoyed our little "one-shot" enough that we decided to try more fully-scoped adventure. I enjoyed the Druid that I played, but our DM was not shy about starting our 3-player party in combats where we were surrounded. I don't think anyone had an AC over 16 at level three, so every fight was a chaotic scramble of us crawling over each other to get away from being surrounded and flanked, and it was very hard for me to actually target any of my big boom spells without friendly fire (I was also incapacitated in every combat). I want to play something that will be a bit more comfortable in melee this time. I'm leaning towards Rune Knight, but I'm wondering how painful it will be if I give up 3 AC from not taking Defensive Style or wearing a shield. I have a very bad intuitive sense of 5e numbers ( I learned what "bounded accuracy" is about two days ago) and it's making it tough to evaluate some of the trade-off options. I've been playing a lot of pathfinder CRPGs recently too, which have clownishly huge number scaling by comparison, so it makes me feel like I must be missing something when I look at a two-hander fighter and it's like "maybe some day I'll afford platemail and have 18 AC". Kinda makes it seem like that 3 AC is actually a huge deal, but I have no idea!
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Oct 29, 2022 15:04
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Scoss posted:I recently played 5e for the first time, and we enjoyed our little "one-shot" enough that we decided to try more fully-scoped adventure. The 3 AC is a big deal! An Adult Red Dragon in 3.5 or pathfinder has +24 to it's attack rolls. In 5e the Adult Red Dragon only has +14 to attack rolls. The numbers are much smaller in 5e and they ramp up much slower.
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Oct 29, 2022 15:13
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Echo Knights are extremely fun.
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Oct 29, 2022 21:29
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3 AC is kind of a big deal figuring that you're probably not going to get above 20 any time soon (or possibly ever). However, its not a big enough deal to really factor into your choice of fighter. They are all beefy enough to be your front-line character and you should pick the one you think is the coolest. One fun thing with Rune Knight is to combo Giant's Might with Enlarge/Reduce somehow (Duergar get this as a racial) and grow to Huge size. It's more funny than anything but being able to go kaiju is pretty rad. Throwing flaming handcuffs on people is cool too if you like being a cop. They're a pretty simple class overall though but that may be what you're looking for.
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Oct 29, 2022 21:40
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I hadn't taken a close look at Echo Knight before but having a free clone of yourself to play around with like an extra chess piece certainly seems like a good gimmick. I was very torn between Battlemaster and Rune Knight, because Battlemaster most resembled my lost precious 4e Warlord. I reasoned that RK gets about half as many special power uses but they are more potent individually so they probably end up similar, and I liked the flavor of the RK a bit more (plus the GET BIG power seems fun). I was not *particularly* looking for anything simplistic, but it seems like most of the beefy martials in 5e are relatively simple so what can you do. The other option I've been considering, in a totally different flavor, is some manner of Bladesinger. I can't quite tell if you can truly play Bladesinger like a melee skirmisher who isn't afraid to get messy, or if it just ends up being a regular Wizard who can sometimes have a decent AC.
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Oct 29, 2022 22:28
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Scoss posted:I hadn't taken a close look at Echo Knight before but having a free clone of yourself to play around with like an extra chess piece certainly seems like a good gimmick. You CAN play as a skirmisher....but, and here's the but...you leave a lot of utility on the table. Also how your DM rules greenflame blade working...especially with regards to shadowblade will really dictate how effective you are as a melee damage dealer.
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Oct 29, 2022 23:24
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Scoss posted:I hadn't taken a close look at Echo Knight before but having a free clone of yourself to play around with like an extra chess piece certainly seems like a good gimmick. A bladesinger that actually blades is a bad wizard but a good fighter, and it seems like you can even still use a hand crossbow or a quarterstaff (and therefore crossbow expert/polearm master) while in bladesong, if you really care to invest in weapon attacks. The optimal way to play a bladesinger is still to ignore your weapon attacks and play as a regular wizard with good AC, but if you want to gimp yourself on purpose and actually scrap in close quarters, you're probably still not that far behind the fighter anyways. And if you need to get serious for whatever reason, you can always go back to playing as an regular wizard whenever you feel like it. 
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Oct 30, 2022 02:23
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I tried to play that sword-first bladesinger and somewhere between 2nd and 3rd level spells I started falling back on wizardry more and more anyway. A web or fireball is just so much obviously better than even booming blade + attack, it's hard not to be aware of how much you're doing the latter for the style points. It is still pretty cool to have that magic sword combo as your backup though and even then it's better than regular cantrips (don't forget that you can also shoot a bow + firebolt).
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Oct 30, 2022 03:36
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In the main campaign I'm in our Bladesinger basically will open with Fireball (of Acid type) if there's a big clustered group of enemies. But otherwise will pull out Haste and will start swinging and only pull out control spells to make it easier to get to enemies to swing at them. You probably just need a few more levels before it starts making more sense to be focused on the sword. Anyways, I have a Foundry question, for heavily homebrewed content; are there any suggested modules for if/when I need to stray from the 5e path regarding custom spells/features/items/abilities/classes/enemies? I found a module called Data Toolbox that seemed recommended, and something called the FVTT Rules Parser to parse rules from stuff that's copied and pasted from GMBinder/pdfs etc. I'm still googling seems I'm not the first person but also a lot of information seems old and who knows maybe Foundry supports way more stuff now since some of these 1-2 year old reddit threads?
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Oct 30, 2022 15:22
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Raenir Salazar posted:In the main campaign I'm in our Bladesinger basically will open with Fireball (of Acid type) if there's a big clustered group of enemies. But otherwise will pull out Haste and will start swinging and only pull out control spells to make it easier to get to enemies to swing at them. You probably just need a few more levels before it starts making more sense to be focused on the sword. You can create items/features with a lot of flexibility in foundry. If you have MidiQOL you can automate a lot of things. Base v10 foundry even has a lot ability to create custom items and spells
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Oct 30, 2022 16:33
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Scoss posted:IThe other option I've been considering, in a totally different flavor, is some manner of Bladesinger. I can't quite tell if you can truly play Bladesinger like a melee skirmisher who isn't afraid to get messy, or if it just ends up being a regular Wizard who can sometimes have a decent AC. You can do either or even both though usually the difference is whether you build dex main or int main. For melee skirmishers concentrating on Shadow Blade gives you more punch than most melee. A lot of people consider the real defining feature of Bladesinger to be its level 6 extra attack feature, which lets you cast a cantrip in place of one attack. Since cantrips are designed to level scale to make up for no extra attacks, this adds even more punch. With the current errata I believe the concept is you Shadow Blade with one hand and hold a finesse sword in the other so you can cast greenflame or booming blade. All this to be a squishier fighter holding full spell slots in their back pocket. If you just go full wizard with AC that's fine too, though there are other wizards subclasses with defensive options. If you never wander into melee you can hold a Sling in one hand to still take advantage of that extra attack feature without any extra training during the turns you're merely concentrating and cantripping. There's also a degenerate option where you go Hexblade 2, Bladesinger 6, crossbow expert and eventually sharpshooter, stat focused on Cha. As your attack you can Hand Crossbow (Cha with Hexblade), Eldritch Blast, Bonus Hand Crossbow for 4 to 5 attacks all with Cha. Spirit Shroud with upcast optional. Again, full degenerate build for people who only see damage per round numbers.
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Oct 30, 2022 20:09
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Played a super gimmicky build in a one shot the other day that amounted to a heavily armored dhampir blood mage. I got to 3rd level in Artificer for the Armorer subclass so I could have plate armor and a shield, with the former infused with mind sharpener and the latter infused with enhanced defense for an AC of 21. I then took eight levels in Wizard and chose the Blood Magic school (from the Tal'Dorei book). The gimmick of this subclass is basically to play a wizard that gambles with their small hit point pool to do things like reroll a number of damage dice in exchange for taking necrotic damage equal to the spell's level. They also get a once per rest reaction to cause a creature that hits them to take as much damage as they inflicted. Finally, a Blood Magic Wizard can use their own body as their arcane focus so long as they aren't at max HP, meaning that I could use my shield and still have a hand free for somatic spell components. From here I focused on making sure I had as much HP and ability to safeguard it as I could. I already had the AC of 21, but then I took both an Amulet of Health to boost my Con to 19 and the Tough feat to beef up my hit points to 116, False Life for temp hp, and prepped Cure Wounds from the Artificer spell list. Finally, the dhampir lineage gives both a Vampiric Bite for another means to heal and always-on Spider Climb so I could retreat to a ceiling or something if I really needed to get away from melee attackers. It was fun justifying this weird build; basically, I decided my character was from a bizarre, ancient, and very secretive noble family of tiefling vampires and that my character in particular had learned how to manipulate the iron in blood to create their armor. In terms of RP I ended up with a character who, rather than being edgy like I imagine most people would play a blood mage, was mostly a tinkerer who just so happened to use blood and the iron in it for materials and didn't understand why other people thought that was such a big deal. Unfortunately it ended up being a combat light scenario, so I don't know how the character would have actually fared in a variety of battles. Hexmage-SA fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Oct 31, 2022 |
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Oct 31, 2022 03:13
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Further thoughts on the Muscle Wizard homebrew I've been mulling over: I want the idea to be trading the range and utility of wizard spells, including the potential to be out of the way of your own AoE spells, for physical prowess and the ability to "cast" even through things that prevent the use of magic. I want it to be different from Monk because I like the idea of them using spells that weren't created to go off at the end of a fist. They're not reinventing magic missile to be magic fistile. They're throwing rapid jabs with magic missile darts on the end of them. I figure, by default, the class would have "your spells have a range of touch unless from Warlock or Cleric levels" and "on hit you may add unarmed strike damage to spells with a range of touch." I don't know if being able to use Str for Int when casting should be default or something that you'd have to get when leveling. I like the idea of class abilities synergizing with your own AoEs that deal damage in a radius around where it is centered also hitting you. such as - Reduce the damage taken by spells that do not target you specifically by 25%, and later 50%: - If a spell you cast damages you and at least one other target, you may make an unarmed strike as an additional action. Then later "you may cast a single additional touch range spell this turn." Giving someone who committed to Muscle Wizard the ability to, for example, cast fireball in someone's face, finish them off with an acid arrow, then deck the guy standing next to them for good measure. Flavorwise, I like the idea of it being a matter of them being closer to sorcerers than wizards. Born with mystical energies flowing through them. Most do end up sorcerers, but some are either unable, or unwilling, to project these energies too far beyond their own bodies and instead train and perfect these powers by perfecting themselves physically
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Oct 31, 2022 09:50
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TheDemon posted:There's also a degenerate option where you go Hexblade 2, Bladesinger 6, crossbow expert and eventually sharpshooter, stat focused on Cha. As your attack you can Hand Crossbow (Cha with Hexblade), Eldritch Blast, Bonus Hand Crossbow for 4 to 5 attacks all with Cha. Spirit Shroud with upcast optional. Again, full degenerate build for people who only see damage per round numbers. I do like the version of that build that also goes with one of the Fizban's Dragonborn races and takes the Dragon Fear feat. So first round of combat is a bonus action spell (like spirit shroud) an AOE fear effect plus a repelling/agonizing blast eldritch blast. So you do a decent bit of control and damage with the first round, and your damage output in later rounds with your hand crossbow/sharpshooter and eldritch blast is a lot of fun. If you really don't care about being a wizard and just want to be a weird damage machine, throw in 2 levels of fighter for Action Surge.
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Oct 31, 2022 13:13
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Thri kreen bladesinger with throwing daggers. I did the math once and if you start with four daggers in hand and draw one dagger per round, while also blasting with a cantrip, you can make four attacks per round for four rounds with no other feats.
Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Oct 31, 2022 |
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Oct 31, 2022 13:22
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I'm gonna be running a one-shot set in my bugbear fighter's home village which is literally Moomin Valley reskinned with 5e monster races. The general idea so far is that the something is wrong with the Groke and she has driven the hattifatteners from their island and Fuzzy on the details so far, but I found a post on reddit suggesting a Medusa could be reskinned to serve as the Groke, not sure what the hattifatteners would be yet but I've got two weeks to prep, at least.
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Oct 31, 2022 14:31
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Flumphs seem like a good fit if you’ve not done anything else with them.
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Oct 31, 2022 14:34
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Friendly grung maybe?
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Oct 31, 2022 15:11
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Adder Moray posted:Flavorwise, I like the idea of it being a matter of them being closer to sorcerers than wizards. Born with mystical energies flowing through them. Most do end up sorcerers, but some are either unable, or unwilling, to project these energies too far beyond their own bodies and instead train and perfect these powers by perfecting themselves physically. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMFAHpd26/ (it being a tiktok link, I apologise if it randomly takes you to a different video) I think this is the article: https://www.awesomedice.com/blogs/news/how-constitution-spell-casting-makes-the-5e-sorcerer-better-in-every-way I'm assuming there are balance and mechanical reasons it wouldn't work, but fluff-wise it's pretty interesting, and it kind of mirrors the Barbarian in an interesting way as well. It certainly goes more along with the muscle wizard logic if they're actually a sorceror wrestling the universe into submission, rather than a book nerd using gameshark codes. Bobby Deluxe fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Oct 31, 2022 |
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Oct 31, 2022 15:38
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Bobby Deluxe posted:I'm assuming there are balance and mechanical reasons it wouldn't work, but fluff-wise it's pretty interesting, and it kind of mirrors the Barbarian in an interesting way as well. It's because tying your primary attack stat to CON would by its very nature make you extra beefy compared to any other spellcaster over the course of normal progression without having to decide where to allocate your stats.
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Oct 31, 2022 15:55
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Yeah, a CON caster would be super-duper-SAD. Point buy and racial boosts into Con only and you only have to take one ASI and a half feat to have, functionally, maxed stats. So then you get to take three other feats functionally for free. If I were re-designing a muscle wizard or, for that matter, monk, I'd probably let them choose either str or dex as their "casting" stat for purposes of all special abilities (armor bonus, spell dc, etc.)
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Oct 31, 2022 15:59
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Also reading through the article it claimed that people felt that sorcerer's were fragile, underpowered and boring. Since this is likely talking about phb and maybe Xanathar's I will go with that framework, but Tasha's sorcerers are a giant dollop of power creep (in a fun way) but if we are only talking about PHB and Xanathar I will agree that Sorcerers were boring, but they were never fragile or underpowered, regardless of how people felt. They were weaker than wizards...BUT wizard is far and away the strongest class in 5e and Sorcerer does not need now, nor did it need then that much of a buff. They have con proficiency to start with so they have some of the best protected Concentration saves of any caster at level 1. And only need 1 feat to get both Warcaster and Constitution save proficiency unlike every other full caster either needing to dip for it or taking 2 feats. They have Shield, Absorb Elements and Mage Armor, so they can be as tanky as they need to be from the back line, and a 1 level dip into hexblade (as of Xanathars)would give them full medium armor and shield proficiency, completely eliminating any armor issues whatsoever, making them tankier than most Fighters. They have full 9th level spell casting including wish...sure their spell list is more limited and they get less known spells (again this difference is almost entirely gone with Tasha's sorcerers) than Wizards but they do have metamagic and plenty of very powerful spells. I honestly just think whoever wrote the article just wants every caster to be Wizard powerful, which....I fundamentally disagree with, I don't think any class should be as powerful as Wizards (including Wizards) but sorcerers even in the early days of 5e were very powerful. Could you make an argument that Bards and Wizards were stronger than sorcerer, absolutely, and I think you would be correct in your assessment. However that does not make sorcerers bad by any metric. Madmarker fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Oct 31, 2022 |
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Oct 31, 2022 16:15
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I brought it up because I thought the flairing might be cool for the reasons in the video. I see now that this was a mistake.
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Oct 31, 2022 16:29
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Bobby Deluxe posted:I brought it up because I thought the flairing might be cool for the reasons in the video. I see now that this was a mistake. Honestly, mistake is a strong term. I do think there is room for a Constitution based caster, I would just make it a half caster or a third caster like an eldritch knight or Arcane trickster variant.
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Oct 31, 2022 16:57
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Bobby Deluxe posted:I brought it up because I thought the flairing might be cool for the reasons in the video. I see now that this was a mistake. Oh it's worth talking about it's just something that would *probably * result in balance difficulties
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Oct 31, 2022 17:10
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Dragonhelm, one of the main guys who worked on the 3e Dragonlance products, made a post 2 weeks ago on EN World that once Dragonlance gets DM's Guild approved that he has plans to republish Tasslehoff's Pouches of Everything along with future products. The Pouches of Everything were a sort of "5e core rules" for Dragonlance available for a time before it was taken down as a result of the upcoming Shadows of the Dragon Queen. I'm aware that Dragonlance is a rather contentious setting, but the 3e books marked a high point IMO and would be interested in seeing the author(s) for that work on material for it again.
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Oct 31, 2022 20:19
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Bobby Deluxe posted:I brought it up because I thought the flairing might be cool for the reasons in the video. I see now that this was a mistake. Yes, I've been playing a Shadow Sorcerer in a ludicrously slow-advancement campaign (Level 1 to 8 in only two years real-time!), and I haven't felt underpowered at all, despite deliberately taking a few suboptimal spells (I have been swapping spells at level up to make up for this). CHA as main stat but CON as secondary, and I took variant human and Inspiring Leader which at this point translates into 13 temporary hp for the entire party after every rest. Health and concentration aren't issues. In addition to the standard tricks (Fireball, Hypnotic Pattern, Twinned Haste), there's a real depth of options available, but just the basic "twin Firebolt" is quite effective. 4d10 fire damage every round if they both hit is more than respectable for a L8 character, so much so that at L9 I might drop my last L2 spell known and reserve all those slots for conversion. You can also push some unusual escape buttons, like the time my fighter support peeled off and the character got jumped by hobgoblins on wargs and lost half his HP in one round. Quickened Haste on himself, Disengage, then run 120 feet away from them. I should add that this was a night engagement, the sorcerer has Eyes of Night for 180 foot darkvision, and the enemies all had 60 ft DV. Being hasted for the rest of the fight wouldn't have been my priority, but it was for sure effective at playing keep-away. As for CON-based casters, I agree that it needs to be casters with different models. My alternate 5E class system set Pact Magicians (= "Warlocks") as CON casters, but they're a bit more complex than 5E warlocks in that every pact comes with a different set of powers and a different list of spells which can be learned; a few don't offer Eldritch Blast but provide other benefits, like Lycanthrope pact, where you start at L1 with a hybrid form giving you an extra claw attack as part of an Attack action and boosting your HP, and where the capstone gives you lycanthrope weapon immunity as well as boosting STR and DEX by 2 to a max of 22. If you want to Lycan gish, you can eventually get four natural weapon attacks per round. Most of the pacts give you an incentive to want another good stat besides CON. The overall idea is that your pact usually involves a slow physical transformation: Lycanthrope pact magicians become lycanthropes, dragon pact magicians become draconic, angel pact magicians become angelic, and so on. A few involve personality changes, like devil pact magicians.
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Oct 31, 2022 21:22
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Libertad! posted:Dragonhelm, one of the main guys who worked on the 3e Dragonlance products, made a post 2 weeks ago on EN World that once Dragonlance gets DM's Guild approved that he has plans to republish Tasslehoff's Pouches of Everything along with future products. While I have no nostalgia for Dragonlance, I am quite interested in the revised setting. It does seem interesting, and it's flaws are stuff I think are easy enough to clear up. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 1, 2022 04:13
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Weirdly I was just watching something about the idea of a caster using CON instead of CHA: The way I have them designed, so far, they don't end up using Con for their abilities, but they'd probably end up investing heavily in Con anyways just because of how close up they have to get in combat and their occasionally eating their own attacks. On that subject, I think you could balance a Con-based sorcerer by having them have to burn off their health for other things. They wind up technically beefy, but to be as functional as they can be they end up not being able to put all that health to use in an actual fight. Though Con has other uses they'd benefit from, but so does Cha.
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Nov 1, 2022 08:46
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i will continue to die on the hill that the ability scores as they stand are dumb and should be changed
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Nov 1, 2022 09:03
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