|
Just one little correction to what Azathoth said: not all classes pick their subclass at level 3. Clerics and warlocks, for example, select their subclass at level 1. Aligning all the classes so they choose their subclass at level 3 is probably the biggest change 6E is going to make to class progression.
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2023 15:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 02:31 |
|
|
I am working out how to handle the small army my players have lucked into. We are still playing Out of the Abyss, they convinced all the factions present in Gauntlgrym to lend them their aid. So they get a few soldiers from each faction and a shield guardian from the harpers. I want to set up some interesting pitched battles against some Demon Hordes while they are en route to their next destination in the Underdark. I just really want to hear like it sound like a good idea or a boring slog. There will be a few "random encounters" while travelling that mainly have to deal with morale problems and infighting amon the diverse fighting force. Then come the battles. If the players have sent some scouts ahead they will learn of the existence of a horde of demons lead by a stronger one. They have a chance to avoid them if the scouts rolled well but may have to take a longer route with its own perils. For the battles, if they want to fight them, I thought about making both the rank and file of the players and the enemy simple minions with 1 HP. The players have the choice of only sending their troops to battle the rank and file while they engage the commander or try to break the ranks of the enemy by wiping out most of their fighting force. This has the potential to preserve more troops but they would not be able to prevent enemy buffs/debuffs spells. In hindsight it might have been a poo poo idea to give them any more troops than 1 per faction but I just kinda rolled with what the campaign book suggested. I'm not sure my players even want to be commanders, except for maybe the paladin. Does this make any sense?
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2023 15:13
|
|
|
Consider statting up the different units they have recruited and the demon hordes those units will likely face as swarms. Another option is to look into the old War Machine rules from BECMI. That's what I've been using for mass combat in my 5E campaigns when it comes up. I also found this UA, but I don't know if it's any good: https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/2017_UAMassCombat_MCUA_v1.pdf
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2023 15:26
|
|
|
Azathoth posted:Ranger facts Playing a Hunter Ranger/Ancestral Guardian Barb at 13th level, the Ranger part didn’t really feel effective until I got expertise and Nature’s Veil from Tasha’s. But even after that I still can’t match the damage output of the casters in the party…
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2023 15:29
|
|
|
Buck Turgidson posted:I've been invited to a game of 5E with some friends. I'm familiar with the basic concepts from playing D&D PC games over the years and I'm reading the player's handbook to get a feel for what I'm going to make. First you're missing spells. And everything lacks scaling a little in 5e. The two spells that should really be ranger class features are Hunter's Mark (concentration spell/bonus action for 1d6 extra damage per hit - which is great for archers) which works really well with archery and Pass Without Trace for a +10 group buff to stealth you can take at 5th level. Second there are feats.The combination of the Archery fighting style. the Hunter's Mark spell, and eventual access to the Sharpshooter feat is enough to make archery rangers viable. Melee rangers are just bad; they are likely to need concentration checks for Hunter's Mark and fail them - and two weapon fighting doesn't scale well (and competes with hunter's mark for your bonus action). Oh, and unlike fighters and paladins melee rangers don't get either big or fast self healing. But in general you're absolutely right about the PHB melee ranger; it's a bottom two base class at all levels (the sorcerer has high level spells so although levels 1-6 or so are bad it eventually gets good, the barbarian might get nothing meaningful from its base class after level 5 while rage's damage resistance weakens but it can hard carry a party from levels 1-5 and the monk is great at low levels and again great from level 14 when it gets the best saves in the game). They more or less re-wrote it in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. And you're probably not right enough about the PHB Beastmaster; with the exception of small rangers using their companions as mounts what's not obvious is that the companion isn't as tough as a wizard, is a melee creature, and soaks healing that the wizard could use; they turn your game into an escort mission. And yes that does mean that the PHB melee beastmaster ranger is both one of the worst two base classes in the game at all levels and one of the four worst subclasses. (Tasha's also rewrote the beast companion). That said we're still talking a 5e power curve, not a 3.5 or Pathfinder 1e power curve. Everything's tier 3 or 4 when played as intended with a couple of builds creeping into tier 2 (Charismadin with a hexblade dip and chronomancer and bladesinger wizards I'm looking at you).
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2023 17:01
|
|
|
Oop, missed a page sorry.kingcobweb posted:Any of the pure martial classes really don't have too much more complexity at level 20 than level 3. Rogues are still trying to get advantage on stuff and hitting it for a zillion damage. However this does take up your bonus action, which might be a big problem for a rogue. It does fit thematically for BAMFing though and gives you one of the major advantages of a roguebarian without getting too weird with your stats or costing you multiclassing. It also leaves you free to take the rogue to 19th or 20th level for that sweet 10d6 sneak attack damage. Swashbuckler to at least 3rd level might be an interesting choice, since it lets you add sneak attack without having to using your bonus to hide, and also fits with Nightcrawler's rapier usage. Hell, slap a level or two of hexblade on there for flavour and you're really cooking with gas. Bobby Deluxe fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Feb 16, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2023 19:39
|
|
|
kingcobweb posted:How do you balance your encounters? Keep a bunch of monsters on the DM level of Roll20 and bring more in as waves of enemies if the party is rolling over what they can see. Plus if the creatures start to hurt the party too badly/quickly I don't drag out the hidden monsters and let the party recover a little with out of combat healing spells. I just did a spider cave bug-hunt session where the spiders rolled hot and kept beating 19AC so I never used the phase spiders I had in reserve because the giant spiders were doing just fine all on their own.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2023 20:34
|
|
|
Wouldn't Nightcrawler be a Monk multiclass since he kicks and punches? Maybe Way of the Shadow?
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2023 20:48
|
|
|
Night Crawler often uses a rapier.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2023 20:58
|
|
|
He's also a sword guy, so either works.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2023 20:58
|
|
|
My ideal D&D table:Nessa posted:Oooh, fun idea!
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2023 21:29
|
|
|
PeterWeller posted:Consider statting up the different units they have recruited and the demon hordes those units will likely face as swarms. Thanks. I might look into BECMI but I need to have something prepped until Sunday. So I will try to come up with something and see what sticks.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2023 22:37
|
|
|
This superhero analog conversation is reminding me of an idea I had for my Strahd campaign. I need some low stakes conflict and was planning to have a group of lower level adventurers attempt to confront the party for reasons I don't need to get into here. Is it too on the nose to have the Mystery Gang in gothic horror flavor attempt to apprehend them? Fred - Glory Paladin Velma - Inquisitive Rogue Daphne - Aberrant Sorcerer Shaggy - maybe an Alchemist? Scooby - Moon Druid
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 00:02
|
|
|
Zurreco posted:Wouldn't Nightcrawler be a Monk multiclass since he kicks and punches? Maybe Way of the Shadow?
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 00:22
|
|
|
Zurreco posted:Shaggy - maybe an Alchemist? Congrats. You've discovered the only reason to ever play the PHB Beastmaster Ranger.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 00:38
|
|
|
Indolent Bastard posted:Keep a bunch of monsters on the DM level of Roll20 and bring more in as waves of enemies if the party is rolling over what they can see. Wish I had more to add but yeah I do this too and it’s a great technique for on the fly difficulty tuning.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 00:48
|
|
|
My current experience in tuning was to make some variants of the current monsters they were facing because the monsters had absurd dex saves and the poor cleric couldn't get any monsters to fail their dex saves with Sacred Flame so I made a version that had lower AC, lower saves but was beefier and seemed to work a little better for the cleric.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 02:25
|
|
|
Zurreco posted:This superhero analog conversation is reminding me of an idea I had for my Strahd campaign. I need some low stakes conflict and was planning to have a group of lower level adventurers attempt to confront the party for reasons I don't need to get into here. Is it too on the nose to have the Mystery Gang in gothic horror flavor attempt to apprehend them? Yeeeesss, I love it! And later you can have the party encounter their corpses in some gruesome fashion, or just find notable bits of their costumes somewhere, like the werewolf den. Velma’s glasses, Fred’s Ascot, etc… I think Velma could do well as a Wizard since she’s the bookish type. Shaggy could totally be Beastmaster Ranger with Scoob as his companion. Paladin works for Fred. Daphne could fill a lot of roles, like Cleric, Rogue, Bard, or Sorcerer. She’d have a high Charisma stat for sure.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 06:59
|
|
|
edit: No longer relevant.
Nehru the Damaja fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Feb 19, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2023 19:20
|
|
|
I am honestly amazed by how *bad* Foundry's drawing tools are. Everything is 3 clicks away and incredibly hard to work with consistently, e.g. having a palette of a few primary colors which I can customize, or a few quick panels to adjust line thickness or text size. The gesture to start drawing a shape is very stiff and tends to be very inaccurate with fine details. If I want to draw a small circle, it ends up being a warped little pentagon. It should be *easy* for me to make a sketch for my players to show the layout of some situation which I don't have a pre-made map for, but instead it is a pain in the rear end every time. Roll20's drawing tools have problems but they are *breezy* compared to Foundry. Another thing Foundry is really bad at is token importing and scaling. In roll20 if you just drag a picture onto the page it shows up as a token. Yes it's a pain in the rear end to link it to a character sheet and everything but that first step is so simple. In Foundry, nothing apparent happens at all when you do this. I would expect to at least have a new token + file-upload flow pop up, which lets me just click "ok" and have a new guy who is on the page now. Maps that don't use grids at all, like most large city maps, are really annoying to place and scale tokens on. You can only reduce the normal size by 50%, and then you can separately reduce the "scale" to 10%. These are two independent settings which you have to tweak separately for best results. Even then, the box around the token ends up being huge when the token is small, which makes it hilariously difficult to select one small token which is next to some other small tokens. Roll20 just has a loving draggable arrow show up when you mouse on the corner of a token, and you can set it to whatever size you want, and that's it. I want the players to be able to see the entire city map when I activate it, versus just seeing the top left corner of it, so I use a modestly sized image for the map. But this means I don't end up being able to set a small enough scale which lets me use a reasonable default size and positioning for tokens. There's no way to win with this dumbass tool. At least not until somebody writes a mod about it. I recently updated to v10 and not a single thing is improved. The journals system has been complicated to take each page I used to have and make it into its own notebook, at the same time introducing additional steps between creating or opening a page and being able to edit it. I had to track down a mod to unfuck it and now it's at least not bad enough to compel me to downgrade. The only thing that redeems Foundry is the fact that you can stack 20 mods onto it to fix up a lot of the horrible poo poo in it, and code your own mods if you are really motivated/have the time. The Arch Linux of VTTs.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2023 18:59
|
|
|
brap posted:
You can set the initial view coordinates and zoom level in the map configuration. As for the rest...
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2023 19:08
|
|
|
idk how you're having a problem with drawing a circle in foundry when there is literally a circle tool under the drawing menu that is accessible via "click drawing, click circle, click and drag on map to place shape" and then you can double click the shape to edit anything about it from color to fill to text labels. The lack of a classic mspaint style color picker and line picker is not great, but, as also mentioned, you can install a couple mods to fix that. (https://github.com/xaukael/drawing-presets/ / https://github.com/dev7355608/advanced-drawing-tools / https://github.com/operation404/boneyard-drawing-tools ) Gwaihir fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Feb 21, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2023 19:25
|
|
|
It’s a sketching tool. Not a drafting tool. I don’t need a circle tool to draw a circle and the rectangle tool to draw a rectangle and so on. I just want the simple line drawing tool to not mangle the motions I am making with my mouse.One Legged Ninja posted:You can set the initial view coordinates and zoom level in the map configuration. As for the rest... I’ll give this a shot. Thank you
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2023 19:58
|
|
|
One thing I'm not a huge fan of in Foundry is how hard it is to draw a continuous wall for lighting, especially if you stop and have to restart. Also a wall-rectangle tool would sure be nice. And don't get me started on placing doors so there aren't cracks that let people peep around them.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2023 20:20
|
|
|
huh, if you have to stop and continue you can just click on the edge of the wall and drag it longer. if you need to add a door, or segment, you can just control click the circle at the end of the wall and drag and it will auto connect to that wall.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2023 20:41
|
|
|
Monks wall enhancement also lets you draw freehand walls and it will crate wall points from the freehand drawing
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2023 21:36
|
|
|
The Slack Lagoon posted:Monks wall enhancement also lets you draw freehand walls and it will crate wall points from the freehand drawing drat I guess they really did fix that class for One D&D
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2023 21:42
|
|
|
brap posted:It’s a sketching tool. Not a drafting tool. I don’t need a circle tool to draw a circle and the rectangle tool to draw a rectangle and so on. I just want the simple line drawing tool to not mangle the motions I am making with my mouse. I truly hate to be that guy, but "it works great on my machine". We've been using foundry for our PF 2e campaign, and all of us have used the freehand drawing tool for various things like "I'm tying a rope here" and "I'm placing the trapmaker's head on a spear here". The response has been fine, and what I would expect from any simple drawing tool. I suspect there is a performance issue somewhere. There are few good troubleshooting tips in this thread: https://forums.forge-vtt.com/t/fixing-world-performance-slowdowns/15625 That's sort of client-focused, but could be the server, too? If you're running the server locally on a PC, maybe go through background apps and clean things up. And then make sure sound and video drivers are up to date, as well. Foundry utilizes hardware acceleration in the browser, so drivers can have a large impact. Also, try different browsers (if you haven't done so already.)
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2023 09:13
|
|
|
Foundry definitely has a lot of irritating design decisions, and I’m saying this as a bit of a power user. The journal changes are neat in some ways, but completely rear end-backwards in others. I have no clue why they made it so a separate window opens up when you’re trying to edit a document, especially when you can’t pull windows out as a GM. The search is completely hosed as well, opening up all of your folders whenever the search returns something inside that folder, and doesn’t return them back to closed after the search is over. Meaning every time I search I need to close every folder myself. It’s 99% usable but there are design decisions that confuse and irritate me, especially since I’m a web developer. For what you pay, it’s a much more amateurish product than I’d expect. That being said, it probably is the best option out there right now, especially if you’re a GM running games on a Mac. Some systems really shine on the platform, like warhammer fantasy and 5e.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2023 14:01
|
|
|
So, after my party will be talking to a bunch of various people next session, they’re going to have to travel through a large swamp. I wanna have something for them to do in there, so I’m thinking there will be an issue with certain fruits that are harvested there, all filled with maggots. I’m thinking a Star Spawn Larvae Mage could be behind it and infesting the fruits. I kinda want to throw a Young Black Dragon in there as well. Perhaps they’re working together. The party just reached level 6, but they are very strong. A single big bad at a time is a cakewalk for them, so I need to throw more stuff at them at once to be a challenge. Perhaps the maggots in the fruit also infect those who collect and prepare it, maybe turning them into zombies and/or servants of the dragon who recently made his lair there. Gonna come up with some cool swamp stuff that’s different from the last swamp the party was in.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2023 21:35
|
|
|
Have the maggot fruit bleed into the swamp water to the point that players might have to roll against poison condition or damage. The dragon can also grapple and submerge players to force them to roll against higher DCs or whatever. Environmental effects are (in my opinion) a better way to bump up the difficulty rather than just adding CR 1/4 damage sponges.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2023 21:59
|
|
|
maggots are larvae, what are they turning into, maybe corpse flies or something worse, swarming around being gross
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2023 22:00
|
|
|
I personally enjoy when the environment takes "actions" at specified initiatives to spice up a battle. Maybe a big fruit starts wriggling at the top of the round, and by the bottom it explodes and causes X effect to everyone nearby. It causes people to move around, and sometimes try and push enemies into the AOEs, keeps things dynamic. Maybe you have spots in the terrain that are hazardous, but the players don't know until they step on them (like hidden hazards under the swamp water). Do that on top of minions to round out enemy counts in battles. Taking cues from things like WoW raids where you fight the single elite for a bit, followed by adds phases or extra enemies coming into the battle, and you get a more dynamic encounter. If you have environmental hazards, you can adjust difficulty on the fly by having them be effective at taking enemies out if the players can push them into the environment, in case you overbalance the monsters.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2023 23:00
|
|
|
Oooh, good ideas! The swamp itself should definitely become hazardous. The Paladin in the party literally cannot fail a con save unless it’s a higher DC, so being pulled under the water could pose a challenge. Maybe some camouflaged oozes hidden about too. I think the maggots will become whatever bugs the Larvae Mage is composed of. Maybe the kind of bugs that can crawl under the skin like in The Mummy. Bug based body horror.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2023 23:35
|
|
|
I haven't seen Enjoy post here in a while, but I'm grateful Satan Has His Miracles is still being updated. It invites a LOT of homework for even the one-shot I'm trying to put together, but even the historical research is fun.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2023 22:09
|
|
|
Haven't seen it posted in this thread, but figured it could be interesting for some 5e players (particularly DMs): Someone released the translated magazine entries from the OD&D game that influenced the creation of Record of Lodoss War, a popular and influential anime from the 90s. A link to the translation can be found HERE. I highly recommend giving it a read. It's a great window into the TTRPG culture of 80s/90s Japan. It displays some solid DMing and player habits, and even offers DM notes about intentions and how to approach certain situations. For those that don't know, Record of Lodoss War is a classic anime that was very influential for the western fantasy aesthetic in Japanese animation. Deedlit is practically the framework for how elves are drawn in anime today. It is the quintessential D&D cartoon IMO, literally based on a D&D campaign. It's available to watch on CrunchyRoll and other places if you look hard enough, and it's absolutely worth a view. There aren't too many episodes, so it's not daunting to get through. It also has an absolutely kick rear end intro and outro song.
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2023 18:07
|
|
|
To add: watch the OAV series and stop there. If you really want more there's a TV series but it's nowhere near as good other than the opening song.
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2023 18:14
|
|
|
Verisimilidude posted:Haven't seen it posted in this thread, but figured it could be interesting for some 5e players (particularly DMs): This is pretty cool, definitely going to read through it. I do (maybe) have a problem with this statement in the foreword: quote:For example, western players tend to place greater emphasis on a character's alignment as first and foremost being Good or Evil (with Chaotic or Lawful being modifiers of the core state) while the Japanese players herein treat Chaos and Order as the core states and Good and Evil, merely expressions used to describe those states (Lawful is Good, Chaos is Evil). That has nothing to do with "being Japanese". That's how BECMI alignments worked. For the first couple years of my D&D experience, I played BECMI and for a LONG time this is exactly how I thought about alignments. So, it's kind of annoying to see this laid out as "oh wow these Japanese are so DIFFERENT". Yikes.
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2023 20:13
|
|
|
Last week, my players and I (GM) completed a 20ish session campaign. We laughed, we cried, we finished everyone's character arcs and actually completed the core conceit of the campaign (obtaining a magic wishing claw and thereafter making wishes). Something that was really awesome was that we spent about 2.5 hours after the end of the final session to just chat about the campaign. A post mortem of sorts. We went through each player character and had everybody mention their favorite moments of that character, and then had a long discussion of best party moments, good and bad parts of the campaign, etc etc. I had pre-written a bunch of questions and favorite moments as discussion starters. Really fun and educational for me - if you ever have a chance, I'd recommend doing some sort of post mortem like this in your campaigns. As a final send-off and thank you, I made a partially-AI-generated party portrait. It turned out fabulously. It was a process to get it working, and I'd be happy to share that if anyone has interest. - Now, I'm starting a new campaign this Sunday (with mostly different players). It looks like it will also be 5e, but I wanted to do some jank stuff with the system. Has anybody touched the ICON RPG systems? My current intent is to use ICON's narrative system and throw it on top of D&D's tactical combat & spell systems. This would give me a better list of skills for players to use (no dubious/useless skills like Religion) and the Blades in the Dark narrative flow (i.e., player picks skill, I decide Position and Effect) whilst still keeping the familiarity of D&D classes, combat, magic, etc. Is this a bad idea?
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2023 18:55
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 02:31 |
|
|
Does anyone have a recommended oneshot type thing for a wedding or wedding themed, I'm sure it's come up before and I am working with someone to brainstorm a few ideas for them since it'll be their first GM'ing session too.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2023 21:15
|
|
