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History Comes Inside! posted:If dnd beyond was just, I dunno, 8 bucks a month and here’s literally every published thing that exists then it would do gangbusters I’m sure. I like pay once and own until they shut down the site personally.
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Jul 10, 2023 17:07
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I don’t wanna stump up $500 just for the source books so I’m gonna pass on that option, personally, but I’d pay them on and off for a few months for access instead.
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Jul 10, 2023 17:15
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History Comes Inside! posted:I don’t wanna stump up $500 just for the source books so I’m gonna pass on that option, personally, but I’d pay them on and off for a few months for access instead. I'm at the point in my life where I don't have the time and energy to read source books for fun, so I'm definitely on board with a model like this. Let's me have access to the stuff in the books when I've got a game going, which is all I really care about anymore.
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Jul 10, 2023 17:27
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I'm not a fan of subscription models but I think they will go that route in the future with microtransactions for extra stuff. Subscriptions have been pretty normalized for every service lately and people seem to like them. Not that they don't have advantages, like for people who want everything but not all the time, or if you need alot of stuff to get into a hobby but your unsure of being into it. I just wish buying a book got me a digital version. I don't care about all the extra's like character builders, encounter builders etc. I just want the information in the book in a digital format also. I don't even care about the pictures really, just the text.
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Jul 10, 2023 17:35
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Reo posted:Your DM can also force you to make a concentration check in other, non-damaging disruptive circumstances (I believe the example they give is getting carried off your feet by a huge wave of water) but this is entirely subjective. Apropos nothing but I read this as “carried off your feet by a huge wave of butter” and immediately wanted to play in this game.
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Jul 10, 2023 19:12
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First session as GM over! Everything went well, except I'm not sure how to award XP.. So they smote 4 Giant Weasels. Each have the CR 1/8 (25 XP), and since there were four creatures I'm supposed to multiply the total by 2, and there are three lvl 2 characters in the group, so they each get 200 XP, correct?
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Jul 10, 2023 20:37
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Use milestone leveling instead. Also place loot based on the party don't use the random loot tables.
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Jul 10, 2023 20:41
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I like the balance Pathfinder hit with Archives of Nethys, where the rules and creatures and items and stuff are freely available, but you pay for the modules and setting and world building and art.
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Jul 10, 2023 20:46
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They weasels. I guess there's some bones and poo poo if they really dig through the mound. When do I do the milestones? The scenario (ghosts of Saltmarsh) says kind of when the characters are supposed to level up so I can just follow that, but after that I would find it that to do on my own.
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Jul 10, 2023 20:50
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Weasel fur is quite highly prized, maybe giant weasel is too. Good for hats and coats.
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Jul 10, 2023 20:53
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Agrikk posted:Apropos nothing but I read this as “carried off your feet by a huge wave of butter” and immediately wanted to play in this game. 
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Jul 10, 2023 21:11
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Tias posted:They weasels. I guess there's some bones and poo poo if they really dig through the mound. You can grant milestones for when the players complete some kind of objective, such as vanquishing a powerful foe, reaching an important location, solving a mystery, or finding a specific item. You can also grant them milestones every few sessions, or do what I do and just go with "whenever it feels appropriate". Whatever you do, make sure the next level takes a bit longer to reach than the last. So if you start at level 1 and your players reach level 2 by the end of the first session, have level 3 take around 2 sessions, then level 4 takes 3 sessions, 5 takes 4, until some upper limit is reached.
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Jul 10, 2023 21:16
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Agreed on just having players level by fiat. Hand out inspiration if you want to reward players for actions or achievements. Some amount of random loot is fine, especially for consumables and minor items. For bigger stuff, I’d hand-place items. I’m also a big fan of items that can grow/scale with player level (or with side quests).
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Jul 10, 2023 21:20
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Tias posted:First session as GM over! Everything went well, except I'm not sure how to award XP.. So if you do want to use XP instead of milestones (which some people do prefer), how the rules work is that you divide the total between the players. The multiplying XP is purely for difficulty the book says they still just get however much XP the creatures were worth. So each player should get 33 XP for the 4 weasels.
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Jul 10, 2023 21:38
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Tias posted:They weasels. I guess there's some bones and poo poo if they really dig through the mound. Most scenarios will put the expected level at the start of the next part of the module. I haven't run Ghosts of Saltmarsh but it has been present in every other official module. If it isn't present, the wikipedia article for it has a level listing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghosts_of_Saltmarsh. Not sure where that's from but I'm guessing it's in the book somewhere. You might need to eyeball within each part when to level the PCs but usually there's a good spot after a big story beat or setpiece bossfight you can grab. Most folks use milestone leveling because it discourages players from doing content they don't want to do just because they think it'll make future content easier. I tell my players that they absolutely can try to cheese individual encounters using novel tactics, powergaming builds, or RP shenanigans but overall I'm going to balance combat encounters based on their performance as they go so they shouldn't try to do adversarial bullshit to try to get one over on me as the DM because, aside from the time we ran Lost Shrine of Tamoachan, I'm really not trying to TPK them.
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Jul 10, 2023 22:34
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I recognize all the strengths of milestone leveling for controlling pacing and discouraging degen unfun behavior, but there is still something about earning EXP and knowing that you're about to level up that tickles the lizard brain reward centers just right.
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Jul 10, 2023 23:27
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Tias posted:First session as GM over! Everything went well, except I'm not sure how to award XP.. The XP math looks good beyond the aforementioned note about the XP being divided among the players (comes out to 67 XP per person). If you're ever feeling uncertain, Kobold Fight Club is a great resource. Also, since you're just starting out as a GM, I'd recommend sticking to XP over milestones. I have a few reasons for this, but my primary reason in your specific case is that you should try out the rules as initially presented before deviating. Same sorta spirit as "don't change course in a fog"; you'll want to wrap your brain around the GMing process in total before trying out homebrew or variant rules. Give it a few sessions and then discuss with your players if introducing new rules like milestone leveling make sense. Anyway, congrats on your first session as GM! GMing is my favorite part of D&D and it's awesome that you're doing it. If they keep coming back, you're probably doing it right.  - Re: XP vs Milestone Chat I used to do milestones, but I do XP leveling and prefer it these days. In my experience the players prefer XP leveling as well. Here's a few reasons in no particular order:
For perspective, I've DMed 2 campaigns with milestone leveling, 1 campaign with "goal card" leveling, and 3 campaigns with XP points. I do recognize that it's all subjective and it depends on you and your players. It's an age old discussion that others have covered extensively in better ways. Or sometimes funnier ways. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbgYM39j8Mc
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Jul 11, 2023 00:10
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You can also award them as much XP as you want, as a hybrid of milestone and traditional XP. "You got X XP for fighting weasels, Y XP for talking to villagers, and Z XP for successfully navigating your character sheet. The total is blah blah which means you will probably level up during your next session, please read about your characters next level by then." This lets you control pacing a la milestone, but tickle reward centers with a steady drip feed and create anticipation. The score's made-up and the points don't matter. If someone questions incongruities in XP between sessions, tell them "I dunno that's just what the book says."
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Jul 11, 2023 00:29
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Scoss posted:I recognize all the strengths of milestone leveling for controlling pacing and discouraging degen unfun behavior, but there is still something about earning EXP and knowing that you're about to level up that tickles the lizard brain reward centers just right. There's a great "debate" about this on Contested Roll. The argument against exp is basically "You are accepted into Wizard academy. There are no classes - you are sent into the basement on day one to slaughter an endless supply of rats. You become a level 10 Wizard within 2 weeks after killing all of the animals, livestock, and passers-by in town. You are now strong enough to challenge the big bad demon that has been ruling the neighboring kingdom for a decade."
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Jul 11, 2023 00:31
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Zurreco posted:There's a great "debate" about this on Contested Roll. The argument against exp is basically "You are accepted into Wizard academy. There are no classes - you are sent into the basement on day one to slaughter an endless supply of rats. You become a level 10 Wizard within 2 weeks after killing all of the animals, livestock, and passers-by in town. You are now strong enough to challenge the big bad demon that has been ruling the neighboring kingdom for a decade." this argument is so bad it hurts my head lmao
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Jul 11, 2023 01:30
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Zurreco posted:There's a great "debate" about this on Contested Roll. The argument against exp is basically "You are accepted into Wizard academy. There are no classes - you are sent into the basement on day one to slaughter an endless supply of rats. You become a level 10 Wizard within 2 weeks after killing all of the animals, livestock, and passers-by in town. You are now strong enough to challenge the big bad demon that has been ruling the neighboring kingdom for a decade." This is as arbitrary and dumb as "You walk into the tavern and talk to the bartender. This milestone makes you 10th level and now you're strong enough to challenge the big bad demon that has been ruling the neighboring kingdom for a decade."
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Jul 11, 2023 02:00
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To me, the only merit in individual XPs is to allow for them to diverge and allow different levels of players in the game. 5e, at the very least, makes a passing ability to support this with bounded accuracy. (Whether or not it is actually supported, I leave to your imagination.) So, the issue is that playing XP accountant at the end of each session is tedious busywork that is only acceptable in video games that can automatically tally it up for you. So, if you want to have differing levels and encourage players to strive for success, the solution is to have a level up broken into a small, but discrete amounts of XP. Say, three to get from first to second level, four to get from second to third, etc. You can even have group awards and individual awards. "Two XP for bringing a serial killer to justice, but the paladin gets three if you bring the killer in alive." Dramatically different from the status quo and requiring a lot of work on the GMs side? Of course. But that's what having to build this stuff from scratch will look like if the game doesn't do it for you.
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Jul 11, 2023 02:14
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HOMOEROTIC JESUS posted:Re: XP vs Milestone Chat I think the rest of your points have merit even if I'm a hardcore "milestone levelling or bust" guy but I really can't believe this has ever actually occurred. 5e is a very combat-focused game. If people are playing, they accept they are going to be getting into fights. If 'lack of XP' is disincentivizing fights then there's likely a completely different problem that is in fact making that happen that is being band-aided by 'well, we won't get XP if we don't fight'.
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Jul 11, 2023 02:27
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Update: my DM is great at improv and planning a main story, but he has absolutely no idea what game balance is and I'm absolutely loving it. Upon discussing it with him and talking about character uses, he presented me with a 200 gold mace at level 3 from a merchant I scammed. What's the stats on this thing you might ask? 5d8 magical pact weapon. It also functions as a +1 rod of the pact keeper. This puts me at parity with the mystic and the super Saiyan. Level 3. 5d8 mace. +1 Rod of the pact keeper. Charisma based for attack and damage bonus. All for 200 gold. I'm floored but this is hilarious, I legit only wanted to bring it up as something to keep in the back of his mind but uh yeah sure we can do this. The power creep is going to be intense, but I am excited to see what kind of crazy rear end story he starts spinning if he's comfortable with handing out things like THAT at level 3.
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Jul 11, 2023 02:28
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Monathin posted:I think the rest of your points have merit even if I'm a hardcore "milestone levelling or bust" guy but I really can't believe this has ever actually occurred. 5e is a very combat-focused game. If people are playing, they accept they are going to be getting into fights. If 'lack of XP' is disincentivizing fights then there's likely a completely different problem that is in fact making that happen that is being band-aided by 'well, we won't get XP if we don't fight'. We've definitely run into "there's no point in hanging around here and doing any more quests because we have to do thing X to level up." Milestones have a tendency to railroad the game. You don't level up until you do the next thing in the plot. Leveling by XP has drawbacks, too, but I've felt railroaded by milestones many times.
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Jul 11, 2023 02:34
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It seems very weird to not let you get milestones from side quests if the DM wants you to ever do any side quests, and that doesn't seem like a necessary feature of milestone leveling.
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Jul 11, 2023 03:02
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Sindai posted:It seems very weird to not let you get milestones from side quests if the DM wants you to ever do any side quests, and that doesn't seem like a necessary feature of milestone leveling. Specifically, it was that we got a level for doing like 6/10 quests Ten Towns as per the module (ROTFM). I wasn't the DM, so I don't know the specific requirements. We ended up dropping a couple of quest hooks because we knew we had to go do something else we had been putting off.
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Jul 11, 2023 03:23
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If you played with my last table you'd have welcomed anything that seemed likely to keep them even vaguely on track with the plot
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Jul 11, 2023 03:27
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Monathin posted:I think the rest of your points have merit even if I'm a hardcore "milestone levelling or bust" guy but I really can't believe this has ever actually occurred. 5e is a very combat-focused game. If people are playing, they accept they are going to be getting into fights. If 'lack of XP' is disincentivizing fights then there's likely a completely different problem that is in fact making that happen that is being band-aided by 'well, we won't get XP if we don't fight'.  People are complicated and want a mix of things out of D&D. At the time of the complaint my friends and I had a grand view that D&D could be anything you wanted it to be, not just dungeon diving and fighting dragons. There was a question of "what's the proper breakdown of exploring, roleplaying, combat, fingerpainting, and romance" which we didn't know the answer to. Removing an element like combat XP reduces the reward from fighting and tips the balance of party decision making towards those other things. This didn't stop them from getting into combat (and they had plenty), and I don't fault myself for not railroading them into violence if they expressed during the session that they wanted to avoid it.More detail about that particular complaint: the player was excited about both combat and the campaign narrative. This was a problem because accomplishing the goals of the campaign (and thus achieving milestones) did not necessarily require more than a few combats. The tension of feeling like they had to choose between prioritizing between combat and advancing the narrative was unpleasant. Combat can feel like a waste of time when you're on the way to save the princess from the dragon.
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Jul 11, 2023 05:05
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If they care about the plot to the extent that they are pursuing it to the exclusion of extraneous combats, it seems like everything is fine and you don't need extraneous combats or to bribe them to put up with extraneous combats? If anything, it seems to me like if I was being encouraged to gently caress around for combat xp instead of advancing the game, that would be a problem. HOMOEROTIC JESUS posted:Combat can feel like a waste of time when you're on the way to save the princess from the dragon. If it feels like a waste of time then maybe it is. D&D is a fantasy action/adventure game! There should be combats, and by your own story are, as part of your quest to save the prince from the dragon! Why is this a choice? Why is giving them candy to put up with extra random encounters a goal? Caphi fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Jul 11, 2023 |
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Jul 11, 2023 05:07
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Deteriorata posted:We've definitely run into "there's no point in hanging around here and doing any more quests because we have to do thing X to level up." Milestones have a tendency to railroad the game. You don't level up until you do the next thing in the plot. I definitely ran into this problem with milestones in a Curse of Strahd game that I played in. When a side-quest came up we usually did it, but there was little in the way of item rewards and it felt kinda bad helping anyone in Barovia given nearly every person is evil or a huge jerk. If we were getting XP from completing side-quests, at least they wouldn't have felt like a distraction from the campaign's main goal—get powerful enough/high enough level to kill Strahd. To be fair, our DM was inexperienced and not the best in general, but knowing we were too low level to fight Strahd but not having a tangible path to getting more powerful made the game feel directionless. It didn't help that in Curse specifically, if Strahd isn't defeated, any good act you do is ultimately fleeting and inevitably undone. I like milestones, and used to really like them, and think they're probably a great fit for a lot of 5e campaigns, especially ones where players aren't super-invested in mechanics and stuff like that. If no one really cares and are happy to just level up every few sessions or so when it feels right, definitely don't bother tracking the minutia of XP. But I've really come around on XP as a motivator, as long as its being used to encourage the PCs to engage more fully with the desired gameplay (like how gold for XP in old-school games actually encourages you to dungeon delve). Melusine fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Jul 11, 2023 |
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Jul 11, 2023 05:21
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Caphi posted:If they care about the plot to the extent that they are pursuing it to the exclusion of extraneous combats, it seems like everything is fine and you don't need extraneous combats or to bribe them to put up with extraneous combats? Players will optimize the fun out of their game. They'll avoid extraneous combats if they don't feel like that need them, yes, but a player can find a way to make any combat extraneous. Even combats that they think might have been fun. That is the bad design pattern that arises when you drop the intrinsic reward for rolling initiative. The other rewards of combat can always be found by other ways: gold can be stolen, weapons forged in a place of safety, and princesses saved by subterfuge. Yeah, you can force encounters to always devolve into inescapable combat, but... you could also just not do that. Combat will happen naturally if you give players a pre-existing, system-based incentive to do it, and when it happens that way there's no stink of robbing the players of agency. Yeah, maybe it's a "bribe", but XP is no more bribery or confectionery than gold, weapons, level ups, or narrative climaxes are. It is a great way to make a fantasy action/adventure game encourage players to violently fight bad guys in the narrative with minimal reservations. As for incentivizing loving around for combat XP, I'm not sure I understand your point. If the players see that advancing the narrative will get them combat XP, then it's clear that the optimal way to play is to just enjoy the narrative. No need for extraneous combat. If extraneous combat XP gave more benefits than narrative-tied combat, then sure, I'd agree with you, but it doesn't. Unless the DM has crafted an incredibly bizarre campaign haha Also, to be clear, this "Narrative-Combat Tension Through Milestone Leveling" problem is not an active one, it was constrained to one campaign which ended years ago. The player and I talked and we changed what we did at the table. IMO the biggest thing for crushing that issue and most tabletop issues thereafter was to open up an explicit forum to give positive and negative feedback after the end of every session. Every player talks at least once. People are way more comfortable to give feedback when it's just... part of the game. Gosh, "Stars and Wishes" or something like it should just be in the rules as near-mandatory parts of D&D sessions.
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Jul 11, 2023 06:33
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I blame video games. Most CRPGs lean so heavily on persuade / sneak / explore as ways to shortcut or skip combat that it's almost framed as a failure to actually get into combat; like you couldn't pass the speech check, so combat ensues as a 'punishment.' Especially Mass Effect, where there are huge chunks of combat and even certain boss fights you can just talk your way out of. My main complaint with this kind of videogaminess is that so many of our sessions are taken up with travel between places which comes down to 'roll a d6, you get a random encounter on the way there. You arrive at the new city, do rp for a bit, then skill checks for a bit, then the quest. Then you finish and travel somewhere else, roll a d6 to see if anything happens on the way.' This works fine if it's Skyrim where you can fast travel; not so much when we're using the power of imagination and spend easily half the session getting to the new place and doing the dance of "yes the accent is very funny but seriously do you have any healing potions or not." Edited to make it a bit more relevant to the discussion, sorry. Bobby Deluxe fucked around with this message at 09:04 on Jul 11, 2023 |
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Jul 11, 2023 08:53
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Combat being a fail state is actually very true to old school D&D where its XP was tiny relative to gold XP in most campaigns.
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Jul 11, 2023 09:16
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D&D is the only game I've played where most DMs seem completely obsessed with combat and shoehorn it in everywhere they can. Combat XP can be good to keep your players as excited about your combats as you are.
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Jul 11, 2023 09:21
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Deteriorata posted:We've definitely run into "there's no point in hanging around here and doing any more quests because we have to do thing X to level up." Milestones have a tendency to railroad the game. You don't level up until you do the next thing in the plot. I think this is why milestones are much better based on pure DM fiat and judgement. The entire point of running with them instead of XP levelling is to avoid prescriptive player behaviour, so why lean back into the original problem? The players collapsing in a heap for a long rest, having just barely survived a shocking but purely optional side-quest adventure, can feel like a far more deserved and fitting point for a level-up than simply 'well, you ticked off X plot point on the main quest.' The argument that players feel incentivised to skip fights if there's no XP for them and then end up bemoaning the lack of combat is interesting, but to me that sounds more like a situation where more fights need a pressing narrative reason to occur - even in a dungeon-crawl, the players can still care about why they're charging in, whether it's to save their own skins, to defeat a hated enemy, or rescue someone/something.
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Jul 11, 2023 09:25
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Hra Mormo posted:D&D is the only game I've played where most DMs seem completely obsessed with combat and shoehorn it in everywhere they can. Combat XP can be good to keep your players as excited about your combats as you are. This is because combat is the only thing 5e actually has good rules for and therefore the game incentivizes it above everything else.
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Jul 11, 2023 09:27
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I always hated using XP specifically because it encouraged players to start combats for no real reason other than to gain XP. Like, it incentivizes murderhoboing because that's literally how you get stronger that way. In every game I've ever played using XP, players metagamed the hell out of it, either with the old standby of "Hey let's not go fight that guy yet, I'm 100xp away from a level up so lets kill some goblins or something first" or the much worse "Let's kill this NPC instead of leaving peacefully/negotiating/sneaking past/etc because we'll get XP out of it". Every game I've ever run and every game I play in now, level ups happen at the end of an arc. Sidequests still have incentives in the form of loot, magic items, reputation gains and possible allies to help down the road, which tends to lead to the party acting in a way that accomplishes their goals rather than what will make them stronger in this strange meta, abstract way.
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Jul 11, 2023 09:40
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Thanks for all the good advice! I'll add that I've GM'ed other systems for 25 years and I GM'd DnD (2.5 AD&D back when  ), so the concepts are not unfamiliar to me, it's just that the XP-per-beast allocation is something I haven't done in, well, 25 years. I would always also allocate XP for solving quests as a whole, either bonus XP for the encounter that completes whatever challenge the characters were set out to complete as a whole, or just a bag of XP for solving non-combat 'encounters' like solving puzzles, winning social challenges that gets key NPCs on board with their quest or just moving into an area that has been eluding them. I'm very tempted to just up them an level once they complete the module (which helpfully says that, yes, if they complete both areas, they should have reached level 3), but it does perhaps remove some of the bean counting fun. I'll ask my players. Tias fucked around with this message at 12:01 on Jul 11, 2023 |
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Jul 11, 2023 09:52
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Milestones is better than xp because there’s already enough homework and maths, and it gives you a lot of flexibility with one more thing to tinker with if you want to reward them with a level/prep them for a story beat instead of having to do something like ‘oh and suddenly that last rat was worth 1000xp congratulations’ to get them over the hump.
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Jul 11, 2023 11:29
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