|
Mr. Lobe posted:I've had players claim alignments but they rarely live up to them all that consistently and I don't bother with it much as a DM I told my party's wizard I'd change his alignment to evil if he went ahead and bartered a human sacrifice in exchange for a magic item quid pro quo with a smithy god, then sheepishly admitted it meant literally nothing when he asked what that would entail (they didn't go through with it anyway)
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2024 00:19
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 21:03 |
|
|
If I'm DMing the only place I use alignments is just kinda arbitrarily assigning them to npcs without thinking about it too much, to give me some guidance on them if we're stepping outside of the motivations I've already written down for them. As a pc facing thing its totally vestigial in 5e, but if I see Baron (LE) in my notes I'm like oh I know who this guy is.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2024 00:29
|
|
|
I embrace the view that Good/Evil paints the clearest picture when it's described as Altruistic/Selfish. If you're sincerely concerned for the health and welfare of strangers, if you're willing to take risks or make sacrifices to help them, that's generally "Good"-aligned. If you only care about the welfare of yourself, your friends, and your family, and the rest are irrelevant, if you don't care about hurting and taking from others if it benefits you, then that's generally "Evil"-aligned.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2024 00:34
|
|
|
homeless snail posted:If I'm DMing the only place I use alignments is just kinda arbitrarily assigning them to npcs without thinking about it too much, to give me some guidance on them if we're stepping outside of the motivations I've already written down for them. As a pc facing thing its totally vestigial in 5e, but if I see Baron (LE) in my notes I'm like oh I know who this guy is. This thread has a good list of the few areas that alignment has hard mechanical influence https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/5e-the-few-mechanical-implications-of-alignment.750542/
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2024 00:54
|
|
|
Yeah but most of these are just "this does/doesn't change your alignment" which is kinda meaningless outside of a light roleplaying prompt. Mostly only really comes into play when you're dealing with outer planar stuff, and that's when you can stop and ask "uh so you're evil right?"
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2024 01:22
|
|
|
Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I embrace the view that Good/Evil paints the clearest picture when it's described as Altruistic/Selfish. If you're sincerely concerned for the health and welfare of strangers, if you're willing to take risks or make sacrifices to help them, that's generally "Good"-aligned. If you only care about the welfare of yourself, your friends, and your family, and the rest are irrelevant, if you don't care about hurting and taking from others if it benefits you, then that's generally "Evil"-aligned. I use this exact framework, and I had a cleric who really enjoyed having, as they put it: "a built-in rear end in a top hat alarm" in Detect Evil and Good.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2024 15:06
|
|
|
pseudosavior posted:I use this exact framework, and I had a cleric who really enjoyed having, as they put it: "a built-in rear end in a top hat alarm" in Detect Evil and Good. That spell doesn't tell you people's alignment anymore , here's how it's written in 5e Detect Evil And Good posted:Level 1 divination
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2024 17:26
|
|
|
quote:The spell can penetrate most barriers, but it is blocked by 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal, a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of wood or dirt. I didn't know Detect Evil And Good worked off of beta radiation.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2024 17:37
|
|
|
two fish posted:I didn't know Detect Evil And Good worked off of beta radiation. Well sure, Good emits positrons and Evil emits electrons, basic arcanophysics
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2024 17:56
|
|
|
Why do you think holy spells do radiant damage?
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2024 17:59
|
|
|
30 feet and no physical barriers? Couldn't you, like, see them at that point?
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2024 18:07
|
|
|
Azran posted:30 feet and no physical barriers? Couldn't you, like, see them at that point? I think it's more for identifying guys who can shapeshift or turn invisible or whatever. You know, a way to piss off the DM by allowing you to figure out Fizban the comic relief wizard is actually Paladine the Dragon God way too early.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2024 18:10
|
|
|
Azran posted:30 feet and no physical barriers? Couldn't you, like, see them at that point? You could also use it in the dark. "Don't go that way. Skeletons in the dark, you know."
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2024 18:57
|
|
|
Mr. Lobe posted:I've had players claim alignments but they rarely live up to them all that consistently and I don't bother with it much as a DM I had a fun moment bringing alignments to light as a player this weekend. I'm playing a LE character in a party that is all good-aligned and one neutral. My character is literally Red Beaulieu - the evil football coach from the beloved Adam-Sandler-silly-voice-vehicle The Waterboy. I don't know how relevant that is to this story, but it's fun and now you know it. I started as a fighter in the first campaign, but am now 6 Fighter/3 Warlock to get the fun and cheap Darkness/Devil Sight combo. To get the Warlock dip, coach Red is in the service of Ba'el, Golden General of the Nine Hells. The mostly good party has been letting me get away with a TON of shady poo poo throughout, and have also been pretty callous and bloodthirsty themselves. I finally made them regret that toward the end of Storm King's Thunder. Spoilers for those who don't want to be spoiled on it: The main quest of the campaign is to find Hekaton, the Storm Giant king who has gone missing. You find him prone and tied up on the lower deck of a ship at sea eventually, and there's a big bad wizard who is the boss of the ship. The fight ended up with most of the party rushing toward the bow of the ship fighting the wizard, after we had cut through a few guys at the stern and set it on fire (you have an item to teleport you off the ship). I'm on my way to catch up while the underboss of the ship is annoyingly disengaging and running from me the entire time. The pursuit takes me through the lower deck and past tied-up Hekaton. I was going to cut him loose, when inspiration struck. After he foolishly refused my offer to contract himself to Ba'el in exchange for freedom, Coach plunged his sword through Hekaton's heart and sacrificed the big boy's soul. The rest of the party starts freaking out to undo this, but I remind them I'm a good 100 feet away from them, below deck, shrouded in magical darkness. They are not pleased to learn of the outcome when the fighting is done. I told them they really should have reigned me in earlier 
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 18:56
|
|
|
Is this the place to discuss Beyond and its services and offerings, or is there a better thread for that? If here, I guess I have three items: 1) I like the character sheet creator and manager. Seems good, is the best experience with such a thing I’ve had to date, going back to 2nd Ed/ad&d. Roll20 always seemed too finicky. 2) Plan to try running a game through Beyond. Because we’re just giving it a shot, I’d like to grab something from the store that will have as much of everything needed ready to go as is reasonably possible. Heavier on the dungeon crawl side of things, like a bunch of episodic crawls with some light over-plot would be ace. Any recommendations? 3) Even acknowledging that Maps is alpha, it seems paaaiiinfully featureless at this point. Is that an accurate assessment? I’m looking to do the entire thing through Beyond if possible, which means Maps as well, if it’s even plausible. The encounter manager seems okay, but Maps seems to be 95% future roadmap plans. 4) (Bonus item): I’m currently in a game where we’re doing all characters and rolling through Beyond, and just the map and initiative tracking through Roll20. Which seems okayyyyy, although even then Roll20 rears its finicky head: dumb stuff like the GM adding a monster token to the map makes the map background disappear and all we can see is the line of sight mask. I want to simplify and avoid that sort of thing. But geez, Maps… Bad Munki fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Jan 30, 2024 |
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 05:38
|
|
|
Bad Munki posted:Is this the place to discuss Beyond and its services and offerings, or is there a better thread for that? If here, I guess I have three items: 2) The simple starter module is Lost Mines of Phandelver. At one point D&D Beyond was offering it to all users for free, though I'm not sure if that was just a time-limited offer. 4) There's a browser plugin called "Beyond 20" which integrates the rolls made in D&D Beyond with other VTT's like Roll 20.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 05:45
|
|
|
But that still means getting all the maps and such into Roll20 and dealing with its approach to tokens and whatnot, yeah? Although for the other game I’m in, I might grab that anyhow, since that’s just what we’re doing, Beyond+Roll20. Seems handy. e: Oh, looks like it does a fair bit more than just roll integration. Neat. Bad Munki fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Jan 30, 2024 |
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 05:54
|
|
|
The character sheets on Beyond are great but that's about it, I wouldn't bother using any of the other tools on there or worrying about actually getting your modules through them. Maps is currently the worst VTT you can use and barely even benefits from being associated with DDB at the moment, the encounter builder is functional but clunky, the compendium stuff isn't terribly helpful for actually running the game, like I don't think they even have rollable tables in any of the books yet. This stuff is going to change eventually, Maps will get better and sooner or later their 3D VTT will come out, but DDB is still very much built around the mindset of being the thing you have in front of you while playing the game IRL and for that its great. For VTTs you're better off using Foundry or Roll20 with either the Foundry DDB plugins or Beyond20, or Owlbear Rodeo and alt tabbing to DDB to make rolls (my preferred route). homeless snail fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Jan 30, 2024 |
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 06:08
|
|
|
PeterWeller posted:Yeah, alignment is easy to spin. For example, Enver Gortash is clearly neutral evil because he's just out for himself, Ketheric Thorn is chaotic evil because he'll happily switch patron deities at the drop of a hat, and Orin the Red is lawful evil because she really cares about following rituals and rites. And they are, of course, the chosen of lawful evil Bane, neutral evil Myrkul, and chaotic evil Bhaal respectively. Do like how all the devils in Baldur's Gate 3 act, different versions of Lawful Evil, and Raphael is angrier that you caused chaos then anything else.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 14:53
|
|
|
The one negative I've found with Beyond's character creation system is that you have to have purchased additional content, like Tasha's, Xanathar's, etc., in order to have those options available to you in character creation. Otherwise, you're limited to PHB options unless you're in a campaign and your DM has shared that material with you. For example, I'm fairly new to DnD and hadn't invested any money into content purchases when creating my first character: a Monk for an IRL campaign. As such, the only Monastic Tradition available to me on Beyond was Way of the Open Hand, so going Way of the Long Death required me to manually enter all those skills and abilities as customized actions. Conversely, I'm now doing a campaign with a DM who's purchased everything, and it allowed me to pick Hexblade for my Warlock from a drop-down menu, which then automatically added all the abilities and skills that come with that. Not a huge complaint, really, since it's fairly easy to add custom abilities to characters via Beyond, but it's a bit more of a time sink if you don't have that stuff available from the offset.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 15:37
|
|
|
In this case, the extra content being unavailable without sinking cash is fine: the players in this group are not super experienced in general and not at all experienced with 5e, so we’re sticking to the most core content anyhow and just doing PHB-based characters. I guess I’ll look into VTT options again and see what’s most workable for me. Thoughts on Roll20 vs Foundry vs etc with a target of the shortest learning curve for newbies?
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 15:54
|
|
|
My favorite D&D video game remains Neverwinter Nights, and I still play it. There are plenty of active servers, despite it being two decades old. Any of you play Arelith?
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 18:12
|
|
|
two fish posted:My favorite D&D video game remains Neverwinter Nights, and I still play it. There are plenty of active servers, despite it being two decades old. No but I have fond memories of the permadeath Necrosis server. It's influenced me and some of my homebrew for a long while. I like the idea of a "zombie movie but D&D" sort of setting. Like what if Attack on Titan but its zombies?
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 19:20
|
|
|
NWN was great, I have fond memories of being on the Gamespy Forums in the mid 2000s and being introduced to a weird proto MMO mod by a guy who ran a group of us through it at what seemed like an insane speed - I remember it didn't click until he said it was all about levelling up as quick as possible to get to the endgame stuff. It was also the first time spells with saving throws clicked to me - I'd always looked at Grease as being 'x% chance they might fall over, doesn't even do damage, no thanks' but then he explained that (in NWN at least) it can create a chokepoint where they have to check to see if they fall over every few seconds, and then take a few seconds to get back up, in which time you've already shot at them a bunch of times. Love that spell in CRPGs now.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 20:31
|
|
|
Bad Munki posted:
Disclaimer: I've played on Roll 20, and DMed on Foundry. I tried DMing on the free tier of Roll20 and the experience was less than impressive, which combined with the subscription based platform pushed me to buy Foundry to run my game. I have had enough subscriptions that I ended up not utilizing for whatever reason but didn't want to cancel and lose what effort I'd put in, that the up front cost of Foundry was worth it. To answer your question, I think any of the options today will be approachable enough to get newbs up and playing within the first session. The more advanced features aren't absolutely necessary to play, they generally just make automation easier. Either of those platforms are just websites to the end user, so there's very few hoops they have to jump through. I'm partial to the multitude of add-on modules in Foundry for setting up my game, as well as total control over files, folders, and configuration I have by running my own server, though you can pay for fully integrated hosting if you want. These add-ons have the side effect of me wanting to spend more time thinking of cool ways to use them, instead of actually prepping my campaign, however, so approach with caution. I'll always have a place in my heart, however, for MapTool. It is the opposite of what you want, but before I made real adult money I "used" MapTool, by which I mean I spent all my free time learning scripting to make my own macros from scratch, and very little time playing with it because I had to troubleshoot every player's machine to get it to run properly. In my heart I know it has potential to be great, and I'm also sure it's better than the last time I used it, but it suffers from the same problems that all open source projects have. Edit: corrected spelling One Legged Ninja fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Jan 30, 2024 |
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 23:16
|
|
|
For what it’s worth, I’m not bothered by spending a few bucks, and for most of these tools, it’s likely I already have them, I just never get to use them. My GM/mapping tool collection is only rivaled by my unpainted Bones, and they both tell the same sad story. To wit: I already have Foundry. Gonna start there, I think. I recall I bought it specifically because Roll20 came across as such an absolute curmudgeon last time I was looking at this as a GM and every time I’ve touched it as a player.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 23:49
|
|
|
One of the biggest problems with Foundry especially if you're using it with Beyond is Foundry plugin culture of not paid plugins but plugins on a subscription basis. There's a lot of good rear end plugins for it but you could easily drop $20-30/mo subscribing to four different paterons to run some of them. The better options for DDB syncing stuff falls in that bucket. Beyond20 is free if you like that though.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2024 00:03
|
|
|
Poked around my Muscle Wizard idea from a couple of years ago again. Still far from a playable state, but I figure someone with more experience might like the idea want to run with it on their own: Still running with them being a constitution caster. To balance that out, their spells (except touch range spells) have half the range and they lose concentration if they move (not if they cast or attack and not if they teleport or are teleported. Only if they walk, run, jump, are knocked down, or knocked into a different space). They use the wizard spell list. Spells are broken up into "warm-ups." They get three warm-ups per long rest and the spells that are covered by those warm-ups are the ones that are prepped. They have the flexibility of being able to use all of their warm-ups immediately after a long rest or to wait for later short rests to do them. Warm-ups don't carry over between long rests. Can trade half their HP recovery during short rests to replenish 2 fifth level or lower spell slots. Can trade all of it to replenish one of each slot. Unlike Monks, they don't get a better die for their unarmed attack. They aren't meant to be melee combatants, they're meant to still be casters, just casters who can stand on the front lines. But they do eventually get a class feature that lets them add their intelligence modifier to unarmed attack damage. Class feature that prevents them from taking damage from their own AoE attacks.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2024 07:38
|
|
|
Sorry to be the barer of bad news Hasbro Seeks to Sell IP “DND” and Has Had Preliminary Contact with Tencent. They'll want the IP of the brand to make more cheaper versions of BG3, and the tabletop side of it wouldn't live past the new edition I would think. This could all be fake news, but seriously, who wouldn't think Hasbro would do it? And Tencent I'm sure has the cash. Though maybe Apple or Amazon would be interested for the IP to make the next wannabe Marvel Movie attempt.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2024 13:09
|
|
|
I plugged the original Chinese article it references into Google Translate and the source for this is an unnamed person who told Snow Leopard Investments this move was likely. WotC's overall goal right now is to stop doing what they do and make money from IP, so I don't think they'd sell the brand.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2024 13:59
|
|
|
Someone contact Jeffrey, see if he can buy the IP 6th Edition can come bundled with a dungeon crawl adventure through Groverhaus
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2024 14:06
|
|
|
Empty Sandwich posted:I plugged the original Chinese article it references into Google Translate and the source for this is an unnamed person who told Snow Leopard Investments this move was likely. Eh, a sale makes a certain amount of sense. It's a high profile brand that they don't really know how to make profit from (as they've demonstrated recently) and they just fired most of the people who made it function so they could harvest short-term profitability gains. They don't really know how to make money with it except by accident (see: Bg3, D&D movie) but someone else might.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2024 14:08
|
|
|
It's frustrating to see people destroy sustainable long-term cash cows like D&D so they can make more money now. It's like that thought experiment where you offer kids below a certain age 1 cookie now or 5 cookies at the end of the week, and they will always choose the cookie now. Except it's not like that, because there's a worldwide cookie exchange that enables them to horde and acquire multiple single cookies every second. I'm hungry now.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2024 15:22
|
|
|
Comstar posted:Sorry to be the barer of bad news Hasbro Seeks to Sell IP “DND” and Has Had Preliminary Contact with Tencent. Hasbro wouldn't sell off its one-of-two profitable businesses. They're probably looking to buy video game adaptation rights
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2024 15:28
|
|
|
change my name posted:Hasbro wouldn't sell off its one-of-two profitable businesses. They're probably looking to buy video game adaptation rights While that honestly my bet too, they did just turf a ton of people who were making the products that were so profitable.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2024 18:56
|
|
|
They're talking about video game adaptation rights, they're not selling the whole IP.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2024 05:32
|
|
|
Could be they're seeking help with predatory monetisation for the new VTT.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2024 12:58
|
|
|
Being mad at Chinese things often smells like a racist dog whistle to me, even if Tencent is an obviously poo poo company. So this article might just be an attempt at generating clicks through nerd rage.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2024 14:50
|
|
|
Bobby Deluxe posted:Could be they're seeking help with predatory monetisation for the new VTT. Speaking of, it was a bit of a shock to see yesterday that WotC officially partnered with Foundry: https://foundryvtt.com/article/dungeons-dragons-arrives/ Before, Foundry supported D&D 5e (and prior editions) through SRD-only but then lots of "unofficial" stuff that would help augment that to make it .... semi-playable.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2024 15:35
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 21:03 |
|
|
Tencent has stakes in a lot of companies including Riot, Epic Games, Paradox, Kadokawa, and many others. I think it isn't obvious to me what the quality of whatever they put out would be.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2024 15:37
|
|