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starkebn posted:So a friend of mine has been asked to play in a 5e game, and he said the only way he will play is if he can play a Minotaur bard who plays the cowbell. If they're starting at 10th level and he'll be getting +2 STR and +1 CON for being a Minotaur, and at least 1 lvl has to be Bard - what's the best his character sheet can look like? 10 Levels of Bard of Valor
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 14:06 |
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# ? Jun 1, 2024 12:15 |
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So I went back and checked the DMG for encounter guidelines:DMG page 84 posted:Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer. The chart says that a level 1 character is expected to gain 300 XP within a single adventuring day (a single adventuring day being composed of 6 to 8 medium or hard encounters) And then in a small paragraph at the bottom of the page: quote:In general, over the course of a full adventuring day, the party will likely need to take two short rests, about one-third and two-thirds of the way through the day. Note: the quoted text and chart is also on page 57 on the DM Basic rules So reviewing the playthrough I had over the weekend: 1. One Giant Poisonous Snake, 1/4 CR, Easy encounter: 50 XP split across two characters, so a single character gains 25 XP 2. Two Kobolds, CR 1/8, Medium encounter: a single character gains 25 XP, running total 50 XP 3. One Hobgoblin, CR 1/2, Hard encounter: a single character gains 50 XP, running total 100 XP 4. Three Giant Weasels, CR 1/8, Hard encounter, but they had "roleplayed" (read: stealthed) their way through this without combat: This would have been worth another 37.5 XP to a single character, but disregarding it for now since the DMG says to only award XP for enemies that are defeat by "killing, routing or capturing them" 5. Four Kobolds, CR 1/8, Deadly encounter: a single character gains 50 XP, running total 150 XP (without the Weasels) So there it is. The party I was DM'ing for died on encounter #5. They were one-third of the way to their 300 XP total by the time they finished encounter #3, which should have entitled them to a short rest. Even if I winged it and was only counting "6 Medium/Hard encounters a day", then they would have been one-thirds done with their adventuring day after encounter #2 and I still should have given them a Short Rest. To delve into specifics, a Short Rest would have allowed the Monk to use hit Hit Die to heal up from hits he took in encounter #2, which might have turned the tide considering the TPK in encounter #5 came down to him and a single Kobold trying to roll for who would hit the other first. I will still probably increase first level HP regardless (because the margin on being able to take 1 more hit from a Kobold is really narrow), but I'm willing to admit that I had it wrong. Lesson learned.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 14:07 |
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goatface posted:10 Levels of Bard of Valor What does a cookie cutter Lvl 10 valor bard look like? Or can you pretty much follow the book and make no mistakes?
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 14:14 |
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^^ There aren't really enough options currently available to make any serious mistakes. Pump charisma at 4 and 8, choose some spells, take whatever magical trinkets are on offer. You should probably be multiplying the values for numbers of enemies adjusted by a step up, because it's a small party. So the snake is worth 75 XP (50 *(1 adjusted to 1.5)), the kobolds are worth 100 (25*2 * (1.5 for two of them upped to 2)) and the Hobgoblin's worth 150 (100 *1.5). So that was a 162.5 XP per player right there. Three giant weasels is 187.5 (25*3*(2 upped to 2.5)), four Kobolds is 250 (25 * 4 *(2 upped to 2.5)) So that would be 218.75 more each A combined 381.25 XP per player. They would be level 2. You should have put breaks in after the first kobolds and the weasels. Any new adventurer who survives day 1 should end it at level 2. Level 1 is garbage, gently caress level 1. goatface fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Jan 12, 2015 |
# ? Jan 12, 2015 14:29 |
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goatface posted:Level 1 is garbage, gently caress level 1. I think Level 1 has its place, but it's a pretty specific one. Level 1 is for when your party is just starting their adventuring career, like day one. Like, when there are a wizard's apprentice, a squire, a pickpocket, and a choir boy who happen to all be waiting in line at the general store when the bandit king sweeps into town and kidnaps the tax collector's daughter. I feel like most "So you're in a tavern" intros are really narratively set up for like Level 3-5 adventurers who have already seen some poo poo and have a backstory.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 14:45 |
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Babylon Astronaut posted:Would you believe me if I told you that hundreds of people tested it for over a year leaving detailed feedback and criticism?
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 14:54 |
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starkebn posted:What does a cookie cutter Lvl 10 valor bard look like? Or can you pretty much follow the book and make no mistakes? The only choices you really have to make are: 1. How to assign your ability scores, which for a Bard would be CHA and DEX as priorities, followed either by CON for more HP, or your choice of STR/CON/INT/WIS for the bonuses to skill checks and saving throws 2. You get 2 Ability Score Improvements by level 10. If you're playing with Feats you have to choose whether to spend the ASIs on feats or to actually boost your ability scores. If you're playing with a standard array you need all your ASIs to get CHA and DEX to 20, so it's not much of a choice if you're playing without feats. 3. Spells The choice of which Bard you want to be technically comes between #1 and #2, but you're already a Valor Bard so that's out. goatface posted:So the snake is worth 75 XP (50 *(1 adjusted to 1.5)), the kobolds are worth 100 (25*2 * (1.5 for two of them upped to 2)) and the Hobgoblin's worth 150 (100 *1.5). So that was a 162.5 XP per player right there. RAW, XP multipliers due to Number of Monsters and Party Size only apply to the budget for building encounters, but not to the actual XP rewarded to the players. I do agree that it's a good idea to apply the multipliers to the XP awarded regardless, but that's technically a houserule.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 14:58 |
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Christ, I hadn't even noticed that bit. The adventuring day uses the adjusted values though, so they might just need two days of that to get to level 2. Also, the first encounter in mines of the philanderer, four goblins ambushing the party? If that's a four person party, and the Goblins get their ambush off, that's a 500 XP budget encounter. The very first encounter meets the criteria for "deadly".
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 15:05 |
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Does the rule of 'table trumps text' still apply in NEXT? Because if not, then the text allows for more encounters than the table shows - that budget is the minimum of '6-8 medium or hard encounters per adventuring day'.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 15:13 |
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goatface posted:Level 1 is garbage, gently caress level 1. If the same complaint about encounter budgeting applies at levels 5 and 10 and 15 or whatever, then yeah, let's talk about how the whole thing is fundamentally and completely broken. If it's just a level 1 problem, well, that's still a problem, but how about canning the hyperbole, because yeah, gently caress level 1.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 15:17 |
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IT BEGINS posted:Does the rule of 'table trumps text' still apply in NEXT? Because if not, then the text allows for more encounters than the table shows - that budget is the minimum of '6-8 medium or hard encounters per adventuring day'. Huh, you're right: Five Kobolds is a Medium encounter for a party of four level 1 characters. Each character will earn 31.25 XP from the encounter. After six such encounters, a character will have earned 187.5 XP. After eight such encounters, a character will have earned 250 XP. Both of which are still below the expected 300 XP per adventuring day, even if the party is already done with "6 to 8 Medium encounters per adventuring day" At level 5: three Ochre Jellies, CR 2, 1350 XP total, 337.5 XP per character. 1350 XP gained by 1 character after 6 such encounters, or 2700 XP after 8 such encounters. 3500 XP expected per adventuring day At level 10: five Owlbears, CR 3, 3500 XP total, 875 XP per character. 5250 XP gained by 1 character after 6 such encounters, or 7000 XP after 8 such encounters. 9000 XP expected per adventuring day ... unless you're supposed to make up the difference in "roleplaying rewards"
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 15:34 |
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P.d0t posted:Is it just me, or does the Paladin's Channel Divinity: Sacred Weapon seem like... it shouldn't be an Action? I mean, you're basically losing your turn to get +X to attack rolls. Is that even worth it? Edit: It probably should be a bonus action but I guess they're trying to differentiate it from the Vengeance Paladin where their Channel Divinity is only a bonus action. I wouldn't say it makes it useless by it being a standard action, but I also wouldn't say that it would be bad if it became a bonus action. Power Player fucked around with this message at 16:07 on Jan 12, 2015 |
# ? Jan 12, 2015 16:00 |
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Power Player posted:I know this is from a while ago but it's worth it. You forgot that it also becomes magical for the duration, and if you're playing in a game where magic items are rare (which is how they are supposed to be in 5E), I would say it's good. It's in that awkward place where in terms of mechanical power-level it's absolutely worth blowing the Action on, but not viscerally interesting. Kind of like casting healing spells, actually.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 17:15 |
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Have none of you played 2e/3e with low magic setting? I've never seen a healing potion and I'm very used to seeing healing used in combat by clerics. Hell I just did that two days ago. Burned five rounds of cure minor wounds and spent the other dozen doing various other activities, never cast an offensive spell or attack.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 18:49 |
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mastershakeman posted:Have none of you played 2e/3e with low magic setting? I've never seen a healing potion and I'm very used to seeing healing used in combat by clerics. Hell I just did that two days ago. Burned five rounds of cure minor wounds and spent the other dozen doing various other activities, never cast an offensive spell or attack. Lemme pull open the DnD 3.5 SRD and look some monsters up An eight-headed hydra is a CR7 monster. Its main attack is biting 8 times at a respectable attack bonus for 1d10+4 damage, or an average of 9 per bite. Assuming half of the bites hit, that's 36 damage. Assuming all of them hit, its 72. Its maximum damage, assuming a worst case scenario, is 112 damage, for 14 damage on 8 bites. At level 7, when a CR 7 monster can expect to be fought, a Cleric learns Cure Critical Wounds. They get one such spell slot, plus a domain spell and bonus spells. A cleric's Cure Critical Wounds heals 4d8+7 at caster level 7, for an average of 25. The cleric's healing routinely lags behind the hydra's average damage on half of its hits, is around a third of its average damage on half of its hits, and can't even compare to the worst case scenario. This is for a healing spell they can use a grand total of once, maybe twice. His maximum heal, 39, can maybe make up for one turn of damage at the most. In contrast, a 7th level cleric has so many better options. They can use Lesser Planar Ally to summon a 6 HD elemental, which will likely be enough to significantly whittle down the 8 HD Hydra. They can Bestow Curse (a third level spell, even!) to nearly destroy its armor class or cut its attack bonus in half. They can even blind it. Most of these are much more effective than maybe kinda sorta making up for the damage the hydra deals. Maybe the hydra's unfair, it does get a huge amount of attacks. So I'll look up a more pedestrian beast like a whale. 4d6 on a cachalot whale averages out to 14, with a +12 giving it a 26. That's still one point above the cleric's healing average. Throw in a 1d8+6 tail slap if it gets a full attack off and we're talking an average of 36 damage when all attacks hit. If maximum damage? 50 damage, because whales kick rear end apparently. The level 7 cleric can heal maybe half of that on average, and can't even fully heal it on maximum. A fourth-level barbarian ogre also clocks in at around 7. It get two greatclub attacks, each hitting at 2d8+13. Assuming an average of 9 damage for 2d8, the ogre is dealing 22 damage per attack. This makes for a 44 on average when both attacks hit, with a projected maximum of 58. That's without rage, with boosts its damage bonus by 3 each hit. Once again, the ogre can regularly match or outpace in one hit what the level 7th cleric can do maybe twice, in extreme cases three times per day. A better use of your time than healing is buffing, save-or-sucking, or just plain killing the enemies before they can do such damage in the first place. Its more active and fun for the player who has to be the healbot, and also makes your friends less dead. In addition, healing spells just don't scale beyond level 4. Your 4d8 + caster level? That's the most you ever get with the exception of Heal, and Heal can't be spontaneously prepared so it takes up valuable spell slots. Its pretty much the only healing spell worth it, honestly, considering it heals a flat (up to) 150 damage, no fiddling around, no luck, no dice rolls. Heal's a spell I can respect even if I don't like in-fight healbotting at all. But enough about the good spells, I'm here to mercilessly shred the bad ones! For an example of how cure spells fall apart, let's look at our good friend the Balor. He's hitting, on a full attack, up to four times with a longsword and two times with a whip. Longsword's an average of 7 with a +13 modifier, so if he lands all four hits (and with +16 to hit at lowest, its very likely he is!) he's churning out 80 damage. 1d4+6 + 1d6 per whip hit, which can happen up to twice, adds a respectable 22 or so to that damage. Balor's clocking in at over 100. My good friend Heal's got this one under control, but if we're talking Cure Critical Wounds again? 4d8+20 means on average 38, at max 52, and there is absolutely no in between from "heals half of what the Balor's throwing around" and "heals all of it and more" If the Balor hits max? 132 damage. Still not enough to outdo Heal, still far, far too much for Cure. At this point, though, why bother with heals? You have so many save-or-sucks and buffs that you could contribute so much more actually fighting the Balor. Even in a "low magic setting" (which, judging by the mere existence of a cleric in that example, is already failing at its job by including one of the most magical classes doing very magic-y things), healing just isn't up to snuff. Especially when, after you win the fight and save everyone the trouble of spent spell slots, you can spontaneously convert the leftovers into healing instead of wasting time doing it in combat. Cure Critical Wounds is much less offensive as a post-fight band-aid than it is as a waste of an action.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 19:27 |
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Yeah, it's a well known factor that 3.5's in-combat healing was a wasted action unless it was Heal.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 19:34 |
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Allstone posted:Yeah, it's a well known factor that 3.5's in-combat healing was a wasted action unless it was Heal. This is still true past a certain level in D&D Next; once you can cast Heal, pumping a lower level spell up with a higher slot is a waste when you can cast Heal instead.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 19:45 |
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Well, of course, its because the scaling on every other spell is all wrong compared to how Heal scales. For an experiment, I'll assume you both get Heal at level 1 and Cure spells all the way to 6th level spells, just to compare how they'll grow in relation to each other. Cure Light Wounds: 1d8+1 vs. Heal: 10 damage. At max, Heal is already always the better option. As these scale, Heal gets +10 per level, CLW gets +1 until your next spell level, at which point it becomes:. Cure Moderate Wounds: 2d8+3 vs. Heal: 30 damage. The maximum gap's already increased from 1 damage (9 vs. 10) to 11 damage (19 vs. 30). And it only gets worse from here. Cure Serious Wounds: 3d8+5 (max 29) vs. Heal: 50 damage. Cure Critical Wounds: 4d8+7 (max 39) vs. Heal: 70 damage. Cure Deadly Wounds: 5d8+9 (max 49) vs. Heal: 90 damage. Cure Ungodly Painful Wounds: 6d8+11 (max 59) vs. Heal: 110 damage. And that's without even taking into consideration that Heal scales up to your first 8th level spell at level 15, while the Cure Wounds Series in reality stops at 4th level spells. Its amazing how the designers made two spells do the same thing in such stupidly different ways, especially when it levels 5th level spells a horrible no mans land of outdated healing before you get the actually useful heal spell.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 19:52 |
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Yeah, healing was garbage until Heal showed up, at which point enemies had to start doing 100+ damage a turn or a single party member could just cancel it out. Similarly divine spells were pretty bad at damage, and then loving Flamestrike showed up out of nowhere.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 19:54 |
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Does Heal also get rid of a bunch of negative status effects still?
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 19:54 |
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Allstone posted:Does Heal also get rid of a bunch of negative status effects still? In Next? Yes: "This spell also ends blindness, deafness, and any diseases affecting the target."
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 19:56 |
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I don't think anyone's arguing that cures are suboptimal vs heals. But there's a place for both (wizard at half health who could get one shotted by a crit should get a cure or two vs a heal saved for a fighter). But it's also true that cures shouldn't outpace enemy damage or player damage or else clerics would use nothing but cures. Heal is only balanced by virtue of being such a high level spell that you can't cast many. The point is that the argument about healing potions can be solved if the dm just doesn't use them.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 20:30 |
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Is there anything actually stopping a player with 8 con recovering 0 HP when they use a hit die RAW?
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 20:36 |
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I have no interest in actually running D&D 5e at any point in the (foreseeable) future, but drat I want those books something fierce. Back when I was a freshman in high school and D&D 3e was coming out, I remember buying the books just for the art and to read them on occasion, even though I never ended up playing it at any point in time. I feel that way about 5e now: those books just look so nice!
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 20:37 |
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mastershakeman posted:I don't think anyone's arguing that cures are suboptimal vs heals. But there's a place for both (wizard at half health who could get one shotted by a crit should get a cure or two vs a heal saved for a fighter). But it's also true that cures shouldn't outpace enemy damage or player damage or else clerics would use nothing but cures. Heal is only balanced by virtue of being such a high level spell that you can't cast many. Not really, because nothing's getting solved much there. You're taking a much more expendable resource like gold and replacing it with a much more limited resource that can be better utilized in so many other ways. Spell slots and gold are not, and will never be, and equivalent resource just by the nature of the game. It doesn't solve the healing potion argument, it just kicks it under the rug in hopes nobody notices. You have somewhat of a point with the fact that cures shouldn't outpace damage, but at the same time you walk a dangerous tightrope. If your heals just aren't impactful enough yet take up your entire action for the turn, you feel like you're not doing anything. I'd be much more accepting of those heal values if they could be done while accompanying another, more engaging action. As for Heal being balanced by being a high level spell, not really. You only get one less 6th level spell slot than you get 4th, and until a +8 modifier you don't get a significant bonus spell difference either. You can, on average, cast maybe one more Cure than a Heal, and with how low even the strongest Cure spell heals for why bother?
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 21:24 |
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And it's just my personal belief that healing just doesn't make for exciting gameplay/stories in general. In all the games I've been a part of as player or DM, none of the stories I'd tell would be "remember that time I healed a dude?" The stories are like "remember the time the rogue jumped on the back of the werewolf lord and slit its throat" or "remember the time the fighter grappled a dire gorilla"
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 21:48 |
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Healing doesn't make for interesting stories in and of itself, but in-combat healing makes for much more tense combat, where it feels like it could go against you, but then you rally and take it back etc. It's an accessory to interesting stories rather than an interesting story in itself, but... put it this way, it's tough to have an epic boss fight where there are lots of stages and back-and-forth... without a way to get your health back when it has gone forth. If all you have is what you started with and that's it, it's hard to come back if things swing against you. It's one reason why in 4e, PCs have healing but monsters, generally, don't. It allows the PCs to have that sort of story to their combat, where the monsters don't need to.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 22:08 |
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Mordiceius posted:And it's just my personal belief that healing just doesn't make for exciting gameplay/stories in general. In all the games I've been a part of as player or DM, none of the stories I'd tell would be "remember that time I healed a dude?" The stories are like "remember the time the rogue jumped on the back of the werewolf lord and slit its throat" or "remember the time the fighter grappled a dire gorilla" My group has a few healing stories like that... but they're all paragon-level 4e stories. We had a Cleric who was all about the healing and things got pretty crazy at some points. Healing was genuinely fun and exciting sometimes.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 22:10 |
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gradenko_2000 posted:Huh, you're right: The three hundred xp a day is XP budget, not XP earned. A kobold is 25 xp * 5 is 125, but because of the threat a bunch of monsters can pose, the DMG says to multiply the value of that by 2. 250 xp for that encounter. In that example each character, though earning 31.25 xp for the encounter is spending 62.5 xp of their encounter budget. after six encounters this party will have slogged through 375 xp out of a 300 xp adventuring day budget. Even though they're only earning like 188 xp each. It's worth noting though that running through that amount of encounters would typically qualify as meeting a milestone, and you should allot extra XP for that that would probably bump them up to level 2. So yes, kind of making it up with roleplaying rewards
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 22:17 |
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Quantumfate posted:The three hundred xp a day is XP budget, not XP earned. A kobold is 25 xp * 5 is 125, but because of the threat a bunch of monsters can pose, the DMG says to multiply the value of that by 2. 250 xp for that encounter. In that example each character, though earning 31.25 xp for the encounter is spending 62.5 xp of their encounter budget. after six encounters this party will have slogged through 375 xp out of a 300 xp adventuring day budget. Even though they're only earning like 188 xp each. It's worth noting though that running through that amount of encounters would typically qualify as meeting a milestone, and you should allot extra XP for that that would probably bump them up to level 2. So yes, kind of making it up with roleplaying rewards That's all well and good. Problem is, its incredibly nonintuitive that XP values aren't actually XP values. Or that CR values aren't actually CR values. Or that budgets aren't actually budgets.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 22:38 |
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goatface posted:There aren't really enough options currently available to make any serious mistakes. Pump charisma at 4 and 8, choose some spells, take whatever magical trinkets are on offer. gradenko_2000 posted:The only choices you really have to make are: Thanks. He also wants to be able to grapple most enemies, going by the discussion earlier he'll be better at it being a bard than a warrior anyway right?
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 22:38 |
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The Bee posted:That's all well and good. Problem is, its incredibly nonintuitive that XP values aren't actually XP values. Or that CR values aren't actually CR values. Or that budgets aren't actually budgets. I know it could be nonintuitive, because the bit on encounter building is not next to the adventuring day recommendations. That is why I was letting him know not to throw too much against his players unwittingly.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 22:42 |
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I've had a couple groups swear to me up and down that 5e was the most chill, casual D&D experience they've ever had, and that I should just try it, they're sure I'll like it. Its well meaning, and I'm kind of getting curious myself, if only to see what they're seeing that I'm not. Should I just go on amazon and buy the drat starter set for $12 so I can say "yes I tried it and here's what I thought" or is it truly just so bad that its not worth the box it comes in?
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 22:55 |
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EscortMission posted:Should I just go on amazon and buy the drat starter set for $12 so I can say "yes I tried it and here's what I thought" or is it truly just so bad that its not worth the box it comes in? It's far from horrible, and you could do worse than picking up the starter set. That said, there are much better systems you could be picking up (DW, 13th Age, 4e).
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 22:57 |
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EscortMission posted:I've had a couple groups swear to me up and down that 5e was the most chill, casual D&D experience they've ever had, and that I should just try it, they're sure I'll like it. Its well meaning, and I'm kind of getting curious myself, if only to see what they're seeing that I'm not. This is exactly the situation the free rules are for. I ran a session with just those and it was enough to give me a feel for the game and what my players thought of it.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 22:58 |
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EscortMission posted:I've had a couple groups swear to me up and down that 5e was the most chill, casual D&D experience they've ever had, and that I should just try it, they're sure I'll like it. Its well meaning, and I'm kind of getting curious myself, if only to see what they're seeing that I'm not. If you just want to try it to see what it's like, why not use the free rules?
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 22:58 |
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It's not horrible as long as you don't pick Fighter and quickly get pushed out of relevance by every other class in the game.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 22:59 |
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You could also just go to the Wizards site and download PDFs of all the rules that are included in the starter set for free. Unless you need a set of polyhedral dice really badly, that is.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 23:00 |
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I would totally use the free rules, but after making way too many 3.5 characters, I'd like to get from opening the box to trying the system out as fast as I can. I'd get everyone together and have them build new 5e characters but after being spoiled by Dungeon World, chargen that takes over 20 minutes is a real tough sell. Pregens will hopefully get players to the table and examining the system a little faster.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 23:01 |
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# ? Jun 1, 2024 12:15 |
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In 5e it doesn't actually take that long because non-casters have all of two or three things to choose.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 23:02 |