D&D NEXT: Infinite Posts of the Abyss

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LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

petrol blue posted:

Can things other than spells (or spell-like, etc.) call for saving throws? Maybe strength saving throw would be for something like "can you hold the spiked portcullis up, or does it squish you?" Just guessing here, I'm not far into the pdf myself.

Back in the playtest there were a small handful of monster abilities that keyed to alternate saves, such as a strength save to avoid being knocked on your rear end by a minotaur, an intelligence save to avoid being stunned by a mind flyer's mind blast, and a charisma save to avoid a devil's fear aura (not to be confused with the wisdom saves to avoid the fear effects of every other monster in the bestiary). It wasn't really well thought-out, but I suspect Fort/Ref/Will have been replaced with Con/Dex/Wis saves and then there are the odd ones out, with the order of the rest from most-common to least common being Str/Cha/Int.

It is at this point that I miss 4e allowing you to add the higher of two stats to your defense, even if there were still problems with that.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2014 02:19

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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 03:27

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

Sort of, though there's been discussion about the implications, and the magic involved creates weird ontological issues.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2014 02:55

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

PeterWeller posted:

They put out a nice book at the end of 3.5 called Grand History of the Realms that explains everything up to the Spell Plague, which was the big event that changed everything for 4E. 4E picks up about 100 years later, and the events of those 100 years are vague and scattered across a few novel timelines. But none of that really matters now because the current big event, The Sundering, is going to revert many of those changes.

...

*Crazy Drow poo poo goes down, leaving only Lolth, Ellistrae, and Ghaunadar standing. Ched Nassad is destroyed.

Didn't Eilistraee get tagged as well, and Ghaunadar went "welp, I'm out"?

# ¿ Jul 23, 2014 00:34

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

FRINGE posted:

Ah. I guess I was used to that in the older editions. 3e was a terrible mess to look through though.

Did 4e not have monsters "cast", like could they not be interrupted? (As opposed to innate abilities/ spell-like abilities)

Not really. Basically almost every offensive maneuver in the game came in the form of an attack roll made against one of four defenses:
-AC, which is pretty similar to what it's always been
-Fortitude, which is used to resist attacks against the body such as posion, along with some big hits that would otherwise knock you around
-Reflex, which is used when it's something you have to dodge or counterbalance, be it a fireball or maybe an earthquake, as well as weapon attacks that went through armor, not unlike Touch AC, except it actually scales so it's not quite as much of an autohit at high levels
-Will, which is used to resist attacks against your mind such as charms, illusion, fear, or feints

Attacks can come in different forms, with ranged attacks such as arrows or magic rays and ranged AoE attacks like fireball or a volley of arrows provoking OAs and melee attacks (even if they're melee spells) don't provoke OAs. Successfully landing an OA doesn't interrupt a spell or attack barring certain specialized builds that sling around daze effects, but it does hurt and thus it's not a bad idea to get in the face of long-ranged opponent.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2014 04:21

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

treeboy posted:

yeah assassin is really terrible. Lvl 17 ability: guaranteed crit if target surprised.

wow. that's amaaaaaaaaazing.

How about : Death Strike - if you hit a target when surprised they die, no save.

or

Death Strike - if you have advantage on a target you automatically crit.

The assassin's level 3 Assassinate ability is a guaranteed crit when the target is surprised.

Unlike 3e, crits double the dice rolled, not the static bonus, but this does include sneak attack.

Basic Rules posted:

Critical Hits
When you score a critical hit, you get to roll extra dice for the attack's damage against the target. Roll all of the attack's damage dice twice and add them together. Then add any relevant modifiers as normal. To speed up play, you can roll all the damage dice at once.

For example, if you score a critical hit with a dagger, roll 2d4 for the damage, rather than 1d4, and then add your relevant ability modifier. If the attack involves other damage dice, such as from the rogue's Sneak Attack feature, you roll those dice twice as well.

So if a level 20 assassin hits you while you're surprised, you take 2[W]+ 20d6 + 2[Any Extra Dice] + Dex + [misc static mods]. If you fail the saving throw, all of that damage is doubled again. So cracking 100 damage is easy, because 20d6 is about 70 damage on its own before being doubled.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2014 21:52

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

treeboy posted:

my problem is that surprise rounds happen rarely if ever for the PC's in most campaigns. This may as well not exist as a feature for the Assassin Rogue.

edit: even if with this feature the rogue goes out of his or her way to setup surprise rounds there's all the other required rolls commensurate with such an endeavor. stealth rolls, perception rolls, not to mention the fact he could still roll a 1 on the attack itself and just plain miss.

For an archetype's top tier level 17 ability that's dumb.

I'm partially in agreement with you that surprise rounds are rather rare for most PCs, but it's not as hard to set up surprise rounds as it sounds. Assassins have advantage against any target that hasn't acted, rogues can sneak attack from any distance and you can split your move as you wish before/after your action, so you can hide until you get into longbow range, take a shot, roll twice on the attack to hit, sneak attack and hope for the best then bug out. However, it completely changes the pace of the game and there are feats (Alert), spells (Foresight) and monster abilities (Vigilant, as seen on beholders, ettins and the barbed devil) that flat-out make it so you're never surprised, and I'm pretty sure there are class features that grant it too. Edit: And even if you do go for the gold, proper resistance can still halve your damage and deny the kill.

It's absolutely a gimmick feature that will either be useless, rare or annoyingly game-defining.

LightWarden fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Aug 7, 2014

# ¿ Aug 7, 2014 22:19

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

Plus you can leave the fighter 30 feet back and then haul rear end to rejoin your group as the fighter rolls initiative and regains dice. Fight for a round, then disengage and retreat, then come back in a few minutes and roll initiative again.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2014 22:49

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

Wouldn't Horde Breaker be better on an archer ranger than Giant Killer since Giant Killer only works on bigger things within 5 ft of you and thus means you're probably eating disadvantage on the attack (unless sharpshooter fixes this?)? Horde Breaker means that as long as one dude is within 5 ft of another, you get a free attack, no matter if you're using extra attack, multi-attack, haste or whatever. That seems like it'd come up more often than having a Large+ dude run up within 5 ft of you when you're kiting as a wood elf with a longbow.

Long distance as a wood elf assassin means you have better chance of setting up surprise rounds and then kiting away using your level 2 extra action to fire up Dash/Disengage/Hide every round (which could make you more mobile than a monk in many cases). Advantage on your attacks since you're attacking before other guys, and a crit if the target is surprised because it didn't see you at hundreds of feet out. Then you can back off, end the fight, rehide and re-engage to try to surprise them again maybe. Though that'd be harder to get the DM to agree with.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2014 06:43

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

ritorix posted:

Yeah looks like they changed Giant Killer, used to be an accuracy boost, which synergized nicely with sharpshooter. So either Horde or Slayer it is. The free attack from Horde is going to be better most of the time.

As for play style, the ranger version has better burst from sharpshooting+swift spells, but the assassin would have better surprise round burst and more damage on typical rounds. Survivability is probably a wash; both are in stealth-friendly armor with average AC, ranger has better HP, rogue has dodge and evasion.

A better idea may be ranger 5/rogue 5. Extra Attack, Cunning Action, dodge and assassination.

That does sound like it would be better at covering the rogue's glaring problem with facing more than one opponent in a fight, with both extra attack and horde breaker. Each of those attacks would also benefit from Assassination as well.

Pity that we're back to the 3e way of "pick a gimmick, do it forever" for heavy martials, though even the rogue has better out-of-combat utility than the poor fighter. And I'm still not thrilled with the whole save/proficiency/ability score/feat routine.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2014 07:28

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

ritorix posted:

Cantrips generally are worse than weapon attacks from the other classes.

Level 1: Firebolt does 1d10, a sword+board tank would hit for 1d8+3, a 2hander for 2d6+3, a rogue shoots for 1d8+1d6(sneak attack)+3, a dual-wielder invested in the style has two swings for 1d6+3 per swing.

Level 5: Firebolt now does 2d10 (11 avg), the fighter-types are attacking twice per round so just multiply the above by 2. Dual-wielder would get 1d6+3, 3 times (19.5). 20 average for the 2hander, 15 for sword+board. Rogue shoots for 1d8+3d6(sneak)+3 (18) with a bow or 1d6+3d6+1d6+3 with dual-wielding, 20.5 if both hit.

And that covers the Starter levels. After that, some wizards (and warlocks) will get to add their INT (or CHA) bonus to damage, so another 4 or 5 depending on their stat. Cantrips scale by another die roll at levels 5, 11 and 17. Fighters get another attack at 11 (3 total), other classes scale in different ways.

Where the wizards excel is in being able to throw out a Burning Hands for 3d6 to multiple targets. 10.5 per target (save for half) to a few targets is a lot of damage. And Sleep affects 5d8 HP of targets, 22.5HP average. That is level 5 DPS at level 1, but with the way Sleep works some of that will be wasted.

I've been hearing that Eldritch Blast doesn't scale in dice, but in number of rays, possibly turning it into a multi-attack that can also benefit from things like +Cha to spell damage on each ray plus maybe things like pushing dudes. Then there are supposedly some weird options where you mix battle mage plus a warlock's pact weapon and maybe a pact weapon with reach and start shooting multi-attack rays whenever dudes get too close. I can't confirm this though.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2014 19:38

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

Speaking of spells, someone created an index. Useful.

Apparently, the Bard has Magical Secrets which let you learn two spells of any level you can cast from any spell list each time the feature comes up, so people are trying to figure what weirdness ensues when you can pick up Paladin/Ranger level 5 spells at level 10 instead of level 17 when those classes can learn it.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2014 19:54

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

Stormgale posted:

Reading through the book the wizard seems to be outclassing the druid, specifically the transmutation, enchantment schools (with a notable bonus to necromancy for putting out a ton of damage with skeletons if you want).

As for wizards getting to attack the prefered defense, the necromancy school has a 5th level spell that causes a con save that if they fail, you can inflict disadvantage to a targets wisdom save via a disease meaning you can hit a brainiac monster's weak con to make him vulnerable to whatever you do.

Looks like the diviner has the ability to roll some d20s and then replace them for any other creature's roll. The monk's Quivering Palm is apparently a legit save-or-die.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2014 20:16

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

slydingdoor posted:

Don't think "keep away" opp attacks happen anymore. I've discussed it with people and the only sure way to provoke is to leave someone's reach. I personally think the natural language description of what an opp attack is means you can also take one essentially en passant--triggering when the enemy tries to move from one side of you to the other, in addition to when they try to disengage without taking the action to do so.

I think there's also a Polearm Master feat you're supposed to take that gives you an OA when people get into reach, using your Pact Weapon as some form of reach weapon since you're proficient in your pact weapon regardless of form.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2014 20:35

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

Jack the Lad posted:

Okay big post still to come but just another thing I randomly noticed; mundane vs magical crafting.

You wanna make plate armour? gently caress you, 300 days. Unless you're a Wizard, in which case it's Instantaneous.

People have been complaining about this poo poo for fourteen years, how did they not fix it?

# ¿ Aug 12, 2014 17:36

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

Or you could just let normal people craft plate in a more reasonable timeframe.

On the bright side, all you need is 300 smiths to turn out a plate per day. Henry Ford, here we come.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2014 17:51

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

Jack the Lad posted:

WotC have pulled even the Google cache of the old content on their site now, and have in fact disabled caching entirely:

They just shoved everything into the archive section because they're overhauling the site. Just stick "archive." in front of the "wizards.com" part of whatever previous address you wanted and you'll go right to it.

"Fighter Design Goals" is right here and the rest of the Legends & Lore are right here.

Other things: 4e article archive, 3.5e article archive, 3e art & map archive.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2014 18:07

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

Lurks With Wolves posted:

Of all the Player's Handbook-type books in 4e, Heroes of the Fallen Kingdom is the one that gets why 4e does what it does the least. It lets elves be Dex/Int and Eladrin be Int/Cha without thinking about why Eladrin get +1 Will and Elves don't. (It's because the Eladrin's main stats both boosted Reflex so they needed a bonus in a second defense so their math checked out.) They gave Elves an Intelligence bonus, even though the whole point of the Elf/Eladrin split in the first place was so they didn't have to shove the Smug Wizard Elves and the Woodsy Ranger Elves into the same race.

Changelings also get +1 to Will while having Cha + Dex/Int, so there's some precedent there. I agree that Dex/Int does miss the point of the elves, I'd have preferred it if they went Dex +Wis/Str or Wis/Cha. The defenses problem (both in redundancy and in some classes having poo poo for AC while being confined to light armor) was something they never fixed- I proposed a Dragon article to try and fix that but was told that some of the classes had lax defenses deliberately as a balancing factor (this is why you don't let editors make mechanical statements).

# ¿ Aug 17, 2014 20:40

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

Daetrin posted:

I don't suppose anyone could link/give me a full explanation on this? All I've been able to find is "Druid is bear, companion is bear, exponential bears."

OneThousandMonkeys posted:

This is probably a reference to 4E where you can be a bear with the bear theme who summons bears and rides a bear, IIRC.

3e reference, actually.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 03:29

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

LazyAngel posted:

See Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archives where this, in fact the case; most food is wheat transmuted from stone, and most major buildings are built in wood then petrified.

Both conjuring food out of nowhere and turning other crap into food seem like it would have a few problems.

If you're eating food conjured by magic, what happens after you digest it? If conjured magical food is real enough that it really benefits your body and turns into real poo poo when you're done with it, aren't you slowly accumulating extra mass on the planet? What happens after a few centuries of this? Are you stealing this mass from somewhere else, and will some extraplanar types eventually show up wondering where all their stuff went?

If conjured magical food isn't real and thus you don't actually produce any waste matter, how does it affect your body? Do you even gain any mass at all? If people live entirely on conjured magical food, how will that affect their growth and development? Will their bodies be made almost entirely out of magic? If so, how will that affect how they use magic, and will that change magic's effect on them?

If you're turning stuff into food then matter may be conserved, but the question is what happens to the stuff you turned into food? While we may have a shitload of stones of incredibly varying types lying around, it's not exactly renewable on a human timescale and after a few centuries/millennia you might be dealing with increasing scarcity after much of the world's stone reserves have been consumed- just look at the problems we've had over oil. Do you have to deal with scarcity by deciding what stones should be prioritized for food vs. what need to be used for other purposes? Do you eventually have to start turning other crap into food? Does eating magically altered rocks affect your growth and development? Does it affect how you interact with magic (especially if there are dispel abilities)?

Given that magic might also be loving with the world by introducing new energy into the system, I wonder how the world will look after a few centuries of dudes throwing fireballs around, or just using magic to haul things around.

Magic is weird.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2014 23:00

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

Solid Jake posted:

Man, why the gently caress did I make an Eldritch Knight? Valor Bard is the same thing but better in almost every single way. More skills, better class features, non-gimped-all-the-way-to-9 spellcasting, and it even gets the cast-spell-then-make-an-attack-as-a-bonus-action thing 4 levels earlier (and doesn't waste its class's only gimmick doing so). You only lose, what, the Fighting Style choice and an average of 1 less HP per level?

This loving game, I swear.

You don't gain the fighter's 4 attacks per action, heavy armor proficiency, second wind, action surge or indomitable, and you're probably more MAD, but you do gain the bard's other features such as Expertise and all the spells.

Incidentally, since Expertise doubles your proficiency bonus with two skills and all grab attacks are based off of your Strength (Athletics) skill, a character with three levels of bard or one level of rogue is going to be a better wrestler than a pure fighter or monk with the same stats. A 20th level monk or fighter with 20 Strength will have a check of +11 for both grabbing dudes and hanging on once you did. With one level of rogue or 3 levels of bard that would be +17 instead since you add your proficiency bonus twice.

Similarly, double proficiency bonus on something like Stealth or Perception makes you an incredibly good scout if you've already got the stats to back it up, while double proficiency on social skills makes it far easier to do... whatever the hell it is social checks do in this edition.

In a game of flatter math, the word "double" should appear approximately no time whatsoever when it comes to your scaling bonuses. Admittedly, it seems as though the monster math likes to double proficiency bonuses on occasion just to bolster a critter's power up to where it should be even if the math doesn't normally check out (most dragons have double proficiency bonus on Perception checks, but a tiny bonus to their Wisdom modifier).

The entire ability score/proficiency system is cracked and bad.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2014 03:27

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

4e had some great setting books. Aside from Eberron, Dark Sun, the Forgotten Realms (and Neverwinter), there was more world-neutral stuff like the Manual of the Planes and the two follow-up books (the Plane Below and the Plane Above) plus Underdark, which was probably one of my absolute favorites. Even the Draconomicons and Open Grave were pretty good assuming you were really interested in dragons or undead.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2014 02:17

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

MonsterEnvy posted:

What is your problem with the new save system.

It's poo poo. Specifically, it's poo poo that builds on three of the absolute worst ideas that 3e came up with.

3e collapsed 2e's save system and unified it into a series of Good and Poor saves that scaled based on your class.

Good: 2 + 1/2 level + ability score modifier + misc bonuses
Poor: 1/3 level + ability score modifier + misc bonuses

So a fighter would have a Good Fortitude save, but Poor Reflex and Will saves, while a Rogue would have a Good Reflex save but Poor Fortitude and Will saves, and a Wizard would have a good Will but Poor Fortitude and Reflex saves. These were then modified by your ability scores and miscellaneous bonuses from things such as cloaks of resistance.

Meanwhile, your 1d20 + save bonus is compared to the DC of the thing you're trying not to get screwed over by. The DC formula is common throughout 3e.

DC= 10 + 1/2 level (or HD) + ability score modifier + misc bonuses

In the case of spells it becomes:

DC = 10 + Spell level + ability score modifier + misc bonuses
(Note that most casters receive a new spell level every other level, making it roughly approximate to the 1/2 level from before, though your lower level spells will have lower DCs)

At this point you might think "well, that's not too bad, your Good saves will keep pace with the DCs and allow you to save against something on a roll of 10 or higher, while Poor saves just mean that you have a weakness." Unfortunately, this isn't really the case.

Just for starters, you might have noticed that the saves scale at different rates, which means that the gap will grow with level. There's a 2 point difference between your Good saves and your Poor saves at level 1, which grows to a 6 point difference at level 20, which means that all other things being equal if you're up against the same DC you're 30% more likely to fail if they target your Poor saves at level 20.

The other major problem is that all other things will never be equal. Both point buy and random rolling mean that your character's ability scores are likely to be spread out with a few good ability scores and then some not-so-good ones. Obviously, you will put your good numbers into ability scores that are most relevant to the character you feel like playing. Ability scores can be bolstered as you level and with magic items, but you can't boost all your ability scores at the same time so you need to make some decisions- which usually amounts to "do what you did before better" because investing resources to make the good into the awesome is much more fun than sinking resources into something so you can become staggeringly mediocre. Games where all the player characters have high stats and stat boosters are somewhat frowned upon as giving the players too much for some weird reason.

It's a compounding problem where your class has a Poor save because that's not really part of your character concept and then you don't boost the ability score tied to that save because it also doesn't fit your concept and you'd rather be doing what your character does best. So while you might have a gap of 2 to 4 points between your best and worst saves at 1st level, it's incredibly common to find characters a gap of 10 or more points between their best and worst saves at high levels (the Tarrasque has an 18 point gap between its best and worst saves because it's a big beefy monster with a Good Fortitude and high Constitution that also combines a Poor Will save with next to Wisdom). This means that a DC designed to challenge those who are good at that area and require a 10 or higher is one that will effortlessly stomp someone who is lacking in that area (Pathfinder has this problem). As you level, you will fail saves. Even 4e had this problem despite not having two different scaling rates for your saves/defenses and allowing you to choose between two different ability scores for them- you simply didn't have enough points to boost all three as you leveled and thus you'd have a gap widen in your defenses.

You might shrug your shoulders and say "of course you're going to fail some saves, why would you want a game where nothing can hurt you?" but that's one of those things that severely under estimates just how much this game ramps up as you level. Failing a save at lower levels can leave you with some damage or a penalty to your attacks or something, basically leaving you inconvenienced but still capable of taking steps to fix poo poo. Failing a save at higher levels takes your character out of the game by leaving you paralyzed, petrified, mind-controlled, banished to another plane, dead or worse (such as having your soul destroyed to prevent resurrection). One slip-up and you are done... but it's basically a slip-up that's going to happen somewhere as you level just because there are too many vectors of attack and your resources are too limited to cover all of them at the same time.

5e looks at this problem and says "you know what? I can make this even worse." Instead of three different saves you have to dedicate resources to covering you now have six. But all saves are not created equal. Constitution, Dexterity and Wisdom saves have are used as the default shorthand for Fortidue, Reflex and Will saves from 3e and thus make up the vast bulk of the saves you will have to make. But Strength, Intelligence and Charisma saves still exist, even if you only encounter them a handful of times.

The math for Next is pretty simple.

Save: 1d20 + ability score mod + proficiency bonus (if proficient) + misc bonuses (which are rare)
DC= 8 + proficiency bonus + ability score mod + misc bonuses (also rare)

Major warning bell: Proficiency bonuses are always added to the DC, but only occasionally added to your save bonus. The tide will always go up, but there's no guarantee that your saves will. All classes start out proficient in only two saves- one of the big three (Con/Dex/Wis) and one of the secondary three (Str/Int/Cha). One of those six saves is usually linked to your primary ability score which you use for murdering dudes and thus is probably a good save for you, but that's not a whole lot of help if you're a Dexterity-based fighter with Strength and Constitution proficiency for save bonuses. Your ability scores cap at 20 for a +5 bonus and your proficiency bonus caps at +6, which means that at your best at level 20 you're looking at a +11 before miscellaneous bonuses are added on, but at worst you're looking at +0 or worse if you've got a negative modifier because you probably have one or four of your six saves that haven't changed at all since level 1.

You start as nonproficient in four saves and that doesn't easily change with level. Aside from a few class features that grant proficiency such as the monk's Diamond Soul at level 14 or the rogue's Slippery Mind at level 15 (requiring you to go through most of the game without them), the only way to gain proficiency is through the Resilient feat. Unfortunately, feat slots are kind of limited since they're dependent on class and you choose them instead of boosting your ability scores by either +2 to one ability or +1 to two ability scores. Resilient does offer +1 to the respective ability score, but even if you take it four times you won't have too many other feat/ability slots level for anything else, making it a rather expensive method of protecting yourself. Of course even if you're proficient in all saves that just means you're treading water with the scaling proficiency bonuses of your enemies, and still doesn't mean that you have the ability scores necessary to tilt things in your favor thanks to the fact that both rolling and point buy tend to leave you with a spread of scores and you only have a limited number of ability score improvement slots that vary based on class and can be lost through multiclassing if you spread yourself too thin (no class gets an Ability Score Improvement before level 4, and it can vary from 5 improvements to 7 if you're a fighter). Of course, spending your ability score improvements on improving your ability scores or the Resilient feat to improve your saves so you don't get your poo poo pushed in as you level means you're not spending them on feats that allow you to actually modify your character in interesting ways.

3e at least had the fall-back of slathering your character with spells and magic items to cover up your weaknesses on the save front, but with 5e they wanted to reign that in. Most buff spells now require concentration to prevent them from being stacked (though a party with multiple casters each using a different buff can work somewhat), and there's been a big change to the magic item system. At the tail end of the Basic DM Rules comes the rules for magic items, and they've introduced the idea of Attunement wherein certain items require you to spend an hour bonding with them before you can use them, and you can only be attuned to up to 3 items at a time. Notably among those are the items which you can use to either patch up your weak ability scores (such as gauntlets of ogre strength) or boost your saving throws (such as rings of protection), so even if you can actually find those items you're going to be making some hard decisions.

They wanted flatter math, which meant that they made it harder to increase numbers by all that much (but then they gave the paladin the ability to add your charisma modifier to any saving throw made by you or an ally within 10 ft while you were conscious, which makes your poor saves acceptable and your good saves incredible :iiam:

). Flatter math means that low-level monsters can challenge high level heroes, which is especially true in the case of monsters like the Intellect Devourer. Its Devour Intellect ability is dangerous to a 2nd level fighter with a middling Intelligence and no proficiency in Intelligence saves, and it's just as dangerous to the 20th level fighter who spent those Ability Score Improvements on esoteric concepts such as "fighting". True, the fighter may be able to kill it with one sword swing at level 20, but at level 20 the DM can also justify throwing a dozen or more of those things at the party. That's a lot of rolls you have to make to not get your brain eaten. Any damage it does is paltry when compared to the ability to take a character out of the fight until someone with Greater Restoration and 100 gp worth of diamond dust wants to spend a turn bringing them back in.

As you level the game will come up with more and more angles to attack from, and you will not have enough resources to defend against all of them. You don't just have to deal with high level threats, but any low-level threat you couldn't really handle as well. Save-or-lose effects are still in out in full force, only they've been paired with the fact that you have even more ground to cover. Attacks are stronger than defense because attacks always use proficiency bonuses and saves only sometimes use it, so it's all about finding the right angle to strike from.

On the flip side, many of the monsters have no save proficiencies at all, relying solely on their ability scores (which can run across a wide array and into the negative modifiers) for saves. Unfortunately, the ability to pick and choose which weak save to target is solely the domain of casters, who can prepare a wide array of spells to cast from without having to worry about preparing the exact number of spells thanks to the new preparation system- noncasters have one gimmick and hope that they don't run into anyone who has a strong showing in that area. Plus, it's a lot easier for a caster to target nonstandard saves such as Intelligence than a noncaster- while a fighter may be able to force a target to make nonstandard Strength saves to trip targets, Strength is often a high ability score on things that want to fight fighters and being tripped isn't a terrible thing if you're already in melee. Meanwhile, a caster can force a target to make an Intelligence save through Feeblemind, which will completely shut down a target's ability to think, use items and cast spells (meaning it's good against a cleric who has neither proficiency nor a strong need for Intelligence). There are plenty of options already and as long as the treadmill keeps running there will be plenty more, meaning it's only a matter of time before you find the spell you need to completely ruin your foe's day by targeting the right crappy save. And thanks to the new system, every spell DC is your best spell DC, so there's always reason to fire off lower level slots if they can shut down an opponent hard enough.

It's a terrible system they lifted from 3e, and they honestly should have learned better.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2014 00:27

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:

I kind of wonder how much of the glut of "Resistances: normal poor people poo poo" monsters is to do with making it look like the math's more squished than it is.

Like, a level 1 monster with 22 hp, and a special condition to take less/extra damage? Doesn't seem too bad in your special feely places where all D&D judgments in 2014 reside. A level 1 monster with 44 hp? Now, hold the phone, that's one tough snake.

Well, if it's designed to be a tough wall for level 1 characters to overcome...

PHB posted:

Shillelagh
Transmutation cantrip
Casting Time: 1 bonus action
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (mistletoe, a shamrock leaf, and a club or quarterstaff)
Duration: 1 minute
The wood of a club or quarterstaff you are holding is imbued with nature�s power. For the duration, you can use your spellcasting ability instead of Strength for the attack and damage rolls of melee attacks using that weapon, and the weapon's damage die becomes a d8. The weapon also becomes magical, if it isn�t already. The spell ends if you cast it again or if you let go of the weapon.

They didn't exactly do a terrific job of it.

Past that, the only other ways for classes to get magical weapons without the DM dropping them is the Warlock's Pact of the Blade and the Devotion Paladin's Sacred Weapon (which is only for 1 minute before a rest is required), the Monk's Ki-Empowered Strikes at level 6, or if the Lore Bard picks up Shillelagh at level 6 (or any Bard at level 10). So if Magic Weapons are truly optional then things are going to be annoying for a long time.

Or just spam elemental damage cantrips.

Also, fun fact: Antimagic field suppresses spells and magic weapons, but not resistance/immunity to nonmagic weapons like it did in 3e. Not sure how often that would come up, but there it is.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2014 17:31

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

Skeletons are vulnerable to bludgeoning damage because skeletons support fighters both inside and out.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2014 00:16

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

A Catastrophe posted:

I encourage you all to do super duper clever 'gotya' moments towards the people playing full progression spellcasters in your 5e games. That sounds like a fantastic idea.

Arivia posted:

I misread this as a super-clever "Gotye" moment and got really confused.

Manifest Dynasty posted:

"Now you're just somebody who used to know spells..."

PHB posted:

Feeblemind
8th-level enchantment
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 150 feet
Components: V, S, M (a handful of clay, crystal, glass, or mineral spheres)
Duration: Instantaneous
You blast the mind of a creature that you can see within range, attempting to shatter its intellect and personality. The target takes 4d6 psychic damage and must make an Intelligence saving throw. On a failed save, the creature�s Intelligence and Charisma scores become 1. The creature can�t cast spells, activate magic items, understand language, or communicate in any intelligible way. The creature can, however, identify its friends, follow them, and even protect them.

At the end of every 30 days, the creature can repeat its saving throw against this spell. If it succeeds on its saving throw, the spell ends. The spell can also be ended by greater restoration, heal, or wish.

With this spell you can shut down clerics, druids, bards, paladins, rangers, sorcerers and warlocks. Wizards are probably fine against it though though.

Edit: Probably should have refreshed the tab.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2014 19:48

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

Arivia posted:

Also googled.

I'm familiar with the song, I just find it funny that there's a spell that totally shuts down casters, but to a varying degree since it's an Intelligence save.

By the time a caster can drop 8th level spells you're looking at a proficiency bonus of +5, so the minimum DC of 8 + proficiency + ability score modifier is 13 + ability score modifier, which is likely going to be an 18 or 20 for a +4 or +5 modifier for a DC of 17 or 18. In comparison, if you're not proficient in Intelligence saves unlike a wizard, you're not going to be adding anything but your Int mod, and even that isn't likely to be all that high if you're not the resident smart dude since there's no bonus for a high Int other than Int skills, saves, and spells. So you could be rolling 1d20 + 1 or even +0 if you don't have any blanket save boosters, and thus have a high chance of being completely shut out. But a wizard is likely to have both a high Intelligence and Intelligence save proficiency, so an equal level wizard can be throwing around a +10 or so before save boosts- which still means you can have a 30% chance of losing your poo poo and your life shortly afterwards.

Of course it can only be cured by months or a spell, but if your cleric, druid or bard got tagged with Feeblemind then you're pretty much out of luck barring a wish.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2014 20:20

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

ProfessorCirno posted:

The thing with homebrew in 4e is that it IS more difficult outside of monsters (and sorta with monsters) for three reasons.

1) 4e wasn't a lazy game. Every class had a plethora of powers built around pushing a specific theme. In 3e 90% of the time classes were either a BAB, some saves, and two or three abilities, or just 'USES SPELLS ROM THIS SPELLCASTER.' Homebrewing a class in 4e meant you actually had to put thought and effort into it. This slid away a bit when Mearls unleashed the disastrous Essentials, but even those classes had utility powers.

2) The game as transparent. You could very EASILY see what you were doing, which meant there was pressure to do it right. In 3e it was super easy to gently caress up and never notice or care, because the system could be so goddamn impenetrable.

3) See how it was easy to gently caress up in 3e? Here's the thing: the developers hosed up nonstop. There was no balance at any point - which meant you didn't have to care about balance when just homebrewing poo poo as you went. But with 4e, not only was it easy to see if you hosed up, but it would immediately become pronounced in any comparison to the rest of the game.

In short, homebrew in 4e is more difficult because 4e expects you to give a poo poo.

Remember when Frank Trollman tried to prove 4e was a babby game for babbies and made his own class to show how easy it was, and it was such a piece of poo poo that he ended up backtracking and stated that it was actually proof that 4e was just too needlessly complicated and impossible to understand before finally just pretending it never happened?

Yeah, I actually found 4e to be a much more interesting game to homebrew for than 3e. It's hard to get your head around at first, but once you understand the structure and space of the game it's a breeze to design for- you just think of you want you want something to do, translate that into mechanics and then adjust for level/tier. Going back to 3e or Pathfinder was just horrible because everything is so loose and floaty. And 5e seems like even more of a pain.

Class was definitely the hardest thing to make in 4e, but for the most part whatever you were making didn't need to be its own class. Most things could be rolled under other classes- my personal rule of thumb is that it should only be its own class if you can honestly see it supporting a bunch of seriously different character builds/archetypes, and there's not a whole lot of those concepts left.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2014 02:33

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

ascendance posted:

You mean the ones that have awesome sounding fluff, but basically give you some powers that make you more effEctive in a combat encounter? Compare that to Runequest, where at high levels, you can fundamentally rewrite the myths of your culture in order to create lasting friendship between two peoples.

ProfessorCirno posted:

Epic Destinies only give combat stuff!

*takes Thief of Legend, has almost no combat based powers but instead can literally steal your lovely opinions*

I see our friend has yet to be acquainted with The Best Destiny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozYg8vDTmkc

LightWarden fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Sep 20, 2014

# ¿ Sep 20, 2014 04:43

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

AlphaDog posted:

My 76 year old dad instantly grasped the concept of MMO tanking just from hearing "that guy's the tank". Turns out that when he played hex-and-counter wargames in the '60s and '70s, pretty much any hard-to-kill dangerous unit often got referred to as "a tank", and the act of using something like that to defend other units (or to threaten units who attacked your other units) was sometimes called, get this, tanking.

See also "turtle", "<unit> rush>" and "scrub".

Tendales posted:

I'm actually kind of curious now what the earliest documented use of 'tanking' we can find is.

I've got 1981, but I think there are probably earlier ones.

(From the Manual of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. A D&D-based game that serves as a forebearer for both modern western RPGs and JRPGs alike :japan:

)

# ¿ Sep 21, 2014 05:38

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

Generic Octopus posted:

I guess the idea is that while the to-hit stuff is bounded, the orcs' damage won't scale up, so higher level PCs might get hit just as often but for less of their HP, %-wise.

What I'm saying is, I'm sure it all got put through the Math Wringer so it should all work out.

At the point where they start slinging around shittons of orcs it pretty much becomes a check to see if you have AoE or not. Unfortunately, outside of daily-use AoE spells, the only at-will forms of clearing out hordes are multiattacks (including bonus action attacks), Ranger level 3/11 and maybe some cantrips such as Acid Splash and Eldritch Blast. Unfortunately, HP 15 means that it's incredibly hard for you to get "one shot, one kill" since damage doesn't scale up that fast- even with a 20 in your attack stat and a +3 weapon you're looking at 1[W]+8 damage, meaning you need a weapon that can consistently get a 7 or higher (so a +3 2d6 weapon, probably) or you'll need to make two attacks per target. And anything you don't kill in one shot needs its HP tracked. If you can get enough damage to one or two-shot your opponent, with enough of them it becomes an exciting game of "I kill an orc".

But even if you're willing to expend daily resources to wipe dudes off the map, just a simple fireball won't cut it. Throw enough weak enemies at the party and it becomes a question of spell area rather than damage- killing them by expending as few spell slots as possible. Unless the orcs are packed shoulder-to-shoulder you're probably going to need something like meteor swarm or fire storm to hit most/all of them; a 20 ft diameter spell just won't be enough.

I miss minions.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2014 16:32

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

Jack the Lad posted:

In addition to what I said in my first post to you I want to emphasise what people have already said. There are a bunch of ways to get telepathy in 4e! You can be a Kalashtar or Shardmind. You can be a Changeling, Deva or Tiefling and take a racial feat. You can take the background from Psionic Power. You can be a Psion. You can take the Elan Heritage feat as any race or class.

What were the racial feats and backgrounds? I know about Elan Heritage because it's one of my favorite feats, but I haven't heard about the others.

NorgLyle posted:

Storm of Vengeance is a spell that can be cast by Clerics and Druids and other divine casters by getting to level whatever and spending a night preparing it. It can be cast by a Ranger by getting the DM to create a special sidequest to go find a magic item that lets you do temporarily what the other classes can do whenever they want.

Eh, if you want to kill a poo poo-ton of weak dudes in a big area without resorting to the weirdness that is a heavily metamagicked Locate City, Frostburn introduced the Blizzard spell as a level 5 druid spell. Salient points were a 100 ft radius/level spread, 1 round/level duration, deals 1d6 nonlethal cold damage per round to unprotected creatures in the area and drop a foot of snow per round. Spike your caster level using Circle Magic and then use a metamagic rod of Extend Spell, and you then bury everything within a mile under 50 ft of snow. Since the snow doesn't vanish after the spell runs its course the army has to dig its way out while freezing and suffocating, assuming they didn't freeze to death via the nonlethal damage transitioning into lethal damage while the blizzard was actually in motion.

Arivia posted:

People can have good ideas and bad opinions. Jonathan Tweet is a evolutionary psychology dork. I was reading a lot of good gaming advice from the Alexandrian recently, one of Zak S's biggest supporters. Etc etc etc.

The Alexandrian is also the dude who wrote "Calibrating Your Expectations" and "Dissociated Mechanics", two terrible articles that have unfortunately become nerd gospel and are frequently invoked to prop up really bad ideas about game realism. He seems cool enough on some other points, but man those two articles of his have done some damage.

LightWarden fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Sep 23, 2014

# ¿ Sep 23, 2014 22:22

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

NorgLyle posted:

Um.. yes? I guess? Nobody is saying it's the most efficient way to kill a lot of dudes. It was just the specific spell that he was talking about in his "Global Warming? Then how come I'm shoveling snow?" post. I don't think anybody cares about the specifics of the stupid 3e trick that was used.

Sorry, I just found it funny that there are ways to stomp up and down on armies even from midlevels without needing any sort of grand quest or anything like that.

Arivia posted:

Well there are some things you can't do in 4e, or that the game would crumble in your hands and die if you tried to do it. Like I'm doing my hexcrawl-megadungeon game in Pathfinder, since 4e is kinda poo poo at that kind of play, but that's not bad, just different.

And most of what I can think of is just on the DM's side of things - you're right that it's pretty much jock-trampling from a player perspective.

Aren't Pathfinder's hex exploration mechanics largely system-agnostic?

# ¿ Sep 23, 2014 23:04

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

ritorix posted:

Running away doesn't work because 5e combat is rocket tag. Tag, you're already unconscious. You can get back up again just as quick but if the party decides to run they will leave people to die.

What these games need is a "con" system like mmos have. A mechanic to tell ahead of time "this thing will kick our rear end." In video games they literally get a skull icon or names in red text. Having that would require valid CR levels.

3.5e Complete Adventurer posted:

Assess Opponent: As a standard action, you can use Sense Motive to ascertain how tough a challenge an opponent poses for you, based on your level and your opponent's CR. This skill check is opposed by the opponent's Bluff check. To attempt this task, your opponent must be visible to you and within 30 feet. If you have seen the opponent in combat, you gain a +2 circumstance bonus on the check.

The accuracy of the assessment depends on the amount by which your Sense Motive check result exceeds the opposed Bluff check result. On a successful Sense Motive opposed check, you can gain the following information:
pre:
Opponent's CR				Assess Opponent Result
4 or more less than your level/HD	A pushover
1, 2, or 3 less than your level/HD	Easy
Equal to your level/HD			A fair fight
Equal to your level/HD plus 1, 2, or 3	A tough challenge
Exceeds your level/HD by 4 or more	A dire threat
A successful assessment reveals that your foe belongs in one of two adjacent categories (for example, "Easy" or "A fair fight"). If your Sense Motive check result exceeds the opposed Bluff check result by 10 or more, you can narrow the result down to a single category.

By contrast, if the target's Bluff check result equals or slightly exceeds your Sense Motive check result, you gain no useful information. If the target's Bluff check result exceeds your Sense Motive check result by 5 or more, you may (at the DM's option) gain a false impression, believing your opponent to be much stronger or weaker than he really is (equal chance of either). If the target's Bluff check result exceeds your Sense Motive check result by 10 or more, your assessment is off by at least two categories (for example, a dire threat might be assessed as a fair fight).

Special: The Combat Intuition feat grants a +4 bonus on Sense Motive checks made to assess opponents. It also enables you to narrow your assessment of your opponent's combat capabilities to a single category. Finally, it allows you to accomplish this task as a free action.

An opponent that is particularly vulnerable to your typical attack routine (for example, a vampire facing a high-level cleric of Pelor) registers as one category less challenging; one who is resistant to your typical attack routine (for example, a golem opposing a rogue who relies heavily on sneak attacks) registers as one category more challenging.

Try Again: You can use this skill on a different opponent each round.

3.5e Complete Adventurer posted:

Combat Intuition
Your keen understanding of your opponent's moves and your instinctive feel for the flow of combat enable you to shrewdly assess your opponent's combat capabilities.
Prerequisite: Sense Motive 4 ranks, base attack bonus +5.
Benefit: As a free action, you can use Sense Motive to assess the challenge presented by a single opponent in relationship to your own level/Hit Dice (see the assess opponent option under the Sense Motive skill). You gain a +4 bonus on such checks and narrow the result to a single category.
In addition, whenever you make a melee attack against a creature that you made a melee attack against during the previous round, you gain a +1 insight bonus on your melee attack rolls against that creature.
Special: A fighter may select Combat Intuition as one of his fighter bonus feats.

3.5e Player's Handbook II posted:

Vatic Gaze
Your arcane studies have brought forth your nascent talent to sense magical auras and the power that others are capable of wielding.
Prerequisite: Arcane caster level 9th.
Benefit: You can use detect magic at will.
Also, as a swift action, you can attempt to determine an opponent's spellcasting ability. You make a Sense Motive check (DC 5 + target's caster level). If this check succeeds, you learn the highest-level spells the target is capable of casting. This benefit grants you no insight into spell-like or supernatural abilities.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2014 22:53

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

ritorix posted:

So were any of those actually a good system in the context of 3.5?

For one feat and a bunch of skill points on a skill that's cross-class for all but four of the core eleven classes, plus another feat that requires an arcane caster level and thus narrows it down to one of the core classes (the bard) you gain the ability to only sometimes determine if you're not in a fair fight according to a system that is frequently incapable of adequately gauging that fight (see: giant enemy crab, other parts of CR 3). The first use requires a standard action or a feat to make it actually useable compared to "shoot it and find out), while the second requires a swift action which may or may not be more useful when spent towards actually ending the fight. If you do manage to use it reliably, it all comes down to what your results are- a majority of on-level or lower fights mean that you wasted the feat, while a majority of difficult fights means that you're doomed anyways. Should the fights be the usual mix of easy, medium and hard fights, you've got a feat that only tells you to run one in every ten fights or so (assuming the high CR opponent doesn't have a ton of ranks in bluff to go with its high HD and thus have better odds of fooling you). You've just spent feats on the ability to say "yup, that's a fight" by having your character tummyfeel the situation instead of the player; feats that could be better used on stuff that actually helps you fight those fights.

It's 3e as gently caress.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2014 00:36

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

30.5 Days posted:

An even-level CR should not have a 50% chance of ending the adventure, that's idiotic.

It gets even better- if you have a party of level 20s you can throw dozens of these little fuckers at the party and they'll still have similar odds of ending the adventure. Rogues, Wizards and Druids have a higher save bonus thanks to proficiency scaling and the Monk and Paladin have their own methods, but the 10 Int fighter with no proficiency probably still has 10 Int and no proficiency because the only way for those numbers to go up is for you to spend feat/ability score/attunement slots on things that boost your Intelligence rather than spending those same resources on things that are actually fun.

Then you've got the problem where you can't actually kill them in one attack apiece because damage doesn't scale up that well. A 20 in your Attack stat and a +3 weapon mean that you're doing 1[W]+8 damage per hit compared to maybe 1[W]+3 damage per hit at level 1 with a 16 in your attack stat. Now, the "-5 to hit, +10 to damage" feats can actually push this up into one-shot levels if you have a magical weapon, but if you don't then a fighter or even a ranger with horde breaker and volley/whirlwind attack will have trouble killing more than one per two attacks, which leaves several rounds of this poo poo.

Of course, spending a magic item attunement slot on a generic save booster helps somewhat, but the sheer number of saves you're going to have to make means that every round is a gamble. It's worse at mid-levels if you don't have a ton of magical weapons, because then not only do you have to deal with multiples of these guys to spread out your attacks (not as many monsters, but you don't get multiple attacks until level 6 or so), but your weapon users have to deal with the 1/2 damage effectively doubling their HP. You basically need something that does 21 average damage or greater in an AoE to sweep the trash off the board in only one round, which is pretty much magical AoE.

Since these things can basically bypass the scaling defenses of many classes they're a threat at every level, and their threat only grows as higher level fights support more of them. It's ridiculous.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2014 06:15

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

Generic Octopus posted:

I'd lean toward Devotion just because of the "+Cha to hit" thing it has, but I also haven't looked much at what each Oath gets as spells so I'd look at those and see what you prefer. Honestly not wowed much by most of the Oath-specific features.

Yeah, the +Cha to hit is gravy since it stacks with the fact that the paladin is one of the only classes in the game who can trample the flattened math by double-stacking stats with Aura of Protection (adds your Charisma modifier to all saves of you and any allies within 10 ft, or 30 ft at level 18). Aura of Protection means that at bare minimum every single save you or an ally within range makes is as good as your Charisma modifier, while any actual investment in save proficiency + good ability score means that you can push your save numbers into "can succeed on a 2 or 3", especially if you can boost your Charisma modifier up to +5 early on before enemy proficiency bonuses have a chance to catch up. They took Divine Grace (already an excellent paladin feature in 3e/PF) and allowed you to share it with allies as an uncapped additional bonus in a game where those are exceptionally rare.

# ¿ Oct 8, 2014 20:33

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

ascendance posted:

It kind of does, actually. Given how few HPs people have at low level, they need that 40% chance to save. At high levels, characters have a lot more powers and abilities to mitigate the effects of a nasty spell.

Also, rings and cloaks of protection. I'm pretty certain the "you can play this with no magic items" thing is a lie, or that they will talk about granting people special bonuses to fix the math if you choose to have no magic items.

"Spells." By "powers and abilities to mitigate the effects of a nasty spell," you mean "spells." Fighters and rogues have almost nothing at high levels- a rogue gains proficiency in Wisdom saves and that is it (pity it requires you to spend 15 levels dealing without proficiency in one of the most common save categories). Some barbarians can become immune to charm/fear while raging, and paladins have some decent defensive options including immunity auras, but the thing is that immunity isn't quite as strong as some might think.

For example, let's take Mind Blank.

PHB posted:

Mind Blank
8th-level abjuration
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Touch
Components: V, S
Duration: 24 hours
Until the spell ends, one willing creature you touch is immune to psychic damage, any effect that would sense its emotions or read its thoughts, divination spells, and the charmed condition. The spell even foils wish spells and spells or effects of similar power used to affect the target�s mind or to gain information about the target.

Immunity to psychic damage, emotion/though reading, divination and charmed condition- sounds potent enough, right?

Let's go take a look at the Intellect Devourer again.

MM posted:

Devour Intellect. The intellect devourer targets one creature it can see within 10 feet of it that has a brain. The creature must succeed on a DC 12 Intelligence saving throw against this magic or take 11 (2d10) psychic damage. Also on a failure, roll 3d6: If the total equals or exceeds the target's Intelligence score, that score is reduced to 0. The target is stunned until it regains at least one point of Intelligence.

If you're under the effect of mind blank and fail a save against Devour Intellect, you will take 0 psychic damage but the devourer can still roll 3d6 and attempt to shut down your brain because unlike previous editions there doesn't seem to be a rule that taking no damage also prevents any secondary riders from activating. It's the most potent mental defense spell in the game and it isn't enough to protect to your brain. And this is a spell you will only have one or two castings of because it takes an 8th or 9th level spell slot from a wizard or bard (not sorcerers, clerics, or druids) and you only get one of each of those slots per day.

You might think "well, this is the opportunity to use other buff spells" but that's why they introduced Concentration to stop you from loading up on them- the only way to get multiple party buffs is to have multiple casters in the party, casters who you must then protect so they don't drop their spells.

You might want to load up on magic items, but the designers have made conscious moves to go away from making magic items common and allowing you to bundle up with them- magic items that boost AC, saves, and ability scores all require "attunement" to function, and you can only be attuned to a maximum of 3 items at once. So if you can somehow find a headband of intellect and cloak of protection +3, you've burned through two of your three attunement slots to protect yourself from one uncommon enemy.

Dahbadu posted:

There's a Resilience feat that seems key for tackling higher level content. I know I'm planning on taking it for at least Con.

PHB posted:

You can take each feat only once, unless the feat's description says otherwise.

Guess what literally none of feat descriptions in the PHB say?

You can only take Resilience once, putting you at 3/6 proficiencies (4/6 if you have a class that gives you a bonus proficiency, or 6/6 if you're a level 14 monk). Hope you like making tough choices.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2014 23:03

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

Gort posted:

That's not so bad - someone made a list of all the saves that were used and the vast majority of them were Dex, Con and Wis. Just means occasionally you're going to come across one of the three saves that hardly come up and get screwed over, and it means the monsters that use those rare saves are going to be that much more unexpectedly deadly.

Problem is that of the classes in the PHB, only the rogue even gets close to having the ability to get all three primary saves by taking Resilient (start with Dex, get Resilient for Con, then Slippery Mind at level 15 for Wis). They deliberately made it so each class had one primary save and one secondary save proficiency, and you can't pick up proficiency in other saves through multiclassing (unless you're taking 14 or 15 levels in Monk or Rogue for those features). Only the Monk's proficiency in all saves at level 14 is different. If you're anyone else, you will have two holes in your defense from the very start, and you will still have problems one of those three primary saves even after you take Resilient once.

polisurgist posted:

Literally none of the feat descriptions aside from Resilience, of course.

My bad, it turns out that there is actually one feat with the wording that says that you can take it more than once- Elemental Adept. Resilient is not one of those feats though. This may be unintentional, or it may very well be by design.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2014 23:42

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

Really Pants posted:

Does the brain-eating even require a grapple? I thought it was a spell-like effect, so it gets to ignore plebeian concerns like common sense.

No, the Intellect Devourer's version is just an Intelligence contest against an incapacitated target. While normally that requires the Intellect devourer to set up by draining your Int first, anything that stuns, paralyzes, petrifies or knocks you out can set you up for some brain chomping, such as the Mind Flayer's own Mind Blast (cone of DC 15 Int save or psychic damage + stun) or Tentacles (on a hit, you're grappled and need to make a DC 15 Int save or be stunned for the duration of the grapple). If the mind flayer is grappling an incapacitated creature then it can do 10d10 piercing damage and eat your brain.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2014 00:01

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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 03:27

LightWarden: Mar 18, 2007; Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!

Infinite Karma posted:

So if I don't include a Wizard in the group, you bitch that this is only possible because we don't have a supreme overlord in the party, hogging the spotlight, and if I do, he's trivializing the encounter?

I didn't do the encounter budget math, maybe 14 is the right loving number, I don't know. Each martial can probably kill about 2 orcs every round, and every third orc hits for 9 damage. That's about 50 damage the first round, divided among the martials, 35 the second round, 20 the third, and less than 10 the fourth. It's enough to have seriously worn down each party member, probably not knock any of them out. Whatever the results are, there is some reasonable number of orcs that is an appropriate challenge for high level characters.

How are you killing two orcs per round? At level 5 or 6 most of the combat-oriented classes learn their Extra Attack feature, allowing them to make two attacks with one attack action. Only the fighter will ever gain the ability to make more attacks, though a combat-capable assassin does not and is stuck making one attack for increasingly higher amounts of damage. At any rate, if you're not a fighter with 3+ attacks then if you want to kill two orcs per round while only being able to make two attacks per turn you're going to need to kill each orc in one hit.

In the orc corner, we have... AC 13, 15 HP, CR 1/2.

In the martial corner, we have a weapon attack. Weapon attack rolls are your attack attribute (thus far either Str or Dex) plus your proficiency bonus plus other bonuses from enchanted weapons and the like. Weapon damage rolls are your weapon damage die plus your attack attribute plus other bonuses from enchanted weapons and the like.

So let's say we're level 6. We put a 15 in our attack stat from the start, got a race that put +2 on top of that and then used our level 4 attribute boost to give it another +2, putting us at 19 for a +4 bonus. We even have a +1 weapon, lucky us!

We're now rolling +3 proficiency + 4 attribute + 1 magic sword = +8 to hit, and 1[W] + 4 attribute + 1 magic sword = 1[W] + 5 damage. To kill two orcs per round with our two attacks per round we need to roll 5 or higher on the attack roll and 10 or higher on the damage roll. Weapon damage dice range from 1d4 for daggers up to 1d12 for greataxes or 2d6 for mauls and greatswords. On a hit, we have only a 25% chance of a successful one-hit kill with a greataxe and a 16.67% chance for a one-hit kill using a greatsword or maul, though odds do go up if we roll a critical hit.

If that's not good enough then let's kick it up a few notches! We now have an attack stat of 20 (the maximum for PCs) and a +3 weapon (quite possibly the best enhancement bonus in the game)! 1[W] + 5 attribute + 3 magic weapon = 1[W] + 8, meaning we need to roll a 7 or higher on the damage- 50% shot with a d12 weapon and 58.33% with a 2d6 weapon. If we have the great weapon combat style then odds go up even farther. Unfortunately, if you're using a one-handed weapon then you're going to have more problems- only a 25% chance to roll a 7 or higher on a d8, though the Dueling style can make up the damage somewhat.

Now, if you need more damage on your attacks, there's ways to do it- paladins get an extra 1d8 radiant per attack at level 11, while barbarians can range for +2 to +4 extra damage per attack, and there are feats such as Great Weapon Master or Sharpshooter that allow you to take a -5 to attack in exchange for +10 to damage (though that means you have much lower odds of landing the attack to begin with). I suspect there will also be magic weapons that add a few d6s onto your damage rolls, and there may be spells you can use to boost your damage rolls- though spells are a depleting resource and if you're willing to spend a spell to bump up your damage for a fight, why not use a similar slot to blast them with an AoE?

If you can't kill an orc in one hit, you're going to have to aim to kill it in two, which means you need to find a way to make four attacks per round if you want to drop two opponents per round. Only a level 20 fighter has this natively, so you'd need to find a way to get two more attacks per turn (one more attack if you're a level 11 fighter). There are ways to get extra attacks such as Two-Weapon Fighting, cleaving with Great Weapon Master, or Crossbow Expert, but all of those extra attacks are made as bonus actions, which means they don't stack and you're only getting one attack out of them. Monks can get two attacks on a bonus action by spending ki, but that requires you to deplete your resources.

Now what if we replace these orcs with gnolls? AC 15, 22 HP, CR 1/2.

You can substitute them for orcs one-for-one in your encounter budget, except the encounter now has 50% more HP. If you want to kill two gnolls per round, you now need 50% more damage per attack, making killing two opponents in one round even harder to pull off than it already was between the difficulty of finding extra damage or extra attacks. If you can only kill one opponent per turn you now have to fight for twice as many rounds and expose yourself to many more attacks which still have a non-miniscule chance of hitting thanks to flattened math.

Again, how are you reliably killing two CR 1/2 opponents per round (some of the weakest opponents in the game, only surpassed by CR 1/4 and CR 0). And what will you do if they're replaced by CR 1 opponents at higher levels? (Though, if you have two rangers each with Horde Breaker and Volley acting on the same initiative and targeting the same group of gnolls you could probably get a higher average than two dead gnolls per ranger per round assuming they clustered together and remained clustered together the entire fight... but then you're still proving the importance of AoE damage, you've just hired it out to the lowest bidder).

There are CR 1/4 opponents like goblins and kobolds whose 5 to 7 HP means that they can be one-shot reliably by high-level heroes, but that same HP count means they can be one-shot semi-reliably by level 1 characters and cantrips because the only have 1 hit die which falls into the range of a level 1 character's 1[W] + attribute bonuses. Unless they're doing something absolutely amazing with the magic item rules (and again, in theory magic items are optional), weapon damage just doesn't scale up fast enough against enemy HP to take more than one higher CR opponent out of the fight per round.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2014 01:21

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