D&D NEXT: Infinite Posts of the Abyss

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Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

greatn posted:

Dragons have helium sacs and birdlike bones, the world is much more oxygen rich allowing the survival of large insects and dinosaurs, giant humanoids have springy bones, invisible creatures are not really invisible it is an illusion and mind trick, hit points are an absteaction it turns out that chest wound was merely a graze lucky you.

If you puncture a dragon's helium sacs can it still fly?
How much more fiercely does fire burn than on earth because of the increased O2?
Can I make armour/buildings/boats out of the springy bones and what properties do they have?
Does mind-trick invisibility still work on mindless undead/constructs?

I don't understand how you can come up with justifications for these things but not for a party of adventurers facing encounters/enemies appropriate to their abilities.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2014 17:26

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 02:43

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

e: Oops, quote/edit.

Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Oct 7, 2014

# ¿ Oct 7, 2014 15:19

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

greatn posted:

Dragons have helium sacs and birdlike bones, the world is much more oxygen rich allowing the survival of large insects and dinosaurs, giant humanoids have springy bones, invisible creatures are not really invisible it is an illusion and mind trick, hit points are an absteaction it turns out that chest wound was merely a graze lucky you.

Jack the Lad posted:

If you puncture a dragon's helium sacs can it still fly?
How much more fiercely does fire burn than on earth because of the increased O2?
Can I make armour/buildings/boats out of the springy bones and what properties do they have?
Does mind-trick invisibility still work on mindless undead/constructs?

I don't understand how you can come up with justifications for these things but not for a party of adventurers facing encounters/enemies appropriate to their abilities.

Also:

greatn posted:

Disagree. Your players will feel like you arbitrarily decided to level them up, rather than they earned it. XP is a reward just like treasure, players like getting it and saying "Oh man just 300 more and I can deflect arrows!" or whatever, same as "I can almost afford that magic armor!"

What exactly constitutes earning your level-up?

Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Oct 7, 2014

# ¿ Oct 7, 2014 15:20

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

Does anyone actually believe that if 5e were selling poorly, Mike Mearls would say so? Like, can you envisage a scenario in which he says: "Actually yeah 5e isn't doing so great. I guess we kinda messed up. Oh well."

I'm not saying it is selling poorly, but Mearls saying it's selling well means nothing.

Also, I love the idea that some random guy on the internet would be privy to the specifics of board-level Hasbro business strategy.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2014 10:26

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

polisurgist posted:

An adventure is a series of encounters.

An encounter is an event that has a level assigned. In order to succeed at an encounter, the players must collectively pick up 20-sided dice and roll 11* + half the difference between the encounter's level and their own a number of times determined arbitrarily by the DM (the DM may not always know this number, but it is derived from factors arbitrarily chosen by the DM). The DM also chooses one of the following failure conditions:

The players fail if they get a certain number of rolls less than 11 + half the difference between the encounter's level and their own. This failure condition is known as a "skill challenge" and has no particular consequences for the players beyond the time they have spent rolling dice.

The players fail if the DM rolls 11 - the difference between the encounter's level and the players' a number of times equal to 4x the number of players. This failure condition is known as "combat," and if the players fail, the entire campaign ends.

Variations on this pattern exist. They are called "eyeballing" or "improvising" depending on whether the person currently talking is the one doing it.

*Occasionally, a player may end up in the circumstance where this number is a 12 or 13. If this happens, the situation is known as a "trap" and the player is due either sympathy or scorn on the internet. In rarer cases, this number may be a 10. If this happens, every situation other than this one is now known as a "trap" and should be treated as above.

Can you give specific examples, please?

# ¿ Oct 14, 2014 16:15

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

MonsterEnvy posted:

Nope. While you can turn into a Adult Dragon. You don't get to keep your spell casting.

This again? Seriously? The post you're quoting is talking about Shapechange. You're talking about True Polymorph.

But wait! What's this? True Polymorph can't even be cast on yourself, can it?

MonsterEnvy posted:

True Polymorph does not work on yourself anyway.

MonsterEnvy posted:

It targets other creatures you can see within 30 ft. You are not effected.

MonsterEnvy posted:

Reading the spell the intent is clear and it's to target creatures in sight. Shapechange is the spell for transforming yourself.

MonsterEnvy posted:

Well even if you can use on yourself at least it's weaker then Shapechange in that situation. Still I am going with RAI and saying it can't be used on self.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2014 07:55

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

friendlyfire posted:

making the monk less magical-seeming

friendlyfire posted:

these are things that someone might do if they were deliberately courting people that hate WoW and anime. Reserving the more magical effects for wizards would probably generally be helpful in that regard.

What part of Monks literally casting Wizard spells with ki points is less magical-seeming than previous editions?

You admit that you know very little about MMOs. You seem to know very little about 5e. You've said that you have no intention of playing 5e. You jump around from subject to subject and seem reticent to engage in actual discussion. I don't understand your posting.

Can you distill your position into a sentence or two?

Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 09:54 on Oct 16, 2014

# ¿ Oct 16, 2014 09:52

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

Let's not forget that Ryan Dancey is now literally heading up the MMO Pathfinder Online (which looks terrible).

# ¿ Oct 16, 2014 11:47

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

If there's not a feat to remove the Loading property from gunpowder weapons they're strictly worse than bows and crossbows.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2014 10:11

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

quote:

Q. Given that 5E's spiritual predecessors are (mainly, as far as I can reckon it) 2E and 3.5E, what do you feel 5E offers those who prefer 4E's style of play? Do you worry about losing the support of 4E's fanbase?

A. We actually found in the playtest that people's play preferences don't break down by edition. Support for fifth was equally high across people who expressed an edition preference, regardless of that preference.

quote:

Q. What kinds of guidelines were used when assigning monsters their CRs? Is there a range of values for each rating/level? Coming from 4e with its fairly strict progression I've been having a hard time finding any sort of pattern in monster capabilities.

A. It's much 4e, but with a key wrinkle.

The DMG breaks down CR into an offensive and defensive rating, with a range of values for each (attack bonus and damage for offense, AC and hit points for defense). Special abilities can also modify those CRs, and this is where a fair amount of design sense and playtesting comes in to make sure that something is weighed correctly.

Once you're done, you simply average out offensive CR and defensive CR to come to your final rating. Again, you might adjust a little in either direction for monsters with weird abilities, but the process is easy if you're making typical monsters.

Is there any way in which this isn't just "we make it up, there is no system"? :psyduck:

Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Nov 4, 2014

# ¿ Nov 4, 2014 01:03

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

Your friend isn't having the Druid use Barkskin to set their AC to 16, which would make a huge difference.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2014 11:59

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

It's also pretty unreasonable to spend all your superiority dice on Parry - or even to take Parry, honestly.

Heavy Armor Mastery is also very questionable in CharOp terms (as far as anything in 5e can be).

e: Like at that point you have to start looking at stuff like the Dodge action.

Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Nov 25, 2014

# ¿ Nov 25, 2014 15:03

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

Be a Transmuter and get Proficiency to Con for free at level 6, then use Resilient for Wisdom instead.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2014 18:21

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

moths posted:

I don't think he hated the Warlord, but it was the Grog's Exhibit C at his ideological purity trial. He needs to maintain distance from 4e's innovations or his new Twitter friends start getting really nasty.

From one of the WotC podcasts:

quote:

Mearls: I guess my big thing is, would you, in the world of Dungeons and Dragons, if you pictured a guy who is a cunning tactial leader, would you expect that guy to heal you?

Thompson: I wouldn't expect him to automatically be able to know how to heal somebody. But, I could see that character who is more of a field medic.

Mearls: He could be a healer.

Thompson: He could be. I'm not saying he was.

Mearls: And that's throughout the system. We have a Specialty that lets you pick up some healing abilities.

Thompson: Yeah. We're going to want to continue to expand that.

Mearls: We don't expect the sergeant of the guard or captain of the guard to heal downed warriors. That's not the default. That's kind of the thing. And then if you say, "Well, he can heal, because he's really this inspiring presence, well then you've just kind of described a bard. Because bards -- the entire schtick of bards -- is that they are really inspiring and they are charismatic. The bard is the guy with panache who -- "Onwward!" That's the bard's deal, isn't it?

Thompson: That's a big part of the bard, I would say. I think there's some desire for a, when you're playing that leader character, to be able to say, "Alright, men! Fight on!" and be the guy leading the charge. To be William Wallace from Braveheart. You want to be that guy. I would not describe a William Wallace-type character as a bard.

Mearls: But you also wouldn't say he's a healer. I wouldn't. I wouldn't think, if there's a guy whose been gutted, William Wallace gets the guys to freak out and charge and moon the BRitish--

Thompson: Well...

Mearls: Healing? If the guy has a broken arm, does William Wallace--

Thompson: William Wallace clearly went and inspired the guy who got his hand cut off to keep fighting. There's that--

Mearls: But his hand didn't grow back. (laughter) Now I'm being a little ridiculous.

HP is meat, folks.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2014 13:46

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

Animate Dead is one of the more fun things about 5e and I really liked the whole bone economy this thread came up with where villages pledge their remains to their feudal necromancer lords' armies in exchange for help from tireless skeleton workers at harvest time and for being defended against marauding orcs by them and stuff.

Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Jan 3, 2015

# ¿ Jan 2, 2015 23:32

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

One of the devs already tweeted about that.

Basically the guidelines in the DMG are for non-pro game designers and when you have the time to really test and balance things (and ~game design skills~) you can design monsters case by case and even if they don't always abide by the DMG guidelines it's actually better.

e: Found it

quote:

Q. Monster Manual stats seem lower than guides in DMG for making CR-leveled monsters. Are MM monsters under powered?

A. We don't think so. Keep in mind that CR calculations are heavily affected by monster traits.
Also: CR is not a pure mathematical formula. The nature of exceptions-based monster design means making estimations
And we could afford to be more thorough, and more precise, than the DMG guidelines.
And keep in mind for the MM we are dealing with specific monsters; the DMG has to provide general guidelines.
So the DMG guidelines should get you close, but they can never be as precise as evaluating an individual monster.

We could afford to be more thorough, and more precise, than the DMG guidelines :v:

Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Jan 9, 2015

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 16:03

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

Harrow posted:

Alternative suggestion: 13th Age. It's a version of 4e that shed a bunch of mechanical weight, so for people who thought the abundance of fiddly mechanical bits slowed things down, it might be a great fit.

This is really inaccurate. I don't understand why goons like 13A so much and why I see it recommended so frequently.

From mechanics (e.g. Fighters being garbage) to ultra-grog DM advice (e.g. 'confiscate your Barbarian's greataxe sometimes so he doesn't take the d12 damage for granted') 13A is much more like 3.X than 4e.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2015 17:47

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

quote:

* Mike�s biggest regret is the fighter: the subclasses don�t have the identity that the subclasses of other classes have. What�s a battlemaster or a champion? They were so involved in the mechanics (for simple and complex fighters), that the names don�t mean anything.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2015 10:37

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

Bleu posted:

"If only we had named them Tripspam and Bigcrits, people would lay off of me for making Fighter spend every game forever walking back and forth shaking his sword around like in Final Fantasy."

Even more than the subclass names and identities being their biggest regret, I love the notion that the reason those got neglected is because they were just too involved in the mechanics.

The Champion gets three class features. Three.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2015 11:46

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

quote:

As a swift action while in an act of passion with a willing mortal,

Do most groups play out their acts of passion round by round and with regard to the action economy? Is this a thing I'm not aware of?

# ¿ Aug 31, 2015 18:06

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

Pyronic posted:

I am a bard, and going College of Lore for the out of class spellcasting, so I've got that covered.

Nope, Minor Conjuration is a Wizard-only Conjuration School feature.

That said, Lore Bards are awesome. At level 6 take Conjure Animals and Find Steed.

Conjure Animals lets you summon 8 Wolves, which is pretty strong since they all attack at +4 for 2d4+2, give each other advantage and force DC11 Str-or-be-proned saves. Alternatively you can get 8 Elks to ride on or to carry your loot, 8 Constrictor Snakes or Giant Frogs to Restrain people, 8 Swarm of Insects that attack at +3 for 4d4 and can stack up in the same (the enemy's) space and force them to take 8 OAs if they move, etc etc. Very versatile!

Find Steed lets you gain the Paladin mount class feature. I was considering playing a Bard recently (ultimately went Druid) and was planning on playing that out as having won a Paladin's horse off him at cards. Besides the coolness, it's intelligent and acts on its own initiative count. It also has the very neat feature of being able to share in the effects of your self-targeted spells for free, so at level 8 you can use one 3rd level spell to Polymorph yourself and your steed into T-Rexes.

At level 10, when you get more Magical Secrets, make sure one of them is Conjure Woodland Beings, which lets you summon 8 Pixies, all of whom can cast Polymorph and Fly once per day.

At which point you can turn your entire party into flying T-Rexes at the cost of one 4th level spell slot.

:smugwizard:

e: The Pixies also have Confusion, Dancing Lights, Detect Evil and Good, Detect Thoughts, Dispel Magic, Entangle, Phantasmal Force and Sleep. So you have 8 casts of each of those left after you perform that one scene from Apocalypse Now but with T-Rexes instead of helicopters.

e2: Note that Druids can do Conjure Animals 1 level earlier than Bards and Conjure Woodland Beings 3 levels earlier as well as shapeshifting 2/short rest.

Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Sep 3, 2015

# ¿ Sep 3, 2015 19:12

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

goatface posted:

But do you keep riding it?

D&D 5e: skeleton-based economies and tyrannosaur-riding tyrannosaurs

You can only mount a creature that's at least one size larger than you, but if you have a Sorcerer or Wizard in the party to cast Enlarge, (or some Potions of Growth to feed your would-be mount) that's not a problem and you can indeed be a Huge T-Rex riding a Gargantuan T-Rex.

Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Sep 3, 2015

# ¿ Sep 3, 2015 19:31

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

I really don't understand how it makes sense to shut down the WotC forums.

They're pretty active, it's not like they're sitting unused. And they can't cost more than a few hundred bucks a month, right?

# ¿ Sep 17, 2015 10:30

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

Having flat passive additional damage on your attacks is only marginally less boring than not having it.

Rogues need actually cool class features.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2015 13:53

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

Gort posted:

If true, this sounds pretty bad. He's either by far the best, or useless? Neither of those outcomes sound desirable.

This has been a problem with Sneak Attack forever.

Another problem is how binary it is even when you do qualify for SA; your 1 attack either hits and does good damage or misses and does 0.

Classes with multiple attacks have a much better chance of hitting at least once and doing at least some damage.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2015 15:21

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

I still really seriously don't understand why "you don't have to use the game rules, you can also make stuff up" is used as praise for game rules.

You can make stuff up in any game.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2015 13:53

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

That's so bad. And lazy. Holy smokes.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2015 19:20

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

Generic Octopus posted:

I like how Insightful Manipulator is the Battle Master's Know Your Enemy but worse and at a higher level.

Right, and Know Your Enemy wasn't even good.

I mean, an ability that said "The DM must tell you the ability scores and class levels of anything you can see on demand" wouldn't even be that good.

But nope, you get to know whether certain ability scores are higher or lower than yours. After a minute's out of combat observation.

Is there ever even a situation in which that's useful at all?

dwarf74 posted:

Helping as a bonus action and that redirect thing are both pretty solid, at least.

Bonus actions are in high demand, though, especially as a Rogue.

Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Oct 4, 2015

# ¿ Oct 4, 2015 19:40

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

Generic Octopus posted:

Misdirection sorta sucks because they only get 1 reaction per round, so it's basically only useful against 1 ranged attacker per round firing from behind their ally. There's also the fact that it's a level 13 ability. At least it doesn't require an asinine save to work when the conditions are met.

It also conflicts with Uncanny Dodge (which results in less damage to the party).

# ¿ Oct 4, 2015 20:26

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 02:43

Jack the Lad: Jan 20, 2009; Feed the Pubs

gradenko_2000 posted:

The Battlemaster has the Sweeping Attack maneuver - if they hit a dude, they can spend a Superiority Die, and a second creature within 5 feet of the original target will take damage equal to the number rolled on the Superiority Die, as long as the attack roll is high enough to hit both.

There's also a variant rule in the DMG: if a character hits an undamaged creature with a melee attack, and the attack reduces the target's HP to less than zero, any damage in excess of what's needed to reduce the target to zero HP can be instead be applied to any other target within melee range, as long as the attack roll is high enough to hit all targets involved.

Even if you limited the latter to just Fighters, the rule as-written is still pretty bad because it only works for 100%-to-0%-in-one-hit attacks.

Meanwhile, Green-Flame Blade :negative:

# ¿ Feb 7, 2018 11:38

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