|
Father Wendigo posted:You're also required to roll for your starting coin if you don't take the package your class offers. If it's any consolation, I'm sure some middle-aged jagoff somewhere is happy. D&D Next: I'm sure some middle-aged jagoff somewhere is happy The paragraph on sex and gender is great and also totally in keeping with literature going back to ancient times. Heroes are all sorts of people, and made me feel ok with at least getting the starter box. We'll see.
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2014 23:32
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 22:27 |
|
|
neonchameleon posted:Popcorn Initiative (by Fred Hicks for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying) might be what you're after. The quick version is that whoever is acting gets to choose who acts next out of everyone who hasn't acted yet, and the final person to act in a round chooses who starts the next round. I haven't played 5e's starter set yet to try out Popcorn Initiative there, but we've been using it for the second half of Heroic Tier in 4e. It's starting to look untenable for Paragon tier, since there are more player and monster powers that are "if condition is met, worse thing happens." A simple example is the level 14 Elite Umber Hulk; it has a standard action that allows it two claw attacks. With Popcorn, if it ends the round, it can choose itself to start the next round. Four claw attacks in a row would be bad enough, but if it hits with two in a row from its double-attack standard action, the target creature is then grabbed. The Umber Hulk has another standard action it can only do when a creature is grabbed, and that action is an automatic 40 HP of damage (no roll or save or means of escape, except for what would have been a round to escape the grab if you weren't using Popcorn Initiative). The Umber Hulk also has an action point, because it's an Elite. If the Umber Hulk hits at the end of a round with both of its claw attacks, it can start the next round with that 40 HP damage, and action point immediately to do it again, which (with the two claw hits) is enough to take level-appropriate PCs from full HP to negative HP. There are some things on the player side that can be just as bad, but the campaign doesn't come to a screeching halt when the party TPKs the monsters. Dragons and other multi-initiative-slot modern-design solos are even more deadly when they get to have all of their actions in a row without players between them, because (being one creature) you can only cast one daze/stun on them per round, which they will shake off with their first action. WFRP 3e/EotE "everyone rolls initiative to decide when the player slots/enemy slots are, but each side picks who goes in its own slots from round to round" is better, mitigating but not preventing the Umber Hulk PC-shredding above. Edit: so, uhh, be careful with Popcorn Initiative, I guess?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 28, 2014 16:26
|
|
|
have it your weigh posted:I like that they used art that doesn't look like the stereotypical Conan type barbarian. It makes me want to play one for the fist time. This is actually the reason to play a Barbarian.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 30, 2014 18:20
|
|
|
The power chains in 4e were intra-party in a lot of places (character A can often bring about arrangement or status effect X, allowing character B to do cool thing Y), which I would have loved to have seen more of in a 4.5e.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2014 00:06
|
|
|
LFK posted:My first 4e campaign a lady in the group was all "can I re-skin my Gnome as a Moogle?!" and my first reaction was "ewww, Weeaboo poo poo, no, gross" then I pulled the stick out of my rear end, said "sure" and it was awesome, she was super invested in her character, always describing how she'd be tugging on her pom pom when she was worried and stuff like that. That's a great story. Speaking of reskinning: I haven't been keeping up on the previews of the post-starter-set stuff -- how plausible is reskinning a 5e wizard of some kind as a fighting man?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2014 19:09
|
|
|
Jimbozig posted:drat right! I'll have full preview material ready very soon, like this week. Until then, have Ferrinus' latest. I am pretty excited about it, because I've been tempted to run something 4e for a while, but every time I think about how fun it would be to run Zeitgeist, I think about all the rest of the stuff in 4e.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2014 20:11
|
|
|
Recycle Bin posted:I had a feeling this would be the case. I remember wizards in 2nd edition being super fragile and almost worthless in the beginning until they leveled up, and WotC has been trying to make them a more compelling choice for new characters but ends up swinging them too far in the other direction. At least 5e forces casters to choose what spells to memorize at a time so they don't just always have access to every encounter-breaking spell. They were always a compelling choice for new characters, because 1) most DMs are not total dicks trying to kill the party's level 1 characters, 2) parties would rest when the casters were out of spells, and 3) they had encounter-ending Sleep from the start and get more powerful from there. The only pendulum swing was 4e, everything else was all on the side of "play a caster."
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2014 16:21
|
|
|
eth0.n posted:A direct translation would still be underpowered, relative to casters. I tried to sketch a version that belongs in the same game as a Wizard. But I'm not sure even that goes far enough. I haven't played 5e yet, but that looks pretty great.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2014 17:59
|
|
|
eth0.n posted:One does not need to play a game to constructively analyze it and critique it. Especially one so blatantly similar to a game many of us have plenty of experience with. And most of the discussion about Next here is constructive. Just more in the "designing a game" perspective, than in the "how to play Next" perspective, and not in ways Mearls would ever listen to, because good design angers certain people for stupid reasons. I am on the side of "we can tell some stuff is bad just by looking at it", but it really did happen that people looked at 4e and thought they could tell it was a badly-designed game -- and that all classes played the same way -- just by thumbing through the books. If they'd played it . . .
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2014 21:36
|
|
|
Boing posted:My logic is that if you want cool fiction-driven action and narrative freeform roleplay you should be playing Dungeon World, and if you want crunchy tabletop miniature combat you should go all out and play Descent: Journeys in the Dark or something. I've never tried 4E but I've liked most of the things I've heard about it. The thing that puts me off is apparently it takes a very, very long time to do combat? Which doesn't seem very attractive for a combat-driven system. What contributes to the length? Is it a significant setback? 4e combat is "disproportionately long" (and fun!) rather than "very, very long", and assumes the presence of the full party in each, which leads to a different sort of play experience.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2014 15:20
|
|
|
Jack the Lad posted:The whole '4e combat is long and fiddly' thing really bugs me because it's become an accepted talking point - even among fans of 4e - but in my experience it's no worse than any other RPG. Even if you are only taking 90 seconds for your turn, the DM has to do all the monster turns, set up the map, clean up, et cetera, and that ignores the fights where the monster manages to throw you into the lava, making what would have been a 4-round fight into an 8-round fight because the party has to get you out of the lava and heal you and can't use your actions while you're KO'd, but still has to run your turns and track status effects on you because of the monster's aura and AoEs. In my experience, 4e combat is definitely longer than any other part of 4e (disproportionately so), and definitely longer than most other RPGs. Fake edit: I didn't even account for the groups where players take 90 seconds of looking at their sheet before even saying "well, let's see here . . . " 4e's emergent gameplay in combat is beautiful, but utterly at odds with brevity.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2014 16:18
|
|
|
The Starter Set should have come with 2d20 for Advantage/Disadvantage.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2014 21:18
|
|
|
Chaltab posted:Why is this a spell and not a ritual? Probably because it was a spell before.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2014 20:06
|
|
|
treeboy posted:i'm not missing anything, i'm reading the stat block from the only materials i have personally available. If necromancer grants some extra damage then great, they do +12 instead of +2 or whatever. My point is that the vast majority of those skeletons will never get near the dragon Why do they need to get near the dragon? Don't they have bows? It sounds as though a pair of necromancers with their 200 skeletons could make dragons extinct in a campaign.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 11, 2014 20:14
|
|
|
Mendrian posted:So I had a crazy idea: There was a good fighter posted a few pages back.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 11, 2014 21:56
|
|
|
Jack the Lad posted:Thankfully Wizards also have Locate Object to find skeletons and Move Earth to dig them up! "Your dragon is in another castle."
|
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2014 19:44
|
|
|
There is no edition but 5th edition, and Zack Parsons is its prophet.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 13, 2014 15:19
|
|
|
Since you only need about 20 skeletons to outdamage a fighter most of the time (if I'm reading that chart correctly), you could save the gear/weapons/tusks/skins of every major enemy you've defeated (and party member you've lost) and dress up and name each of the skeletons after those enemies/party members. This would have the added benefit of giving all of them better weapons and/or armor.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 14, 2014 02:42
|
|
|
Ratpick posted:Seriously, skeleton talk has made me want to add a necromancer-run state into every one of my campaigns from now on. I've been guilty of running D&D games in boring settings that have been pretty much whitebread "Not-really medieval Europe with elves and wizards and dwarves and poo poo," and a setting where a city state has an entire infrastructure run by the animated dead would really make it more fantastic. Or play Eberron, where it's done halfway for you.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 14, 2014 20:14
|
|
|
SmellOfPetroleum posted:I'd argue that a book's index is allowed to be alphabetical. I like the NPC classes that they just say to slap any old race in. Shoulda been that way in earlier editions. I thik pathfinder did that actually. I was going to make a smartass comment about how an alphabetical index is pretty dumb when the monster entries themselves are alphabetical, but a closer look at the page numbers indicates they aren't. The Deva is hundreds of pages from the Dire Wolf.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 15, 2014 02:02
|
|
|
MonsterEnvy posted:Here is the actual table of Contents. I guess the ones listed as plural have more than one subtype? I had no idea there was more than one kind of remorhaz. Multiple dragons, but only one half-dragon. And it makes perfect sense that Dragon, Shadow is not under Dragons, because
|
|
#
¿
Aug 15, 2014 02:32
|
|
|
Payndz posted:Okay, so I think I worked out how to kill that loving dragon: It won't work if the dragon can smell what the rock is cooking.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 19, 2014 20:55
|
|
|
So I guess the cover depicts one of the "boss battles", taking on the big bad in his lair. The party wizard, shapechanged into a dragon, has cornered the story's villain, and is about to strike. Very exciting!
|
|
#
¿
Aug 20, 2014 16:46
|
|
|
NECROMANCER AND DRUID ARE FRIENDS would be an excellent children's book about friendship, bipartisanship, and utterly destroying all opposition.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 22, 2014 14:13
|
|
|
Sir Kodiak posted:This may be true for precedent for earlier editions, but at this point, when it comes to what's reasonable for 5e, D&D-style wizards have penetrated popular culture to the point of being the default. Dumbledore, Willow, Dr. Strange, etc. are depicted as producing a wide variety of magical effects on a regular basis. Hypothesis: at this point, D&D has influenced wizard fiction more than wizard fiction has influenced D&D.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 28, 2014 17:05
|
|
|
Ratoslov posted:Because you want mechanical encouragement to turn every dungeon crawl into a pub crawl with everyone getting shitfaced for bonuses and trying to make out with the gorgon. I think people would make out with a medusa, and instead go gorgon-tipping at night.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 5, 2014 19:42
|
|
|
Arivia posted:Yeah I just got a copy of the 4e Eberron Campaign Guide and I'm pretty excited to read about how it plays in 4e. It should be a good fit. The 4e Eberron Campaign Guide was the book that convinced me that I could and should try DMing for the first time since 1987 or whatever. If the 5e setting guides are equally full and inspiring, I think 5e will at least break even on its contributions to the hobby.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 10, 2014 01:53
|
|
|
I would enjoy the Intellect Devourer a little more if it became a major problem for wizards once it took over the body of the fighter. I would enjoy it even more than that if the creature literally named for devouring intellect had the statistics to actually go after the mother lodes of intellect (casters).
|
|
#
¿
Sep 11, 2014 21:01
|
|
|
Rosalind posted:On the plus side, all those dead fighters can reroll as wizards. On the plus side, all those dead fighters can reroll as necromancers raising their own previous characters' skeletons.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 11, 2014 21:21
|
|
|
Sage Genesis posted:I like it, but isn't that what the original Tomb of Horrors was about as well? If "performing highly visible evil acts to attract many high-level characters to devour" is the same as "having one's earthly remains secretly interred in a well-hidden deathtrap tomb so deadly and confusing that almost nobody will make it to you to be devoured", then yes.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 11, 2014 22:08
|
|
|
mastershakeman posted:How does a fighter in 4e get better version of his weapon through the campaign? If a fighter's choice of weapon is something insanely rare, like say, a 2 handed flail, is the DM expected to have the party find magic 2 handed flails of various enchantment power throughout the campaign? 2e/3e/5e seem to be saying no gently caress you, find another weapon to specialize in. 1) Inherent bonsues, 2) we ruled that if the item had a "higher-level" version, the player got that version when he reached that level, with the idea being that they had become more skilled at using the weapon's magic.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 15, 2014 14:55
|
|
|
Lord of Bore posted:
Almost all of its powers relate to ferrous metals, but Rust Metal corrodes ALL nonmagical metals that hit it. So, uhh, I guess it can hurt a wizard's wallet. If the wizard attempts to hurt the rust monster by pelting it with coins, anyway.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 17, 2014 02:13
|
|
|
Tactical Bonnet posted:
The preview for the rust monster specifically mentions mithral among the ferrous metals ("ferrous metals such as . . .").
|
|
#
¿
Sep 17, 2014 15:01
|
|
|
Countblanc posted:Shut Up and Sit Down head honcho Quintin Smith decided to write a review of Next, and apparently explain why it's the most important, newbie-friendly, "ergonomic" version of D&D in the last 20 years. The guy really has no history with the franchise, but still trots out tired stuff about 4e having "macros" and being like an MMO (meanwhile he praises Next for being like a video game). "You should play the new edition of D&D because it's kind of like Dragon Age except this time you can have sex with everything."
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2014 17:31
|
|
|
crime fighting hog posted:Why do people say "it's like a videogame" like that's a bad thing? I'm assuming describing the system of rules/math as similar in ways that WoW has DPS, cooldowns and so on is supposed to be insulting? I dimply don't understand why videogames are considered a thing you wouldn't want your game to be similar to. "Videogames" are things young kids play. RPGs (including CRPGs) are things beyond the understanding of those young children, and are therefore better. For a long time games have had an association with little boys, geeks, and boy geeks. It's going away, but it's still there. The more distance that people insecure about their hobbies can put between their tabletop game of choice and the perceived derision of games, the better. Some people never get to the point where they can analyze how games (for all ages, across all genres) do or do not accomplish their stated aims.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2014 19:55
|
|
|
PeterWeller posted:The problem with the 5E Fighter's power curve is that everyone is buying, or at least playing lip service to, the "magic items are optional" bullshit. Obviously, magic items are an unspoken requirement because that's the only way the fighter balances out. The only way the fighter balances out is by the use of items made by wizards and clerics, who can also make those items for themselves.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2014 21:50
|
|
|
D&D 5e is the best 3rd edition and the third-best edition.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2014 20:01
|
|
|
crime fighting hog posted:Part of me still wants to play AD&D someday. But I just fire up Baldur's Gate when that urge strikes. I love what it did for the hobby and played it back in the day, but also strongly dislike it for what it did to the hobby, and think it is the worst edition.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2014 20:56
|
|
|
Ryoshi posted:
DA2's repetitive environments are indeed repetitive, but I liked it more in a lot of ways. "Smaller" city-level story, more parity in the classes. My newest disappointment with 5e is the monk; the capstone is so lackluster, and some of the best magical powers come from going variant human + magic initiate feat (Guidance? holy cow).
|
|
#
¿
Nov 18, 2014 16:01
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 22:27 |
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:Zak S and RPGPundit Their names are not in "written by" last I checked.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2014 22:19
|
|