|
A'ight, because I keep flip flopping I'm gonna make a big old fat post speculating why the sloppy design might not actually be a bad thing. Or at least why not all of it is a bad thing (anything that makes the DM's life harder is unforgivable). So we start with the assumption that PCs are expected to hit ~60-70% of the time on average and with even moderate optimization will rapidly reach 90-95% with the vast majority of their attacks. We then give players the ability to quickly nullify most encounters. Combat now moves so fast and is so laughably skewed in the player's favour that it's basically a minigame diversion, not a gameplay challenge as much as a narrative punctuation mark. Excessive optimization is less desirable because it's so easy to hit a point of diminishing returns where you're rarely being hit, rarely missing, or overkilling everything anyway. From that point, feats that would otherwise seem like a mandatory tax aren't, because you're already laying waste without it. You don't need fiddly, deep interactions like complex support or defensive roles because fights don't last long enough to care, and characters are resilient enough (past the first two levels) to just rely on the Pony Keg of Healing Potion that the party hauls around. The first two levels are intentionally the hardest, and the only ones where PCs can reliably die, entirely to create the illusion of fragility, even though the reality of that fragility rapidly evaporates. I'm probably going to run 5e for a while purely because it seems to be a pretty good pick for the kind of haphazard, almost anti-Dragonlance campaign that I've had an itch for. No big, sweeping arc, just an awful lot of looting and adventuring. Characters getting turned to stone and poo poo becomes inherently less disruptive because it doesn't become an out of place plot cul-de-sac because the game is just one giant string of plot cul-de-sacs. If a character dies it's not breaking some ancient prophecy, it's just another body in the ground. I think it might work just fine as a more emergent type game, which is basically what D&D was before Dragonlance.
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2014 19:07
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 13:39 |
|
|
mastershakeman posted:How did tsr nearly kill d&d with 2e?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2014 19:32
|
|
|
DalaranJ posted:Judging by Jack's chart  I like your monsters, especially the Blasphemous Statuette. And I agree with your sentiment that it feels like the system is fighting you. I want to just ignore 1/2 the stats, because they don't matter, but then there's some little junk about it that does matter, so gently caress it, gotta do all the stats. Like Charisma and Int are the only things you can actually ignore, except if it's a caster because their Int will impact both their save and their to hit and damage, and it's in theory easy enough to just ignore all that simulation crap, but it's forever hovering behind you, reminding you that making monsters is Fantasy Biology and Taxonomy. Really, well and truly, discarding Fort, Ref, and Will is one of the few cases where making one thing simpler (fewer derived values) made many, many things far more complex. Yes, 1/2 of the saves are more or less ignored, but they're not totally ignored, and there's just as much incentive to try and fix things by adding in more Str/Int/Cha effects as there are reasons to ignore them entirely to make monster stats easier. ON THE PLUS SIDE The system supports interesting and synergistic monster abilities like 4e, so that part of monster design is still fun.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2014 00:28
|
|
|
Rulebook Heavily posted:I had the chance to buy an entire palette of the Complete Book of Elves for 5 dollars once. That's how worthless a lot of the TSR library really was.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2014 00:29
|
|
|
DalaranJ posted:This is true. This is a really nice thing inherited from 4th. Unfortunately, I feel like the condition list is considerably weaker combat-wise than 4th. (Obviously this makes it a joke compared to 13th age which outdid 4th in the area of conditions.) Damage over time is out, immobilized now disadvantages you both directions, dazed is right out because of the change in action structure, no sliding, and vulnerability is now always double which is scary powerful. Sliding is still in, actually, it's just... stranger. Precise slides are obviously out, unless you're willing to accept that, yes, most everyone will be playing with a board. Big forced movement is still in, though, just look at Thunderwave, so knockbacks, throws, drags, go for it. Ongoing damage I've actually seen in game. While it's not codified with a keyword (hahaha, keywords are for successful games like Magic) there were a couple cases in the playtest where monsters and fighter maneuvers could cause ongoing damage. The Malebranche had "hit: 1d6+6 piercing damage and the target takes 5 damage at the start of each of its turn as it bleeds. If the target regains hit points or someone spends an action to bind the wound the bleeding stops and the effect ends." Other option is like the Stirge where If X then creature auto-hits until stopped. Damage auras are totally still in, so Chillborn are totally back. And Reactions are a huge canvas to work with.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2014 02:08
|
|
|
Fuschia tude posted:That's not really a simplification, is the thing. The only difference between "derived stat" and "ability score" is the former is calculated from the latter at character creation, and sometimes when you bump a stat or get a +stat magic item, so roughly every 4th level. The other 99.5% of the game, they're all just more or less fixed numbers, same as any other. But it's not. You've got AC, which is often base + dex mod, and spell DC, and a dozen other things that are already X + Y - Z, so that ice is already broken. It's easily the most confusing change they made, since even 3e's detractors will heartily agree that going from "save vs. death ray and poison" to fort/ref/will was a great decision. I mean, I don't see it appealing to the 2e holdouts, since "make a Charisma save" has all the hassle and none of the charm of "Save vs. Rod, Staff, or Wand".
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2014 02:27
|
|
|
dwarf74 posted:So let's talk about the hour long short rests. How it matters is that it punctuates exactly what kind of a break in action qualifies. If a short rest were thirty seconds that would mean sitting and doing nothing for 5 rounds is all it takes to get all your encounter abilities back. If it's 2 minutes that means basically any time you're not right in the thick of combat is good enough. If it's 15 minutes it means you can conceivably be kinda quiet, hunker down, and be ready to go before anyone finds you. An hour means you need to be safe. Kingcom's right in that "the option to get half or all, always choose all" is an issue, which is why the super-short short rest is useful: because it just happens, so it's not an "option." Ideally a "short rest" is "any span of time long enough that the DM feels it is appropriate to re-roll initiative." Take the decision making out of it: classes that use encounter powers get their encounter powers, full stop. Just looking at the starter set, basically any time the party can take an unharassed 1 hour Short Rest they can just as easily pack up and take a Long Rest instead. On the flip side there's an awful lot of the module where the options are "no rest" or "leave (at which point you take a Long Rest)" So I guess I'm a liar: I agree and disagree. The time is only relevant in that it justifies the mechanics. The problem is that Short Rest has clearly been dictated by the verisimilitudinousness of Arcane Recovery, which is actually just a daily power disguised as an encounter power.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2014 04:40
|
|
|
Comstar posted:Is the basic rules going to be rewritten or added too when the manuals come out? If so, it seems to be worthwhile holding off printing a copy till later. Added to at the least. Monsters and they've confirmed a couple spells will be added.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2014 05:53
|
|
|
Lothire posted:What happens if you open up the EK to choosing any two schools of magic, rather than the two built in? Does any one school particularly change this formula substantially even tho the multi-class still gets any spell? The hilarious thing, though, with the EK and the Abjurer is that Abjuration has basically no Wizard spells. Shield and a couple others. All the good buffs that you'd want for a Gish are mostly Transmutation. Which is why, at present, the EK might as well not get any spell slots and instead just get Shield as a 2x/encounter power.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 30, 2014 00:36
|
|
|
treeboy posted:Doesn't Eldritch Knight also get evocation? Part of it is that I just find it funny that the EK gets two schools, but one of those has barely any Wizard spells to start, and very few that an EK can even cast, and even fewer that they benefit from casting. LFK fucked around with this message at 01:09 on Jul 30, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jul 30, 2014 01:05
|
|
|
zachol posted:If spells are going to appear on several different spell lists (for example, druids and bards both having some cleric spells but also some wizard spells), I'm not sure what a better choice would be rather than just an alphabetical list. Fireball Level 4 Druid/Bard/Warlock/Wizard Evocation It's otherwise really bad, because until you're really familiar with what's on who's spell list there's a ton of flipping back and forth. Like, case in point, "Eldrich Knight gets Wizard spells from the Evocation and Abjuration schools." Okay, cool, Evocation I get, that's all the blasty stuff, but Abjuration? So you flip through looking for Abjuration, but have to keep flipping back to see if these buff spells are even on the Wizard list in the first place.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2014 18:17
|
|
|
Attestant posted:Sure, it might have sold, but it also split the fanbase bad enough that something like Pathfinder could exist -and- outlive 4e. Regardless of sales, this clearly scared the D&D folk something fierce. So 4e was sort of this fluke, a product made with an actual goal directed by people who do actual product research and development. When that oversight pulled away the remaining devs reverted to their gutfeels design processes because they personally identify more with the kinds of grogs who stuck with Pathfinder than they do the thousands and thousands of new players who jumped into 4e because it felt like a cool, modern, slightly-kitschy-nerd-chic board game and not weaponized nerd fuel.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2014 18:27
|
|
|
5e works fine, good even, within its own little assumptions about how the game should be played and what the game should look like, it's just incredibly bad at communicating exactly what that means. In a funny way 5e is less plot-driven than 4e. 4e assumed that your characters were important people who would become embroiled in city/nation/world/universe spanning conflicts between factions and forces, and had mechanics that were copacetic with that, like high character durability, relative ease of resurrecting higher level characters, auto-resurrection with many Epic Destinies, and stuff like that. 5e tries not to assume, but works best when your characters are loners who get involved, but nothing really ever hinges on them, not in some prophetic destiny sort of way, at least. Which would be fine. I'm sure tons of people would love an RPG that was a direct call to Game of Thrones or Black Brigade style stories where important people can and do die and dead is dead because we're all eventually worm food.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2014 18:43
|
|
|
Nancy_Noxious posted:**Essentials sort of makes the same mistake that 13th Age does — the assumption that if classes are differentiated, non-casters must be low complexity because But, really, if any class is going to get boiled down to "here's your thing, add more dice for bigger boom" it would be the Evoker. Firebolt at-will. 3x/encounter either upgrade the damage or upgrade the burst. 3x/day SUPER upgrade the damage and burst. Call it the Pyromancer. Done.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2014 06:53
|
|
|
mastershakeman posted:Cant we just all agree that gnomes are by far and away the coolest race? Gnomes rule. Leaving them out was an abomination.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2014 19:05
|
|
|
Jimbozig posted:drat right! I'll have full preview material ready very soon, like this week. Until then, have Ferrinus' latest. Are you sticking with roll-to-hit or going with roll-for-severity?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2014 20:12
|
|
|
Spell Bombardment sounds cool until you realize you're amping 40d6 up to 41d6. It's not bad, but as a capstone feature... eh.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2014 23:14
|
|
|
thespaceinvader posted:gently caress, when they previewed that table I just felt like it was the worst possible aspects of the design of every past edition rolled into one giant d%. Lolrandom monkeycheese wackiness, check. Randomly screwing the party, check. One player randomly getting massive buffs or penalties, check. DM-fiat-dependent options, check. Randomly adding monsters to the battlefield under the DM's control, making encounters next to impossible to balance, check. Mixtures of virtually meaningless flavour not necessarily applicable to all characters (dragonborn don't have hair, nor do warforged...) and very impactful mechanics, check. And it has a 1/20 chance to happen EVERY TIME YOU CAST A loving SPELL.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 2, 2014 04:00
|
|
|
MartianAgitator posted:I wonder if this isn't the same problem that comics may have. The fans are in charge; the inmates are running the asylum. In D&D's case it seems like the shitheels are the ones holding on to their Wizards employment, gatekeeping new blood from entering the brand like Doritobeards loudly making GBS threads on the Avengers movie at the front of the game store. I live in Seattle; any goons wanna come with me, storm the D&D office, and kick out anyone who doesn't get Dungeon World? Marvel wizened up and told their "fans" (i.e. the ones that don't actually care, just enjoy gatekeeping the hobby) to go gently caress themselves. "Yeah, here you go, here's a throwback easter egg in Winter Soldier, now go gently caress yourselves while we make all the money on the planet."
|
|
#
¿
Aug 2, 2014 17:44
|
|
|
Gort posted:Yeah, KotS was a big disappointment to me as well. They actually break their own encounter design suggestions (Irontooth fight is level 6 and eats starting characters for breakfast) in that module. I always got the impression that that fight was an attempt at placating the "4e is vidja game n players can't lose!" crowd, like the designers, in their insecurity, went "nu uh u can totes die!" As far as good modules, Last Breaths of Ashenport kicked rear end, aside from one really confusingly structured part in the middle.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2014 00:38
|
|
|
Iunnrais posted:One of my friends is trying to convince me that 5e is the greatest thing, simply because of the Advantage mechanic of "roll 2d20, use the higher result". What do people think about this single mechanic?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2014 21:58
|
|
|
thespaceinvader posted:It's good, but doesn't go far enough. because it doesn't stack, and you only need one source of one to cancel out ALL possible sources of the other, it steers the designers heavily AWAY from its use in the places it was SUPPOSED to be used (i.e. basically any small fiddly bonus should be replaceable with 'chuck an extra d20, see if it's lower/higher'), so you either wind up with the silly situation of 'i'm prone, blind, deaf, grabbed and dazed, but because he's also blind I take no penalties from ANY of those', or those start being fiddly bonuses again.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2014 23:33
|
|
|
Sade posted:what would it take to balance the wizard?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2014 03:43
|
|
|
MonsterEnvy posted:\
|
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2014 03:51
|
|
|
treeboy posted:From day to day my opinion on the system can vary pretty wildly from frustrated to actually pretty dang optimistic.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2014 03:23
|
|
|
dwarf74 posted:Hey guys, great news!! mumble mumble mumble I guess I'm spending my evening adding this poo poo to my spreadsheet.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2014 06:48
|
|
Now, it's 36d20 kobolds.
|
So, you wanna see something odd? As the levels go up a monster of a given CR is actually more expensive than the "Hard" encounter budget for a party of the same level. If you follow the projection then a single CR 13 creature is a "challenging" encounter for a party of 4 level 20 PCs.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 11, 2014 06:00
|
|
|
DalaranJ posted:This is using the legends and lore article CR chart, right?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 11, 2014 06:44
|
|
|
moths posted:So here's a thing. If you're a necromancer with a transmuter buddy and lots of time on your hands (which of course you do because you'll both live forever) he can transmute the kingdom's garbage into skeletons, which you animate into an army of heroic dragon genocide. "Before I die, I want you to know I regret I couldn't do more for you in life!" "It's okay, friend Fighter, you've given me the most valuable thing you had to give." "My love and friendship?!" "Your skeleton."
|
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2014 07:06
|
|
|
Bongo Bill posted:Talking about skeletons is never a problem.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2014 07:37
|
|
|
Blade Cascade is badass. I did more monster math, because I love monsters and hate myself. So the Sphinx is kinda worthless, right? Like, it only does 34 DPR with a burst of 44. The Adult Red Dragon, on the other hand, does about 100 DPR, and can burst a good bit higher when it breathes on multiple targets. Oh, wait, no, my comparison is all off because the Sphinx is a loving caster with Flamestrike, so any DPR/burst DPR calculation has to stop, fish through the loving manual for the spells, figure out the DPR of that spell, then figure out how many times the monster can use it (since bump casting is a universal rule and not a PC feature) then figure out if it's ever worth it for the Sphinx to actually roar since roars 1 and 2 are lame but cost the whole turn's action. THIS WAS AN IDENTIFIED PROBLEM IN 3E, WHY IS IS BACK?! Oh, and at the moment every monster we have over CR 8 has notable resistances, if not immunities. Immunity to non-magical weapons being the most common. But they're totes optional.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 14, 2014 07:13
|
|
|
MonsterEnvy posted:Not really. And I think the Empyrean may be a new monster. But MM1 3e and 4e did not really have anything new ether. Archons Also of note is that I'm pissed that Archons got cut.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 15, 2014 06:02
|
|
|
ritorix posted:The monster manual is pretty gorgeous. And it has skeleton minotaurs and zombie beholders. I'm sure we can think of a use for those.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 15, 2014 06:05
|
|
|
Zombies' Downfall posted:I'm confused. Is the point of this quote that Sean Reynolds is insane? Because "Rangers lose 1xLevel HP and some people will need to repick some of their skills/feats/spells" is basically the easiest conversion between editions that there's been in the history of the game. Of course in retrospect 3.5 was still so wide in the power spread that you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between "oops, I'm accidentally playing with straight 3e monsters/classes" and the default 3.5 experience.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 17, 2014 23:30
|
|
|
moths posted:So the lair mechanics are Onyxia raid gimmicks? Standing too close or too far apart or in the corners causes Deep Breath.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 18, 2014 15:43
|
|
|
Zombies' Downfall posted:Have you considered the Dungeon Master's Guide, by nobody important? Nonono, they need the delayed releases to improve QA on the subsequent books, like so that the MM can contain adjustments that were noticed between the release of the Player's... what's that? They were selling finished copies of the Monster Manual at Gencon? Oh, well, gently caress that idea, then. On another note we're starting our 5e campaign soon. I'm building it around the things that 5e is good at, so there's no world-threatening conspiracy that the PCs are remotely relevant to, no important plot to hose over, and pushing for, basically, speed and insanity, shoot-the-bad-guy-during-his-monologue sort of stuff. It'll probably burn out super fast, but I'm okay with that, since I also want to do something more in the vein of space-opera, which means convincing everyone that it's worth their time to learn Alternity.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 26, 2014 00:19
|
|
|
mastershakeman posted:Could a pair of fighters dip into rogue to get sneak attack then always make sure to be up on the same target, activating sneak attack off each other every hit? As long as nothing gives them disadvantage on the attack, yep, totally can. If they're both Battle Masters with Commander's Strike then after level 6 they can each get a Sneak Attack on each other's turn. 5 levels of Fighter and 15 levels of Rogue is a pretty sweet run, all told.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 26, 2014 21:40
|
|
|
Played the D&D Encounters at PAX Prime. Just the quick 1 hour run. Made a level 1 Bard. The Weavers wanted us to buy an illegal dragon egg with fake diamonds and plant a tracking device on the sellers. The DM didn't appreciate haggling for half pay up front or us accusing the Weaver contact of being some sketchy dude up to no good just because he was a shadowy hooded figure asking us to do sketchy, no-good stuff. The exchange was supposed to go down in a barn, so the perfect diversion to get the tracking device planted as to send a couple people in to start the transaction, then light the barn on fire so the Rogue could pilfer stuff in the chaos. That got softly squashed. We bumbled our way through the exchange, it was explicitly a no-fighting encounter, and then, to our utter lack of surprise a bunch of thugs jumped us as we were leaving the barn. The fight ended in one action. I was first in initiative and used Charm Person on the leader then convinced him to take all his cronies and go get drunk with us.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 30, 2014 17:55
|
|
|
The crotch bulge isn't big enough.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2014 07:18
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 13:39 |
|
|
Hidden Under a Hat posted:Is there a consistent way to assign a CR to an NPC character made with the player classes and abilities? My thought is that in an even battle between a party of 4 players of a level versus a party of 4 NPCs of the same level, the individual CR of each NPC enemy would have to be level/4, but I'm not sure if the total CR of an encounter is additive with respect to the CR of individual enemies. From the various things, an NPC of class level X has a CR of X-2. We don't have the "official formula" though, because it probably doesn't exist.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2014 17:20
|
|