- LFK
- Jan 5, 2013
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I think he was referring more to the phenomena of every pick up table and Roll20 group trying to stream to Twitch because they think it something was fun to play it'll be fun to watch. They checked out Critical Role or the Acquisitions Inc. podcasts and didn't get that one is literally all voice actors who make a living being funny elves and the other throws the rules out as soon as Chris Perkins thinks they're impeding the show.
TotM also doesn't work for 5e because it turns into a DM May I for area spells. It sucks to be melee when the Wizard either always gets to smart bomb all the enemies before you can drop one or the Wizard is constantly spraying you with fire damage.
I was just musing about this earlier today, because Mike Rugnetta (Idea Channel dude) was asking about RPG gameplay broadcasts on Twitter, and there's really two kinds: super loving boring ones where they play by the rules, and entertaining ones where the focus is on being performative for an audience.
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Mar 23, 2016 04:45
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May 13, 2024 21:43
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- LFK
- Jan 5, 2013
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Which is correct in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, the rule for scrolls or the rule for a spell scroll?
They’re both correct. The rule for scrolls (p. 139) is for scrolls in general, including a scroll of protection, and it allows you to try to activate a spell if you’re literate. The rule for a spell scroll is specific to that type of scroll and introduces an additional requirement: the spell on the scroll must be on your class’s spell list for you to read the scroll.
A spell scroll can be named in a variety of ways: spell scroll, scroll of X (where X is the name of a spell), or spell scroll of X (where X, again, is the name of a spell). No matter how its name appears, a spell scroll follows the same rule.
For you to meet a spell scroll’s requirement, the spell on the scroll needs to be on whatever spell list is used by your class. Here are two examples. If you’re a cleric, the spell must be on the cleric spell list, and if you’re a fighter with the Eldritch Knight archetype, the spell must be on the wizard spell list, because that is the spell list used by your class.
Don't forget that a Scroll of Protection, despite sounding like a Spell Scroll due to using the "Scroll of X" naming scheme is not actually a Spell Scroll but is, instead, a Scroll.
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Mar 24, 2016 05:56
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- LFK
- Jan 5, 2013
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Oh, we did a lot more rounds than we'd do in 4e. Oh yes, the rounds just flew by. Except we didn't actually do much in any given round. It does bear mentioning that our DM doesn't like doing meaningless "trash mob" encounters with just two goblins because it's just a waste of time to roll for that, but still. I often hear that 5e is supposed to be much quicker but so far I've yet to see it.
The funny thing is that 5e is "quicker" because the default 5e experience involves a lot of pointless, pre-determined speedbump fights that exist entirely to leech a dozen HP or a couple spells from the total party pool. The moment you focus on meaningful, challenging conflicts to the expense of speedbumps then you never see the speed gains.
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Mar 27, 2016 06:19
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- LFK
- Jan 5, 2013
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That's because they had the working on the auto-erotic asphyxiation necklaces and he mad them a bit to strong.
"You put the amulet on and it starts to choke you, but, like, not too much ;-)"
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Mar 29, 2016 16:55
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- LFK
- Jan 5, 2013
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One thing that could kinda "balance" mages is that they are usually frail guys. Unless they're buffed with defensive spells and magic items, they should go down easily, all it takes is a sword through the gut and boom, no more mage; it might be difficult to get in melee range, but once you do they're toast. They need martials to protect them against physical threat.
Perhaps one of the most egregious apologies for 5e is this notion of the Fighter protecting the Wizard while the Wizard warms up, which isn't supported by the design at all. Fighters have very few means for actually defending their allies, and spells are all instantly activated because doing nothing for five minutes while your spell warms up is kinda boring.
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Apr 6, 2016 03:37
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- LFK
- Jan 5, 2013
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It's extra sad because the MM came out quite a while after the PHB, so they had plenty of time to test and double check this stuff.
That's just how it appears. I thought the same thing, but then they had finished MMs available as prizes at GenCon with the PHB launch.
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Apr 8, 2016 06:39
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- LFK
- Jan 5, 2013
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Even a casual DM just couldn't stand running this game for more than a few sessions.
Probably the single most offensive change from 4e to 5e was tossing out elegant monster design rules for a pruned version of 3e's, which is a system that even 3e fans aren't terribly enamoured with. Hell, the people who wrote 3e's monster rules were all "yeah, it's cool in concept, everything being 'naturalistic', but almost impossible to actually use" by MM4. For the "empower the DM" edition 5e sure as poo poo made it hard to actually DM.
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Apr 10, 2016 02:15
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- LFK
- Jan 5, 2013
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I think I remember those guys. They had the character sheet with the ability score box that didn't show all the ability scores at once, right?
Yes, nothing fit in any convenient area, it didn't actually do any math for you, you could add an arbitrary number of hitpoints to your total, but could only remove them one at a time by pressing a button over and over. It was worse than just making a tablet character sheet with nothing but text fields, because it looked like it did the work for you, but it actually didn't do any of it.
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Apr 11, 2016 19:50
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- LFK
- Jan 5, 2013
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Great memories of DungeonScape
Dungeonscape trip report: It was a lot of pages of clicking to generate a lot of pages of stuff which I guess you could use to play D&D if you were a masochist.
Part the first: Getting to the character sheet screen
1: Where to click on the blank screen I'm shown after logon is slightly unclear. Is it the cog icon? Is it "character" down the bottom? Nope, it's "Choose a character" at the top, which doesn't look like a button, but a heading.
2: Race select screen lists size and speed, but not stat bonuses.
3: Class select screen is about what you'd expect, a pic of a dude and the blurb from the start ofthe class description.
4: "Roll ability scores" is the default screen. "Buy ability scores" is secondary. I mean OF COURSE you're not going to just click "roll" until you get a good set. The text box on the bottom left of the ability score screen DOES contain the racial ability score increase, and this is NOT reflected in the scores it shows me at the top of the screen, although the box does explicitly tell me this is the case in text that runs out of the bottom of the box.
5: Background has titles and descriptions, no mention of mechanics or indeed description of what I'm actually getting by selecting it.
6: Personality characteristics screen: It's possible to scroll off the top of the screen leaving the list blank. "Ideals" does contain the mechanical effect (ie, alignment).
7: Starting wealth/equipment screen. I get to see what gear I got from what I've selected 2 major screens ago with Backgrounds. Otherwise it seems fine. Or else I can "choose starting wealth", but it's not clear that it's an either/or proposition. Clicking "next" here gives me a "Choose one: Martial melee weapons" popup with no stats or information about any of the weapons.
8: Now I'm asked to describe my character... I can roll for height and weight and choose my alignment from a dropdown box. You can enter literally anything in the other boxes, even the one for age. The alignment dropdown appears to be an empty black box, but moving the cursor over it lights up the alignments line by line.
9: It's not clear what's going on on this screen. One the left side I'm asked to tick a box for Proficiency: <Smith's Tools, Brewer's Supplies, Mason's Tools> and the right side describes those tools and what a proficiency is. The tools come with a GP value and weight, but it's unclear if I'm getting them now or if I'll have to buy them later.
10: Now I can choose a fighting style with absolutely zero indication of what that is or does. It's literally just a list of fighting styles on the screen. There's a space to the right that's big and blank, as if there should be text there. There is no text there.
11: This screen looks the same but lists Skills instead of Fighting Styles. The big area on the right DOES have skill descriptions. However, I clicked "Next" on the previous screen without really looking at what I'd chosen and now the "Previous" button isn't doing anything, so I'm not sure what kind of fighter I am and I have no way to check.
12: Finally, a character sheet. Wait, this doesn't have much of the info I just entered... how do I page though it? I can either click the tiny tiny dots under the centre column or I can move my mouse or the side of the reddish area and an arrow appears. Groovy. I'll now go through this page by page.
Part the Second: The six page layout clusterfuck Character Sheet
Page 1:
On the left, an illustration. It's OK, I guess. I'm not sure if I can upload my own or if I'm stuck with these. Briefly clicking around makes it seem like these are it.
In the middle, my stats, level, and xp. Clicking on each stats brings up base and final values, although I'm not sure what that is. Clicking on my Con shows that there's a "user adjustment" of +4 although I'm now not sure where that came from.
On the right, all the things I chose in part 8. I wrote "Eleventy One" in the "age" box, and it's parsed that to "0", so that's nice. Clicking on any of these things brings up a SUPER HELPFUL popup in the middle of the screen that says, for instance, "HAIR, The character's hair color. Cancel/Accept". I now realise that's what happens if I click on the word "hair", but if I click on what I wrote for that answer, there's a popup where I can change it.
Page 2:
On the left, Attacks and Proficiencies. The Attacks part seems fine. It's got he weapon name and then the to hit adjustment and the damage. Clicking on the weapon name brings up detailed info. including where the numbers come from. Clicking on the numbers themselves does nothing. I appear to have gained proficiency in all three trade tools, although I only selected Mason.
In the middle, confusingly labelled "attributes", are my AC, speed, initiative, HP, etc. TO adjust my CURRENT HP, I'd have to click it to open a popup, enter the numer of damage/healing I've just taken in a box, click the +/- thing until correct, then hit Accept. It's clunky and would be super annoying during play.
On the right, Saving Throws. Clicking on them lets me adjust them, but I'm not sure why.
Page 3:
On the left, Skills. These default to showing "All". There's a dropdown box so I can change that to "proficient", but the box is blacked out again like the Alignment one was. I can still use it, but eh.
In the middle, Class Features. I chose Fighter. It shows I have a Second Wind and that my Fighting Style was Archery, which I'd forgotten about not remembering. I can't change it from here, but a helpful popup tells me what it does and that the +1 is "already included in calculations". It doesn't say WHICH calculations, although I guess it's pretty obvious.
On the right, Racial traits. Helpful popups to describe them, but text from all of those would fit in the vast amount of blank space that is the red background of the character sheet (which takes up maybe a quarter of my screen... seriously, there's a lot of blank space here).
Page 4:
Spells. Slots on the left (I have none), a blank heading "spellcasting" in the middle, a list of ALL SPELLS (not actuall all spells) on the right. I guess this page does something if you did not CHOOSE POORLY way back on the class screen.
Page 5:
Equipment! All my gear on the left. Turns out I didn't get ANY tools. I got pitons though. Sweet.
In the middle, a blank 3-slot list of attuned magic items. Clicking "Attune" does nothing. Clicking "add" eventually brings up a list of magic items, with a "view cart" button at the bottom. There is no mention of what this stuff actually DOES, but since most of it is "Longsword +1" it probably doesn't matter much.
On the right, treasure. To adjust the number of coins you have, again you need to click the value, enter the new value into the popup, then click accept. Clunky but consistent with the other clunky stuff.
Page 6:
Background on the left. The poo poo I chose from the lists doesn't even fit in the boxes. There's a checkbox here for Inspiration.
The rest of the page is blank, with a section to enter "Notes". I mean COME THE gently caress ON, the poo poo I picked FROM THE LISTS of personality traits doesn't fit in the goddamn box on the left and the WHOLE REST OF THE SCREEN might as well read "this space intentionally left blank".
Conclusion
Using this in a game would be a goddamn nightmare and I'm not even surprised.
e: I could wait and see what the final version is like, but reading the feedback lists and developer responses gives me absolutely no hope that this will ever be presented in a sane usable format. I mean six loving pages, each of which uses about a third of the available real estate on the screen at 1920x1200. You could condense this to two loving pages with a little bit of effort, especially since you're happy cutting off text in boxes when there's still plenty of loving room available. Maybe it's designed for 800x600, but why?
Designed for mobile first!
I leveled up my Bard.
It forces you to roll HP every level, so gently caress you if you're using fixed HP per level. Actually, this isn't quite true. You need to roll first, then you can enter a fixed value, otherwise Next stays greyed out. You can enter any value you want, so now I have thousands of HP. This is fine, all told, though the normal interface for adjusting your total is... well, [you have to click and up/down arrow one by one]http://i.imgur.com/Qst027y.png[/IMG] so if you, say, accidentally gave yourself thousands of hit points it would actually be easier to rebuild your character.
The Bard College selection gives me the fluffy description of each college, but no mechanical overview.
The Bard bonus skills feature comes up with a list of all the skills, with no indication of which ones I'd already selected. I'm assuming if I select Deception again it'll just accept it as is, and I'll never be able to change it.
Dungeonscape don't give a gently caress about stat limits. At level 4 it let me boost my Charisma to 25. Which is odd, since I should only have a Charisma of 19 from my rolled 17 and Tiefling bonus.
On my spell list there's no way to change a spell to "Prepared."
At the moment this isn't really a character builder, too much is broken or doesn't work right. It's nice that it'll often let you enter an arbitrary value, but it's odd that it only allows that in some places but not others. If I can add anything to my HP when I level up, why can't I just change my HP at any given time by typing it in? Right now it's a side grade to a digital character sheet, and in a lot of ways would be an improvement if it simply were a digital character sheet, if so much relies on the player looking crap up in the PHB anyway.
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Apr 11, 2016 21:50
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- LFK
- Jan 5, 2013
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Having two rolls is a fine way to make someone feel rewarded for being good at acrobatics, you just can't gate the success of the success of the attack behind the skill roll. A bad acrobatics roll still lets them do it and make their attack, but a good acrobatics roll lets them do it and they get some bonus.
An even better way is to just have a threshold. "Oh, you're proficient in Acrobatics? You don't even need to roll."
Rewards skill investment, keeps things quick, and minimizes futzing.
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Apr 12, 2016 17:30
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- LFK
- Jan 5, 2013
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Bards and Warlocks would be my first pick. While the Warlock is technically b-tier, they're still powerful and actually get some fun/interesting options. Next up would be Skeleton Supremacy.
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Apr 14, 2016 20:56
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- LFK
- Jan 5, 2013
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When crits are per hit, then the expected amount of damage they do is a fixed percentage. If a crit does double damage, and you crit 10% of the time, then your expected damage per hit is 10% more than just your listed damage.
On the other hand, if your crits are per attack, then the amount of damage they do is a variable percentage. If you only hit on a 19-20 but you also crit on a 19-20, then your damage per hit is twice your listed damage. If you hit on a 11-20 and crit on 19-20, then your damage per hit is 20% more than your listed damage. The average damage a crit does per hit changes based on your accuracy, and it actually goes down as you get more accurate.
All of this would matter more if the designers of 3e had actually paid attention to any of this math in their monster design but 
Re. the bolded part: I've always found this to be a bunk argument despite it being technically true. It's not a meaningful observation, it's just a quirk of the math, like how a brand new M:tG player who wins their first match is technically undefeated, and their Win:Loss ratio is going to get profoundly worse the more games they play.
The big reason why it's a quirk and not meaningful is because there isn't/shouldn't be anywhere in the game where this is the default, universal interaction. You shouldn't really have a space where a level-appropriate monster shows up and can only hit any given party member on a 20.
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May 5, 2016 08:44
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- LFK
- Jan 5, 2013
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This happens with any game that gives you powers and/or abilities you can "spam," inevitably someone will find the best ones and, surprise surprise, use those ones over and over again. This is one reason (among several) that the 4E psionic power point classes wind up falling into a trap that other 4E classes don't, because for some dumb reason the power point classes are allowed to break the 4E "cooldown" design and so consequently it turns out the best strategies for those classes often revolves around cherry-picking the best available powers at your tier and using them as often as you have points to spend on them. And the inverse of this is, as gradenko points out, the Battlemaster Dilemma where once you've cherry-picked those best abilities you have nothing left to look forward to and so every new ability and power you receive is less and less exciting as you draw from a pool of increasingly unwanted options.
I think within 4e, and especially coming out just past the edition's midpoint, this wasn't as bad as it seems, at least not from a bid's eye view of the edition. 4e already had tons of classes and sub-classes using the standard skeleton, with multiple classes in every role and sub role and combination of major and minor role. The psionics were coming into an environment that was lousy with options. In that kind of environment, something that does boil down to repetitive spamming isn't the worst thing, since that's exactly what someone out there is looking for in a class.
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May 31, 2016 08:12
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- LFK
- Jan 5, 2013
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Let's be honest about that. They're specifically mentioned for being minions in Illithid areas of the Underdark. They're meant to be minion-type foes for Mind Flayers (CR7), and under Mind Flayers' entry it suggests that lone Mind Flayers are outcasts and they generally congregate in hive-like lairs with lots of other Illithids and their minions.
Just because the book doesn't specifically call out that monster *only* for use as minions in level 14+ encounters in Mind Flayer lairs doesn't mean that wasn't the clear and obvious intent.
You can hit WotC for doing a lot of half-assed and dumb things, but that one's just lazy.
Doesn't the Starter Kit adventure toss a couple of these into the basement of some gangster's house?
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Jan 18, 2017 06:58
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- LFK
- Jan 5, 2013
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this is bullshit. It absolutely is feasible to give a warning, all you need to do is give it a [pet] tag, and explain that tag somewhere easily accesible. Or, if you don't want someone to fight the dog without its master, make the dog a function of its master instead of giving it its own page.
what video game world of warcraft mmo online elder scrolls game board game game bullshit is this?
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Jan 18, 2017 08:12
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- LFK
- Jan 5, 2013
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I don't think it's feasible in the way that the monster manual is organized (alphabetically) to put a sidebar or descriptor that explains precisely how WotC envisioned each and every one of the monsters to be used.
I would argue that it's not only feasible, but that is, in fact, exactly what books are for.
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Jan 18, 2017 19:21
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- LFK
- Jan 5, 2013
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It wouldn't be viable space-wise to do that for a print book
There's all these words in these books, they're just, the books are full of words, and I'm curious what people think these words are supposed to say if "the intended use of this monster within the game" isn't on the list?
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Jan 19, 2017 01:31
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- LFK
- Jan 5, 2013
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I would argue that crafting costing XP in 3rd Edition was a reason to care about it, insofar as if the Wizard is blowing XP on magical items, they're going to fall behind the Fighter, which actually works out as far as letting the Fighter stay ahead and maintain parity.
Obviously that's a blue-sky interpretation, but there you are.
Even then it broke, unless the Wizard was spending all that XP on useless crap. A wizard surfing one level behind the party is a goddamn nightmare, because they're pumping out wands and scrolls that let them address any contingency, and because they're one level behind they get more XP, so by the time the rest of the party has earned 1m total XP the Wizard has actually earned 1.25m XP (numbers pulled from rear end because I don't remember the literal values).
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Jan 19, 2017 07:27
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May 13, 2024 21:43
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- LFK
- Jan 5, 2013
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Three years after the fact, Wizards has gotten Curse! to release online tools for 5e.
And by "release" I mean "announce a 'summer' release and allow you to sign up for the beta but really you're just signing up for a mailing list."
https://www.dndbeyond.com/
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Mar 12, 2017 19:20
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Mar 23, 2016 04:45
