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ritorix posted:I didn't say they don't have beholder liches. That's weird. The petrification rays require a Dex save to avoid. So far so good. But then the secondary save to prevent petrification is also a Dex save? How? Do you leap out of the way of your own body or something? Does the ray keep orbiting you and try to poke you again next round to finish you off? Is it really that complicated to make it a Con save?
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Aug 15, 2014 12:56
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I stand corrected. All hail Dexterity, once and future God-Stat!
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Aug 15, 2014 13:20
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ritorix posted:Welp, I died to ghouls at gencon. That's pretty much the complete 5e experience. Do they still have multiple attacks which each force a save-or-paralyze?
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Aug 15, 2014 21:24
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ritorix posted:Just 1 but when there's 4 ghouls it didn't matter. 2 pcs dead that encounter, should have been a tpk but the gm had npcs show up to save the rest. 5e. And that's what they showed at GenCon? Like, the big convention where you show off your best? A ghoul tpk in process where NPCs swoop in to save you? That's... kind of not very good. Sort of like the opposite of good really.
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Aug 15, 2014 21:48
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OctoberCountry posted:If I'm remembering right isn't what you're referring to the Ranger wanting to use an encounter power on a locked door? That's not all that creative or cool. I might be remembering some totally different incident but I think it was a drow who tried to use Darkfire (ie. what was once called Faerie Fire) to burn down a door. Chris Perkins had to explain to him that, despite the name, Darkfire is actually a glow and not real fire. I can't really fault Perkins for not allowing somebody to burn down a door with a glow stick. The fact that this power has the word "fire" in it is just one of those stupid D&D-isms that sound perfectly normal to veterans and trip up everybody else. Still, it's a door. Who the gently caress cares how they got past it? They might use an axe or a rogue, what does it matter? Tell the drow that you allow it just this once and but in the future it will just glow a bit. I will gladly sacrifice verisimilitude if it means the player having fun.
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Aug 15, 2014 23:31
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Kai Tave posted:I also think lair-oriented abilities are a nice concept. It makes the idea of going to fight something on its home turf more of a dangerous proposition and rewards groups for doing things like luring the monster out of its lair (how effective that is being, of course, entirely up to the GM). I wonder how the lair dynamic is going to work out. So, you want to lure out the dragon from its lair. Great. Unfortunately, the dragon is not a loving tool and he knows that he can't use his Home Sweet Home magic tricks outside of its lair. And the DM planned for a totally rad encounter that involves the Home Sweet Home magic. Because he read the book and said to himself, "this is so cool I can't wait to see the party deal with this." But the party doesn't want to deal with this. The party wants to lure the dragon just over the doorstep and beat its skull in with a sock filled with platinum pieces. And this is not some trivial difference because lair actions seem pretty loving potent. In the case of the sphinx, it includes a save-or-lose. (Being regressed to the age of a toddler is pretty much an instant loss.) So it kind of matters where you fight the monster. The PCs don't want to go in. The monster doesn't want to come out. I don't see how this promotes cool gaming. It strikes me more as bullshit "Gotcha!" baiting or antagonistic railroading. ("You have only 24 hours to obtain the flower of McGuffin and its inside this lair only, now go forth and face the music.")
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Aug 16, 2014 03:25
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Kai Tave posted:I wonder how a monster having a lair with lair abilities interacts (if at all) with CR and in what arcane ways? I bet it'd be pretty easy to backport lair abilities into a game like 4E by assigning the lair an XP budget based on the abilities and how it works. Again, I genuinely and unironically think that "monster lair abilities" is a neat idea, I'm just not sold on the execution based on what I've seen of it. Come to think of it, isn't the lair basically just a 4e trap? It's tied to a location, it has an initiative, it has one of several actions available. And I bet it has an impact on the xp value of the encounter. They changed the fluff a little and the way to deal with it (only by killing the monster) but they're really not all that different. It should be trivial to backport into 4e.
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Aug 16, 2014 12:59
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Whoa, I must have missed some sort of abusive combination here. How do you make True Polymorph be permanent?
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Aug 16, 2014 13:51
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Jack the Lad posted:It's right in the spell. Wow, my eyes glanced right over that. That'll teach me to read before drinking enough coffee. That seems... kind of stupid.
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Aug 16, 2014 14:03
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ProfessorCirno posted:For the record, the power itself didn't actually involve any fire. It's the drow illusion racial ability that momentarily shadows an enemy's eyes. It lacks the Fire keyword. It would be like a wizard casting Faerie Fire to melt some ice. Exactly, like I said earlier. There is no power called Darkflame Blast or anything similar. The only one that comes close (I checked DDI) is the Darkflame power, which is the faerie fire analogue I talked about. It's an illusion, not real fire. That said, pointing out that it can only target creatures was garbage.
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Aug 17, 2014 12:57
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Ruckby posted:If you had actually done the math you would realize that a 5th Casterdition level 1 God-Wizard has a 96% chance of insta-killing up to seventeen orcs with a roll of 2 or higher. Just the eff was WotC thinking when they designed this piece of poo poo? With Sleep? On orcs which have 15 hp each? How are you going to roll 255 with 5d8?
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Aug 19, 2014 15:52
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MonsterEnvy posted:He's joking. Oh right. You never know on the internet. I've seen some weird opinions out there.
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Aug 19, 2014 16:18
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slydingdoor posted:Sorry. Sorry for what? Flies aren't larger than 100-ton boulders, nor are they CR 10+.
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Aug 19, 2014 21:05
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slydingdoor posted:Haha my bad. "No Xer than Y" language always fucks me up. Negatively formulated statements are infamously easy to misinterpret.
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Aug 19, 2014 21:13
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dwarf74 posted:Haha... Conjure Woodland Beings +pixies... Forget skeletons. Hey, you can have both. Army of skellies 24/7 and one single Concentration spell to unleash 24 Sleeps, 24 Polymorphs, and 24 Confusions if necessary. But man oh man, look at the Fighter. By the time you get to pull this off he's attacking three times per round. Yeah, don't you feel jealous now, Mr Wizard?
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Aug 20, 2014 13:58
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Jack the Lad posted:Oh wow yeah I didn't even think of that. 24 Pixies have a 72% chance to generate 3 successful Polymorphs against an Adult Red Dragon, which is enough to blow through its legendary saves. You then begin casting your own save-or-lose spells at DC19 and follow up with the barrage of Confusions. The Pixie Armada is supreme. But yeah a Bard would be better at this. The Pixie Armada requires you to cast a Druid spell, whereas Animate Dead isn't.
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Aug 20, 2014 14:24
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Froghammer posted:Edition partisans used to call that one "The Stormwind Fallacy". The basic idea is that "thing X isn't a problem because you can fix it easily by doing Y" is a logical fallacy because if X really and truly wasn't a problem then it wouldn't need to be fixed at all. That's the Oberoni Fallacy. The Stormwind Fallacy states that just because you're mechanically powerful doesn't mean you can't be roleplayed well.
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Aug 21, 2014 00:59
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:Multiclass Warlock, take Summon Warlock's Ally, summon eldritch vampire brides (Mourning Handmaidens). It is clear to me now what my next character will be. Nay, what it must be.
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Aug 22, 2014 15:11
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:Revenant has a separate concomitant feat chain that turns it into a vampire (Dark Feasting), so you could be a half-vampire/half-vampire in a past life that returned from the grave as a vampire and then was bitten by a vampire and turned into a Vampire. So... Blade and Rayne had a kid (let's call her BladeRayne) and then that kid died, but her various half-vampire powers awoke during death and she rose from the grave. Then there was a real dracula waiting at the grave who bit her to make her fully one of their kind. Oh, and she learned martial arts from Goku. Of course. My special snowflayke is now complete.
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Aug 22, 2014 15:31
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Jimbozig posted:Yeah, it seems like picking Berserker is actually a big nerf to raging. Which is pretty funny. On the other hand, at level 15 you never have to stop raging. You'll end it just before you go to sleep, which restores the exhaustion. Then next day you wake up, go into a frenzy and then have a frenzied wash, some frenzied breakfast, and walk along the road frenzied while whistling a frenzied tune. All a rage does it prevent you from casting spells, big deal. You can still do any other task normally.
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Aug 24, 2014 16:20
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Jack the Lad posted:Unfortunately Persistent Rage means your rage ends early only if you choose for it to do so (i.e. not if you can't hit something for a round). It still only lasts 1 minute per use. Ah drat. Too good to be true, I guess. Ok yeah so frenzy just sucks then.
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Aug 24, 2014 20:41
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A Catastrophe posted:Correction: He judged in favour of the RAI, which in 5e, is king. It feels weird to defend 5e, but... No, the Hiding sidebar on page 177 makes the intention pretty clear. You get a check when a creature "actively searches" for signs of a hidden being. Passive perception is explicitly called out as being the method for handling creatures that aren't actively searching. Maybe if there were some city guards and Rosalind's face had been appearing on Wanted: Dead or Alive posters, they would get some checks. But the idea that everybody is actively scanning all the time is absurd and obsoletes the entire concept of passive perception. Rosalind's DM was a loving tool.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:23
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Gort posted:My main issue with wizard characters is how they devolve into a boring "hunt for the best spells" character that has no coherent theme at all. Play one wizard and you might as well have played every wizard. Amen. I played a 3.5 Wizard all the way up to level 19 or so and this is exactly what happened. Oh, I had some flavorful choices as well of course, but when the rubber hits the road you can either be flavorful or alive. I can't seriously play a hyper-intelligent character and also ignore all the spells that are manifestly better at keeping myself and my friends in good health.
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Aug 28, 2014 19:29
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There are loads of effects that incapacitate but I haven't found any that still allows movement, save for Modify Memory during the reprogramming (but the creature is unaware of its surroundings so movement is still not a good option). But there could be, in theory, some in the MM or future products. Being incapacitated in 5e is like being dazed in 4e: you can still do some things, just not as much as normally.
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Aug 28, 2014 23:20
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GymnastyThom posted:Stupid newbie question, what do you add to a damage roll? For example, a level one monk with proficiency in simple weapons hits with a quarterstaff. The quarterstaff is 1d6. Do I add my Dex modifier? And my proficiency bonus? Neither? Remember that the quarterstaff does 1d8 damage if you wield it with two hands. And you really have no good reason not to.
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Aug 30, 2014 23:25
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Jack the Lad posted:Why would you roll for stats? With the standard array capping out at 15, there's something to be said for rolling. You have a pretty decent shot at getting a 16 and that would allow you to start with an 18 in your main stat (depending on race) so you can cap out at level 4. It's risky but if you pull it off you're ahead of the curve.
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Aug 31, 2014 23:07
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Kai Tave posted:Here's the thing, Wizards have a whole big chapter full of ways to overcome their own weaknesses. Bingo. So, the Wizard gets surrounded by goblins. At low levels that could be a problem. At higher levels... you can nuke them all. Or Sleep them. Or teleport away. Or fly. Or turn invisible. Or summon things to take care of it. Or mind-hijack them. Or self-buff to the point where you can take them out (this includes shapechanging). And it's not like every wizard can do all of these things. But a Wizard needs only to be able to do one of these things to render his own "weakness" irrelevant. Meanwhile the Fighter class has no way of ever dealing with his own weaknesses.
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Sep 2, 2014 02:15
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Kai Tave posted:Diablo was AD&D2E and WoW was 3E though. Diablo 2 was 3e as well. Check this poo poo out: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/Moomoo.pdf
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Sep 2, 2014 04:45
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MonsterEnvy posted:A natural 20 is always a pass no matter what. Page reference? I see this for attack rolls but not other types of rolls. Sage Genesis fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Sep 3, 2014 |
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Sep 3, 2014 21:28
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MonsterEnvy posted:The Nat 20 thing I did not know. I thought it was like 3.5 and 4e in which you could always pass a saving throw with a 20. I read it was that way on attack rolls so I assumed it was the same on saving throws. I mean this in the most helpful sense possible: please make less assumptions about the rules and read up on them. It will make discussions easier for everybody involved.
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Sep 3, 2014 23:03
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Radio Talmudist posted:Could someone explain the concept of hit die and how they work when leveling? I found myself confused by the explanation in the PHB. When you level up, you roll a single hit die of the appropriate type to your class, and your Con modifier. This adds to your existing hit points to determine your new maximum. In addition, you keep the hit dice you've accumulated over your career as a self-healing mechanism. After a short rest you can spend one or more of them, add your Con modifier to each, and regain that many hit points. Spent hit dice are recovered through long rests, which gives you half of them back, rounded down. (It's not explicitly stated that there's a minimum of 1, but unless you want 1st level characters to be unable to heal you'd do well to interpret things that way.)
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Sep 8, 2014 14:49
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Power Player posted:So is there nothing like Arcane Spell Failure chance in 5e? If you're proficient with a type of armor, you can cast in it, no questions asked? Yes, that's exactly right.
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Sep 10, 2014 15:48
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Know what's weird? Body Thief says the monster gains all the knowledge of the victim, including spells... but it doesn't really ever say that it loses this knowledge if it leaves the body. And why should it? It ate the brain, which houses the knowledge. It's not like the brainless body by itself knows all this poo poo. So I guess there's Intellect Devourers that also happen to be level 20 in every class, having slowly worked their way up the food chain. Not that the rules take this into account or anything with a random "this is the poo poo it knows" table or anything. Or look at it from another angle: knowing spells implies that the ID can cast them. But how does that make sense? Do gods only grant spells to the bodies of their clerics, even if someone else entirely is driving around the car? What about warlock familiars or ranger pets? Do they still obey? I think there is room for an "up to the DM" philosophy, particularly when it comes to corner cases. But this stuff is so weird that I wouldn't know how to handle it. The ability is two paragraphs but still so vague that I can't figure it out. Is knowledge of warlock spells enough to cast them? Even though the Devourer never made a pact? If the answer is no, then the Devourer's ability lies. If the answer is yes, then nobody ever needs to make a warlock pact anymore because knowledge can be taught and imparted on others, as the patron's permission is irrelevant. Come the gently caress on, if you want to have it all be "up to the DM" at least provide enough of a framework for me to make informed decisions. This isn't empowering me to do my job, it's forcing me to do yours.
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Sep 11, 2014 21:37
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Kaza42 posted:That would actually make a great slightly-meta Big Bad for a campaign. An ancient Intellect Devourer who has consumed dozens of powerful adventurers, obtaining their knowledge and skills over the centuries. It's why the villain performs highly visible evil acts: to draw out new adventurers to devour. The Devourer would then goad them into gaining in strength at the rapid pace that heroes tend to do, until they're worth eating. I like it, but isn't that what the original Tomb of Horrors was about as well?
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Sep 11, 2014 22:00
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Oh look, it's a level 1 creature that resists nonmagical weapons. What a surprise. It's starting to look like this is the edition where damage resistance is more common and earlier encountered than ever before. And of course a single attack routine can knock out an equal-level Fighter. Although looking at some other CR 1 monsters... that seems to be pretty common. I really wonder what the hell their design principle is here. If levels 1 through 3 are the tutorial levels, where players are new and characters are low on resources, why would you make everything so drat swingy? Shouldn't you hold off on that until level 5 or so?
Sage Genesis fucked around with this message at 08:34 on Sep 15, 2014 |
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Sep 15, 2014 08:21
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:Is magic resistance still a thing for monsters? Sort of. Some monsters do have a trait called "magic resistance." What this means is that they have advantage on all saving throws against spells and other magical effects. But there's also spells that require an attack roll of the spellcaster, or that work through some other method (e.g. Sleep being compared to hit point totals). Against those spells the magic resistance trait does utterly nothing. It looks like they included the name because grogs expect it and they just slapped on some advantage mechanic, their go-to solution for everything. But it means the trait is quite inconsistent in terms of what it can resist. It also can no longer differentiate between a monster which used to have 10% resistance or one that had 90% resistance (or between SR 12 and SR 26 , if you prefer the 3e style); everything is just an extra die.
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Sep 16, 2014 10:33
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Slimnoid posted:I remember it taking a while for a rust monster to pop up in 4e, and it was relegated to a Dragon issue with the explicit warning of "look, you and I both know this isn't a very fun monster, but people have been asking for it SO here's some ways to include the monster while also not screwing your players over immensely." Hmm, not quite. Ecology of the Rust Monster (Dragon #376) came out slightly after they were already introduced in Monster Manual 2. No such warning either. That said the 5e version of this monster is still pretty drat stupid. No no, it doesn't resist nonmagical weapons... it just happens to destroy them. See? Much better! And yeah it leaves wooden weapons alone but there aren't really any good ones. For its CR this is just yet another "gently caress you for being a Fighter" monster.
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Sep 17, 2014 02:15
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crime fighting hog posted:Serious post: how many of you ever encountered a rust monster while playing? I've been doing this poo poo since 2004 and never ever EVER dealt with a goddamn rust monster, as a player or as a DM in search of poo poo to throw at my players. Yes. Once back in the 90s, when we were young and new to the game and didn't know any better. Once in the game Kai Tave already mentioned (I'm in the same game). I used them once in an actual game as the DM. A camp of hobgoblins had organized a game where you're strapped with pieces of iron and have to ride a Rust Monster for five minutes. Whoever had the most intact pieces at the end of the runs was declared the winner. It's called the corrodeo.
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Sep 17, 2014 10:25
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Power Player posted:Wait, does mage armor set your base AC as 13 or 16? I could have sworn it says 16 in the book, but in the rules on Wizard's site it says 13. It's 13 + Dex modifier.
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Sep 18, 2014 15:50
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ascendance posted:All the complicated interacting rule bits make it much harder to tinker with the system. The assumption of game balance means that I won't, say, arbitrarily decide martial characters can start off with guns and magic weapons in exchange for debt. Sure you can. Why not? Giving sweet loot to martial types in 4e will have the exact same impact as it does in any other modern D&D edition. The only difference is that 4e is so transparent that you can see what would happen. And what would happen is this: the game's default sense of balance would be disturbed. That's all. Doesn't mean the game crashes, doesn't mean a good DM or campaign-specific story can't handle it, just means you're no longer guaranteed the predictability of balance. I swear, some people out there have some very strange ideas about what "balance" really means...
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Sep 19, 2014 20:40
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