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ascendance posted:In 5e, the balance is once again tilted in favor of casters, so giving better gear to non-casters is more a way of adding balance back into the game. Not sure if that's true, and also not sure what it has to do with the idea that it would be hard to do such a thing in 4e. Even if it were true that it would be a good idea in 5e... how does that reflect at all on the difficulty of doing it in 4e?
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Sep 19, 2014 21:02
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Bassetking posted:It is literally dirt loving simple to do it in 4e. Look at the weapon table. Go "Hmm. I'd like my melee character to have a sword which can be used to deal fire damage, and can also be used to deal ice damage." Then look at how weapons are built. Then say "Ok, it's a 1d8 weapon, and, once per turn, as a free action, you can change its damage type to fire, cold, or neutral." Exactly, that's my point.
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Sep 19, 2014 21:48
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Grimpond posted:So, your point is that 4e is....a mechanically understandable, modifiable system that has clear rules for how to use it? Well it helps to keep a bit of context in mind here. I was originally responding to "ascendance", who claimed that it was harder to make certain adjustments to 4e. My point is that I disagree with that idea.
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Sep 19, 2014 22:06
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thespaceinvader posted:I'd disagree. It's easy to come up with a single element (a power, a magic item, a ritual) and have it be reasonably balanced. The original statement was about giving guns to martials... what you describe is something quite different.
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Sep 19, 2014 23:50
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branar posted:Out of curiosity have you figured out what kinds of formulas (...if any) are going into monster stats? Well to be fair to 5e, perhaps you should hold off on some of those questions until the DMG comes out.
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Sep 20, 2014 01:05
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Kai Tave posted:...in a few months, give or take. But the staggered release feels so delightfully D&D! Remember how we couldn't play 3e for months after it was "released" at first? Clearly that's something we needed again. Alright alright, jokes aside, I think they gave a reason for that? Something like... they wanted to be able to concentrate their full team on polishing up the MM and next the DMG? Which suggests that they designed their classes and spells before they knew what the opposition really was. In D&D, which is at its core a dungeoncrawling PVE style game, apparently you can design the damage output of spells before you even know what sort of hit points the targets will have. I don't even know man.
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Sep 20, 2014 01:15
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Sab669 posted:With the spell Message, can you talk to things that don't share a Language? Sure, you absolutely can talk to things that don't share a language with you. It's just that they won't understand what you're saying. The spell only repeats words that you've whispered - if they wouldn't understand the whisper, they wouldn't understand the repetition. But you can still talk to them. Or talk at them, strictly speaking.
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Sep 20, 2014 16:04
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Gort posted:The death rules are actually less lethal than 4e as well - in 4e you had to be knocked to negative bloodied to die, in 5e you have to be knocked to negative full HP. Unlikely to happen except at the lower levels. Sort of... you can also die if you get hit three times, regardless of how much damage each hit does. If you normally have 100 max hp while you lie at zero, a single blow of 99 damage doesn't really threaten you. But three blows of 1 hp each, and you're instantly off to the Styx.
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Sep 20, 2014 18:22
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ascendance posted:What? As a fighter I can run up to a guy, hit him with attack, kill him, and move on to the next guy. How does letting the fighter move in between all of his extra attacks neuter his ability to engage in melee? It's not the Fighter's ability to move that neuters them, it's everybody else's ability to do so that neuters them. Well, "neuters" might be too strong a word, but with only one reaction per round it definitely does mean that hit-and-run tactics are frightfully effective. It also means that blocking off a corridor just by yourself is unlikely, unless it's very narrow. This reduces their traditional role as front-line warrior.
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Sep 21, 2014 02:45
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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." Wow, that is... that something alright.
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Sep 23, 2014 17:34
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greatn posted:Your less interesting stuff is my less tedious bullshit to keep track of. Tell me, what did the orcs do?
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Sep 24, 2014 02:04
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greatn posted:4e doesn't have classes. There's one class. Something I considered the other day: There are complaints leveled against 4e that all classes feel the same. Now let's take into account that they do work the same to some extent, because all classes (or at least those at the start of the edition's lifespan) largely use the same AEDU structure. Compared to previous editions, this has been a very large homogenizing step. But why does the same power structure cause them to feel the same? All characters in Savage Worlds use the same structure of skills and edges, but they're not the same. All characters in Exalted use the same structure of motes and charms, but they're not the same. All characters in Fate use the same structure of skills, aspects, and stunts. But they're not the same. All characters in GURPS use the same structure. Same for Mutants & Masterminds. And Cyberpunk 2020. And Nobilis. And Burning Wheel. And Heavy Gear. And The One Ring. And- you know, I'll just stop now. You get the point. I don't think I've ever seen anybody complaining that all vampires in VtM feel the same. Ever. In 23 years of that game's existence. (I'm sure there's one or two people who think that way, this is the internet after all.) But give both the Fighter and the Wizard a daily power and watch the fireworks! Now every class is the same and a videogame! I sometimes wonder if maybe 4e is more popular amongst fans of RPGs, whereas 3e/5e is more popular amongst fans of WotC-era D&D.
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Sep 24, 2014 02:39
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goldjas posted:It's not like in 5E sometimes the DM has to roll when a monster attacks, and sometimes the player has to roll when a monster attacks (depending on if it's considered a "spell" or not) and it's not like there are 7 entirely different types defenses to keep track of to survive these things. Seven defenses? No... it's more than that. Sometimes you need to roll a save, but sometimes you need to roll a check. Different bonuses apply to each. (E.g. Paladin Aura vs. Remarkable Athlete.) And sometimes the monster rolls 3d6 and compares it to one of your scores. Man, seven defenses... that would be way too few. Thank goodness 5e didn't dumb things down too much, right?
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Sep 24, 2014 02:44
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Transient People posted:They actually don't. The more they target the high-defense targets, the lower their average DPR drops. If you're a squishy ranger, get the gently caress out of the line of fire. Rangers count as squishy now? D10 hit dice, medium armor, they're really in a pretty decent position. Just a tad above average all things considered.
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Oct 3, 2014 14:57
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Transient People posted:Talking about 4e here. They are very squishy there. Ah I see. Hmmm, but I've run several 4e campaigns where people played Rangers. They never struck me as squishy. Their defenses and hit points are decidedly average. And they have a couple of nasty interrupts that can make attacks miss. Maybe we handle different definitions of "squishy."
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Oct 3, 2014 19:08
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greatn posted:I'm not sure I understand the whole xp budget thing. If the multiplier doesn't effect the earned xp, why are you supposed to use it? I've just been flat adding all monsters together and dividing by number of players. I'm not sure if the multiplier doesn't affect the earned xp. By the way the Basic D&D DM pdf works, I don't think it ever really says that monsters award xp at all.
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Oct 6, 2014 13:23
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AlphaDog posted:That part's right there in the text. The same sentence also kind of hints that characters gain xp for beating monsters. Oh there it is. Man, that is dumb. I think my brain forced my eyes to gloss over that part for self-preservation.
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Oct 6, 2014 13:36
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greatn posted:I just approach things from a far more improvisational stance, and apparently so did the designers. Then they shouldn't have provided a system in the first place. Plenty of games use a fairly relaxed, improvisational stance. That's fine. Some games simply place opposition based on what makes sense in the game world for there to be, balanced encounters be damned. That's also fine. Different approaches for different styles. But you shouldn't make a whole system, complicated enough to need multipliers with fractional numbers, and then take the stance that you're not actually supposed to trust or use it. If you make a system, go and do it well. Anything less means you didn't do your job.
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Oct 6, 2014 14:24
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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!" Perhaps your players do feel that way, but I wouldn't make statements like that about other people's players. Mine are absolutely fine with leveling up when I tell them to, as it tends to be after an adventure or two, meaning they both earned it and it happens during a natural lull in the action. (Depending on the game and edition of course. If for some reason I were to run AD&D then I couldn't really hand out equal levels.)
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Oct 7, 2014 15:09
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:With advantage and the 18 crit, a champion can be getting crits on 28% of attacks, or a 63% chance of landing at least one crit per round with 3 attacks. Champions also get a bonus to initiative which i hope noone is going to sneer at. Oh wow, a 63% chance of doing... what, 1d8 extra damage or something? Look, improving your crit range by 1 in 5e means a 1-in-20 chance of doing your damage dice twice. For a Rogue this would be cool. For a Champion-Fighter this translates as less valuable than a straight up +1 damage bonus would be. Not only is the average damage gain pretty small, but due to the erratic nature of the dice sometimes you get your oh-so-cool crit on a monster that would've died from a normal hit anyway. The Champion Fighter is the class that gets the crit range increase but he rolls the least dice (compared to Rogues, Barbarians, Paladins, War Clerics, and Marking Rangers), meaning he barely benefits from it. It's an example of what I consider to be a widespread problem with 5e's design: feels good, thinks wrong.
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Oct 11, 2014 02:44
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ascendance posted:I read stuff like this, and I start to think stapling on BECMI style weapon mastery to 5e might just be a good idea. Hey, go for it. I'm not a fan of 5e but I'm not blind to its strengths. (I know, I know, the laws of the internet dictate I shouldn't say so.) It's pretty easy to houserule 5e and I really doubt the Champion Fighter would suddenly become overpowered by gaining some weapon mastery ability.
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Oct 11, 2014 02:57
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:1d8 if you are sword and boarding, but the champion doesnt really synergize with that. 1d12/2d6 dropping 1s is more their style, and with the DMG we'll probably see on-crit bonus equipment. A Fighter subclass that requires (optional) magic items from a different book and still doesn't synergize well with the arguably the most iconic depiction of the Fighter is nothing to be happy with.
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Oct 11, 2014 13:41
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AlphaDog posted:CR defines XP. It's relevant to encounter building. Yeah. Every single CR 2 creature is worth 450 xp, for example. To say that CR is irrelevant and you should look at xp instead is... frankly impossible. The one is directly determined by the other.
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Oct 12, 2014 15:18
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:It doesn't do you much good. The XP number is what you need and use when building encounters. So... what is your actual argument here? I'm really having trouble following this. You say that CR is irrelevant and it's all about the xp value... even though the CR basically is the xp value. And also, you yourself said that CR is a number that shows the appropriate minimum level the PC party ought to be to face these. I don't see how any of this makes CR irrelevant. Nor do I see why you're making this a point of discussion. Even if we were to somehow accept that CR is irrelevant, so what? Why bring that up? 30.5 Days mentioned that by their CR, illithids and IDs can appear in the same party... and you then say CR is irrelevant. So you think they shouldn't be encountered in the same group? Or something? Look, I genuinely want to see and participate in some good D&D talks, but I have zero clue what you're trying to say here.
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Oct 12, 2014 15:28
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Quad posted:So I just started reading through the Starter Set stuff and I've got some questions for anyone with a PHB. Ok, first of all, because I am a pedantic motherfucker: lightning bolts don't travel at the speed of light. They're fast by human standards but not nearly that fast. If you don't recall any spell having a 40% chance of failure, then I guess you only played with monsters who lack magic resistance and have all their saves at +0? Every Wizard specializes in a school of magic at level 3. You don't need a feat to specialize, it's just free. And finally, don't forget that Ray of Frost is an at-will beam of frozen death. It can kill a goblin instantly, even at level 1, and will continue upgrading on its own. It just happens to not auto-hit all the time. That's not a big deal, sometimes you just happen to miss with your ice-laser. It's an attack. In D&D, attacks can miss. No worries.
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Oct 14, 2014 13:59
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gradenko_2000 posted:Some very basic ways around it are to guarantee 1 point of damage per attack even when the players (and only the players) miss, Yeah I don't think that'll go over well with the D&D crowd at large. When this was briefly put into the D&D Next playtest, people flipped out so much on ENWorld that they had to make a temporary subforum just to house the shitstorms. I am not even remotely kidding. This is thing that happened. Damage on a miss? People went loving nuts over it.
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Oct 14, 2014 15:30
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gradenko_2000 posted:I couldn't find anything in the PHB about subdual damage, and knocking him unconscious at 0 HP can still cause death if he fails his 3 saving throws "Knocking a creature out," page 198.
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Oct 17, 2014 16:52
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This has been covered many times before. They're both effects that set your AC to a specific number. Meaning, they are not effects that provide a bonus to your AC. So it's not a matter of stacking, it's just taking the higher of the two values. Either your AC is 13+Dex or it's 10+Dex+Con, whichever is best. This approach was chosen specifically to prevent stacking. (Contrast it with a spell like Shield of Faith, for example, which does provide a flat +2 bonus and so it would stack.) As always, feel free to houserule.
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Oct 20, 2014 22:45
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Agent Boogeyman posted:I'm absolutely dumbfounded how this game could have been made in 2014 and not be the laughing stock of modern tabletop game design. The writing of 5e reminds me in some ways of a Rorschach ink blot test. The "natural language" writing is amazingly vague in some places when you look closely at it, although at a glance it seems clear. For example, the Concentration rules tell you to make a saving throw when you're damaged, rolling separately for each source. But what is a "source" of damage? If a monster multiattacks for three attacks on the wizard, is that three sources (three attack and damage rolls) or one source (one creature using one action)? If a poison continues dealing damage to the wizard every round, isn't that a single source? Does that mean only a single saving throw has to be rolled during the first instance of damage and then never again? Or does the saving throw DC keep scaling up as the total amount of damage from this one single source keeps accumulating? Look, the intent of the rule is probably clear, I won't argue otherwise so let's not even go there. It's just to show that a relatively simple rule has been written in a way that can lead to some pretty different outcomes. And to anyone who says "rulings not rules", that's a cop out. Designing a game with GM adjudication in mind is fine, but that doesn't excuse vagueness in the rules you do intend to include.
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Oct 21, 2014 02:29
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To touch back on the Ryan Dancey/Pathfinder MMO/D20 thing for a moment, let me share an anecdote with you all. The points will become clear later. Back in the day, I ran the Warcraft d20 game for some of my friends. They were really into the whole Warcraft thing, and so was I must admit, so why not? (Note: we're talking about the Warcraft d20 RPG, not the later World of Warcraft d20 RPG.) This game really is just D&D 3.5 with some of the names changed and a couple of custom feats and spells thrown in. In one of the supplements, the world is described in greater detail. To give an example, the city of Goldshire is described as having 7000 inhabitants and possessing enough trade to have some goblin merchants amongst them. So what are my points? First, the D&D/d20 engine is terrible for running certain (most?) kinds of fiction. It played nothing like Warcraft should. System matters. It determines things that can or can't happen within the game's progress. Second, about that Pathfinder MMO. That's going to be awful for those poor guys who genuinely like the Golarion world. Anybody who is familiar with Goldshire in the World of Warcraft MMO can tell you that it's not a city, it doesn't have 7000 inhabitants, and there's no goblin merchants. In truth it's one inn, one blacksmith, and maybe like two houses. Oh, and a cart at the side of the road. Of course, few people knew about what Goldshire was really intended to be like, so nobody cares. With Golarion things are different. There is no way for them to make a world large enough to support cities with thousands upon thousands of inhabitants. Any MMO on a realistic scale would be preposterously huge and would require its own server for each individual city on the planet. Anybody who expects to see a 3d version of Golarion is in for some serious disappointment. At best you'll get to see a miniaturized parody. And that will lead to some odd flamewars down the line. New fans of (digital) Golarion will meet the fans of the old (paper) Golarion and they'll get to argue about whether this place or that is a city or not, how tough certain things are, how long it takes to run from Sandpoint to Magnimar, and so on. They'll do it. If you think they won't, you must be new to the internet. I think D&D did things smart. When they went with Eberron, they only did Stormreach. When they went with the Forgotten Realms, only Neverwinter. The entire campaign setting all at once? Yeah good luck with that.
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Oct 23, 2014 15:13
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Ratoslov posted:Nah, I can't remember where I heard the stuff about Goons, but here's some crazy stuff about Alignment Dancey wrote last year. It's pretty stupid. Wow that reputation system is pretty awful. If a high-level character quickly jumps into the Burning Hands cone of a newbie wizard, then the wizard counts as the aggressor and may be mobbed and mauled to death with impunity. The system also doesn't really punish anybody who can kill his target in one single attack. This system sounds trivially easy to abuse.
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Oct 23, 2014 22:31
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5e DMG previews: http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/news/extra-life Orb of Dragonkind can enslave your mind forever if you fail a Charisma check. Because let's not use our six saves or something?
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Oct 24, 2014 11:31
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gradenko_2000 posted:I don't know which one I like less, the completely lolrandom effects that can permanently gently caress over a character, or the insistence on using "percent" instead of "%" Stupidly enough, the figurine sometimes ignores "your" commands if "you" are good-aligned. In all cases, "you" refers to the one who activated it. But by default the figurines are friendly to "you" and "your" allies. In other words, just give the figurines to neutral-aligned party members and have them activate the figurines and give the command to give you a ride. This strikes me as a typical example of a rule that is meant to feel magical that in practice just gets ignored by gaming the system.
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Oct 24, 2014 13:15
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AlphaDog posted:That won't happen if the players don't know what it does though, which they would only know if they cheated by looking at the DMG. After the first lame gotcha! "reward" I'm sure they'll just throw endless Identifies on everything just to go through the rituals of their antagonistic paranoid relationship with their DM.
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Oct 24, 2014 13:52
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The obsidian steed is very rare, which doesn't mean what you'd think it does. It's rare in the sense that certain Magic the Gathering cards are rare. But it's not an artifact and as such can be Identified normally. And as for the actual artifact, yes those are extremely rare in the proper sense of the word. But that doesn't excuse using a Charisma check to enslave a PC into quasi-NPC status. Just because it doesn't happen often doesn't mean it should happen at all. I much prefer the 4e method where items would reward you for doing the correct thing by granting you more powers, and taking those powers away again if the character goes against the wishes of the artifact. To me that results in an interesting dynamic, where you might be seduced down the path of evil by being seduced by power. Being able to cast Suggestion at-will on you is essentially the same as handing over your character sheet to the DM. With a DC of 18 you will fail a save sooner or later, so you might as well give up and stop rolling dice to pretend you have any free will.
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Oct 24, 2014 15:24
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"You're far to pure" "You're far too pure" There is a difference.
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Oct 25, 2014 02:03
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Gerdalti posted:I'm about to start paying my first d&d game in almost 20 years. Combat flow is a little confusing to me. I get movement and action. How do reactions and opportunity attacks work? I'm planning to roll a Paladin with the Sentinel feat, so I should probably figure it out before my first session. You may take up to 1 reaction per round, in between your turns. This is not something that happens every round - for many characters, taking a reaction will be a rare occurrence. You typically need a special feat or class ability to make use of reactions, such as the Sentinel feat you already mentioned. Exactly what these reactions do or what they're triggered by depends on the individual reaction in question. The only thing the various reactions have in common is that you can take only one per round. Not one per type, just one in total. Opportunity Attacks are probably the most common type of reaction. Anybody can use it without the need for a special feat. It's triggered when an enemy you see leaves your reach. Your reach is typically 5' although some creatures and weapons might have more. When this does happen, you get to make one melee attack against them. So basically, don't worry about opportunity attacks too much. When somebody walks up to you, nothing happens. When somebody walks around you, nothing happens. When somebody walks away from or past you, then you get to make an opportunity attack. Sage Genesis fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Oct 27, 2014 |
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Oct 27, 2014 00:44
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Really Pants posted:Wait, is that the exact wording? It's only when something leaves your reach, not squares within your reach? What is these "squares" you speak of? No, as Rannos22 said, TotM means that it's only when they leave your reach. I do need to add one thing to that though: it doesn't count if they're forced out of your reach, such as by being knocked back by an explosion.
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Oct 27, 2014 02:44
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Sanglorian posted:Rant over. Feel free to tell me I'm wrong. Not really. In fact, would you mind if I save this post so I can quote it if I happen to run into someone who tells me 5e is really super-easy to pick up?
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Oct 28, 2014 15:32
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Gerdalti posted:As mentioned in another post, I'm about to play my first game of D&D in about 18 years. We're going to use 5e. I've built a character, but wouldn't mind a once over by some of you more experienced people to see if I've made any terrible glaring mistakes. Your saving throws are wrong. You noted as being proficient in Con saves, but you're actually proficient in Wisdom and Charisma saves.
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Oct 28, 2014 16:29
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