|
Concentration is a good mechanic. Now, imagine if special fighting stances, stubborn denials of mortal wounds, etc, were powered by concentration.
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2014 19:42
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 05:49 |
|
|
Meepo posted:Total spells that require a saving throw: 42 Each class in the starter set has one real save and one bullshit save. It seems like fortitude, reflex, and will still exist in all but name - although it wouldn't exactly shock me to learn that some of the non-core classes either get two bullshit saves or two real ones.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 4, 2014 02:12
|
|
|
It's with bitter irony that I post this given the further conduct of the guy who wrote it, but nevertheless: http://nobilis.me/quotes:exalted-is-totally-gay There's probably room to quibble about that sidebar's wording but it's a good inclusion.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 4, 2014 02:30
|
|
|
Fighter maneuvers are cool, just like a wizard that got advanced spell slots but could only ever prepare level one spells such that all they ever got was the ability to fling more magic missiles at once would be cool.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 5, 2014 03:31
|
|
|
treeboy posted:Thinking about how to control wizard scope and ability. I've long thought that Wizards should be forced to choose a specific school of study which would limit the overall availability of other schools (or in certain situations outright deny them) Okay, what if they pick conjuration? Oops, problem remains. The problem isn't that a wizard with three spell slots can fill them with firebolt, charm, and blink as opposed to firebolt, fireshield, firewall. The problem is that a wizard has three spell slots and a fighter has the attack button.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 5, 2014 06:17
|
|
|
Amethyst posted:A wizard with a smaller spell list where spells scale might actually be cool Have you read the .pdf? That's how it works. Magic missile is a 1st level spell that shoots three forcebolts. If you spend a 2nd level slot to cast it, it shoots four forcebolts instead. Cast it with a 9th level spell and it shoots ten bolts. At the same time, though, there are actually spells so powerful or dramatic in effect that they need a minimum level spell slot to work at all. There's no 1st level fireball or 8th level time stop, for instance. So, not only can the wizard fire off numerically enhanced versions of his old tricks, but he steadily learns new tricks. Meanwhile, there are no high level maneuvers. The only difference between a level 20 fighter's capabilities and a level 3 fighter's capabilities are the frequency and intensity of the manuevers - there's no qualitative scaling of any kind. So, it's like a wizard who got higher-level spell slots, but never learned higher level spells to cast with them. It's really easy to imagine ways to fix this, even ways that would be consistent with the existing language/power schemes - like, maybe if you spend two dice on a maneuver, or spend dice of a certain size on that maneuver, the maneuver sprouts some new property - but, welllll.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 5, 2014 06:30
|
|
|
The funny thing is that even if you removed the high level spells the wizard's "scales with spell slot" system would still beat the maneuver system the fighter got. Here's how fighters improve: * learn more maneuvers * superiority dice go from d8, to d10, to d12 * can store more dice at once (maybe not? I forget, it could be that they just always have a max of five) * at level 15, regenerate 2 dice at the end of any turn that they began with zero dice Buuut you only ever spend one die on one maneuver. So you go from a feint that adds d8 damage to a feint that adds d12 damage. Unlike the wizard, the fighter can't choose whether to use his biggest, strongest dice or mid-level dice or whatever, it's an all or nothing proposition where the difference between "all" and "nothing" is actually pretty minor. Now, since maneuvers trigger on attacks, and fighters get to make multiple attacks, a high level fighter can effectively spend multiple dice in a turn if each attack connects and each enemy saving throw fails, etc, but fundamentally they are still missing the implicit drama in "This foe will require all of my power! Magic missile... nine!" You just... attack, and spend your dice whenever the game decides to let you, until you run out.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 5, 2014 06:40
|
|
|
LFK posted:your 15th level Maneuvers are, by definition and all practicality, the ones you wanted least. This is a great way to put it.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 5, 2014 07:26
|
|
|
Who cares about Knock? Knock should be a ritual - it's exactly the kind of spell the ritual rules were made for. You might as well charge a fighter hit dice each time they kick a door down.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2014 00:39
|
|
|
I'm still waiting for some feat or class feature or whatever that gives you a bonus bonus action.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2014 01:20
|
|
|
Jack the Lad posted:It seems likely to me that it was an oversight. I don't see any other reason for them to have included Potent Cantrip in Basic without including cantrips that benefit from it. If they are adding cantrips that will benefit from it later, why not add Potent Cantrip later as well? This is such obvious bullshit. Obviously a cantrip that pushes on a hit doesn't push on a miss, even if it deals half damage. A shitload of spells in the basic .pdf deal damage + effect on a hit, half damage alone on a miss. Who the hell does he think he's fooling? treeboy posted:So wizard DPR is not as high as was being calculated, also interesting that fighters can get upwards of six attacks in a round with action surge Six attacks in around with action surge if they're also dual wielding - you can only action surge once per turn. It's almost certainly better for your damage output to just penta-attack with a greatsword. Wizard DPR is going to be as high as has been calculated within a few points, incidentally. There's a cleric cantrip attack that deals 1d8 -> 4d8 on a failed reflex save right there in the basic rules, and it's got the extra effect that it ignores cover, so there's no reason that a separate d10 damage cantrip won't come into being within a book or three. Note also that you're talking about the DPR of a wizard using at-will capabilities exclusively.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2014 16:19
|
|
|
Maxwell Lord posted:If only there were some way to clearly mark what parts of a spell trigger on a hit and those which go into effect no matter what. This has nothing to do with the presence or absence of natural language. Thunderwave and Sunburst both clearly inflict full damage + effect on a hit, and half damage without an effect on a miss. Every vs. AC cantrip that inflicts a nondamaging effect reads "on a hit". Half damage on a miss creates no confusion whatsoever because the meaning of "hit" is clear even in the absence of highly technical formatting.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2014 17:13
|
|
|
It's worth dollar sign XP, though! Think of the haul!
|
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2014 03:52
|
|
|
"The monster you have disadvantage against" doesn't really do the Medusa justice, though. Zachol's got the right of it - a game that was actually about engaging and taking down terrifying monsters of myth would be one whose game mechanics tracked how close you were to succumbing to that monster's powers, such that running out of hit points against the medusa signals that you have been forced to look into her gaze and turned to stone.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2014 01:29
|
|
|
Underwhelmed posted:Yeah I actually liked a lot of little things in 4e (the healing surge bit in particular) and wish they had copied forward an awful lot more of it in 5th. Here's what's insane: 5e has healing surges. They're called "hit dice", you spend them to regain hit points after short rests, and the interesting thing about them is that while a full night's rest restores all your HP, it only restores up to half your maximum hit dice. This means that unlike surges, hit dice can to some extent model multi-day burnout/exhaustion. But... nothing seems to use them. You can totally imagine martial healing being like "a creature that can hear you spends a hit die" (and maybe even rolls it twice and uses the better result, or maximizes it, or whatever) while magical healing consumes spell slots but doesn't care about your hit dice at all. And yet...
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2014 15:18
|
|
|
Yeah, unless you've got a specific feature that allows you to rip your surges out of your body and hit your enemy with them, healing surges are more a way of keeping score and measuring how well a party is doing. A bunch of adventurers with 2-3 surges left each is different from one that has 5-6 each, even if they've got the same powers readied. Being low on surges is a sign you need to start thinking about pulling back and resting, same as being low on hit points and spells is.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2014 02:39
|
|
|
The burning hands/thunderwave thing is seriously unreal.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2014 04:52
|
|
|
What kind of stuff did the ~consultants~ veto?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2014 17:44
|
|
|
In fact, it's spells by higher level casters which are harder to save against, which is simpler but actually worse for the guy rolling the same - a wizard doesn't need a level 7 will save to shut a fighter down when a level 2 will do just as well and hit just as often.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2014 01:53
|
|
|
eth0.n posted:Fighting Man for D&D 5E. This is pretty cool. If I seriously wanted to play one I'd want to see some sort of alternate class feature that replaced your followers with something more inherent/internal, though.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2014 06:06
|
|
|
Check out this cutting edge rules tech: bonus reaction.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 17, 2014 16:38
|
|
|
You can definitely delete all listed feat prereqs in any edition of D&D and harm nothing.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 18, 2014 15:09
|
|
|
Jack the Lad posted:Also, Resilient gives you proficiency to a chosen save. So that's probably going to be fairly mandatory for most people to shore up those dump stats. Ahhhhh-hah. Can you take it multiple times? Even if you can't, we've definitely found our first feat tax. Gee, I wonder what save a spellcaster is going to choose... Does the game let you buy Resilient for, like, Str or Int saves, by the by? Does any text warn you not to do this?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2014 14:12
|
|
|
treeboy posted:Resilient gives +1 to a stat and proficiency in that stats saves. Are you nuts? It cuts your weak saves in half. It'd give a fighter some kind of reistance against hold person and otherwise trivially effective disablers. Concentration checks are Constitution saves. Obviously, you wouldn't take this instead of twenty-ing your wizard's Int score, but you don't have to.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2014 14:48
|
|
|
treeboy posted:I am not nuts, simply pointing out that getting a 20 in a primary stat takes at least 2 ability score increases (if you're using arrays). That means the earliest you'd be able to select this feat is lvl 12. The higher the level the more likely your concentration saves won't matter since eventually they become impossible anyway. So you buy two regular ability boosts and then Resilient and Warcaster, or maybe just one full boost since most of the caster feats you're taking are worth +1 caster stat anyway. Remember, your Fortitude save is important even if it didn't increase the range of attacks and annoying phenomena you could maintain concentration through - what, you like getting thrown off cliffs and taking full damage from Finger of Death? Resilient is definitely a feat tax. It's the sifferent between being competitive and being overmatched vs. an entire class of attack. Failed saves kill! Or at least pathetically incapacitate.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2014 15:13
|
|
|
Surely you'd put Con over Dex. HP is probably more valuable than AC and most Dex saves are just attempts not to lose HP. (Just taking Resilient twice migh be ideal, in fact) Even Con peoficiency isn't going to save tour concentration from a dragon bite or something, but what about a flurry of goblin arrows? A 1d6/rd burning floor? Seasickness? What if you've got Stoneskin on? If you've got proficiency and advantage on Concentration you've got way more options open to you on top of the enormous universal utility of having one weak save instead of two. Improved Defenses wasn't a 4e feat tax for nothing.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2014 15:40
|
|
|
Ten saves you fail on a 2 instead of ten saves you fail on a 7. That's huge. Stack war caster and it's ten saves you fail in TWO twos. But, honestly, the concentration thing is just the icing on the cake, governing WHICH version of Resilient a caster is likely to prioritize. The reason Resilient is such a big deal is that in 5e there are three important saves whose DCs scale with the strength of your opposition, but only one save whose bonus scales with your level. You get suckier and suckier at surviving fingers of death or dominates or whatever... unless you take this feat, which puts you on the same footing at level 10 that you were on at level 1.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2014 16:06
|
|
|
I mean, in 4e you don't need a lot of the NAD boosters early on either, because it takes to around mid paragon tier for your barbarian's will to start getting hit whenever a monster rolls a 3. Resilient really "comes online" around the level you get a new feat having maxed your attack stat already - it IS a level 12 buy, in other words, since your prof bonus is what by that point, 3? 4? E: And come on, dude, no trap feats? Hrm, should I take Resilient or Linguist.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2014 16:18
|
|
|
Yeah, that's why they're called feat TAXES. They're boring as poo poo, but leave you comically incompetent unless you take them, so they push interesting and flavorful feats out of the game.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2014 16:31
|
|
|
You can try saying "yes, you're right, Resilient is a feat tax" instead of immediately dodging. For instance, you're once again pretending that Resilient is just a way to fix your concentration checks, when I've pointed out quite explicitly that it's a crucial math fix that happens to improve spellcaster concentration as a significant side benefit. You're not wrong about "don't play with feats". Perhaps people SHOULDN'T play wih feats. Of course, if they don't, non-scaling save bonuses will lead to creeping incompetence on everyone's part, so maybe annoying as feats are the poor math of the game means we're stuck with them. Hmm, this feels familiar... E: It's almost directly analogous to 4e item progression. You think there weren't trap items, even though many items gave you +1 to some core value regardless of how lovely or crucial their additional property was? Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Jul 21, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2014 16:55
|
|
|
I would say that 5e is for people who liked 3e but didn't invest themselves into it heavily or got too tired of their giant houserule matrices to keep at them. "3e with numerically stronger fighters and numerically weaker spellcasters" appeals to some people.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2014 18:10
|
|
|
I mean, there basically are just three saves, and each class gets to be good at one of them. That's what it looks like in the basic set, anyway - can anyone in the full rules confirm that none of the printed classes are good at more than one "real" save? Actually, I would't be too surprised if some were, precisely to make members of those classes be unusually resilient - I'd expect monks and paladins to have at least two "real" saves, for instance. If psionics came out and targeted nothing but the bullshit saves - Int to resist psychic domination, Str to fight back against telekinesis, etc. - that would actually be pretty funny. You could almost see it working, too, since suddenly each class's lovely save is the star of the show.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2014 00:36
|
|
|
4e players like rests, right? And feats? I heard those guys love feats. What the heck, throw 'em in.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2014 07:18
|
|
|
It'd be a lot cleaner if you could just take a single short rest per day, and would incidentally eliminate complaints about second wind or whatever drat thing. That's actually a neat way to break up resources into daily and quasidaily, I think, and it already applies to the most important kind of resource since a wizard's short rest spell recharge is 1/day. It's a good idea to allow a high level wizard to cast two level 9 spells per day but only 1 in a given encounter, for instance.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2014 18:20
|
|
|
MalcolmSheppard posted:If WotC knew how to design a action/hero/fate/willpower/good stuff fuel trait worth a drat I think it would solve so many problems. Spend a point to do X, the points recover over a game time interval (per session) or based on the type of power being invoked. For some reason that company, which has a lot of design talent, never seems to develop decent implementations of this idea. Power Points in 4e's third PHB were a horrible disappointment here. I want a D&D where you play "lands" except instead of Island and Mountain they're stuff like Mana and Stamina and you need to tap 1 Mana, 1 Stamina, and 1 power point of any "color" to execute an Eldritch Slash or whatever. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Jul 25, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2014 16:58
|
|
|
It honestly is an improvement over 3.5 in many ways, and it's no doubt faster to run than 4e was. This board's complaints about 5e (or at least, my complaints about 5e) boil down to: 1. It pretends it's a theater of the mind (as opposed to grid/map-using) game when many of its rules pretend otherwise 2. Like every other edition of D&D but the fourth one, it reserves all its agency and doting attention for spellcasting characters, leaving non-spellcasters thin and boring
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2014 17:57
|
|
|
So that magic swords are better than regular swords. I don't really buy that pluses, even "straight" pluses totally unalloyed with any other magical properties, trivial or otherwise, are a bad thing. If all swords deal 1-8 damage, and your sword deals 2-9 damage (or 6-14 damage), that's meaningful in itself. (I could see the argument for enchantment only affecting damage, not hit chance, but I think either are potentially fine, especially in a game with largely flat defenses and high base to-hit chances) It's silly to pretend that high-level adventurers aren't expected to have magic weaponry, of course.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2014 21:07
|
|
|
Getting straight-up better isn't actually boring, it's just familiar. Insofar as HP damage is at all real and meaningful in the game world, +1 to HP damage makes a difference to the narrative.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2014 21:21
|
|
|
Peas and Rice posted:I didn't like 4th Ed because it felt like making an MMO character. In fact, it felt like the engine of a computer RPG, which substitutes character development in the imagination based on the shared experiences around the table (remember that time we nearly died fighting those goblins?!) with preconstructed development trees for classes. What sticks out to me here is that is that crunchy character development and shared experiences around the table have nothing to do with each other. There's no edition of D&D that I know of that actually integrates shared experiences around the gaming table into the actual mechanics, although I guess the "achievement" feats in Pathfinder come close; memorably almost dying to goblins makes no difference to how much time you had to waste picking feats out. One of the tragedies of the D&D fanbase in general, I think, is that well-meaning people honestly misinterpret what other well-meaning people honestly want, so for instance you are assuming here that I enjoy 4E because I like really complicated system mastery-intensive character generation (I don't, it's actually really tedious) and if I was uncharitable I could assume that you enjoy 5E because it shoves the fighter right into the trash where it belongs. In reality, I'd be overjoyed to play a version of 4E that had 5E's jump-right-in simplicity and I assume that you would at worst shrug at a version of 5E that gave fighters daily powers. The real problem is that game designers make this mistake, so people actually creating official Dungeons and Dragons content are honestly sitting there and thinking they're doing 4E fans a favor by writing up huge lists of interlocking feats or whatever.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2014 20:10
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 05:49 |
|
|
Having a list of preset activated powers to choose from is crippling to the imagination, which is why spellcasters in all prior editions were always so helpless to improvise or use lateral thinking.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2014 20:18
|
|