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Angryhead posted:The Pathfinder Beginner Box comes with a pretty nice reusable map. I was tempted to look into that for a beginners game I might be running, but it seems what you're basically paying for is the adventure (which I have no idea how good it is) and some (not even interesting looking) dice. I think if the dice were cool and the adventure was good it's probably worth the money.
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Feb 13, 2015 17:24
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Been running 5e for two groups. A bunch of dudes at College and my 6 year old little sister (And the rest of my family, but mostly her). Running Mines of Phandelver out of the Starter Set in both. It's going pretty well! Rules have been easy to pick up and the game plays very fluidly. The "Twelve Zombies" encounter drug on a bit, though. Partially because my players kept trying to loot the mages tent in the middle of the fight. No fatalities so far, but we've had people fall unconscious in both games. I can recommend the Starter Set and MoP pretty solidly, however it's balanced for having 4-5 people. It's really lethal with 3 people, and some fights are a pushover with 6.
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Feb 13, 2015 18:47
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BashGhouse posted:Been running 5e for two groups. A bunch of dudes at College and my 6 year old little sister (And the rest of my family, but mostly her). Running Mines of Phandelver out of the Starter Set in both. It's going pretty well! Rules have been easy to pick up and the game plays very fluidly. The "Twelve Zombies" encounter drug on a bit, though. Partially because my players kept trying to loot the mages tent in the middle of the fight. Well if you try to scoop up treasure mid combat these things happen. It's a shame to hear about the balance as I was thinking of using it with two newbies and one more experienced player. I suppose you can always adjust the number of monsters involved. In my next session I'm going to be trying to sell some items to village folk like a snake oil salesman. The things in question are the penises I cut off some lizard men we killed (no 6 year old in my game). I'm going to roleplay the poo poo out of that and use a mage as a shill so I can claim it has properties it doesnt using prestidigation. I wonder if my DM is going to allow that or not. I'm getting +5 to all my deception rolls so it should be easy enough to fool some peasants, and they are genuinely the penises from magical lizardmen so technically I'm only lying about what they do. I'll do it all with me and the gnome disguised too so we can change and make a quick get away.
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Feb 13, 2015 19:14
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Kitchner posted:I wonder if my DM is going to allow that or not. I'm getting +5 to all my deception rolls so it should be easy enough to fool some peasants, and they are genuinely the penises from magical lizardmen so technically I'm only lying about what they do. Considering that your GM allows you to harvest genitalia from dead enemies, I'm pretty sure his powers of judgment are so withered that you could get away with anything.
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Feb 13, 2015 20:52
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PurpleXVI posted:Considering that your GM allows you to harvest genitalia from dead enemies, I'm pretty sure his powers of judgment are so withered that you could get away with anything. Well it came across as a guy was like "What are these lizard men wearing" To which the response was "Oh not much, just loin cloths". The guy then, stupidly, said "Yeah well I'm going to look under them". Which got "You see lizard dicks" Then I asked him if I could harvest them to sell to simple village folk as aphrodisiacs and he said I could try to do it, so hence why my inventory has "Bag of lizard cocks" in it.
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Feb 13, 2015 21:15
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Don't tell people about your adventures with lizard cocks, and don't try to rationalize it when people question your adventures with lizard cocks. In fact, avoid adventures with lizard cocks.
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Feb 13, 2015 21:22
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Really Pants posted:Don't tell people about your adventures with lizard cocks, and don't try to rationalize it when people question your adventures with lizard cocks. No kink shaming please.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:13
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that's extremely loving weird, sorry. What was your thought process for that?
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Feb 13, 2015 23:40
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Grimpond posted:that's extremely loving weird, sorry. What was your thought process for that? The inevitable logical conclusion of a D&D adventurer's desire to loot everything, obviously.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:50
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Kitchner posted:Well it came across as a guy was like "What are these lizard men wearing" Down the road I hope this thread becomes "D&D Next Advice Thread: Follow the rules or end up with a bag of lizard cocks." In regards to the swarm of zombie event we had a bear of an encounter with them during our last game night. The GM kept rolling so high it was triggering the zombie's ability to not die and reset to 1hp. Lucky it was a pretty controlled situation where we had them bottle necked.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:52
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Hey Lizards have a genital sheathe. You should not have been able to see Lizard dicks. (Ironically I learned this in a D&D related comic.) MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Feb 14, 2015 |
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Feb 14, 2015 00:02
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Trast posted:What are some creative applications for low level spells you all have seen in your play time? I know a story about a goon playing a druid using heat metal to kill a Roper by feeding it a corpse with armor on it then heating the armor up from inside. I thought that was hilarious and really creative. DISCLAIMER: I don't know if it holds up in 5th edition, but one trick we used to do was cast silence on weapons (melee or arrows/bolts) instead of casters and then attack casters with them. It has like a 15' radius or something, and the items don't get a saving throw. Works for non-caster situations too if you want to stop goblins from raising an alarm or something. Lizard Cock sounds like Thieves' Cant for selling illegal cockactices to me.
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Feb 14, 2015 00:24
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Grimpond posted:that's extremely loving weird, sorry. What was your thought process for that? Animal genitals are sold/used for aphrodisiacs all the time, I mean Panda Penis is still used in China as an aphrodisiac despite it containing none of the chemicals needed because dumb peasants believe anything. My character is a conman and I've been trying to think of an angle for a con for a while that wasn't just "cheat at gambling" and then when that was mentioned I remembered snake oil salesman and the aphrodisiac thing and went with it. As you can tell my group isn't deadly serious about roleplaying. MonsterEnvy posted:Hey Lizards have a genital sheathe. You should not have been able to see Lizard dicks. Someone actually pointed this out, but the GM had already said there were lizard penises, and I think he wants to see me run an elaborate con selling these things to peasants so he didn't retcon it. It's funny how often general knowledge gets used in a roleplaying game, like I knew Iron mines from this sort of era (e.g. mediaeval) generally weren't very deep, so I asked the DM if we were lower than usualy for an iron mine for that reason (we weren't meaning the miners didn't deliberately mine into the lizard men temple). ScaryJen posted:
Slang has to start somewhere. Kitchner fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Feb 14, 2015 |
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Feb 14, 2015 00:43
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That's enough about lizard dicks in the advice thread. Chat thread it or something!
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Feb 14, 2015 03:25
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ScaryJen posted:DISCLAIMER: I don't know if it holds up in 5th edition, but one trick we used to do was cast silence on weapons (melee or arrows/bolts) instead of casters and then attack casters with them. It has like a 15' radius or something, and the items don't get a saving throw. Works for non-caster situations too if you want to stop goblins from raising an alarm or something. I've actually used that already. It wasn't an arrow that I used though it was a copper coin. I cast silence on it and wing it at the bad guys or give it to the rogue so he can make with the stabbing in peace. It's a great suggestion regardless. We also came up with an environmentally friendly and far less flammable light source then oil lanterns. Since two character in the party have the light cantrip we pop it on a coin and toss it in a shaded lantern. That way we can douse it quickly or focus it as needed.
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Feb 14, 2015 03:59
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e: Whoops, nevermind.
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Feb 14, 2015 10:17
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Trast posted:I've actually used that already. It wasn't an arrow that I used though it was a copper coin. I cast silence on it and wing it at the bad guys or give it to the rogue so he can make with the stabbing in peace. It's a great suggestion regardless. Yeah when there were creatures lurking around in the rafters of this tall building we got the cleric to cast light on a throwing dart and I threw it at the beam in the cieling to light up the area there.
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Feb 14, 2015 13:55
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Old tricks are the best tricks. Casting light spells on coinage has been a thing since at least 1st edition AD&D, since a coin is the perfect combination of size, weight, and disposability for a continual light spell. 3.x got away from this by changing the fluff to a flame that never goes out but doesn't consume the torch or light anything else on fire. We used to rig up a hooded lantern to mount a coin instead of a wick.
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Feb 14, 2015 16:05
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BatteredFeltFedora posted:Old tricks are the best tricks. Casting light spells on coinage has been a thing since at least 1st edition AD&D, since a coin is the perfect combination of size, weight, and disposability for a continual light spell. Yeah I figured it was old school because there was no way we were the first to come up with it. Still the DM was happy we thought of it as it showed we were actually playing the game and not just treating it like a PC mmo.
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Feb 15, 2015 00:32
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Casting light (or continual light) or stones or coins is something I remember from the 80s. I remember iron spikes being a favorite thing to use, because you can hammer them deep into things. Using your wizard's downtime to mass produce continual light arrows used to be a really, really smart thing to do in AD&D/2e - using your resources to give every martial class the ability to shoot several unquenchable bright-rear end lights way out into the distance had a lot of applications, including trivialising certain types of monster encounters, "marking" targets for siege engines or fireballs, making enemies into lanterns, seeing how far down the chasm goes (or more importantly, how far across), etc. Are creatures with light penalties still a big thing? Or did they sort of survive vestigially? Or not at all?
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Feb 15, 2015 00:59
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Player Drow get disadvantage on attack and perception rolls if they or their target are in bright light. I don't have a Monster Manual so I don't know if any actual monsters have penalties. In the play test that introduced Drow there was an item you could buy that was basically a pair of shaded goggles, Riddick-style, to remove such penalties. Don't know if it made it to final print as a non-PHB magic item.
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Feb 15, 2015 01:44
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Can't top casting light on a squirrel that belonged to the druid. Looking back, casting it on an animal probably wasn't allowed but gently caress it, we had fun and didn't break anything with it.
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Feb 15, 2015 03:00
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JerryLee posted:Can't top casting light on a squirrel that belonged to the druid. Looking back, casting it on an animal probably wasn't allowed but gently caress it, we had fun and didn't break anything with it. Our rogue was being an rear end in a top hat to some DM controlled characters belonging to my Cleric's temple so I cast light on his clothing so he couldn't sneak around stealing poo poo. DM got a kick out of it.
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Feb 15, 2015 03:09
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Trast posted:Our rogue was being an rear end in a top hat to some DM controlled characters belonging to my Cleric's temple so I cast light on his clothing so he couldn't sneak around stealing poo poo. DM got a kick out of it. You can do that if they fail a dexterity save. As for the squirrel I'm not sure you can just make a glowing squirrel, but if you put a collar on it you can do that.
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Feb 15, 2015 13:34
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Also out of interest for people just starting DnD how many of you own a copy of the Dungeon Masters Guide and how many of you own the Monster Manual? If you didn't buy them but somehow have PDF copies of them that you use then say that. The reason I'm asking is because I've paid for the PHB but I've also got PDFs of the other two books and honestly I can't say I feel they are important enough to spend £50 on. On the other hand I already know how to DM so I don't really need a guide. So I'm interested to see how many players, especially newer players, actively use these.
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Feb 15, 2015 17:37
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Kitchner posted:You can do that if they fail a dexterity save. He rolled a three, Tyr be praised.
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Feb 15, 2015 19:43
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NameHurtBrain posted:General tips for character creation and play: I'm playing a Barbarian about to hit 3rd level, so I've been reading the path descriptions pretty carefully. My opinion basically matches yours. Frenzy makes your rage a bit stronger, but it's incredibly debilitating; hopefully you're not also receiving exhaustion for other reasons, otherwise you could be truly hosed. It's also got the same problem that the Fighter's Champion path has: it adds no interesting features to the class and is purely something to take for "I attack" reasons. The whole thing is kind of bullshit, actually; players at level 3 might not have had to deal with exhaustion at all, so they might not realize just how debilitating it is to be at disadvantage to all ability checks, and they might not also realize that a Long Rest only eliminates 1 point of exhaustion. If you use your Fury 3 times during a set of encounters, then you're practically useless until you get about 3 days worth of rest. The alternative is Path of the Totem Warrior, which either makes you more tanky (Bear), more agile (Eagle), or more of a team player (Wolf). With the Eagle path you can fly for short distances while enraged and you get to use Dash as a bonus action. With the Wolf path you can arbitrarily knock creatures prone when you attack them and you give your allies advantage on attacking any creatures near you. All of these paths also confer some neat out-of-combat capabilities (such as seeing clearly up to a mile away), and you also get some free utility spells (Beast Sense, Speak with Animals, and then later Commune with Nature, all as rituals only). This path give you a lot more flavor and utility, it is arguably just as useful in combat, and you don't have to deal with exhaustion at all. For further comparison, a 5rd-level barbarian with Frenzy can make 3 attacks (one of which is a bonus action), but then they suffer a point of Exhaustion when their rage ends. A 3rd-level barbarian with Path of the Wolf can only make 2 attacks, but your allies all have advantage against any creature within 5 feet of you.
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Feb 15, 2015 22:35
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There's basically never a reason to pick Berserker Barb or Champion Fighter. Everyone is better off by pretending those paths don't exist.
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Feb 15, 2015 22:45
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ImpactVector posted:Question for anyone with the DMG: What kinds of magical items or item effects are there that are aimed more towards casters? Any item that gives casters more flexibility is always a good thing. If you give a wizard a Wand of Magic Missile, then that frees up spell slots for other spells (or just more castings of Magic Missile, if that's your thing) Rod of the Pact Keeper is the warlock equivalent of an enchanted weapon: +1, +2, or +3 to spell attack rolls and and to saving throw DCs of warlock spells. Also lets you regain one warlock spell slot as an action once, an ability that is recharged by a long rest. The +1 variety is only "uncommon". Go nuts. You could arguably make something similar for Druids. There's the Pearl of Power, which lets you regain a spell slot up to 3rd level once per day. This can be quite useful. Ring of Protection is a classic, +1 AC is always useful Ring of Spell Storing is designated "rare", but that's because it's so sweet: it stores up to 5 levels of stored spells. This frees up spell slots like a wand, but the owner gets to choose what goes in to be cast later. You could probably ask your DM for something lower level in order to make the item a little less valuable (maybe up to 3 levels of stored spells for basic utility purposes) You could also ask for an item that straight up increases an ability score. In 3.5 I recall there were items that set a specific ability to some score like 18 or 19, which makes it a nice boost at lower levels but is something that the player can potentially outgrow.
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Feb 15, 2015 22:58
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Kitchner posted:Also out of interest for people just starting DnD how many of you own a copy of the Dungeon Masters Guide and how many of you own the Monster Manual? I didn't think you could get the full books as PDFs yet. That said, the free DM's starter PDF probably contains everything you need as long as you're not... starting. Last time I looked that and the player's starter PDF were missing stuff like "what XP is and when and how to gain it", which is obvious if you already play D&D but could easily confuse the poo poo out of an actual new player.
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Feb 15, 2015 23:11
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He's implying  without stating it outright. Hence the "somehow have PDF copies" bit.
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Feb 15, 2015 23:22
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The DM guide and Monster Manual can be useful for improvisation if you haven't prepared a bunch of extra resources ahead of time or if you don't want to come up up with your own items, encounters, and creatures. For instance, the MM gives you all of the necessary stats, some background, and an idea of how challenging a monster might be for a given party of adventurers. It also gives you a visual aid, usually. This is all really useful. You're paying money to save time, basically. That said, there are lots of good online resources, and if you have older edition books you can probably repurpose them.
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Feb 16, 2015 00:35
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I'd still use the MM for sheer convenience: the stats might not be balanced worth a drat, but it's still easier to use them as a basis rather than try to go through the DMG's monster creation steps (or mathing-out your own monster creation formula).
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Feb 16, 2015 01:02
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Yeah the MM seems a handy way to not bother creating any monsters yourself, but it's still something you could probably cope without. The DMG though? I guess if you don't have the DMG or the MM you'll struggle to make balanced creatures on your own.
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Feb 16, 2015 01:19
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How do the monster stat blocks from the basic pdf compare to those in the MM? Is there a significant difference between the stat blocks in the MM and the results of creature creation using the DMG rules?
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Feb 16, 2015 01:41
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DalaranJ posted:How do the monster stat blocks from the basic pdf compare to those in the MM? Is there a significant difference between the stat blocks in the MM and the results of creature creation using the DMG rules? I think the monsters are same between the two. The basic rules just does not have too many interesting monsters in it compared to the MM.
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Feb 16, 2015 01:52
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DalaranJ posted:How do the monster stat blocks from the basic pdf compare to those in the MM? Statblocks are the same, you lose the flavor text and art. In other words, if you've already played D&D, you just need the free PDF since you already know what (eg) an orc acts like. The art is super nice though. DalaranJ posted:Is there a significant difference between the stat blocks in the MM and the results of creature creation using the DMG rules? There's no rules there that would prevent you from making Exactly An Orc Again*, but depending on the monster you might end up with a different CR from what's in the book. The CR system is arguably useless, so you might not care that it doesn't line up. *Or whatever else. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Feb 16, 2015 |
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Feb 16, 2015 02:00
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JerryLee posted:Can't top casting light on a squirrel that belonged to the druid. Looking back, casting it on an animal probably wasn't allowed but gently caress it, we had fun and didn't break anything with it. I was one of two players in this game (which JerryLee was DMing), and I should note that we were casting Light on the squirrel so we could tie a rope around its midsection and lower it into a dark pit just to see what was in there. This was a few in-game days after we had it and one of the other squirrel companions of the druid drink coffee so they could stand watch overnight while the druid and I (cleric) slept at the inn. I can't remember why we decided we needed to set a watch, but there we go. He also reminded me that the squirrel helped defeat an orc in one of the party's first encounters.
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Feb 16, 2015 02:02
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Can you use Acrobatics to avoid OA's, just like Tumble in 3.5? One of my DM's seems to think so, but I think that might be a "rulings not rules" thing.
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Feb 16, 2015 04:11
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quote:Acrobatics. Your Dexterity (Acrobatics) check covers your attempt to stay on your feet in a tricky situation, such as when you’re trying to run across a sheet of ice, balance on a tightrope, or stay upright on a rocking ship’s deck. The DM might also call for a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to see if you can perform acrobatic stunts, including dives, rolls, somersaults, and flips. PHB says no. There's a Tumbling variant rule in the DMG, but that's just to move through a space occupied by a hostile creature, nothing about avoiding OAs.
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Feb 16, 2015 04:23
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