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To generate some initial points of discussion, some houserules and gameplay reminders to make the game possibly play better: * Use the standard array: 15/+2, 14/+2, 13/+1, 12/+1, 10/0 and 8/-1 The game's underlying math has a bunch of assumptions which include to-hit percentages and damage bonuses that rely heavily on your attribute scores increasing according to a given "schedule". Using rolled stats can throw off this pattern: it's okay if your stats end up higher than the standard array, but it might not feel good if they ended up worse. It might also not feel good across players if someone gets lucky and gets really good attribute scores while someone else rolls low, and while it's possible to craft a rolling scheme that guarantees good stats, at some point removing the chance of a bad roll means it's equivalent-but-faster to use the standard array anyway. If you really wish to use rolled stats, make sure the group understands the implications of it. Alternatively/additionally, you might want to try a system wherein every player rolls for their stats, but the players all choose a single set of 6 between those rolled as the one to be used across all their characters. That way, stats are still random, but equal across characters. * Groups should have a Short Rest approximately every 2-3 encounters, and a Long Rest approximately every 6-8 encounters * Short Rests are 5 minutes long * All characters have their level 1 maximum HP increased by an amount equal to their CON score * Replace Hit Dice healing with Reserve Points: a character has Reserve Points equal to their maximum Hit Points. When a character takes a Short Rest, they can convert Reserve Points into Hit Points at a 1:1 ratio. Half of all Reserve Points are recovered after taking a Long Rest. The first one is a general reminder, and the next three are house rules. I'm grouping all of these under the reasoning that it is very easy to die in this game at early levels. A couple of good rolls by a Kobold can knock out a Wizard in a single round, and even a Fighter or Barbarian can go from full health to unconscious with the span of a single fight. So the first bullet point is just a reminder to give the party sufficient chances to heal themselves up. The second point is to shorten Short Rests so that it's narratively easier to sell the idea that the group is taking a quick break. Under the normal 1 hour Short Rest, not only can it be difficult to engineer a situation where the group is safe and secure for an entire hour, it also lends itself to the idea that if the group is secure for an hour, then they're likely going to be secure for a full 8 hours and might as well take a Long Rest. The third point is to give players a larger HP buffer, to reduce the chance that they'll be killed by an encounter that wasn't really supposed to. You can still create difficult encounters if you want, but a wider HP range gives you a larger margin of error so that an easy fight doesn't bleed into a hard fight just because of the dice. Finally, the last point allows players to tap into their Short Rest-based healing in a precise manner. I really don't see the reason why Hit Dice healing has to be random apart from the general idea that rolling dice and randomness is "fun". If you were taking a break, you would know exactly how much you'd heal yourself for. It's also much easier to track and perform healing this way, rather than having to note down how many Hit Dice you have then rolling those dice. If you want to retain the lethality of the game and think it's a good thing, then you can simply throw out the +CON score to max HP rule. Alternatively, when leveling up and increasing max HP, you can disregard any new HP value that isn't higher than your current max, until such time that you "grow out of it" naturally. The 5 minute Short Rests and Reserve Points I think are good rules to keep even if you want to retain the raw threat of death of the first 3 levels. Having said that, starting at level 3 is also a plausible idea. Not only will it get you to a point in the game where you're not so easily killed, but most classes will have a number of their abilities unlocked by then and can do stuff beyond basic attack and raw improvisation. It may be overwhelming for completely new players though, so yet another general good idea is to fast-track level advancement: you might want to be level 2 by the end of your first session, and then level 3 after your second. The first 2 levels were deliberately designed to be easily achievable even under the raw experience-marking rules anyway.
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Feb 7, 2015 16:27
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Re-linking Sanglorian's Microlite5E document because it's a good resource on making RAW-legal monsters that are easy to construct with having to use the rear end-backwards DMG method, and it has some good ideas on streamlining the character creation process (although these characters will be more powerful than using the standard array)Trast posted:I really like how those house rules sound. How much play testing have you put into them? Trast posted:Also regarding the house rule of five minute short rests what happen to thing like the cleric/paladin channel divinity abilities? For example where I am now I have two channel divinities: turn undead and guided strike. Guided strike gives me a plus ten to my hit roll if I announce its usage before the DM declares a hit or miss. Did you find that being able to reset those abilities every two to three encounters made these abilities too powerful or raised their usefulness? I have caught myself holding onto my channel divinity waiting for a big encounter and ended up not using it. Reducing them to 5 minutes makes it easier to engineer a narrative situation where it can be done, but it's not a question of changing the balance of the game because you were already expected to get them that often in the first place. AlphaDog posted:I'll ask a question, too. What's everyone's opinion on jack-of-all-trades type characters? Or to put it another way, how do I best make a character who can do a bit of everything? Obviously "casts spells" provides heaps of options, but can I get decent spellcasting, melee combat, ranged combat, sneakiness, and healing (even just self healing) into the one character? Bard is definitely your best bet - they can choose to be Proficient in any skill (assuming your group is strict on following skill proficiency selections by class/background), they have access to Expertise, and then can still use half their Proficiency on skills they're not Proficient in. Valor gets you better at combat, but Lore lets you cherry pick more spells from other class' spell lists, such as say if you wanted some explicit healing spells. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Feb 8, 2015 |
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Feb 8, 2015 00:44
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Slippery42 posted:On short rest talk: It usually comes down to either time pressure or wandering monsters. From a more general perspective it's a difficult thing to balance because it comes down to DM fiat, but there needs to be a reason and it needs to be believable. 13th Age does this thing where narrative justification for a Long Rest is disregarded entirely: the party can be in whatever situation, but they can only ever actually benefit from a Long Rest once every 3-4 encounters and when the DM allows them to, because it's so key to the pacing and tension of the game for that 3-4 encounter interval to be maintained that it basically boils down to instead of trying to twist the story's arm to make it fit, just go "gently caress you, no Long Rests until you finish 3-4 encounters, realism be damned", with the small caveat that okay, the party CAN force a Long Rest before they're allowed to, but it means taking a plot failure. I mean, you could certainly approach it that way - no Rests until I say you get Rests, but it breaks the 4th wall as it were and getting people to go along with it requires that they understand the underlying gameplay-based reason for it. You only rest because of gameplay, so the only reason to rest should be gameplay-based. Kitchner posted:"intimidation could just as well be based off of str or dex if you have a reputation as a deadly opponent" You reminded me that this one of the very first things I had to houserule mid-flight - Intimidation keying off CHA made the Fighter completely ineffective at trying to threaten dudes. I definitely think it's a workable idea to decouple skills from their attribute modifiers and assign the pairing on a case-by-case basis. It's probably the closest thing to make characters more flexible without having to do an entire DTAS rewrite, although some characters would still suffer from MAD. Another idea in the same vein would be simply letting a character select whatever 4 proficiencies they want, class and background be damned (as long as the player supports it)
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Feb 9, 2015 01:07
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Semper Fudge posted:I am entirely new to D&D, and table top games in general, as is the entirety of my group. I ended up getting stuck with DMing because I beat Baldur's Gate 2 a couple of times and that somehow made me the most qualified person for the job. So far the learning curve hasn't been quite as harsh as I expected it to be, but the thing I'm struggling with right now is loot. I really have no idea what I should be handing out and what I should be withholding and the whole randomly generated loot hoards aspect doesn't seem to be helping. Use this: http://donjon.bin.sh/5e/random/#treasure Individual treasures for random/mook encounters and treasure hoards for beating bosses, quest rewards and reaching plot milestones. If you see an item that you don't recognize, resist the urge to look it up in the book. Instead, just make something up. The generator just spat out "Silk Gloves trimmed with Sable" which is supposed to be 25g vendor fodder, but you could just as easily play it off as a consumable item for a skill check that requires delicate handiwork. You can also use the treasure generators for other systems this way.
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Feb 9, 2015 02:09
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I used to run a campaign of Microlite20, whose skill check system was [d20 + attribute modifier + skill bonus]. The attributes were STR/DEX/MIND, and the skills were Physical/Subterfuge/Knowledge/Communication and you could map most any action to various pairings. I'd say decoupling attributes from skills is a workable idea, although the specific implementation is going to differ from person to person and 5E's skills are specific enough that you might not ever run into some stat+skill combos. And yes, you're also going to run into players that are always going to want to frame the skill check in such a way that if they have 20 DEX then they're going to Intimidate dexterously or Investigate dexterously or Perform dexterously, but I personally would just let them do it - if it means they start making ridiculous stunts just to make the pairing fit, more power to them.
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Feb 9, 2015 18:30
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Bazanga posted:After DMing a ton of 4e games and having to deal with all the maps/minis hassle, I've been running my 5E game without and minis or maps whatsoever. It seems to be going alright, but I was wondering if people other than myself have had any success in doing it? I started up with a new group this time and while nobody seemed to have an issue with it, one guy brought a ton of minis with him and sorta assumed I'd be using maps. I like running sandbox-style games it is a real pain to have to quickly come up with maps and layouts during a session. It's possible to run 5E without a grid and minis, but it means coming to an understanding with your players that you aren't, and the ruleset doesn't quite support it*, and you're going to have to work together to resolve and arbitrate combats in a more narrative, more impromptu, less strictly tactical manner. For what it's worth, I've managed to run 5E games with a map, but without strictly obeying grid and 5-foot-increment rules, and got by on not having a layout prepared by telling the players "it's a pantry, draw what you think you should be in it" * to be clear, I mean in the sense that while it's possible to get by on a description of the battlefield, if you're doing that then you still have to come up with a map and a layout anyway, just that it's all in your head, and if you're going that far then might as well play with a map and minis regardless.
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Feb 11, 2015 06:24
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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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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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Spells that don't need/use saving throws nor attack rolls: Cantrips Blade Ward Dacing Lights Friends Light Mage Hand Mending Message Prestidigitation True Strike Level 1 Alarm Color Spray Comprehend Languages Detect Magic Expeditious Retreat False Life Feather Fall Find Familiar Fog Cloud Identify Illusory Script Jump Longstrider Mage Armor Nagic Missile Protection from Evil and Good Shield Sleep Tenser's Floating Disk Unseen Servant Of these, Blade Ward and True Strike go well with the melee combatant theme, although an "end of next turn" duration along with consuming an entire turn to cast themselves might limit their usefulness. Alarm, False Life, Jump and Longstrider all similarly seem to fit with a physically-oriented Wizard.
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Feb 16, 2015 14:06
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Apollodorus posted:So, I'm interested to know - what resources are available for helping a DM who has little free time (or little free time for intellectual activities) to put together a tight, thematic adventure? Putting together a good adventure with a minimal amount of preparation is really more of a general GM practice than anything system-specific: the system is just supposed to be there to make it easy for you to actually pull a Lizardman encounter out of your rear end if that's where the party ends up, but how they get to the Lizardmen is a(n improv, collaborative) mindset. I'd point you towards the GM Advice thread and the Dungeon World GM's Guide
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Feb 16, 2015 14:29
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Apollodorus posted:What are some advantages of D&D Next compared to Pathfinder? It's a heavily modified version of 3.5e (and by extension Pathfinder) that gets rid of some of the jankiest aspects of that game like: * tons and tons of CharOp/multiclassing/prestige-classing * Touch Attacks and other BAB tomfoolery * item wishlisting / Wealth-by-level * buff stacking * feat bloat (at least for now) * small incremental bonus bloat (morale bonus vs reflex bonus vs untyped bonus, etc) * Martials outside of Tome of Battle or multiclassing literally have nothing to do except full attack You could almost call it Dungeons and Dragons: Mike Mearls' 3.5e Houserules Edition 1. Character building is easier - there's less stats to keep in mind, and more-or-less the only decisions characters need to make are their class progression tracks at level 3 and their spells. 2. Monster creation is theoretically easier since you have a chart of expected stats by CR (and goon Sanglorian has made it even easier), but how well this will translate into a fight against the players is up in the air because class design and math isn't as tight as it was in, say, 4E. 3. Combat is objectively quicker at low levels because of a sheer lack of options. As you progress past level 4 or so, everyone starts getting toys to play with. We don't really have a lot of in-depth insight to what happens - some people say combat remains quick, but only because rocket-tagging starts coming into play. Some people say combat starts getting slower as classes start getting more/as many powers as they would have in 4E, especially the casters having to pick through spells. Apollodorus posted:How would I go about fixing monster CRs to put together more appropriate encounters? Should I just multiply them all by 1.5 or something? Or is there an alternative table somewhere? I have attempted to create a fix for this. I have not been able to playtest it yet, but the underlying math and principles are sound, and nobody has piped up yet with any violent reaction. Part 1 and Part 2
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Feb 17, 2015 03:44
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QuarkJets posted:Yeah, doesn't every class have at least one or more way of casting spells? Even Barbarians and Fighters have some limited spellcasting capabilities Right - as long as you stay away from the Champion Fighter*, 5E at least pays some lip-service to giving martial characters some mechanical abilities beyond just "full attacks". * The Assassin Rogue, the Path of the Berserker Barbarian and the Beastmaster Ranger are also kind of bad
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Feb 17, 2015 08:12
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koreban posted:Just asking because I'm playing my first D&D and picked the shape shifting Druid over the extra spells when in terrain types if I fall into the same *bad* category? You're playing one of the stronger classes and arguably the better archetype of that class. As long as you can get out of level 1 so you can actually start shapeshifting, you should be more than fine - a shifted Druid can be a really powerful and tanky melee fighter.
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Feb 17, 2015 08:27
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It's a good idea to "flavor" your attacks as much as possible, but there are only so many ways you can describe 1d6+4 damage before you start wishing it actually did something else and that's when you start running into the 40-year issue of having the DM adjudicate attack powers and effects that aren't there.
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Feb 17, 2015 15:58
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Apollodorus posted:All I want to know is how to use the 5E MM to quickly assemble a collection of monsters that won't kill my players' characters but will put up a medium-to-difficult fight. As it is the rugby team I manage as a player-coach gets our butts kicked almost every game; doing the same in my inchoate DM career would prove I am a failure at both sports and dorkdom. The revised monster table I made and linked you should produce a "Medium" difficulty fight if you create as many monsters as there are player-characters, of the same level. If you have three level 4 players, create three level 4 monsters. For easier fights, make the monsters outnumbered. For harder fights, make the players outnumbered. To make the difficulty steps more granular, use lower-level monsters, or "Minion"-type monsters that go down in one hit no matter what and deal half the damage of the "base" monster. Stats can also probably be adjusted by 25% up or down. To easily create encounters using the in-game rules, use this: http://donjon.bin.sh/5e/random/#encounter Plug in the number of monsters you have, plug in their level, plug in the difficulty you want the fight to be and you're off to the races. I even specifically requested that the creator of the tool include the CR of the monsters used to generate the encounter so you can replace it with whatever equivalent CR monster you want. I cannot guarantee that the encounters will actually be as challenging as the difficulty that you want, but this is the most straightforward method to generate encounters within the guidelines of the books. Most of the "it's too easy to die" concerns usually revolve around the first three levels when players don't have a large HP buffer and don't have a lot of abilities and resources to adapt to circumstances.
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Feb 18, 2015 02:50
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Victorkm posted:Yeah but why are a group of player characters fighting a centaur or the centaur fighting the PCs? Unless the PCs are all evil in which case they deserve to get pasted by a neutral good hunter/gatherer. "the players aren't really expected to fight this monster" isn't an excuse to publish a badly designed monster.
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Feb 18, 2015 07:16
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Cautioning people that the encounter building guidelines as is might produce unwanted TPKs isn't essentially different from suggesting additional survivability at low levels. (It might even be mutually exclusive, if you think about it, but adjusting survivability entirely from the DM back-end has the utility of not confusing players with houserules right off the bat) Even if we grant that the Centaur is an outlier, a newbie DM isn't going to know that just by reading the book. Ratpick posted:This system assumes a group of 4 PCs as the baseline, but as noted above the system is self-adjusting to parties of 3 or 5 as well. First you'll need to calculate the difficulties of encounters for a group of four of the appropriate level. An Easy encounter is worth 1 XP, a Medium encounter worth 2, Hard is worth 3 and Deadly is worth 4. I love your idea of explicitly and mechanically defining rest opportunities and treasure handouts. I want to try this, it's a very cool idea.
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Feb 18, 2015 12:17
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On rests, I tend to lean towards enforcing them strictly: the narrative can always be stretched to justify a rest now, or not a rest now, but there's a mechanical reason to pace the rests in a certain way, and leaving it up to the narrative to when it can happen can mess with that. If I'm going to structure the story in such a way that the group can rest when they should, while conversely also throwing in a reason to make resting impossible when the group isn't "owed" it yet, I might as well cut out the middleman and make resting a purely gameplay consideration. At most, I'd take 13th Age's approach to it: if the party wants to rest when they shouldn't, the narrative takes a hit; if the party wants to push on even while they still have an opportunity to rest, the narrative gains a bonus. Ratpick posted:I agree with this sentiment 100%. What I'm thinking of doing is ditching +X weapons and armor altogether, baking the assumed bonuses for magical gear into the math, and giving special weapons and armor more story-related abilities. For an example, instead of finding a +1 sword in a dungeon it would be a magic sword (that thus obviously counts as a magical weapon for the purposes of overcoming monster resistances [another thing I might get rid of altogether]) that, I don't know, shines with light whenever anyone in hearing range of the sword's wielder tells a lie (little white lies glow as bright as a candle, big lies make it shine bright enough to illuminate a dark room). Just a reminder on how loot is supposed to work in 5E: 1. You don't need +x weapons anymore, except when facing traditional-D&D monsters that need +x weapons to hurt/kill. You can get around this by simply not using such monsters or ignoring that particular monster ability. 2. You may need +x armor, but I already explained that in my modified monster stats table Ratpick posted:Thanks! If I try out this system I'll most likely also use your house rules, including your encounter-building guidelines and better survivability at lower levels. At the moment this is just so much theorycrafting on my part, I don't even have a group to run this game for at the moment. Since we're theorycrafting, I want to note that you probably do not need to use both the additional level 1 HP and the modified monster stats table. Something like 10 extra HP on a character is going to drag out the hits-to-kill of a monster against a player by a full 5 hits, and that may make combat way too unthreatening.
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Feb 18, 2015 16:01
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BattleCake posted:Hey gradenko, I was looking at your table for monster creation from the other thread and I just had 2 questions I was hoping you (or anyone else really) could clarify for me. If I'm understanding correctly, your numbers are meant to create a single monster that's a fair fight for a single character correct? So for example if I had a party of 4 players who are all level 2, a group of 4 level 2 monsters using your table should be a match for them correct? 1. Yes, if you have four level 2 players, a Medium fight would be four level 2 monsters. 2. A solo boss monster would still have the AC, attack bonus and saving throws of a same-level monster, but multiply the HP against the number of players. If you have four players, the boss should have 4x the HP, or ~120 HP for a level 2 monster. The idea is that it's going to absorb the attacks of the entire party, so it has to have the hit points to match. That said, keep the following in mind: - you cannot directly multiply the damage-per-round by 4, or you're going to one-shot the players. Try to come up with abilities that hit different players, or abilities that are clearly telegraphed but are otherwise avoidable. Think MMO bosses with a loudly announced nova. - a single monster can potentially be rendered helpless if the party throws all their "crowd-control" abilities against it. That's the reason behind 5th Edition implementing "Lair Actions" so that the boss always has abilities that it can activate and damage the players with no matter what, as well as "Legendary Actions" to simply let the boss pass the first x number of saving throws. There's no particularly clever way to get around this, but drawing on MMO design again, it is in fact true that you can't just stunlock the big dragon or cast Polymorph on it, and it does have multi-hitting abilities, but completely subverting the way your player's spells work might not feel good. Tread carefully. - alternatively, distribute the additional DPR across the boss' minions. Think MMO bosses that summon "adds"
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Feb 19, 2015 03:20
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Elendil004 posted:With polearm mastery, do enemies who are already within my sphere of influence, but move around (not disengaging) provoke attacks? This is a tricky question. A reach weapon is defined in the PHB as "adds 5 feet to your reach when you attack with it" The implication is that when you are not attacking, your reach is still only 5 feet. That is: * if it's your turn, and you attack, you can attack a dude that's 10 feet away * if it's not your turn, and a dude moves farther, from 10 feet away to 15 feet away, the dude does not provoke an Opportunity Attack, because your reach and therefore your threatened area is only 5 feet, because you were not attacking and thus were not benefitting from the extra 5 feet of reach * if it's not your turn, and a dude moves farther, from 5 feet away to 10 feet away, the dude provokes an OA per normal rules With Polearm Mastery: * if it's not your turn, and a dude moves closer, from 15 feet away 10 feet away, it does not provoke an OA, for the same reason mentioned above * if it's not your turn, and a dude moves closer, from 10 feet away to 5 feet away, the Polearm Mastery clause triggers, and the dude provokes an OA There's no need to think about OAs getting provoked by a dude that's already in your threatened area and moves "deeper" into it, because your threatened area is always only 5 feet anyway, with or without the feat. There's a tweet going around by Jeremy Crawford that says, and I quote verbatim "Yes, OA (an attack) is based on your reach with the weapon you're using.", but as far as I know that does nothing to clear up or change the reading of the text, because the reach of a polearm (and indeed every weapon) is 5 feet. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Feb 19, 2015 |
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Feb 19, 2015 18:45
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My understanding of why golems aren't actually "anti-casters" is that there's a distinction between "I shoot a bolt of fire at the golem" and "I summon/manifest/conjure a flaming arrow that flies towards the golem". The golem might be immune to the first, but he's still vulnerable to the second, because it's an actual physical thing that hit it, even if the thing was created via magical means. Or something. I think things like Grease also falls into this distinction: the golem can still be affected by it because it's actual grease, even if the grease was created by magic. And things like summoning a gigantic iron wall to simply crush the golem. I don't know if this particular creative reinterpretation is specific to D&D or not.
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Feb 20, 2015 14:02
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Trast posted:Are there any feats that you guys think are under powered or don't really work as intended? Charger should really not have been spun off from a basic move into a feat Durable relies entirely on the game using rolled HP rules (although I will grant that max HD at level 1 makes this somewhat more tolerable than in previous editions), and feels rather redundant with Tough Keen Mind, Lingust are some of those RP-reliant feats This doesn't make it a bad feat per se, but Sentinel feels really awkward because it's the one feat that makes a Fighter a really effective defender, but it's not a Fighter-specific ability. Grappling aside, I don't really like how unarmed damage needs the Grappler feat just to be able to do 1d4 damage. It ties back to the whole "the players are supposed to be fairly competent heroes" thing Weapon Master feels awkward, at least to me, because letting the player wield that one kind of weapon they really want should really be more of a "rulings not rules" thing instead of costing them a feat. This isn't due to the design of the feats themselves, but Defensive Duelist, Sentinel's third clause, Shield Master and really a bunch of other class abilities are all hobbled by the sheer paucity of Reactions that a player gets (and lack of a feat to get more?)
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Feb 28, 2015 05:00
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"A flying monster when the party is pretty bad at hitting flying monsters" is, I would imagine, an incredibly common encounter-balance problem, and the onus shouldn't be on the DM to detect that as a potential problem, but rather on the writers of the module to give the DM an out by officially stating, within the book, to modify the encounter if needed. I mean, we figured it out, why didn't the writers? Why would the writers assume that a newbie DM would know that he's allowed to go outside the boundaries of the written book, AND that the newbie DM is going to be able to modify the encounter "appropriately"? It's the whole "system mastery via 3rd-party sources of knowledge" thing that crops up with games so often: sure, the design (or in this case, the corrective action) might make sense, but will the player come across it just by reading the material as-is, or will he have to visit forums or a wiki or whatever?
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Mar 1, 2015 04:38
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Polearm Battlemaster is perfectly fine as a choice, although your effectiveness will be greatly affected by how well the DM will stick to the Short Rest "schedule"
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Mar 16, 2015 00:34
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Getting to level 20 is generally going to take a while. Think months if not years, even with a group that plays very regularly. To put it in the context of WoW, Tabletop RPG-ing allows you to actually make a significant impact on the world you're playing in. You might not have to kill Onyxia the same way everyone does*, you might not even want to kill Onyxia in the first place, and may end up having to face the fallout of Onyxia's death on the sociopolitical climate of Stormwind instead of just "yay she's dead, now move on to the next boss", at least if you want to get involved in politics. Hand in hand with this is that nothing the players do should ever be boring. Even if they're in Goldshire, they shouldn't be "grinding on wolves" to get to the next level: something's always troubling the village, and it's up to the players to track it down and solve it, whether it's Kobolds that are infesting the mine, Bandits that have kidnapped the mayor, unrest among the peasants, or even a murder mystery involving the parish priest and the local alchemist. As they level up, the thing that is always being trouble will expand from the local village to the general region to the whole kingdom to possibly the whole world, but the same principle still applies that the players are always doing something important. The same extends to combat: if the players like interesting tactical puzzles and challenging engagements, they don't need to wait until level 10, 15 or 20 to get it. Whether they're fighting extra-dimensional beasts or the criminal mastermind du jour, it should be possible** to create a "raid boss" type fight that keeps everyone on their toes and feels "epic". * I had a game group that faced a Lightning-spewing Bronze Dragon that I had introduced as early as level 3 to serve as a sort of overarching villain. What they ended up doing was recruiting battalions of the Kingdom's soldiers, forging a lightning rod with the help of a mad scientist, and infiltrating the dragon's lair to face her in the most fortuitous terrain possible. They ended up killing her by level 5 simply by accumulating so many advantages rather than the usual "I'm strong enough to personally tank the damage and personally take her HP down to 0" trope. ** I'm talking about RPGs in general. One of D&D Next's flaws is that there's a paucity of hit points and interesting character abilities at the first 3 levels, which sort of makes it difficult to play up complicated or clever combats at that stage.
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Apr 10, 2015 03:30
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Captain Walker posted:How badly does a 16 matter in your primary stat? I'm starting my first 5e game ever with intent to play a fighter, and I don't immediately hate the game, but I do miss the ability score bonus coming from both class and race, since I want to be a tiefling. As long as you get to +3 by level 4, +4 by level 8 and +5 by level 12 you will be keeping pace with the rest of the game's math. If you are behind, how much that will matter is up to the specific encounter design and difficulty.
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Apr 20, 2015 18:53
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Skeletons, are vulnerable to Bludgeoning damage. Damage types are as important as your DM implements them, but yes, they are a thing as far as RAW.
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Apr 20, 2015 20:45
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I don't know about "must have", but War Caster is very useful for letting you side-step the whole Concentration mechanic as supposed to be a limiter for casters, as are either Magic Initiate or Spell Sniper for grabbing cross-class cantrips like a Warlock's Eldritch Blast. Alert and Lucky are powerful feats for anyone.
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Apr 21, 2015 20:02
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It tends to generate arguments whether it should or shouldn't because a "naturalistic" interpretation might lead one to think that it should break concentration simply by virtue of being friggin' polymorphed, especially if the resulting form is a creature that cannot cast spells in the first place.
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Sep 16, 2015 06:02
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My guiding principle as a GM tends to be to favor the ruling that the players prefer or is more beneficial to them, since I can always pull more rabbits out of my hat. The Wizard can turn themselves into a dragon, and if they want to be able to retain concentration through the polymorph, I guess that's okay, because there's always another more problems where that came from.
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Sep 16, 2015 14:11
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Of the official content that's been published, your options are: Lost Mine of Phandelver from the Starter Set begins at level 1 Hoard of the Dragon Queen starts at level 1 Princes of the Apocalypse technically starts at level 3, but one of the chapters can be reworked to be a level 1-3 adventure before you start on the main quest Out of the Abyss starts at level 1 LMOP and HOTDQ were both written before the game was final, so there are some issues with the encounter design being a bit janky. I've also heard of HOTDQ being a bit railroady. The other thing to note is that LMOP ends at level 5 and HOTDQ ends at level 7, so you have to look for another book if ever you want to extend play further. POTA and OOTA need a bit more work to pull together into a cohesive adventure, but the advantage is that they go all the way up to level 15, and that they were written later, so they should be somewhat more mature in that regard. Past that, you're looking at either homebrew or unofficial published content, such as: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/153213/WK0-Night-of-the-Mad-Kobold-5E https://www.froggodgames.com/wizards-amulet
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Nov 10, 2015 06:11
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It's not something you want to use all the time. If the party is traveling from the equivalent of New York to Boston, you don't need to implement it. However, if the party is setting out from the equivalent of Mombasa to head to Kilimanjaro, or from Alice Springs to Ayers Rock, then yeah, you could track their pace, how many days they're been traveling, how much supplies they've consumed so far, and so on.
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Nov 11, 2015 06:56
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Seconding how the MM is more important than the DMG if you're running modules and/or aren't particularly ambitious when it comes to running something homebrewed. There's more than enough generic world-building advice floating around in the internet for free (including this very forum!)
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Nov 12, 2015 05:47
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http://merricb.com/2014/08/03/the-great-list-of-dungeons-dragons-5e-adventures/ A big list of all published* 5th edition adventure modules. * there is no official license AFAIK, so most of these are wink wink nudge nudge compatible
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Nov 20, 2015 07:00
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Chapter 6, Customization Options, page 165:quote:A feat represents a talent or an area of expertise that gives a character special capabilities. It embodies training, experience, and abilities beyond what a class provides.
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Nov 27, 2015 07:49
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There's a bunch of feats that are so poo poo from a mechanical basis that it'd behoove you to let the players earn them as part of narrative character development, such as in your examples, and basically anything that also provides a +1 stat as an acknowledgement by the designers themselves that Linguist is too piss-weak to ever be worth an ASI by itself. There are others though, such as Sharpshooter or War Caster, that are powerful enough to be worth the ASI, though it's really up to you whether you want to let the players "earn" these anyway. One special mention would be something like Crossbow Expert: if you have a player that likes crossbows, and you're not playing with feats, and they're a class that has the Extra Attack feature, every bone in your DMing body should tell you that yes, let the player have the Crossbow Expert benefit at some point, even if you have to make it part of a quest or something.
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Nov 27, 2015 08:01
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