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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Something which was rattling around in my head for a while was that D&D has multiple deities, but it treats worship of them effectively as multiple-choice monotheism, they're not worshipped as a collective pantheon like how it was historically such as with the ancient Roman and Greek gods. That got me to thinking - what would a cleric who worshipped the gods as a pantheon be like? I figured that probably would be unpopular with all the monotheistic worshippers, and thus put the cleric on the bad side of all the religions. In FR and Greyhawk at the very least, they actually are worshipped as a pantheon. You pay respect to the gods for different things. Only a smaller subset such as clerics take on a direct patron, and even they give offerings and such to other gods on the circumstance. But on your character concept there is a recent D&D novel the Fallbacks that has Baldric a dwarf sorta Cleric who rather than devoting himself to any instead does favors for them in exchange for clerical powers.  
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Apr 19, 2024 21:00
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How fast does he type?
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Apr 19, 2024 22:02
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2E had options for clerics to worship concepts or principles. I don’t think any D&D version has gotten serious about pantheon-based spell resources: the equivalent in a system like Runequest would involve getting most of your stuff from the specific deity you worship, while getting additional spells and powers from affiliated deities (usually, but not always, in the same pantheon). Given that 5e has clerics use spell preparation off a unified list, I don’t know that it’s worth any effort to make modifications. A single “Pantheon” cleric archetype might suffice, where you pick a primary deity and get a collection of options based on that primary and some secondary choices. Or just stick with an existing archetype but swap a few of the associated spells with another archetype’s spells without obviously cherry-picking “the best” or only spells not on the cleric list normally. Mixing and matching archetype powers or the extra channel divinity options won’t break anything with some care. Actual roleplay and other practices matter much more. Having specific deities in specific pantheons allow the preparation of specific spells seems like a good idea, but balancing them is very tricky. 2e’s domain system tried that, and it was a huge mess, with a few canonical deities in later projects having domain lists where their clerics could prepare zero 4th level spells.
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Apr 19, 2024 22:36
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My players in Phandelin and the lost obelisk have unwittingly formed a coalition of disenfranchised bad guys. They let Glassstaff get away, they sold the dragon on a pretty lovely deal and took his treasure, and the doppelganger spider operative ran off (partially after Foundry outed her as a doppelganger, frustratingly. They also unintentionally gave a hostage goblin a god complex by giving him the mental strength to break free of his bonds due to being drunk on special ale. I fully intend to bring them all back as a group of wronged foes at an inopportune time, perhaps the dragon will drop the others on the party in the wilds.
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Apr 19, 2024 23:11
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You are correct in that how big a deal it would be for a cleric to worship a Pantheon instead of a specific god is setting dependent, and hence something to discuss with the DM first (or possibly decided on a backstory with specific story beats). I am getting the impression that using a Bard with its fixed number of spells known to take the role of a Cleric's more flexible "know all, prepare what you want each day" spellcasting is not the best idea mechanically. At least I found this out by making a level 11 Lore Bard character on DDB in five minutes and not after trying to play one for five months. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Apr 21, 2024 |
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Apr 20, 2024 03:58
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bird food bathtub posted:One character concept I have in my back pocket is an oathbreaker atheist paladin. The atheism is aspirational. Attack and dethrone all the gods. 
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Apr 20, 2024 08:28
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bird food bathtub posted:One character concept I have in my back pocket is an oathbreaker atheist paladin. The atheism is aspirational. Attack and dethrone all the gods. Well, that's better than my Most Illegal Subfaction In Sigil. Practical Athars - who believed in the Gods and rather than wanting nothing to do with them wanted to lure them into the Lady of Pain's domain.
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Apr 20, 2024 23:19
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neonchameleon posted:Well, that's better than my Most Illegal Subfaction In Sigil. Practical Athars - who believed in the Gods and rather than wanting nothing to do with them wanted to lure them into the Lady of Pain's domain. how could they possibly plan to pull this off
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Apr 21, 2024 01:16
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Shar permits it by shrouding their plans
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Apr 21, 2024 02:08
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its very compelling in a farcical way, like squirrels that conspire to trick men into walking into traffic
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Apr 21, 2024 06:35
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I’m currently playing a Dwarven cleric of Sharindlar, but that manifests primarily in my character’s personality and his job in his dwarven community (a matchmaker and marriage councillor). On other appropriate occasions he’ll say prayers to other members of the Morndinsammin, and while he doesn’t know much about the Faerunian pantheon, he’s making an effort to learn since he views the mostly human settlements we’re now travelling through as their domains, so they naturally demand respect. My table has been gradually emphasising the distinction between Cleric and Priest over the last few campaigns, which I intend to bring to full fruition in our next campaign in Icewind Dale when I retake the DM chair. I’ve decided I much prefer the idea that being a cleric of a god is a highly rare thing, and that most cities and villages don’t have people who spend their entire lives in service to a single deity, and that like Greco-roman polytheism, being a priest is a job you do for anything from a year to a few decades, possibly even an elected position. Priest then is essentially an NPC class which can cast cleric spells exclusively as rituals, and not rituals in the “casting time + 10 minutes on certain tagged spells” sense but more in the “one hour to cast a level 1 cure wounds, plus a sacrifice” sense. But a priest can notionally cast any spell in the Cleric spell list regardless of level as long as they have the appropriate ritual and sacrifice, and larger rituals require multiple people and sometimes multiple days. The same is true of arcane spellcasting, with most NPC “mages” doing ritual magic that function as reliable ways to access the weave independent of innate magical talent. That means you can still have some of the trappings of a higher-magic setting like Faerun is often seen to be, but with the caveat that most magic is the work of hours or days, not mere seconds, which explains why people still wash their clothes, for example, rather than taking them to a wizard laundromat where the kid behind the counter just charges a copper to cast prestidigitation over and over again. Only creatures of destiny, heroes and villains, can cast magic in the manner of the PHB with its one action casting times and so on. That makes the PCs’ magic more significant and special. I think Ed Greenwood has been kind of moving in this direction too with his more recent stuff about needing “the Gift” to do magic—albeit I don’t know that he’s really thought through how to have it make any sense with the decades of FR lore that makes the setting more high magic, (which I think our table’s solution kind of works for). I think he threw out some numbers at one point that if taken literally would imply there’s like 0.27 clerics on the entire continent.
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Apr 21, 2024 10:33
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Half a dozen mages frantically working in shifts for three days to drop a cloud kill on the enemy army.
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Apr 21, 2024 18:14
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I like hard statistics about classes, especially "in-world" classes like Clerics and Sorcerers. Lets you really get a feel for how common things are. When I do world-building I try to do demographics to shape expectations about how rare something or someone is.
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Apr 21, 2024 18:45
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Jimbone Tallshanks posted:I like hard statistics about classes, especially "in-world" classes like Clerics and Sorcerers. Lets you really get a feel for how common things are. A few years ago I did something similar for thinking about a low magic setting. I thought of it like this: a traditional medieval-inspired setting retains all the trappings of feudalism, and notionally the nobility of a kingdom are both its leaders and its most significant martial warriors. But if every village has a local wizard and a cleric doing the religious stuff like most D&D villages, why is everyone subservient to the manor lord? Notionally under feudalism it's because he has the role of the protector and leader, but if the village has a wizard and a cleric that seems a bit strange, especially if the plot hook is that the lord has become a tyrant. You can think of it this way: effectively under feudalism, there's kind of one member of the gentry for every village, a knight or similar manor lord. So if there's also one wizard and cleric per village the numbers are equal, but it doesn't feel right in a low-magic setting that the number of people who have access to ancient arcane secret tomes and the number of people who have quality mail armour and a horse are the same. So I set a baseline: spellcasters need to be significantly rarer than that--my gut was, there should be fewer spellcasters in a kingdom than people with full titles of nobility. What I settled on was "one witch per county, one wizard for every four counties, one cleric for every diocese". For a place like the 13th-century kingdom of England, that gives you 39 witches, 10 wizards, and 19 clerics for 68 spellcasters. That means every village plausibly has a forest within a day or two's walk that could have a witch in it, there's one wizard in tower within a week's journey from your village, and if you really need magical healing, you probably have to travel to one of the kingdom's cathedrals--which is to say, you do a religious pilgrimage, ala visiting Canterbury or Lourdes. In comparison, there's 139 barons, 16 earls and a king for a total of 156 titled nobles so we're in the desired ballpark of "about half as many spellcasters as senior nobles". My favourite parts of that idea are first, that for any given area it's genuinely feasible to talk about "the witch" or "the wizard", because they're the only one around. If your one local witch is wicked it's a problem for many villages and that's a quest hook. If the wizard in a region is mad, it's a serious problem that an earl will be desperate for the PCs help to solve. And second, I really like the idea that you could have a kingdom-level threat that is so massive it requires every spellcaster in the kingdom to meet in the King's castle, and the players can be in a medium-sized hall briefing every single spellcaster in the realm on an impending danger they've discovered. There's something I find really resonant with that--"this isn't the kingdom's most powerful miracleworkers, it's all of them. And they're waiting for you to tell them what must be done. What do you say?"
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Apr 21, 2024 23:09
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Reveilled posted:A few years ago I did something similar for thinking about a low magic setting. I thought of it like this: a traditional medieval-inspired setting retains all the trappings of feudalism, and notionally the nobility of a kingdom are both its leaders and its most significant martial warriors. But if every village has a local wizard and a cleric doing the religious stuff like most D&D villages, why is everyone subservient to the manor lord? Notionally under feudalism it's because he has the role of the protector and leader, but if the village has a wizard and a cleric that seems a bit strange, especially if the plot hook is that the lord has become a tyrant. You can think of it this way: effectively under feudalism, there's kind of one member of the gentry for every village, a knight or similar manor lord. So if there's also one wizard and cleric per village the numbers are equal, but it doesn't feel right in a low-magic setting that the number of people who have access to ancient arcane secret tomes and the number of people who have quality mail armour and a horse are the same. So I set a baseline: spellcasters need to be significantly rarer than that--my gut was, there should be fewer spellcasters in a kingdom than people with full titles of nobility. What I settled on was "one witch per county, one wizard for every four counties, one cleric for every diocese". For a place like the 13th-century kingdom of England, that gives you 39 witches, 10 wizards, and 19 clerics for 68 spellcasters. That means every village plausibly has a forest within a day or two's walk that could have a witch in it, there's one wizard in tower within a week's journey from your village, and if you really need magical healing, you probably have to travel to one of the kingdom's cathedrals--which is to say, you do a religious pilgrimage, ala visiting Canterbury or Lourdes. In comparison, there's 139 barons, 16 earls and a king for a total of 156 titled nobles so we're in the desired ballpark of "about half as many spellcasters as senior nobles". Legit this is great world building. When EVERY wizard is in town, you know shits real.
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Apr 21, 2024 23:21
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This kinda thing was standard fare in some books. The 2e Druid had a bunch of stuff in the class description: Druids have a worldwide structure. At their upper levels (12th and above), only a few druids can hold each level.
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Apr 21, 2024 23:50
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Jimbone Tallshanks posted:To take the place of a druid, they must be defected in magical or hand-to-hand combat, thereby assuming the defeated druid's position.[/i] And the defective ones get recalled 
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Apr 21, 2024 23:55
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Where did that Druid structure idea come from? It always struck me as far more organized than I pictured Druids.
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Apr 22, 2024 00:04
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I never took it as organization, I always assumed it was more there can literally be only one 15th level druid as a metaphysical law of nature, and you need remove them to absorb their power
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Apr 22, 2024 00:08
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lifg posted:Where did that Druid structure idea come from? It always struck me as far more organized than I pictured Druids. It came from the head of Gary Gygax in 1E.
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Apr 22, 2024 00:17
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But if you want the inspiration, it's probably a combination of the mythology and reality surrounding Druids.
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Apr 22, 2024 00:33
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homeless snail posted:I never took it as organization, I always assumed it was more there can literally be only one 15th level druid as a metaphysical law of nature, and you need remove them to absorb their power Technically they're the one Druid in the hierarchy you can't challenge. The one Grand Druid has to find a successor, and then give up all but 1 XP and become a hierophant Druid.
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Apr 22, 2024 00:38
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Last time I DM'd, the player cleric was the only cleric of his god alive at the time and he was treated with the appropriate reverence. That was partly a design decision since the backdrop was a massive plague, which isn't a huge challenge if every local village had a cleric. Creating a cleric was a significant and active investment of divine power to give him his daily spells. Part of the deal was he was essentially a mortal avatar for his god created to deal with the main villain and his powers went away after that limited campaign. He got treated, wherever he went, appropriately: villagers mobbed him begging for lesser restorations, the church hierarchy (who were mostly rogues and celestial warlocks) gave him huge leeway, and he could more or less get a direct line to the Big Guy whenever he needed.
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Apr 22, 2024 04:07
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I lead weekly roleplaying days at the youth club I work with, and with the older kids we do 5e. Today we had a complaint about balance, and I'm wondering if maybe the players got it wrong. They're big on responsibility and keep each other honest so usually I just trust them when they describe their characters capabilities. However, the player of the Way of Mercy Monk feels like the Swashbuckler Rogue outshines him. The player says that as swashbuckler, he gets to do sneak attack damage every turn, and that he does not need to be camouflaged or otherwise get advantage to pull off the sneak like a standard rogue. This means he deals fat stacks of melee damage with his rapier every single turn that the Monk needs to expend Ki points to even match, much less exceed. E: they both lvl 4, if that helps. It appears we got the unarmed damage wrong, so the character now went from 1+str bonus to 1d4+dex bonus pr unarmed attack, and that helped, but it still seems like they're not on par. Any ideas of where the disparity lies? E: Bonus question - the Sorcerer has taken the Twinned Spell metamagic, and wonders if it works on Scorching Ray. I'm leaning on no, since I vaguely recall something about spells that can pick multiple targets not being eligible Tias fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Apr 26, 2024 |
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Apr 26, 2024 15:41
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Swashbucklers aren't particularly great, it's just that monks are particularly bad. RAW no, you can't twin Scorching Ray because it functions like you said.
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Apr 26, 2024 15:52
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Swashbuckler can sneak attack if they are fighting one-on-one: there needs to be no other creature within 5 feet of them. If it's an ally flanking they still get the normal Rogue flanking sneak attack, but technically if there's someone behind them they don't get that sneak attack bonus. They don't get sneak attack if they're threatened by multiple opponents (unless they'd have the normal Rogue sneak attack). Also they can't have disadvantage on the attack roll. EDIT: But the assumption for Rogue is that they will get their sneak attack every turn anyway, so that's not really an issue. The other half of the Swashbuckler's abilities lets them maneuver around a bit easier so they can get those one-on-one matchups. Way of Mercy's strong point isn't damage, it's that they can convert ki points into healing very efficiently in combat. Morrow fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Apr 26, 2024 |
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Apr 26, 2024 15:57
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Tias posted:I lead weekly roleplaying days at the youth club I work with, and with the older kids we do 5e. Today we had a complaint about balance, and I'm wondering if maybe the players got it wrong. They're big on responsibility and keep each other honest so usually I just trust them when they describe their characters capabilities. I think the problem is in character expectations. Monks are usually considered underpowered - largely because their MA die range goes from d4 to d10, and the comparison is between a Rogue whose subclass helps them more reliably deal damage in combat, and a Monk whose subclass is aimed more towards healing. There's a reason why the "5.5e" Monk has a lot of changes from how the 5.0 class, including their MA die range going from d6 to d12. If you want, you could try homebrewing in some of the 5.5e stuff (UA2023-PH-Playtest-8). Monks do however, get an extra attack at 5th level, and Rogues don't. Tias posted:E: Bonus question - the Sorcerer has taken the Twinned Spell metamagic, and wonders if it works on Scorching Ray. I'm leaning on no, since I vaguely recall something about spells that can pick multiple targets not being eligible It doesn't work because Scorching Ray is multi-target already. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Apr 26, 2024 |
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Apr 26, 2024 16:01
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Tias posted:I lead weekly roleplaying days at the youth club I work with, and with the older kids we do 5e. Today we had a complaint about balance, and I'm wondering if maybe the players got it wrong. They're big on responsibility and keep each other honest so usually I just trust them when they describe their characters capabilities. monk is mostly a movement monster until 5th level, which is when a monk will start being capable of outshining a rogue in combat (still more with utility than raw damage though thanks to stunning strike)
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Apr 26, 2024 16:03
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are you scorching ray? who wants to know
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Apr 26, 2024 16:03
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Ominous Jazz posted:are you scorching ray? who wants to know drat, usually you need a sword of sharpness to get cuts this deep.
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Apr 26, 2024 16:50
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One thing to remember about Monk is that they can use Monk Weapons in addition to unarmed strikes. So with a spear (or a specialized analogue*) at level four with a 16 Dex that means they can be dealing 1d8 + 3, followed by a 1d4 + 3 bonus action, without spending any Ki. Then level five should see a big bounce for them with an extra attack, stunning strike, and 1d6 martial arts die. So for comparison (without considering Ki or advantage): Level 4: Monk - 1d8 + 3, 1d4 + 3 Rogue - 1d8 + 3 + 2d6 Level 5: Monk - 2d8 + 6, 1d6 + 3 Rogue - 1d8 + 3 + 3d6 *Monks have express access to weapons that aren’t available in the PHB. This is so they can use all the kung-fu movie tropes like nunchucks, katars, or ninja stars. There’s no need to actually use different rules for them, though homebrew lists are available. But for example if they want to only use their fists then give them some gloves with a fancy name that have the same stats as a spear. Kaal fucked around with this message at 08:40 on Apr 27, 2024 |
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Apr 26, 2024 16:56
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Yeah most people don't realize it's just a.bonus 1d4 plus dex damage bonus every round. Then you get 2 attacks at 5th etc..
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Apr 26, 2024 17:00
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Morrow posted:... but technically if there's someone behind them they don't get that sneak attack bonus... Technically? That is not how sneak attack works. It has no interaction with the flanking rule, except maybe the advantage. But in those cases the sneak attack would get triggered anyway.
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Apr 26, 2024 17:02
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Rubberduke posted:Technically? That is not how sneak attack works. It has no interaction with the flanking rule, except maybe the advantage. But in those cases the sneak attack would get triggered anyway. it’s how rakish audacity works, the swashbuckler rogue special modified sneak attack that gives you advantage in a 1-on-1 fight. quote:Rakish Audacity its a sick subclass
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Apr 26, 2024 17:06
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Rubberduke posted:Technically? That is not how sneak attack works. It has no interaction with the flanking rule, except maybe the advantage. But in those cases the sneak attack would get triggered anyway. I mean, if the rogue is between an ally and an enemy, they don't get the swashbuckler sneak attack.
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Apr 26, 2024 17:06
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I ran a campaign with a monk and rogue. The way I handled it was to have one or two more durable monsters (often with an attack or debuff that made them a significant threat), a larger number of low-CR minions, and plenty of walls, cliffs, and liquid surfaces. The rogue usually attacked the higher threat targets while the Monk took on the minions, traversing terrain to get to them. The penultimate battle of the campaign included a pit full of ghouls that I ruled the Monk could run across the heads of and a tall Statue next to a wall that he ran up to land on the head of before later slow falling back down.
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Apr 26, 2024 17:20
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Morrow posted:I mean, if the rogue is between an ally and an enemy, they don't get the swashbuckler sneak attack. Yeah it's a bit of a weird technicality that makes you keep your teammates away unless they can guarantee you advantage/sneak attack somehow.
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Apr 26, 2024 18:22
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Jimbone Tallshanks posted:Yeah it's a bit of a weird technicality that makes you keep your teammates away unless they can guarantee you advantage/sneak attack somehow. Well they will permit a sneak attack if they’re within five feet of the enemy, so there has to be a fairly specific set of conditions where it is a problem.
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Apr 26, 2024 19:31
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Rubberduke posted:Technically? That is not how sneak attack works. It has no interaction with the flanking rule, except maybe the advantage. But in those cases the sneak attack would get triggered anyway. Note that Flanking is an optional rule in 5E. The normal Rogue Sneak Attack rule just requires an ally to be within 5 feet of your target, not necessarily flanking them. Kaal posted:Well they will permit a sneak attack if they’re within five feet of the enemy, so there has to be a fairly specific set of conditions where it is a problem. Those conditions can basically be summed up as "is alone and has more than one enemy within 5 feet."
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Apr 26, 2024 19:36
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I'd let sorcs twin basically any spell that only affects one person in that casting. E: So if the scorcher is split between targets, no twin. If all Scorcher rays are directed at a single target, it's a defacto single target spell, so it may be twinned and a second target can be selected to receive an identical version of the spell. Outrail fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Apr 26, 2024 |
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Apr 26, 2024 20:32
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