room topic changed to D&D 5e Deconstruction: In which we poke 5e with sticks. Poke @Jonathan in RPG General for an invitation. This room is a Gallery to maintain integrity of discussions. [dnd-5e]

room topic changed to D&D 5e Deconstruction: In which we poke 5e with sticks. Poke @Jonathan in RPG General for an invitation. This room is a Gallery to maintain integrity of discussions. [dnd-5e] [sticks]

I'm going to attempt to put together that Inspiration answer. I expect to earn some downvotes for this. And upvotes! But a bit of both really.

room topic changed to D&D 5e Deconstruction: In which we poke 5e with sticks. Poke @Jonathan in RPG General for an invitation. This room is a Gallery to maintain integrity of discussions. [dnd-5e] [ow] [sticks]

@BESW Haha.

@JonathanHobbs I think your previous draft had some phrasing issues that didn't really reflect what you wanted it to.

hmm....

docs.google.com/document/d/…

@BESW You're busy and I appreciate that. Do you have a few minutes spare to read that Google doc, or shall I let you work?

@JonathanHobbs Eating dinner while watching Attack the Block (again; it's awesome), so I'll take a glance.

@BESW Oh boy. :D

Nick Frost, and the same production house as several of my favourites... sounds promising.

The alien design is awesome, the actors are good (not even accounting for the fact they're mostly unknowns taken from acting classes and clubs so they'd be the right age for the roles), and it's about violently criminal underclass minorities becoming heroes.

The theme of the film is "even the people society has written off and given up on can rise to heroism."

That sounds fantastic. XD

And it's not like it tries to sugar-coat them. The film starts with the main characters doing an armed mugging on a nurse.

@BESW eeeeexcellent

I like the way our learned discourse of 5e is already going.

Oh, yes.

(I'm actually giving the other room a shot; if it can stay non-aggressive and non-patronising I hope this room can dissolve.)

@BESW Curiously, that's kind of what my serialized novel-to-be (oh gods) is about. I'm not honestly sure what made me think writing about a homeless drug-addicted teenage girl in a post-D&D world as a first serious effort was a good idea. Not that anyone other than people in my immediate vicinity are reading it that I can tell.

@BESW I'm gonna stay out of it for the good of everyone involved.

@Magician That sounds ambitious.

@BESW And up on the internets as I write it! Which is every time a terrifying experience.

Ursula Vernon has written about the difference between serial publication and... all-at-once-ing.

@BESW Oh, hey. Any comments on that write-up?

I've started by just writing it in a closed doc, and eventually realized a decade of GMing made me accustomed to setting up scenes with specific goals.

@JonathanHobbs Wading through it; since I haven't studied the mechanic in question...

@BESW it's got about half an A4 sheet devoted to it

media.wizards.com/downloads/dnd/… Page 35, and continues just past the green block on page 36. Minus the green example block, 1/4 of an A4 sheet.

@Magician Post-D&D in D&D fiction or in real life?

@JonathanHobbs [blink] You mean... a homeless drug addict ex-DM?

@BESW Well, could be!

@JonathanHobbs It's in a setting of mine, where I've actually run my D&D games for a while now. It was a typical D&D world, but now some of the underlying concepts (like alignments) are broken, and others are being discarded by survivors. Which is not that obvious in the text yet...

@Magician Awesome >:D

Post-apocalyptic dark fantasy! Steampunk! Urban! Something or other!

MAGIC!

First chapter's here, in case you want to take a look. I've been working on chapter seventeen for a while now, it's stalled a bit.

Work on Eighteen! ;D

That might be a good idea, yeah. This consistent sequential narrative thing is hard.

I'm presently reading the Rise of Endymion (finally, the final book in the Hyperion cantos!) and there's a trio of chapters where it looks like the author might have written them in chronological order at first, then decided it was more worthwhile rearranging them and dumping one in the middle of the other two chronologically.

@Magician I've found that in drawing, programming, writing for this site, or writing for Storium, if I'm stuck on one part, I should just go work on a different part. At some point, I'll be ready to return to the first part, and by then, something will have processed, or at the very least, I'll be no longer in the groove I was in before.

same has happened for some of my game designs, or their stories, or so on.

(I do video game design for a hobby. Haven't done that in a while, but will return to that soon.)

@JonathanHobbs Speaking of writing for Storium....

@BESW I do need to go do that...

Both my games have stagnated.

This month has been the beginning of the end of performance year evaluation process (like a financial year, except in different alignment again), and i've been busy studying and freaking out a bit over study

@JonathanHobbs Please take a look at how many times you use "it" to mean "inspiration."

I can colourise them too, if you like.

@BESW i'll take a look

if you'd like to, in case i miss some!

Oh, hey, an actual 5e thing to discuss, it's first (?) feat:

They did mention that the weaker feats would give +1 to a stat to compensate.

Which basically sounds like for every odd stat you care about, you can take a weak feat and not lose anything.

It seems... odd. And it's interaction with humans' +1 to every stat doubly so.

Answer edited a bit further, pronouns for the most part destroyed and replaced (thanks @BESW).

Cause humans kind of get multiple feats for free then, just staggered across their level progression?

@Magician minifeats?

featurettes

Spelling is hard.

The feat itself looks quite useless. It makes the fun* activity of improvised fighting suck a bit less. Why it couldn't suck less for free I do not know.

If it works for monks, there might be something there.

Because then you couldn't get better at it!

@Magician Oh wow, that looks fun.

Beat people up with tables and rassle 'em.

@Magician This seems to be a fundamental thing in a lot of D&D: your basic everyman options stink, so that you'll be excited by what your chargen choices give you!

@BESW Which is kind of ok, but then 5e goes: "Do whatever, improvise, it's awesome, have fun!" But you'll suck at it.

Either everyman random fun is the goal of the system, or it's not.

If it is, it shouldn't cost a rare character resource to be better at having fun while still sucking.

On the other hand, the feat is almost free if you have an odd stat. Such a weird mechanic, it'd take a while to comprehend it properly.

All in all: the feat gives a numeric bonus to a fun* activity that's not about numeric bonuses. It may be useful in campaigns where you expect to find yourself without a weapon frequently (which is a bit odd, imo). It's main strength is in allowing a free 1d4+Str attack when you're trying to grapple someone. I don't see using grapple so frequently as to have this warrant a feat expenditure.

If there are more grapple-boosting feats, this could be the basis of a grapple-build (ah, taking all the things that give a bonus to same activity until said activity breaks the game) or if monks are compatible with it, I can see it being useful.

Bottom line: I must hate fun.

huzzah

so is this were we can actually critique 5e without hurting people's feelings?

Ah, I was staring at the interface trying to figure out how to do things.

@JoshuaAslanSmith Aye.

sounds reasonable

unboxing, watch what he does when he finds the wizard character sheet

I also felt the same way about the tavern brawler though

I was like hmmmm this feat makes a terrible decision and chore (fighting unarmed) slightly less terrible?

/me is this thing on?

@waxeagle yes

@waxeagle herro

wasn't sure if my modly powers granted universal gallery access or not

apparently they do

@waxeagle i suspected they did! this is good

@JonathanHobbs cool