@NautArch I instead VTC as unclear, for the issues that we've uncovered in chat. There's just too many whys need to be answered to get a good answer. The question is screaming "XY Problem"
@Adam that's fine, i wasn't sure where to go and the duplicate did seem legitimate. The WHY of the question was actually less important than the HOW which was answered. Maybe. I dunno. either way, trolls gonna troll.
No. Neither does my fiancee really. Tried to get her into it, but I was a bad beginner and she didn't like game mechanics, and the two situations sometimes ended up ruining the night, her going home, and me feeling like garbage all night
@Adam oh no! that stinks. Once my kids are a bit older, we've talked about doing some gaming together. My wife used to do acting and is at least open to it because of that aspect.
@NautArch I'm sure I'm exaggerating while looking back at it. I just can't shake the feeling that I had some significant part in turning her off of the game. My fiancee did all kinds of backstage stuff in school. set building, stage tech, and even stage mistress. Never any acting though
@NautArch, the failure rate on that spell, cast by a novice, is atrocious. Half the time, it actually reinforces the notions, just cause of how bad the spell was cast.
@KorvinStarmast i'm waiting until my youngest is 5/6 before trying it out. I think my situation may end up like yours, but very much hoping I can get her into it.
She says that if it was with some of our friends, she might be up for it. My cousin offered to guide us through a game of dread. It would be my cousin, his wife, me and my fiancee, and my Dad. My Dad used to DM for my cousin back in the day, so everybody is pretty excited about it. My fiancee agreed that she would play, too. So there is some hope
The comment to this answer convinces to me that this is a troll post. I had some hope before now that it wasn't, but no more: rpg.stackexchange.com/a/99027/32395
@NautArch She never left and our child is due at the end of June.
@ShadowKras I did, to a degree. I ended up giving her 8 Fighter levels to mimic her parent-given battle prowess, but now I'm thinking about just rebuilding her from scratch. Lumping on templates and HD/levels isn't quite doing her justice, given the unique creature that she is.
@ShadowKras I did and I used it as inspiration when I tried several different combinations of things.
@ShadowKras That is absolutely true, but as a good-aligned creature, she's not going to use them except under extreme duress when her "other half" comes out in full.
@NautArch Brief summary: The Queen of Succubi (minor deity) seduced the herald of the goddess of battle and had a child. She has the form and powers of a succubus but the heart of a celestial, and is hunted by both sides. For the campaign, she's the unwitting and unwilling cause of the destruction of the PC's home village and the final encounter.
If an average tavern in the town of neverwinter were to have a bottle/case of imported alcohol, which is the most common type of high quality imported alcohol that has appeared in the lore somewhere or might have come in from a common trade route?
@Karelzarath actually, you could add 18 fighter levels that she would still be considered CR 18 i think? first 14 levels are off a different role (she isnt a fighter) and are worth +7 CR, for a total of CR 14, every fighter level after that is +1 CR, so at CR 18 she is fighter 18. This sounds dangerous.
@Karelzarath You might have to bite the bullet and add unique abilities. You could flavor it as special abilities granted by the uniqueness of her heritage.
@ShadowKras That's why I'm pegging her at CR 18. The PCs should be 15th for that encounter. I want her to be a threat but not deadly difficult. Killing her is a "bad ending" for the campaign.
@ShadowKras, I'm convinced that that ruleset about associated class levels is utterly unbalancing in too many cases to be worth listening to as more than a "suggestion" at best.
@ShadowKras, also, one of the big problems is HD/BAB/Saves from that many levels, and at that point, I'd rather slap a gestalt-track on the NPC instead of adding that many "true" levels.
But let's consider a fighter 18 succubus, she has CR 7 worth of succubus powers, the highest save DC of those abilities will be around 22 or 24 considering she increased her charisma, because the fighter levels will not improve the DC of those SLAs. Plus, she has 18 levels of fighter, that are worth CR 17 (class level - 1).
At lv15, a character with good will saves will have about +9 on his check without considering his wisdom or magical items, at lv15 a cloak of resistances +5 is considered average posession according to the unchained table for Automatic Bonus Progression. So that character will have at least +14 on his check, or 50% success ignoring his wisdom bonus. So those abilities are secondary to her character by now.
But yes, personally i wouldnt rate her as CR 18, but 19 or 20 (most likely).
fighter 16 seems to be enough to be considered CR 18.
@ShadowKras In terms of guidelines, but a fairly balanced level 9 party would probably have very little trouble killing one (magic item-less) fighter 18.
Well, I've got an NPC that ok pretty sure wasn't supposed to last, but we've kept him alive (has gone down in nearly encounter) and he keeps on fighting and killing. Figured he lost his redshirt status, but wasn't sure what to call him.
@ShadowKras Let's see... Succubus + Fighter 18 might have advantages (SR, Save DC) that Fighter 18 alone would not that dwarf straight CR math, as well.
Consider the situation differently, a CR 18 encounter that is a fighter 18 npc (CR 17) plus a succubus (CR 7) pet that can only act when he uses his actions to direct her actions, so to use her charm monster, he would have to spend a standard action. Got it?
Anyway, CR is there to evaluate an encounter, not stone hard rules to measure difficulty. I remember this one time we, as a lv1 group, killed a black pudding in 3.5 because we prepared well enough.
@Adam they can take on higher CR, but that depends on too many factors.
@Adam, is 5e different that way? 3.5/PF say you should be able to go up +4/+3 to CR and still have enough of a chance that good preparation makes it trivial.
we simply couldnt do a thing to get near him (he was on the top of a building, under cover of a chimney) and while we wasted turns trying to get up there and firing arrows/spells at him, his spiritual weapon sliced through our hit points.
@NautArch Well, Valorum seems to like the answer but did not accept it. Zeiss Ikon's answer was IMO not a bad frame challenge, but was explicitly rejected by the querent. I note the down votes on the question, and I find it an interesting illustration of community norms. "We don't like griefing" ... which I generally agree with.
To not say we had a TPK, my cleric pledged to not know the other guys (they literally had just met him and hired him to be a healer) and didnt know what that was about. So he lived to heal them after the cultist ran away with whatever he wanted from them.
@godskook I mean, there are so many variables that it's really hard to tell. In general the game assumes that a well rested party can handle quite a bit more than just their CR. But different factors can change things.
For example, first level is kind of awkward. A lot of CR 2 creatures can dish out enough damage to instakill level 1 characters. It makes the combat riskier than, say, a level 3 party against a CR 4 monster. At higher levels, monsters can do tons of damage, but they probably wont instakill you from full HP
@ShadowKras I'm starting to feel like we are getting away from the original topic and getting onto how CR is inaccurate a lot of times, which wasn't really my intent
@WrongOnTheInternet Yeah, as noted in chat there seemed to be something of a game going on
@godskook KorvinStarmast, the question is "what's the best way to do X, ignoring ALL the best ways to actually do X". Questions of that structure, without explanation as to -why- they're of that structure will always be hated
@godskook I think there's more to the visceral reaction than that. This community has certain norms, and I've noted how the hive mind responds to some things.
@WrongOnTheInternet Oh yeah, as the DM can fudge anything, particularly for beginners.
@KorvinStarmast, based on the reaction in chat where everyone was moreso trying to understand the constraints of the question than they were trying to virtue signal her down, I think social norms are not the primary driver at play. Could be wrong, but the nature of this situation means I'll probably never know for sure either way.
@WrongOnTheInternet Oh yeah, back in them days before we had all of this fancy stuff, we died and we liked it! grognard moment passes
@godskook It's an ethical thing, I think. I don't think any of us really like, in the RPG context, helping to set up grief play, and help someone be deceitful. In chat that was part of the signal being sent, I think.
@NautArch It could be as simple as "I'm not really into this, but I want to at least show up for awhile to be socially acceptable." Where the answer to that is "Sorry guys, I can play but I need to duck out mid-session, go ahead and take over my character when I leave."
@NautArch, #context, that's what the questioner used for the term, not me.
@Yuuki, anyone who thinks that about pizza has either never had sufficiently good pizza or sufficiently bad pizza to understand how wrong that core value is.
@Yuuki, to which I ask, have you ever been to Chicago?
@Yuuki, 1.thin crust, not deep dish, we have excellent both, and I'm referring to the thin crust, 2."no pizza" is short-term enough that yes, I have turned down pizza that was inedible before, many times.
I don't know, I'm starting to regret my close vote and am considering changing my stance on the thing. But also, it's just like, "I want to help you solve the problem, but you refuse to give us context"
Now I'm just imagining a game that reaches long into the middle of the night where (s)he keeps trying to kill off his/her character and the DM keeps handing over pregenerated character sheets.
@Adam when someone refuses to explain they are usually either trolling or have an answer they already want to hear. so not worth spilling much ink or blood over
There are some myths that at the end of the universe, the following conversation will be heard: "I stuff a entire pallet full of napkins down my throat and die of suffocation." "Ooo, that sucks. Here, I pre-genned a gunslinger for you."
The Big Bang was when this game had gone on long enough that the accumulated 1st-level bodies numbered so great that they underwent supermassive collapse.
@godskook Hmm, the conflict that broke up the Beatles obviously supports your point that he sucked at that, but the Beatles were already growing apart at that point. PS: I don't see how those two are related to my little joke on a song title and imaginary numbers ... nor why you made that leap.
To misquote Denis Leary, Mark David Chapman emptied his pistol and all of the bullets hit John Lennon. Yoko Ono was standing right next to John, and none of the bullets hit her. There is no God
@KorvinStarmast, your construction was "imagine there's no foo"->"Lennon is bad at foo". The original song was "imagine there's no things to fight over".
Numbers/math was the joke. Why would he want to imagine there are no numbers? If he sucked at math, this would be the same utopia as the rest of the song.
When one has to explain a joke, perhaps it's not a great joke. 8^D
I think my construction was "imagine there's no foo" "lenon sucks at what foo makes" thus "Imagine there's no flour" Lenon Sucks at baking is the joke. (He was actually a good cook, baked his own bread).
I wonder why the 5th edition Wild Magic table include the option "you Fireball yourself". Almost all the options are funny and quirky but mostly non-fatal, and then there's that one.
Well, I had a Wild Sorceror in my previous game and I went over the table and we just kinda... didn't use it because there was a chance of "oops, entire party dies"
But it feels like missing out, because the flavor is pretty cool, except instant death isn't worth it
Even at a 2% chance, I know how that ends up going
I'd even be okay with the Sorceror accidentally blowing up herself if she wants to gamble, but a Fireball has the potential of taking out the entire party
I find most of the games I play nowadays have random death as a factor occasionally. Although "random" in this case really means "your friend kicked a basket that exploded while you were in the room, had the hit points to survive. You did not."
Our bard fell 300 feet to his death. Rolled a 1 on his climb down a cliff. 20D6 will do ya at 5th level. And I had one scroll of raise dead. I cast it, rolled to not screw up using the scroll, and he was alive in a few minutes, but suffered the side effects
