3.PF and 5e need a sentence on creating your own monster that says "You don't need to design them like characters; just put the derived values down and you're gold."
The books leave it up to you.
DMG 273-279 contains information for building monsters. The section opens with:
The Monster Manual contains hundreds of ready-to-play monsters, but it doesn't include every monster that you can imagine. Part of the D&D experience is the simple joy of creating n...
This answer and the linked article made me think of that.
I might have to check that one out then, I love looking monster manuals. I just bought Tales from the Yawning Portal though, so maybe I'll wait until next paycheck..
So I'm thinking about building a batman-esque character, I've decided Thief/Shadow Monk is a decent way to go, but I was wondering how you would put "Armor" on a monk and not hurt his unarmored movement
D&D 3.5 had something called... twistcloth, maybe? It was armor that gave a miss chance because instead of resisting attacks, it twisted and billowed so they'd be attacking where you weren't.
That's Batman's cape if anything is.
I think it was in the gnome section of Races of Stone.
The trick with this kind of character design is that D&D is built with different priorities and restrictions than a comic book, cartoon show, or film--and it's predicated on a certain amount of necessary random failure, which doesn't fit well with a concept like Batman.
So I'd suggest working backwards from personal first principles:
Build him by feel
SevenSidedDie has an excellent answer about why there's no definitive Gandalf build, but I think we can talk constructively about how to go creating a Gandalf build.
You want to "recreate Gandalf from the books" "in D&D3.5 terms." You can't, not precisely. D&D isn't a good fit...
My personal Batman would probably be a ninja chessmaster; Frank Miller's is a gadget-laden determinator; Adam West's is a charismatic detective. D&D would represent each completely differently.
> MS Paint is one of the best photo editing programs out there! > I'll agree with most of what you're saying, MS Paint is definitely one of the photo editing programs out there.
@BESW The modern Batman fanboy's Batman would be a literal Deus ex Machina.
This is part of why I greatly... dislike d20 derived superhero games. The swinginess and random failure of the system just doesn't mesh with the genre.
The d20 requires a snackrifice! Feed it your pride, your plans, your statistics, your hopes and dreams for a campaign with character continuity. The d20 must be sated.
For example, Fate gives you the resources to succeed on MOST of your efforts, but you get to choose which things you succeed at, or at what cost.
Failure is still very much a part of the game, but often you've chosen to fail now to get the tools for success later, or to succeed at a price (which is often even more interesting!).
Pilgrims of the Flying Temple offers choices about immediate success at the cost of increasing the likelihood you'll fail at the ultimate goal, with that choice ALSO influencing the direction your character develops independent of success or failure.
Having choices about failure makes our games much more fun than just wondering when the d20 will decide we choke on a pretzel.
And a lot of DMs don't really understad that, and then they whinge about their PCs never running from a battle...well it's kind of hard to run when the party fighter has a 15ft movement rate and the monster he's fighting has 20ft reach
Hey Shal, thanks for the tip, looks like that "slide" was helpful. :) Of course, I also got all grumpy with a few people talking rubbish about FBW ... should not post late at night.
@BESW Over at Aviation.SE, Fly By Wire and Helicopters. There are a few dead bodies related to that fusion and I don't like how people think how "easy" any of all that is.
> I have met exactly one person who I was sure knew what they were doing. After getting to know her better, I found out she knew exactly what she was doing in one specific area of her life, and had panic attacks trying to navigate the rest.
> The fact that she was in her late fifties and was my college professor did not improve this realization.
I think the moment I become an adult is when this happens:
> Every once in a while, I look around my apartment and remember that the only thing keeping a roof over my head is my own continued effort. It's weird.
@KorvinStarmast yeah. what interests me in helicopter controls is the other end -- is it possible to make a helicopter that's naturally stable enough to fly IFR without any stability augmentation?
@Shalvenay I did it boost off in an SH-2F, and in a huey. Not sure about yoru question
@Karelzarath It's the next best idea in replacing a Black Hawk with a smaller Tilt Rotor. Go to Bell's site, it's a cool tech, first flight this September. No, I don't work for bell
which one was the easier one to do it in, btw? (I'd think it'd be the SH-2 as the synchropter design is more stable in general AIUI, but I want to hear your take)
It's ASE had some heading and alt hold modes, so there was a sort of autopilot. GOOD instrument bird. Flew in some real crap in that bird and it did fine. Not as fancy as Sea Hawk, but a good instrument bird.
SH-2F needed NO hydraulics due to servo flap design.
For reasons, the druid in my DW game is going to summon a spirit of fire in the next session in order to give a species of artifically created infertile tiny newts the ability to procreate. This is gonna be interesting.
The books leave it up to you.
DMG 273-279 contains information for building monsters. The section opens with:
The Monster Manual contains hundreds of ready-to-play monsters, but it doesn't include every monster that you can imagine. Part of the D&D experience is the simple joy of creating n...
