@DavidCoffron Cool! That's even higher than I thought. So no-one should be surprised if half of their 22 players all pick only three different classes.
@Helwar: club, yeah, but the flip side of that is that there is a 'magical' reaction between the holy water and the fiend/undead that renders that somewhat moot. Shape it like a javelin, and Bob's your uncle, if you are jav proficieny. Dagger. Etc.
@Helwar Not really a problem, regarding the sword and its edge, since you can shape it to conform to all of the blade but the edge ... that's why "work with your DM" is as ever a good idea. Plus, if your weapon is a Warhammer, there isn't an edge to concern yourself with. :)
I have noticed that I'm a fun-ruiner. You know how people defend the rule of fun? I agree on principle but then at the table i feel meh about thse kinds of things.
later, in hindsight, I always think I should have ruled differently
it's hard to change the mindset, when a player tells you something that doesn't really compute to you, to just "let it happen" if you think the outcome would be fun. First instinct is: this wouldn't work like this....
but hey, eventually I'll improve my dming skills
it's not like I don't spend a sizeable amount of my weekends doing it :P
@Helwar From experience, it might take them and you some getting used to talking about the things that can be improved and how they can be improved, but asking about the most awesome thing is usually easy and rewarding.
we have to change our whole behaviour around RPGs, we play very, very long sessions, but people interrupt to tell an anecdote or talk about the soccer game or whatever, some go away to walk the dog, others go to fetch supper, etc... We eventually end the session when we are too tired to continue
I want to try to do shorter, more focused sessions, with less digression, but there is some resistance to it
we see each other mostly only when we schedule for D&D so they want to catch up, and they look at the "focused" part of the proposal as not being able to, wich I understand. I just want to do it before, or after the game, not during. But well... It is what it is
I try to have some structure, and take breaks. A few times that I've done it one of them has taken the chance to walk the dog (good for her!), but the others spent the time twiddling and I was like: NOW IS THE TIME TO TALK ABOUT SOCCER YOU MORONS! haha
I have one player (THAT player taht I always complain about) that's 110% of the time playing something on the phone. I've told him several times not to do it but he complains others take too much time on their turns and dismisses me
then It's his turn and I have to explain everything that has happened
now, I'm not a misoginist or anything, but 2 members of our group are girlfriends / wifes of players. I try VERY HARD to be engaging with them, to include them in every decision, but when they have the spotlight shy away or just ask the husband/bf what to do... so there is a lot of disinterest there
e.g. Rather than say "I recommend moving and casting Fireball", I'd point out that there's some unthreatened space, and some enemies that need dealing with, and let them decide how they want to deal with that
In the last PF game I was in, we got to 10th level, and 3 of the 6 players (who had been there since level 1) still didn't know the basic rules, because people kept telling them what to do all the time
@ColinGross true that. I'm an RPer first and a fighter second. 3 of my players just like crunching things and the other two are the SO of another player and are just there
They are my friends though :)
yeah we play board games often too, and video games
@ColinGross thing is, they claim they like it, they are having fun, and don't want to stop. And frustrating as it is, I have fun too, when I don't want to kill that one player :P
They show up because they want to be with their SO, but aren't interested in the activity. As a result, they end up bored and annoyed, and the other players end up a bit frustrated at the lack of participation.
@MikeQ I know I know, as I said I'm not misoginistic or anything. They are just not interested and they involve themselves because their special other does
One way to counter it is to give some "training wheels" preferential treatment, as if they're newbie players. Be willing to bend the rules for them, so they don't have to wrestle with the game mechanics as much.
@Helwar This may vary by the social dynamics of your group, but if I was GM in that situation, I would step in and tell them to make their own decision. Also reconsider ways to make their character simpler to play.
@Helwar I don't know what your friend dynamic is, but you should probably tell him. Also, he's stated the issue is time between turns, so ask him for help on how to deal with that.
@MikeQ I've tried that. I stopped doing that because I felt like an evil teacher asking them to go in front of the class and recite the whole list of irregular verbs
I was planning of placing the two girls together in some kind of situation and force them to take agency that way, even going to another room without their SOs if that's what is needed
@MikeQ I do too. But you can't convince the veterinary that Druid is the hardest class to play for a newbie.
the other girl started as a beastmaster ranger and after a session where she played a barbarian (it was a martial arts tournament and only the monk had agreed to participate, so I made them play his contrincants), she liked it and found it simpler
@MikeQ Druids/Clerics are more complex, but I would argue that in general, they're easier to play, because you don't have to make critical spell selection choices with the class.
If you pick a spell that's bad or suboptimal, you just shrug your shoulders and repick your spells on the next Long Rest.
Okay, I see. I thought you meant like, the SOs have no idea how to play and their partners just choose everything for them, including build options and in-game tactical and RP decisions
As far as Spellcasters go, I would say the Memorized classes (Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, Eldritch Knight, Arcane Trickster, Artificer) are a lot more difficult, since if you make a bad spell choice, you have to stick with it until you level up (and it may interfere with picking better spells later on). And Wizard has a Tyranny of Choice problem where you're constantly agonizing over what the best choices are.
well, they mostly choose for them, including build options, but this girl has put the effort to know how her beast shapes and spellcasting works, btut then cowers in front of every decision. And she doesn't know how her most used spell works. She's a walking contradiction :)
that's why I want to find a group of people that really is into the game hahaha, I can handle this game because they are my friends are all dear to me, but I kinda need a less difficult setup to decompress
The question in question: Is it true that that "more taint-absorbing items = less protection against taint"?
A moderate rep user created a tag that, as far as I can tell, accurately describes the content of their question. A high rep user then deleted said tag. This seems problematic to me, be...
Out of game, ask something like "Hey I noticed you seem kind of confused/bored/whatever when we're playing <game>. How can I make it more fun for you? Would you like to see more <something in your game>?"
@MikeQ I did that quite a few times. They claimed all was ok, sun and rainbows. It got to the point that they thought I didn't want them in the game, told that to their SOs, and we had a very interesting conversation (that got cleared pretty soon! Thankfully)
@Helwar I was trying to pull from my own similar experiences, but it seems like your players (the SOs) are moderately interested, but they're cautious and want to ask someone they trust (i.e., their partner) for tactical advice
What I've seen are: - SO/outside friend who doesn't pay attention, so they don't learn how their character works and then get stressed when the party faces an actual challenge - SO/outside friend who knows the system, but has a dramatically different (read: antagonistic) play style from the rest of the group - Newbie player who built a complicated character based on recommendations, then slows down the game because they don't know how their build works
> I built a Homebrew army of Necrons that got hit by an ion storm while hibernating and when they woke up, they thought they were Orks. With nanomachines. They met an Ork raid and were readily accepted and are now called the Toomteefs.
@Helwar The issue is that you're not enjoying the experience, correct? The players haven't opined that they're not enjoying the time together, correct?
I have a build challenge I've been mulling over for awhile: Can you create a character that, with the cooperation of the DM, is only composed of (potentially multiclassed) Spellcasting classes (Bard, Druid, Cleric, Wizard, Sorcerer, Warlock), but can convince the other players at the table (who don't physically have access to your character sheet) that they're actually a Fighter? Bonus points if you don't, at any point, say the phrase "Hexblade".
My original concept for my Sorcerer was to try to do this, but the Eyes of Darkness + Mage Hand Legerdomain feature combo was too good to ignore, so I deviated away from it.
@MikeQ It's for funsies. And also for an RP fantasy where I play with my other players genuinely thinking I'm playing a Fighter, only to reveal many sessions into the campaign with a sudden massive Fireball that I'm actually a spellcaster.
@Xirema Sure. Even without seeing each others sheets, at some point you still have to lie to the other players. It's not role playing your character is hiding it from the other characters... this is the player hiding things from other players.
@ColinGross Okay, but like, there's a difference between hiding "I'm secretly an assassin, and I'm going to kill their character the moment I spot their vulnerability" and "I'm secretly a Sorcerer, but revealing that would expose my identity, so I pretend to be someone else who's a really good fighter", on the scale of "secret information that is bad←→good to play with".
Also, I don't know what your games are like, but I've never played a game of D&D where players didn't keep some critical information hidden from each other, not just in the fiction of the story.
in fact, one of the stories that's retold often in my old RPG circle was about a player whose character was an illusionist who was permanently invisible and the entity that everyone thought was him was just a very convincing illusion, which was revealed when a T-Rex "ate" the illusion
The druid in our campaign has apparently got some super secret dark aspect of his backstory that only the DM knows about, and which I only know about because he refused to let me look at the backstory portion of his character sheet when I was helping him level up.
Also, the DM and one player chuckling about something might make the other players feel like their on the outside of an inside joke or worse that maybe they're the butt of it.
@ColinGross No idea. Supposedly there was almost an overlap between the (very murdery) backstory of my paladin and his backstory, but the locations/timescales didn't line up.
Though there is one player who always has elaborate backstories and then decides in the first few sessions to play his character completely differently anyway, so it's just ignored...
One of my ideas for making this work was RPing a Stone Sorcerer by having them always stand near someone they were "protecting" and "Readying an Action" to attack anyone that tried to harm them, and "teleporting" only a few feet at a time when using their reaction to attack, explaining it away as a weird [DM-approved] Racial trait.
regardless of what you come up with, you have to actually play it to figure out which bits are fun to play, and there's an element of compromising for party cohesion which probably happens (consciously or not)
I had written a character that was all gung-ho about joining the militia and fighting "the bad guys". Went off to war raring to fight and came back to a hometown burnt to the ground.
@Yuuki The short, short version is that my Paladin used to do very bad poop before she became a Paladin, and a lot of people died both directly and indirectly by her hand. So if my backstory overlaps with anyone's, it's 50:1 odds I killed their parents. XD
I tend to make rather vague backstories for my PCs because I know I'll only know how I want to play them until I've interacted with the other PCs for a session or two
@ACuriousMind Can you expound a bit on that with a brief example... not that I'm going to be making copy pasta of it later.... just want to know... for a friend.
@ColinGross I mean, in session 1, I cast Command on our Rogue to stop her from threatening a captive we had tied up, and as of this session, she doesn't trust me because of my use of a magical artifact we think might have evil power in it, so "inter-player conflict" is sort of our bread & butter. XD
@Carcer I agree. I think the violent backstory where one character killed the other's parents and this ends up being a surprise to the players could set up a situation that's ripe for the unfun "it's what my character would do!" as now there's PvP
@NautArch To be clear, I wasn't the one who made that call, that was my DM connecting dots of "Okay, ten years ago, she was a bit murdery, and in his backstory, [BACKSTORY REDACTED], when did that happen...?"
@ColinGross Well, in one game I played a street magician specialized in illusions and all sorts of people skills. All I knew about his backstory was that he was a noble that had acted as a spy during a recent civil war, and fallen in disgrace after that. I resisted the urge to specify what specifically he had done, how exactly he was good at handling people. During the first two sessions he became this overconfident compulsive liar
who mainly used his illusions to get away once he saw no other way out. Originally, I had more pictured him has being very diplomatic and formal, using subtle illusions to bolster his standing - but I avoided nailing that down in the backstory. It was much more fun to "discover" him through play than trying to shoehorn my original vision into the chaotic ragtag group he found himself ending up with.
@NautArch Also, w/r/t my Paladin, I've been very specifically conscious that she refuses to outright kill people unless she's convinced that leaving someone alive will cause more harm than good. A party member (justifiably) pissed at something she did a decade ago is waaaay below that threshold, even if they are actively trying to kill her.
Slowly, for my magician, it emerged that he'd been found out as a spy because he just enjoyed telling elaborate lies too much, and that he escaped his death sentence only through an illusionist hat trick with his guards. Perfect fit as a backstory for who he was now, while what I had in advance simply made no sense for his personality as I had played him
@Carcer I could retcon that into her backstory! She would have attended alongside her second-in-command, who lived with her after the war.
@ACuriousMind To be fair, backstories work a lot better as "conflict fodder" for the DM to sift through than they do for "why does my character act the way they do"
@ACuriousMind Even though literally everyone tries to do it the other way around.
Although maybe I take that to heart too much. My paladin's first question after encountering a surprisingly sentient skeleton was to ask "have I murdered you before?"
Which, I think we can all agree is the best icebreaker.
If it works for the other players then I guess it's ok
Normally I've found that distrust of character motives can be kinda rocky for party cohesion
One time I told an already not-quite-trusting party that I'd bring a cleric (my previous character perma-died), and my first action was necromancing up some big spoopy skeletons, and then casting charms on our NPC allies to stop them from attacking
@Rubiksmoose I still think that question is a dupe :) The answers took the earlier question to mean one thing, but the question did actually encompass this one.
More specifically I'm trying to understand if a Barbarian who has been polymorphed, either willingly or not would be able to rage. However this also applies to things such as Uncanny Dodge, or Evasion, anything a player might want to continue to use while no longer themselves.
Many questions spe...
I thought it was a dupe because the question is merely about using a feature - not specifically about activating one. And the new question is asking the exact same thing. Can I use a feature after polymorph.
@NautArch The old one is asking about using class features while polymorphed, while the new one is asking if the effect of a class feature (not using it itself) is canceled while in polymorph.
@NautArch I had a duplicate claim denied on the basis that the two questions weren't literally identical to each other. So I get the sense that the standards for "are these questions duplicates" are higher than I (or you, apparently) are expecting.
It's a hard line to parse though. Calling a question a duplicate if the OP doesn't agree can feel like you, the person making the claim, aren't putting any effort into understanding their issue, which brushes up against that Be Nice rule we have.
If a race had a racial feature that turned yourself invisible (similar to the spell, but not the spell), and you used it and then got polymorphed, would you still be invisible?
>Why does Polymorph stops an active Rage on a Barbarian (no more class features), but doesn’t remove Arcane Ward?Arcane Ward is an external effect that you activate. Its duration isn't dependent on your form. — Jeremy Crawford
Bam
Arcane Ward is a wizard class feature very similar to Bladesong
> Persistent Spell Metamagic. If you lose concentration on a spell for any reason, you may use your Reaction to spend 1 Sorcery Point and regain concentration on that spell, and the spell continues to function as though you never lost concentration.
@Xirema It may be more balanced as 1 sorcery point per spell level (would have to play test), but that is a very good alt Metamagic that I could totally see in the game
@SirCinnamon I think 5e discourages that kind of design. Heightened Spell is closer to how they'd design a Metamagic like that.
> Misdirected Spell Metamagic. When you cast a spell, you may spend 1 Sorcery Point to make it appear as though another creature was the source or target of the spell. A creature can make an Intelligence(Investigation) or a Wisdom(Perception) check (against your Spell Save DC) to see through this illusion.
> Phantom Spell. When you cast a spell, you may spend 1 Sorcery Point to instead produce an illusory effect that merely resembles the spell you attempted to cast. The spell itself is not actually cast, and the Spell Slot (if applicable) is not consumed. A creature can make an Intelligence(Investigation) or Intelligence(Arcana) check (against your Spell Save DC) to see through the illusion.
@Xirema I'm not sure if illusion'istic metamagics will work. It's supposed to show that the sorcerer can adjust the fundamental aspects of the spell since it is ingrained.
@DavidCoffron I feel like "can make a spell look like it's doing something other than what it's actually doing" counts as "adjusting the fundamental aspects of the spell".
@ColinGross Because the selection as-provided by the PHB is limited, and kind of boring TBH.
Or require hours of rules lawyering (See Twinned Spell)
Phantom Spell would need to be adjusted. It occurred to me that it duplicates the effects of Major Image (but limited to only producing illusions that look like spells you can already cast, hence the reduced cost) but would behave very strangely if you actually tried to cast, say, Major Image.
> Comical Spell. As long as you have 1 Sorcery Point when you cast a spell, you may choose to also produce a minor illusory effect that resembles a one-word phrase in any language you choose.
@GreySage Well, for the former case, it does something that an Illusion spell can't do. And in the latter case, it reproduces Major Image at a cheaper cost, but with severe restrictions on what it can do.
@Xirema I think setting a trigger might be too strong/abuse-able. A straight up timer is more clear
"We need a distraction. I want to walk into the other room and cast firebolt into that curtain, delayed by 5 minutes. Then i return to where I was, where everyone can see me."
> Pre-Causal Spell. When you cast a spell, you may choose to spend a number of Sorcery Points equal to its level to not spend a spell slot. You must spend a spell slot of this level within the following week or pass a DC25 Concentration check to not wink out of existence.
> Delayed Spell Metamagic. When you cast a spell, you may spend 1 sorcery point to delay the beginning of the spell's effects by a fixed period of time that you specify, up to [X QUANTITY OF TIME].
@Xirema I would say... no - but if it's a concentration spell then they immediately give up any existing concentration when it starts, and depending on the spell exactly, if the target has become invalid the spell will fail
@Yuuki I like the idea, but I don't think I'd permit that to be accessible to a level 3 Sorcerer. Maybe a class of "Advanced Metamagics" would be appropriate for something like that.
@Yuuki It also would require some playtesting. It seems very potentially abuseable.
Spend one sorcery point while touching an ally - the next time you cast a spell you can instead cause the ally to deliver the spell as if it had cast the spell
> Expedited Spell Metamagic. When you begin casting a spell that has a casting time greater than 1 round, you may spend 4 Sorcery Points to cause the spell to immediately take effect. You are then incapacitated for a duration of time equal to the amount of time the spell normally requires to cast.
The question in question: Is it true that that "more taint-absorbing items = less protection against taint"?
A moderate rep user created a tag that, as far as I can tell, accurately describes the content of their question. A high rep user then deleted said tag. This seems problematic to me, be...
