@CTWind There's Mutants & Masterminds 3e, which isn't necessarily combat-focused but has a pretty good combat system. However, it's more like D&D 3.X than 5e, and character creation has a COSMIC degree of options and complexity.
To clarify - character creation is complex. The game itself runs smoothly once the group figures out a rhythm that works for them. It doesn't get more complicated at higher power levels - the numbers just get bigger.
@BESW It's in comparison to systems where, say, every single action actually involves a bunch of subtasks and you have to look up rules in different places and figure out how they interact
and then higher tiers of play introduces even more complex mechanics that bog down the gameplay further
Bigger numbers tend to mean very little because the target difficulties increase alongside them, while greater complexity can mean you're actually able to do MORE but at what cost.
At the moment my conclusion is that "tiers of play" isn't something I'm interested in either way.
I told one of my friends the exact sequence too much get a really low level city buster (no undead required) so he's going to pull it on the unsuspecting DM.
Hello ladies and gentlemen (or probably just gentlemen) Originally I wanted to post it as a question, but later I realised that it might be too broad My friends and I are going to start Curse of Strahd (D&D 5e) and I rolled 15-11-14-12-15-14 on ability scores (STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, CHA respectively, we're rolling "ladder" style) Party already consists of Warlock (Archfey patron), Cleric (Nature Domain), Rogue (would-be Thief) and a Ranger (UA Revised, would-be Hunter Conclave) I was thinking about taking Half-Elf Paladin (probably Oath of Devotion or Ancients) but even though its a viabl…
@AntiDrondert Hiya! I just finished CoS yesterday, and we had a bit of retrospective regarding our class choices. The campaign does have a few elements that make having members of a particular class (or a set of classes) very worthwhile -- would you like information based on that or is it too spoilery?
(I'll be to lunch soon but I'll be back afterwards, don't worry)
@kviiri Wassup Ye, it would be nice to hear some thoughts, since all of the players played this compaign before (me included) but didn't quite finish it (6 sessions top), also one of the players (who is my DM in another compaign) read the whole book, so spoilers aren't the issue, I suppose, unless this is some PLOT-TWIST-YOUR-WORLD-UPSIDE-DOWN-NOW spoiler
@kviiri ROT13: Bar bs gurz zhfg or Fhaoynqr V thrff, V'ir rapbhagrerq vg va zl cerivbhf pbzcnvta. Vg pna or hfrq nf n fubegfjbeq nf jryy, vs V'z abg zvfgnxra? Gnxvat na Rys jvgu Jrncba Genvavat zvtug zvgvtngr fbzr bs gur pynff' qvfnqinagntrf ertneqvat ybatfjbeq/fubegfjbeq jrncba cebsvpvrapvrf. Yea, this was hardly a surprise, but thanks for the tip :D Enjoy your meal :)
@kviiri What about other classes? Good way to utilize relatively high STR score would be to take some martial class (though 11 DEX and 14 CON is hardly suitable for Barbarian), but it seems a waste to throw out WIS and CHA scores. But I still need heavy armor to get decent AC, any thoughts?
@AntiDrondert High Wis and Cha go well with Paladin, naturally. I think Barbarian wouldn't be too bad otherwise but given the Gothic horror tone of the campaign, I'm not sure if they're the best thematic fit
Or maybe it depends mostly on how you play them... our barbarians have always been a bit powertrippy :)
@kviiri What kind of problems I might encounter if I take the same class as another player (Cleric) but of different domain? Not taking RP in account, how can one avoid being a "copy-cat"? Is it an issue anyway?
@AntiDrondert Hmm.... I think Cleric is a bit riskier than usual since they have less of a fixed set of spells --> their spell repertoires aren't really a part of their "personality"
So two clerics will feel more alike than, say, two wizards
well, in practice it still depends on which spells that actually use
and different domain abilities encourage different playstyles
but there isn't an inherent gameplay issue with having two similar characters, especially two clerics - having more healing available is never going to be bad for you
I would be much more concerned about the other player feeling infringed upon
@Carcer I was thinking about War Domain to fill out melee combatant vacancy, how potent are Clerics this way anyway? I still can't shake off established image of a priest in robes.
@AntiDrondert I played CoS with a Light Cleric X/Ftr 1 frontliner, and it was a lot of fun. The other cleric didn't even know I was a cleric, since I billed myself as a paladin =)
@Carcer Well, we're allowed to pick Human (V), so my guess is yes, though it wasn't explicitly said to us. GWM with War Cleric's Channel Divinity variant could be a nice combo per short rest.
@AntiDrondert I'm a big fan of the bonus action attacks from War Priest, personally. (Because I generally try to make sure I can have bonus actions available.)
@nitsua60 Ikr, every time I'm asked in the end of the turn if I'm finished and all I have is unused bonus action I can't apply, I feel kinda unsatisfied.
@AntiDrondert I've heard good things about it and read the rules --- it seems very promising. It basically feels a bit like what DnD could be if they didn't have to worry about breaking tradition :)
but war caster does have the other bonus features for easy somatic casting with your hands full and the ability to drop a spell on enemies as an opportunity attack
@kviiri We're playing another introductory module since 3 of 5 players are refusing to play Dead House all over again, but I guess we will reach level 3 at most.
:( I actualy liked it, helped me to dive into "spooky" atmosphere and be more careful overall But probably our DM tweaked a couple of things to make it better, I haven't read it so I don't know for sure
@AntiDrondert Yeah, my problem with it is largely that I don't really find "carefulness" to be a concept easy to implement in DnD... especially when there's cries of "No metagaming!" around :(
Also, it isn't exactly clear what type of carefulness such romps expect of their players in order to succeed
carefulness like "come on now, we've only got two healing potions" or carefulness like everyone's carrying a 10-ft pole and nobody touches a door that hasn't been intensely stared at for ten minutes at least?
@Carcer In Death House, it's specifically "careful not to dally" vs "careful to check everything"
It's like in those video games where some NPC tells you a demon bear took their father or some stuff and you promise to rescue them. And then you go clear out a bunch of smaller dungeons, do some crafting, save the world from the dragon god, swim around the continent for an achievement
Could not describe it better :D ROT13 (Spoilers? Not sure): "Fnir bhe cneragf!" naq gura lbh raq hc whzcvat guebhtu ebgngvat oynqrf fnivat lbhefrys sebz gur haqrnq.
@kviiri Well, to be honest, there IS an easy way out, though none of parties I've heard of made this choice. ROT13: Lbh pna fnpevsvpr lbhe nyyl gb qvfnoyr nyy gur gencf va gur ubhfr.
@kviiri Frperg ghaary yrnqf sebz nygne punzore gb cevfba pryyf nf sne nf V haqrefgbbq, gubhtu gurer zvtug or nabgure bar.
Alright, I decided to go Paladin after all, though Oath pick isn't less difficult: I'm struggling between Devotion and Ancients, both of them fit my character concept nicely, so the struggle is in the mechanics. Assuming we're are ending at level 9, the difference is in Channel Divinity option, oath spells and level 7 Oath feature.
Honestly, @AntiDrondert and @kviiri, I think the Not A Bar would be better for discussing spoilerey CoS things than populating the main room with gibberish.
Hey Im trying to find an old post that discussed how to convert a creature into a skeleton for D&D 5e, im trying to make skeleton troglodytes for my bone naga former spirit naga
@KaleDodge You're trying to sort out the stat blocks. Got it. I find it easier to re-skin an existing monster of the same type with similar size and CR.
i'll look into both options @colingross I choose troglodytes cause I really like those creatures and it made sense that my bone naga would have had the time and spite to enslave them
Question, Skelotons don't have sunlight sensitivity but would the skeleton of a creature that use to have sunlight sensitivity still have it or no?
If it was some creature that reacted violently physically to sunlight -- eg. Tolkien-style trolls or vampires, then I'd maybe consider extending it to their remains. (Vampire Skeletons --- double the fun!)
I really like making off-color jokes about my own ethnicity but you have to word those sort of things really carefully or else you get flagged into oblivion.
I had once gotten flagged (though not confirmed) for making jokes about Hurricane Harvey despite the fact that I live in Houston and had water up to my front door at the time.
Somewhat of a related question to Why Are Our 5e Questions Terrible? - questions from people who haven't read the book yet, and want us to do it for them.
This is a little different from the discussion in Should a question be judged on its level of "expertise"? because these questions don't even...
@NautArch It's definitely not a read the book to me question, but this one highlights we're not tolerant of people going and sharing whole material and we don't want the site to be about that.
So while we've got no special obligation to chase down copyright infringement, we're still going to come down on blatant copyright violation when we see it, such as: - people sharing the whole text specifically just so someone doesn't have the book - people asking for people to do that specifically just so they don't have to buy the book - piracy websites that exist solely to reproduce paid material en masse (hence our website blacklist)
There's pragmatic and ethical reasons, for example, we want to maintain a good relationship with the people whose games we are Q&A'ing about because them liking us will be a positive thing for the site.
@NautArch That answer was from 2010 — the site was two months old — and we haven't exactly followed it. See: our site blacklist created after dndtools started getting linked everywhere, our stopping "gimme the content pls" questions.
Putting it in context too, the question was someone being concerned about someone quoting too much that it might violate Fair Use. It's not blatant copyright infringement and we're not really sure, so we're going “eh, it's fine until someone complains about it.”
FYI, I'm trying to figure out how to trim some of that down so it makes more sense as a posted answer to that question. As-is, this is definitely overkill and probably more confusing than enlightening.
The TL;DR is that you want a level 7 (8) Eldritch Knight for the Bonus Attack on GFB, and then a level 12 Hexblade for the Lifedrinker feature. All the rest is just proof that other combinations are less good than that.
@Xirema Okay, so I should update the question about races. Can you confirm for me that "centaurs, goblins, hybrids, loxodons, minotaurs, vampire, vedalken, and viashino" is the list of races that made it in there?
@Xirema I definitely don't know how to parse anything on that table other than the top is ACs so I presume this is some kind of average damage output of certain attacks versus those ACs.
Yuan-ti have a purity level: your conversion into a Yuan-ti can get more and more advanced. They have names for the stages of conversion. The most pure form of Yuan-ti is called an “abomination” or something like that. Then they have a version that looks almost completely humanoid and is the first stage, and they call that a “pureblood”.
There's also a stage somewhere in the middle called a half-blood.
Abominations are almost totally snakelike, and Anathemas are supremely powerful yuan-ti who often have some fairly extravagant features like multiple heads.
Why is the most snake-like yuan-ti form not called the pure-blood? Why is the almost-completely-humanoid version not called an abomination or half-blood?
@GreySage Oh yeah, ok, half-bloods and malisons are two names for the same thing. Cool. That makes sense.
I remember reading about Yuan-Ti back in 3.5 days, and being really confused why this snake worshiping race referred to the least snake-like members as 'pureblood'.
@goodguy5 I read it. The actual mechanic change was interesting, although unexplored and surrounded in non-sensical and unnecessary prose that just takes up space, as is usual for the AngryDM.
I'd be interested in trying out the mechanic. Something like +2 for positive invoking, -2 per 'stack' for negative invoking, or just auto-fail (like a nat 1) when overstressed.
I feel like +/-2 could be too small to make an effect, but more could be too breaking.
I find I'm really bad at estimating the impact of number in 5e
@GreySage The more I've played, the less impact I've seen of the modifiers in 5e. It very much feels that the majority is on the die roll. Add/losing modifiers can help push you in one direction or another, but it seems minimal.
@NautArch So, I saw a 4-person conversation with Colville and I liked what he had to say. (Though he was the least vocal of the 4.) And I KSed his book, so that's coming in the mail some day. But if I wanted to get more of "Colville being Colville" and I'm not at all willing to watch other people playing, where should I go? Does he write a blog? Have a podcast (that's not a campaign)?
@GreySage If you trust Angry...
> I mean, who freaking cares. A +2 bonus or even Advantage on a certain subset of actions isn’t going to break anything and you need to stop taking game balance that freaking seriously. Trust me.
@nitsua60 I've watched some youtube vids of him just talking
@nitsua60 I think advantage is a bigger deal than a modifier, mostly because I believe that the dice roll is the bigger factor. But I can't really support that in any meaningful way other than my opinion.
@NautArch Eh... 'snot really for me. I generally either like something I can read--so it's a pull-medium--or something I can listen to while running, doing yard-chores, shelving books, &c.
@NautArch What I've learned from doing all my stats breakdowns is that a +1 to any given stat modifier is like a +10% damage output to any weapon attacks that use that modifier.
@Xirema Ha! I wasn't even thinking about damage modifiers :) I was looking at attack rolls, saves, etc. It's why I generally think the Ability score isn't quite as valuable as I thought it was and prioritize feats because they're more fun, intresting and the difference of a 1 or 2 modifier just isn't that big.
@NautArch I mean, a 10% boost is pretty boring when you take into account that that's the normalized DPR, including the +5% chance to hit and the +??% change to actual damage on hit. Defeating an enemy in 90.9% of the normal time is pretty uninteresting, TBH.
It matters—it's the difference between a character dominating the battlefield and a character... not. But it isn't interesting.
@Xirema Yeah, was thinking about that just now, too. Which further supports my view that the modifier isn't nearly asimportant as the roll. I've told my players not to worry about bad stat rolls or them in general.
@NautArch I will say though: my Paladin is only a few points away from being able to ignore concentration checks on damage 21 or lower. I'm seriously considering picking up the Resilient Feat just to drop my chances from 12.5% to 0%.
And that's just a difference of +2.5, realistically.
@Xirema Yeah, my paladin is pretty close to it. I've got a +6 on my Concentration save (+4 CHA, +2 CON), plus +1 from my ring of protection and we use the proficiency die so rolling a d12.
@goodguy5 For a paladin, the modifier threshold is +9, since you guarantee +1 from the d20 itself, and a 10 will always succeed on a concentration check from damage 21 or lower.
For my paladin, it's usually +8, since I always have Bless up in combat.
As DM, if you ever encounter a roll that cannot fail or cannot succeed, you really shouldn't issue it in the first place. Granted, 5e makes such rolls really infrequent—how many times do you see an actual DC30 or DC5 in the game?
"You hear McWizardface yelp briefly and see him stumble off of the stoop. The \*thud\* he makes when he hits the ground, doesn't sound ... right, though. And you hear no groan of pain.
When you investigate, you see that his neck is bent to the side at a sickening angle and there is no light is his eyes. They stare into the aether, still and dark, like a doll's eyes."
I would still personally generally prefer to give some choice of a 16 or 18 starting stat. Either give everyone more points, or fewer points, but a "free" 18 or something.
