TRPG General Chat

Southpaw Hare

12:05 AM

Hi all

Shalvenay

hey there @SouthpawHare, how're things going?

Mike Q

@SouthpawHare Hola amigo, happy Tuesday to ya

Southpaw Hare

I'm good

rpg.stackexchange.com/a/124790/7253 I'm getting some negative feedback here, though

Mike Q

@SouthpawHare This is just speculation, but I'd bet the downvotes are because it's an opinion-based answer to an opinion-based question, even though the answer content is quite reasonable

Southpaw Hare

Well the question wasn't closed yet, so isn't it fair to answer it?

Mike Q

12:09 AM

I'm not sure the question is an answerable question in its current state

Southpaw Hare

@MikeQ I've edited the original question

Does that help? I trimmed it down substantially

Mike Q

It's trimmed down but I have no idea if that was the author's intent :/

Southpaw Hare

You don't? It seemed clear what he was asking to me.

It was just buried like 5 paragraphs in

And it doesn't seem all that opinionated either

It's a pretty universal problem that anyone could have

Mike Q

There's a section in there that smells of the XY problem:

> Obviously I don't want this to happen, because that would be very exploity, and not very fun. So to make it interesting...

David Coffron

I agree with Mike Q here. They should ask about the problem their having rather than how to make a creature resistant to ranged attacks.

Southpaw Hare

12:23 AM

@DavidCoffron Isn't that basically what they asked, though? I'm having a hard time seeing the difference.

Mike Q

No... Let's allow the original author to provide their own edits and clarifications, rather than trying to reshape the question to fit our answers.

David Coffron

@SouthpawHare Not necessarily. They could be really wondering (and asking a different question with a presumed solution) "how to keep the encounter interesting when the straight forward tactic is to shoot it at range" or "how to develop my monster to prioritize non-combat solutions"

This is what an XY problem is. The author has a problem they are trying to solve and the solution they have not quite fully developed is to make the creture resistant to ranged attacks when other solutions may be better.

Instead, they should state their ACTUAL problem and if that is the best solution (which I doubt) someone will leave it as an answer

Southpaw Hare

@DavidCoffron Well yes, but it's super obvious this is the case. It's practically automatic to just see right through this XY problem.

David Coffron

@SouthpawHare I disagree. I didn't read the quetsion like you did at all. It's best to let the OP clarify their question

Southpaw Hare

Oh? How did you see it?

Mike Q

12:29 AM

There was a lot going on. They designed a slow-moving monster that was hard to kill in melee, and then indicated that letting the players rely on ranged attacks (which seems very logical!) would somehow result an unfun and uninteresting challenge

David Coffron

@SouthpawHare I saw it as the GM trying to combat-proof the creature (it already destroys melee combatants and now he wants to strengthen against ranged combatants, including spellcasters). There are better ways to prevent your non-hostile creature from being attacked then by making it unfightable (which is a trial in futility as players find hard encounters more of a motivator than a deterant)

Shalvenay

@DavidCoffron yeah -- the question I have is "why is a creature that's not intended to be hostile getting attacked to begin with?"

Southpaw Hare

Hmm, I see

David Coffron

@Shalvenay Which is the kind of clarifying question I would ask before editing

NautArch

12:43 AM

@Shalvenay because they can harvest it's fancy metal! Murder for profits.

Axoren

@BESW I'm going to look through your list. I've been working on a new setting and campaign that depends a little on a deviation from the usual traversability tiers of 5e. Having 4e's method of Ritual-based Travel might be a good way to go about it, rather than having multiple Wizard/Cleric taxes.

Essentially, The Feywilds and Shadowfell are replaced with the Fey Bright and Fey Dark, and you can walk into either of them from the western-most edge of the main Kingdom the party will be in.

Since the creation mythos is radically different from Faerun and other D&D settings, the planes don't exist in the same way, and nothing has the same structure.

NautArch

@DavidCoffron it almost seemsoke they're trying to create a tarrasque

Mike Q

@NautArch Then they're tarrasquing the wrong question

Axoren

If they don't want them cheesing the monster with ranged attacks, just give it a feature that says "Ranged attacks only work from within X feet"

The main issue is that they made it slow.

Tactically, you SHOULD be using ranged attacks.

Mike Q

12:58 AM

@Axoren Exactly why @DavidCoffron and I think it's an XY problem and they want to accomplish something else

Axoren

"I want this to be a threat." "I want it to be slow."

Hmm...

Honestly, the environment answer shouldn't be so poorly scored.

Something like this seems like a good fit for a labyrinth.

I hope they settle on what they're actually asking.

David Coffron

1:26 AM

@Axoren labyrinth is good. Vehicles would be way cooler. Giant cephalopod has a mecahno-arcane vessel (im thinking low cover 5 armed mech suit) that makes him faster. They have destroy the vessel to slow him down so they can outrange him. That is if I was going to make it a combat encounter which OP seems to.be trying to.avoid

Axoren

@DavidCoffron It seems like the slow encroachment is what the OP wants, sort of like Slow Zombies.

The only reason it works for them, is that Slow Zombies are plural. There's oodles of them.

Axoren

1:40 AM

@HellSaint It should be noted that for Level 2, 19 HP is average for a Cleric with 16 Con and 18 AC is really high for Level 2. This cleric is really beefy. A paladin with the same constitution is about 3 more HP on average, which is what you're noticing (The paladin being left with 1-3 HP more than the 0 HP of the Cleric). If the Paladin has the comparable AC, this is about what you should expect on days when the Barbarian doesn't show up.

Some answers might go on to tell you that the Cleric's stats are bad, but they're honestly ideal from what I can see.

I might post an answer with some suggestions for the Cleric's kit, but honestly, you're just running into the issue that most of the party's HP resources are in the backrow being under-utilized.

nitsua60

also, in three sessions a bunch of this stuff will have worked itself out. A bunch of these recent questions just feel like the usual learning curve for any party+gm combo.

HellSaint

1:59 AM

@nitsua60 Fair enough, but that's new for me tbh :P

Maybe I'm trying too many new things at the same time, while having new players as well hahaha

Axoren

@HellSaint Honestly, my response to this Cleric is "Cast Shield of Faith every combat."

The Oracle

1

Q: Is a question asking what official D&D 5e classes are available a viable Stack question?

We've got a couple of "list" questions asking about official D&D 5e content and resources already. Where do I find the "official" rules for D&D 5e? What are the playable D&D races in 5e? (discussed on meta here: Where to find races and classes in 5e) Would a question asking about available of...

Axoren

If that's not enough? Sanctuary after every turn.

HellSaint

@Axoren And yeah, I don't think the tactics or the stats are any problem here. I just don't know how I should handle his frustration.

@Axoren yeah, there's the problem he's playing very, very reactively (i.e. he heals himself after taking damage instead of trying to avoid the damage to begin with)

Axoren

@HellSaint If the Cleric were to use Shield of Faith, they'd have 20 AC, which means that up through Part 4 of that campaign, the highest attack bonus I've seen is +4, which means enemies need at 16 or higher on the dice.

HellSaint

2:03 AM

But then I'm not sure I should be telling the players how to play their classes :P

Axoren

Even not knowing that meta knowledge, the Cleric must be noticing a lot of close calls that a Shield of Faith would stop and make the connection that another +2 AC would increase their life expectancy by 10%

Don't tell them "You must do this." But tell them "You CAN do this."

HellSaint

I mean, we have a Warlock without EB - after allowing that without complaining, I'm not willing to tell anyone how they should play hahaha

Axoren

Some players undervalue options because they don't see the merit.

If they want to have reactive options, Sanctuary is something they should look into to improve their survivability when they're really low and have decided to heal themselves.

If they don't see these as an option, mentioning them might get them to do their own research

KorvinStarmast

2:53 AM

@Shalvenay Heh, I wasn't going to say anything, but anything that slow can usually be avoided/evaded.

@HellSaint You now have an answer to that, but with some people, the frustration bubbles up more readily than with other people.

@HellSaint See my point in the answer on coaching. As I noted there, 4+ decades with this game has shown me that coaching is a DM role, implicit if not explicit. (Heck, in our Tier 3 game, and none of us newbies, our DM now and again provides a coaching nudge here and there ... )

BESW

4:06 AM

got a lot of attention. And kept on getting it. A lot. People talked about their campaigns, their characters, their house rules, their bizarre digressions, all like today except slower because you were commenting on previous distributions ("disties") for your own submission /7

Tweeted by BruceRedux on June 19, 2018 at 8:40 PM in reply to BruceRedux

The Oracle

5:26 AM

2

Q: Heavy edits to get a question reopened that change the fundamental underlying question

See the question What's a good method of giving a certain monster resistance to ranged attacks made against it? as a recent example. The question has been fundamentally edited in order to get it reopened, and bears little resemblance to its original form. In cases like this, where there is no inp...

discussion questions editing

BESW

8:16 AM

@BESW ...that was supposed to be this:

I want to talk about one of the most important women in the history of tabletop RPGs, and about an aspect of RPG history many younger folks won't know about. Stay awhile, and listen. :) Amateur press associations are one of the interesting kinds of social network founded in 1/

Tweeted by BruceRedux on June 19, 2018 at 8:30 PM

2

doppelgreener

8:29 AM

o/

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