TRPG General Chat

Ender Look

12:15 AM

@KorvinStarmast I know, I think I'll use that so he always could have 1 or 2 "helpers"

KorvinStarmast

12:36 AM

@EnderLook cool, that would be great. ;)

Shalvenay

2:35 AM

hey there @Joshua

Joshua

So, one of the two plausible rulings for how walls of force work in deep space yields a planet buster if used right. There's no point using it on normal stars, but neutron stars have a diameter of 10km and are solid. This should mean the planet buster does something horrible to one.

Was watching youtu.be/Bqs2lLx31uI

Shalvenay

@Joshua so, starquake writ large?

Joshua

More likely, blow one up

It kicks a twenty foot hole in its target with every particle in its path kicked up to several nines of c, sideways through the main body of the target

Shalvenay

@Joshua that'd be seriously nasty

Joshua

Good thing there aren't life sustaining planets near them.

Shalvenay

2:39 AM

pretty much

Joshua

But yeah, it started life as a planet buster.

Shalvenay

I could see this being easily at least SGR level of bad to anything nearby, if not worse

SGR 1806-20

SGR 1806-20 is a magnetar, a type of neutron star with a very powerful magnetic field, that was discovered in 1979 and identified as a soft gamma repeater. SGR 1806-20 is located about 14.5 kiloparsecs (50,000 light-years) from Earth on the far side of the Milky Way galaxy in the constellation of Sagittarius. It has a diameter of no more than 20 kilometres (12 mi) and rotates on its axis every 7.5 seconds (30,000 km/h rotation speed at the surface). As of 2016, SGR 1806-20 is the most highly magnetized object ever observed, with a magnetic field over 1015 gauss (G) (1011 tesla) in intensit...

Ender Look

My brother one to ask a question so I will lend my account for a moment:
"I want to be a Sorlock (favored soul sorcerer and celestial warlock). I want to specialice in Eldrich Blast. I started at level 3rd (1 sorcerer and 2 warlock). This are the cantrips I plan to know.
# My race which is a homebrew Avariel (based on a High Elf and a Aasimar) gives me Guidance.
# My sorcerer gives me 4 cantrips: Frostbite (cold damage with constitution saving throw) (I choose it because is like Vicious Mockery, giving disadvantage to the enemy, but with more damage). Prestigitation, Minor Illusion and Mage…

Joshua

Mending -> infinite material to work with

Ender Look

# My warlock gives me 2 patron cantrips, Ligh and Sacred Flame (radiant damage, dexterity saving throw and ignores cover) because I choose Celestial. Then I have 2 cantrips, Eldrich Blast (force damage, various range attack throws,

scales which invocations) which is the center of my character and Toll the Death (necrotic damage, wisdom saving throw) but I don't know about it, because even that this do more damage to wounded targets and I can twin this with the twin metamagic spending only 1 sorcery point, this would do less damage than only 1 Eldrich Blast with Agonizing Blast, so I don't see a utility for this one (which don't have other special ability like frostbite).

Furthemore I want to have my warlock at level 3 for the pact. I will focus in long rage (eldrich blast) so for me would be useless to have the pact of the blade, instead I will have the tome pack which gives me other 3 cantrips. I was thinking in Shocking Grasp (electricity damage, melee attack throw, advantage at metalic armored target and stun them) (this is useful if someone get close to me and I want to scape),

Word of Radiance (radiant damage, wisdom saving throw, personal AoE) (useful if some enemies surround me) and one more that I have no idea.

I can use PHB, EE, XGtE, SCA or any other guide.
My spells would be primordially tactical, but I want to have 1 AoE damage spell (fireball or something that I can pick), 1 one target spell (like scroching ray or something that is better than my super Eldrich Blast and that could be twinned) and 1 AoE personal damage spell (like thunderwave).

So, which cantrips would you chosee?. It is good to pick, Toll of Dead or Create Bonfire? Which one would you pick with the last cantrip of the tome I did't chosee? It is useful mending? Which are your ideas?"

Ben

4:18 AM

BESW

4:43 AM

[face/palm] That's some next-level Stockholm syndrome nonsense right there.

"Somebody made our D&D nights miserable for a year but an in-game story twist made it turn out we were the bad players the whole time."

user15026

5:06 AM

I...that just....no that's not how you make a good game

BESW

@Ash That's like claiming a sequel can retroactively make the first movie better.

user15026

hahahah pretty much yes

BESW

"No, I still sat through two and a half hours of stinky dull-colored grease, and telling me a year later that it was ambergis doesn't change that experience in the slightest."

user15026

Pretty much!

BESW

5:57 AM

Our Druid transformed into a snake. @delmorii takes role playing seriously. #DnD

Tweeted by qyjari on February 18, 2018 at 4:54 AM

V2Blast

6:47 AM

Hey @JeremyECrawford , @armando_doval and I would like to offer help with identifying questions that need revised answers in the Sage Advice Compendium. Would you like help in this regard?

Tweeted by quadhund on January 18, 2019 at 3:14 PM

@quadhund @armando_doval I think I caught everything in my recent review, but I always value more eyes. Please do let me know what you’ve spotted (other than anything dealing with disintegration). 🙏🏼

Tweeted by JeremyECrawford on January 18, 2019 at 6:58 PM in reply to quadhund

If anyone has any pressing questions to be addressed in the Sage Advice Compendium, tweet them at Crawford!

Carcer

7:46 AM

HOW DO TROLLS DIE

questions that need revised answers suggests clarifying stuff already in the SAC, though, not new ones

kviiri

8:54 AM

@Ben Is it just me or is that image hardly readable?

Oh well, I managed

@BESW This is one of the big reasons why I rather dislike DnD meme dumps and greentext dumps... they tend to always glorify this stuff

Then we have new players who think it's the best idea ever to be a jerk to your fellow players just to pull some fancy twist afterwards

Ben

9:35 AM

@kviiri No it is a bit hard to read lol

kviiri

11:03 AM

Beautiful sunny day today

...and I had to reserve it for writing :/

kviiri

11:30 AM

1

Q: How to seed a thieves guild with out being disruptive to the rest of the group

Background: D&D5e with a steam punk flare. My protagonist is a changeling rogue (can assume the role of other people) with a small bit of magic (Arcane Trickster). My deity has requested that I seed a thieves guild to act as a network of spys that will slowly grow as the protagonist progresses in...

dnd-5e

I'd like to answer this but it seems idea-generationy. What's your opinion on this?

Thatguy

12:11 PM

I have a question that i don't know if ranks as an actual question.

Is there any way to make a character that runs PURELY off of dice roll induced luck in 5e? Like no weapons, no armor, no max range, but he can attack in almost any way imaginative, and it all runs off of a set of dice that the character uses.

I.e. The character sees a goblin far away 300 ft. and decides he wants that goblin to suddenly be engulfed in flames. He rolls a (House ruled) crit hit, the goblin then erupts into flames. No spell needed.

kviiri

@Thatguy Hiya, lemme check

Thatguy

@kviiri No problem, thought i'd ask here, and not waste all of the little bit of rep i've collected...

kviiri

Hmm, well, the RAW answer is clearly no

Thatguy

@kviiri i know it would be a severely homebrewed thing to try and pull.

kviiri

And you would need to delve very far into house rules territory to make that happen, because you need to replace pretty much everything in the game

I foresee some difficulties with that though, the main one being that the GM has to arbitrate DCs for those rolls

And there's going to be a lot of them

Thatguy

12:17 PM

what i was thinking is 1-5 is critical fail. i.e character does to himself what he intended to do to the enemy, 6- 15 would basically be a normal thing, if its a physical attack close would do unarmed damage, if its a ranged attack it would fizzle, but not inform the enemy of whats going on, no harm done, and a 16-20 would be a critical hit

All ability rolls would be decided on a coin flip pass fail. No mods.

this is what i was thinking

kviiri

@Thatguy So basically, it'd be something like Roll to Dodge, except everyone else in the table'd be still playing DnD 5e?

Thatguy

sort of. It would still have all of the regular things, talking, roleplaying, but basically playing an extremist luck based character. oone extreme or the other. Sort of like domino from deadpool with the bad end of the Shtick too

kviiri

Well, I personally would advise against that

Thatguy

@kviiri i can understand that.

kviiri

Although the idea of different characters having dramatically different rules is somewhat interesting...

Thatguy

12:22 PM

@kviiri so do you think this would potentially be a question to put on the stack? If so how should i word it s its not too off base or opinion based, or too broad?

kviiri

@Thatguy I think the go-to solution is to post what you've planned and ask what troubles should you expect, and then someone answers that. Iterative design is not really supported within a single question but you can always try to post another one afterwards, with the issues highlighted in the first one's answers fixed.

However, I wouldn't stack that without a clear statement of what you're trying to accomplish with such a character.

Thatguy

@kviiri the only thing i was trying to get done, is to see if i could make it work to be completely honest...

kviiri

But what is "it" here?

Thatguy

that specific character with those "abilities"

@kviiri like to see if i could make it to say level 5 with this eggshell cannon of a character.

kviiri

Well that'd depend on the GM and the game they were running, naturally.

@Thatguy Well, the answer to that is going to be a rather strictly binary "yes" or "no". Are you sure you're not interested in eg. other ways to evoke the concept of luck-based character?

Or a character without stats in DnD game?

Thatguy

12:29 PM

@kviiri I think this with a luck based character would actually be highly entertaining. I'm trying to raise my abilities as a player instead of your everyday "hey go hit this thing and collect the god" type of warmongering player. Or the ever present "throw a magic missile at it" type.

kviiri

Thanks for taking my criticism well btw

That's luckily not a particularly rare quality but always appreciated :)

@Thatguy I need to go shower, but be back soon :)

Thatguy

I actually need to head of to work, we'll talk more about it later on.

And to add to my appreciation for your comment, I dont understand why people dont take criticism well. If i'm to be comletely honest here, we ask questions to be answered. Not to expect you guys to grant us with all of our dreams met. Sometimes ideas aren't meant to be.

And also if we're being honest, this site is for advice. When we ask the questions, we can either take it or leave it. Its not like you're going to invade our DND game and yell at me to stop.

kviiri

1:05 PM

@Thatguy Entertainment factor is always a bit subjective of course, but it very much depends on how your group accepts this idea. Gimmick characters do tend to have an abysmal half-life though...

Raising your abilities as a player, I'm not sure what you mean. The character concept is definitely not suitable for learning 5e "system mastery", since you're effectively not playing 5e anymore if you use this kind of a character concept. If you mean your skills in characterization and role-playing, I don't know... just seems a bit weird to practice that with a character whose main defining quality is that they can kinda do anything except it often fails.

Mechanically, that's going to be a balancing nightmare if the rest of the party wants anything that resembles a normal DnD game.

I mean, since your character can attempt anything, it can lead to weird situations where your character is the go-to solution to any trouble you encounter and the rest of the party just provides healing and other damage mitigation to negate the effects of critical fails.

It's also notably swingier than a normal DnD character, in terms of probabilities

If you want to develop your skills in role playing and find the usual "combat and loot" routine to be a distraction, I'd instead recommend playing something else completely. There's a ton of RPGs outside DnD and many of them approach gaming from a completely different angle. There are many good, simple and freely available ones out there.

Just remember to discuss and settle on expectations on the other game and genre you play, so you don't accidentally start playing the same old DnD in a system that wasn't designed for it :)

Shalvenay

2:42 PM

hey there @Helwar

hey as well @ACuriousMind

ACuriousMind

ahoi @Shalvenay

Shalvenay

@ACuriousMind how're things going?

ACuriousMind

Meh. Recovering from a feverish cold that struck me down for a few days :P

Shalvenay

@ACuriousMind ouch. alright here, although my weekends sure are filling up fast :P

Shalvenay

3:23 PM

D&D 5e question for you folks: what would be a good way to represent a lesser form of demon-human spawn than the CR 5 stock cambion from the MM? have an encounter for which the cambion is thematically apropos, but a CR 5 monster is just too much. Should I look at nerfing the MM cambion statblock (probably by taking away its multiattack and resistances, and cutting its HP down to size), constructing a custom monster using the DMG rules, or building something on a Tiefling chassis?

nitsua60

@Shalvenay What if you pull the cambion but play it somehow (obviously) de-strengthened? When it was summoned it lost part of an arm so it's disadvantaged on DEX saves/checks and is already at half HP? Or there's something environmental that has it so discombobulated that it's under the effects of a slow spell?

kviiri

@Shalvenay Hmm, I'd probably start from a desired-CR humanoid and just "reskin" it to Cambion, perhaps copying something distinctive from the actual Cambion.

nitsua60

It still hits hard, so they've got to be real careful. But they can take it down if they vary tactics from their usual =)

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 "Beat Up Cambion" -- I kinda like that, actually

may have to use that in conjunction with some of the other strategies

also, while I have you here @nitsua60 -- are 5e undead really not immune to sneak attack? or if they are, where is that in the books?

@kviiri yeah, that's an option as well, maybe give it a weakened form of the Cambion's charm ability?

kviiri

3:40 PM

@Shalvenay They aren't --- nothing is categorically immune to it as far as I know.

@Shalvenay Could work! :) I need to look that up

Shalvenay

@kviiri ah :)

kviiri

Although lots of things can be immune to it by virtue of being immune to the rogue's damage type

Shalvenay

@kviiri that's far easier to overcome though ;)

kviiri

@Shalvenay Usually so :)

nitsua60

4:11 PM

@Shalvenay Not immune to SA? Correct, they are not. Were they previously?

ACuriousMind

@nitsua60 In 3.x immunity to sneak attack was standard for undead and things lacking physiology like slimes

nitsua60

Ah, interesting. Makes sense, I suppose. I can see the argument the other way, though: "everything's got a weakness...."

Shalvenay

@ACuriousMind yeah, undead, constructs, and oozes were SA immune by default in 3.x

one more question: what would be the most appropriate damage type for something that does damage without necessarily leaving obvious physical traces of said damage?

actually, I think the answer's "psychic" XD

goodguy5

Agreed

With tied runners up being necrotic poison and radiant

Actually poison might be a little ahead

nitsua60

@goodguy5 (Depends on your skin tone. My wife sunburns badly, I just tan.)

=)

goodguy5

4:23 PM

1. Haha at joke.

2. Is that radiant or fire damage?

nitsua60

Usually radiant, though I make my own charcoal during the summers to occasionally I've gotten close enough to a hot enough fire to sunburn =)

(Though I guess that's still radiant.)

> Kind of like Neo in RWBY

What's "RWBY"?

Carcer

4:40 PM

cgi anime thing by rooster teeth

said as "ruby"

Shalvenay

so, I decided to nerf the cambion statblock close to across-the-board and came up with what, according to rough DMG calcs, is a CR 1-ish version

@goodguy5 @nitsua60 either of you want to double check my nerfed cambion statblock and make sure my CR calcs aren't way off in the weeds?

kviiri

5:07 PM

@Shalvenay I can take a look, seeing neither of them seems to be active atm

Shalvenay

@kviiri ah, want me to just pastebin the statblock here then?

@kviiri paste.pound-python.org/show/AAKKqyeNPCy7do3mve2E

kviiri

Works for me :)

What was the intended use of this enemy, btw?

Shalvenay

@kviiri it's intended as a difficult combat encounter, one of the "boss battles" of the dungeon if you will

kviiri

@Shalvenay Gotcha. For a L1 party or?

Shalvenay

@kviiri low level, yes

kviiri

5:22 PM

Hm, comparing to another CR1 creature, the Half-Ogre, this seems quite equal in power.

Shalvenay

@kviiri so, my reckoning in making it CR1 is about right then?

kviiri

HP is about equal, your Cambion has significantly more AC (15 vs 12) but deals significantly less damage (2d6 ranged vs 2d6+3 ranged, and 1d4+3 melee vs 2d10 + 3 melee)

And less attack bonus +4 versus +5 of the Half-Ogre. I'd say the Cambion-Mini would be weaker if it didn't have a fairly strong support power in the charm thing

@Shalvenay Yeah, but I'm not sure if the Fiendish Charm is a good fit on a creature intended to run as a Solo encounter for low level characters

Think about it this way: it's a single use per day feature that has the potential to completely disarm one character if that character fails a save --- that's a lot riding on a single die roll.

Shalvenay

@kviiri nods that is true -- in the context of how it's being used, it wouldn't be a problem, but it could make the encounter much more troublesome if used in a different context

(I left it in as a 1/day for reasons having to do with how the char fits into the dungeon as a whole)

Mark Wells

6:56 PM

So this week someone in my game actually tried the "I cast light on an object in my mouth so that I can turn the light on and off at will during combat turns" trick.

MikeQ

7:20 PM

Did the DM allow it?

KorvinStarmast

@Carcer I pushed one into a pool of hot lava recently. It worked. :)

@Shalvenay I'll have an idea for you shortly ... just saw this

@MarkWells Works for me, though one might create flicker vertigo if the PC who did that talks a lot, or is a spell caster with a lot of verbal components. Or is a bard. :)

Wis Save DC 10 to avoid being visually impaired, or a Con Save DC of 10 versus puking ...

Have fun with it. Flashbacks to 70's era disco balls ...

V2Blast

8:20 PM

@nitsua60 roosterteeth.com/series/rwby

RWBY is an anime-style webseries by Austin-based video production company Rooster Teeth, created by Monty Oum.

Besides Red vs. Blue, RWBY is probably the thing Rooster Teeth is best known for

KorvinStarmast

8:48 PM

@nitsua60 If you want only one character, or a few characters to understand batiri/elven/giantish this little roll20 trick might be handy. Ref our last session with bard being able to understand ... (though I appreciate being able to see your one liners first hand)

Shalvenay

hey there @KorvinStarmast

KorvinStarmast

@Shalvenay hi, seems like you already firuged out the cambion deal

Shalvenay

@KorvinStarmast sure, but if you want to PM me your ideas over on Discord, I'll hear them out anyway :)

KorvinStarmast

As I was beginning to look it up, my attention wandered, it was mostly a reskin of an NPC warlock tiefling idea.

What I thought was in Volo's isn't.

Am checking something else at the moment, may try again a bit later.

Shalvenay

9:26 PM

hey there @Caitlynn, welcome to the RPG.SE lair :)

KorvinStarmast

@Shalvenay On second thought, take the Cult Fanatic, change the spell casting stat to Cha versus Wis, give it a scimitar, and AC 15 (Dex plus "at will" mage armor based on a borrow from warlock). Drop out sacred Flame and add fire bolt or ray of frost, to taste. tougher end boss for lvl 1 party. Give it small horns ... or go pure tiefling with a tail and such

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