Cantrips scale automatically with character level. Weapon attacks only scale with ability score and any extra attack features you might get.
How could the damage of weapon attacks keep up?
and curiously, in 5e you can pick up cantrips as part of some races or a feat, and the attack-y ones are as good as any sorcerer and most wizards can do (if your casting stat keeps up)
I don't have the reference, but the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide has a casty-stabby extension to, I think, the Wizard
@Shalvenay that's where the proficiency I mentioned comes from; you're only proficient in a few weapons as a Warlock, but you're always proficient with the pact weapon, whatever shape it takes
Dear URU: I think I just figured out why you failed so miserably to acquire an audience. You're an MMO with a puzzle that requires standing still for 15 minutes.
A Myst franchise MMO was always a weird idea, but they implemented it as a run-and-jump OTS with puzzles involving kicking objects because you couldn't pick them up, standing in place for 15 minutes, and treasure hunts with literally NO clues where to start looking.
@Masakan There's this problem where people who try to do anime-like characters (think Ichigo from Bleach or Hokuto no Ken, or One Punch Man... you know, that kind of character) are usually interested in showing off, big fights, flashy finishes... for a lot of people, D&D is high-magic but still kinda middle ages European fantasy. Genre-wise, they don't mesh well
@Shalvenay I think I've decided the route I want my D&D character to go. I need to submit the feats and skills I'm missing in a little more than 3 hours
@Zachiel well i wont deny that i wanna be a little flashy, but while im an anime nut. im not interesting in showing off. I just wanna be strong and influential to my team
@Masakan I think itìs the flashy part that's the biggest problem with the D&D groups I described. Also, there's a lot of Timmy players - the term comes from Magic:tG, it's the player who likes the big creatures, the seemingly powerful cards, the flashy spells over crazy comboes and optimal building - that happen to like that sort of animes, and this might have come to be seen as a telltale sign of such a player.
@Masakan When the other players think that your "style" is "being excessive and noisy in a dark and grit setting, well--- (anyway, yay mountebanks, but mountebanks are different from Kamina from Gurren Lagann XD). And in any case I'm not saying anime characters are bad, just thinking about reasins why some groups might dislike them.
My ranger's backstory is that he got kicked out of his community for being too bloodthirsty. His character is that he's a superstitious coward who loves exerting power over others. His goal is to live forever, and he thinks he can achieve that by killing so many things Death will always make its quotas and never need to come for him.
In his world, adventuring is a good way to make a living by killing lots of stuff.
Thus, he's an adventurer.
Mechanically, he's a ranger because that lets him kill stuff from a safe distance. His build is focused on buffing Shot on the Run so he can always be getting out of danger while also killing stuff.
You might find it useful to look the character generation parameters of other RPGs, like Masters of Umdaar.
D&D is not designed to mechanise personality.
It leaves interesting characterisation entirely in the hands of the player.
What you're talking about above when you mention "style" and "interesting" doesn't sound like characterisation, it sounds like combat technique combined with an attempt to overcome the system's goblin dice problems.
So @JoelHarmon's suggestion is that if you're having difficulty developing combat techniques which mesh with your group's play goals because combat techniques are how you make a character interesting but your group isn't interested in the sorts of mechanics that engage you, you might have success looking outside mechanics for something to make your character engaging to play.
ok so long story short my character was an orphan taken in by an abusive caretaker in Athkatla. she was made to do very...questionable things just to make ends meet and was struggling to survive one day she found out her caretaker was gonna sell her off and tried to make a run for it after a struggle she accidently stabbed him left him for dead and ran off before anyone found out, she wandered the country side for months until she finally collapsed at the gates of waterkeep
where she was brougth back to health thanks to deciples of sune who took her in
since then she basically warmed up but still has nightmares about her past
and while being a thief she has a robin hood type approach to it
i would talk about it mroe but i think thats enough for now
My ranger was fun not because he was good at Shot on the Run, but because of how his cowardice, superstition, and hunt-dominated paradigm led him to interact with the other party members.
So, is she an optimist or pessimist? Funny, witty, taciturn? Devoted or flaky? Standoffish or friendly? All the stuff you mention is stuff that happened, not a description of a personality
Performer, enchantress, Silver tounged thief personality wise she would be a very outgoing person not afraid to show skin pretty much refusing to wear anything that doesnt expose her midriff very easy to get along with and a doubles as a negotiator and investigator but shes also very rash, impulsive, terrible with money and loves jewels she's also prone to tantrum and is ever so slightly vain(edited) which is fitting considering she's a sunite
so yeah fairly optimistic, funny witty flirty
a little flighty but not flacky
and overall very friendly
but will have moments of selfishness
and when i say selfish i mean she will start acting liek a child not getting candy
Jessie is fun because her overconfidence and garrulousness means she takes everything in stride and thinks she's up to the task even when she obviously isn't, but she's so sociable that running off half-cocked never means leaving her friends behind.
And Sweetheart is a total neurotic who desperately wants to be a person who does things just because they're right, but really needs the approval and recognition of others.
In Fate I can actually make characters whose mechanics are their personalities, to whatever extent I want: Jessie's got a lot of cool physical stuff going on like rocket boots, while Sweetheart's more focused on how her personality influences her problem-solving.
the denser end of the spectrum is d&d 3.5. If you stacked up the whole of all published books for that system, it would be somewhere between knee and hip high
great ork gods is one of my favorites to date, so is Lasers & Feelings -- lightweight star trek (original series) parody game, prints out on 1 side of an A4 piece of paper, characters are a name and a description and a number.
One, games like Fate use a generic action system and let players customise their characters in a free-form style, while D&D needs unique mechanics for each action and uses a "choose from a list" paradigm for character generation.
Two, D&D is trying to be many many different games at once. Most other games pick a goal and drill toward it.
@Masakan Well, it tries to. But the way it does this is by giving you pre-baked specific options for... everything. Which is a great way to sell splat material, but not a great way to make a game simple or coherent.
Compare Fate, which has a phrase-based attribute system.
the very earliest games in this genre (and I'm going off hearsay and conjecture here) is called Chainmail. That game is very simulationist, to the point of having different effects depending on which part of your arm someone hit with a sword
I am working on a build that is as Charisma reliant as possible. Literally needing nothing but Charisma and a little constitution to function.
I've been fascinated with the Slippers of Battledancing for a very long time and have tried desperately to integrate it into a build.
However the more I ...
@Nox the easiest way is either to try it in an edit window and look at the results below, or try editing any question that has a spoiler (I'm looking at you, puzzling.se)
So when I make a character in Fate, I'm asked to write a series of pithy phrases describing what's true about her that I want to be important in the game. I can do that for any setting, any theme, whatever.
Yes, they're broken. They've been broken in this particular way for a couple of years now. There's no neat workaround. One spoiler paragraph sitting in lonely isolation is always fine, but combining them isn't so easy.
What you did to break it (aka what to avoid)
Your problem was that you wrote...
the same way that multi-classing into another spell casting class, like Cleric, wouldn't advance your Bard casting, but would increase the number of spells cast per day (though not all Bard spells, of course)
what are you going for? At a glance, it looks like it gives better casting than a Bard
For the sake of completeness, there is an RP way to be knighted and receive some mechanical boons for the knighted char.
Hiding it under spoiler, since planning char development for taking that route will require a meta-knowledge on a specific adventure, which you shouldn't probably use since i...
@Masakan This is a good example of the difference between D&D and many/most other RPG systems; while many RPGs have expansion material, it's usually truly supplemental and neither intended nor necessary as an always-on addition to the (singular) core manual. Supplements are usually completely optional tools for changing the nature of the game, like Call of Cthulhu's expansions for changing the time period or Fate's Worlds of Adventure for tailoring your game to a particular genre.
@Masakan I agree there are a multitude of other options, but the current discussion is advancing Bard casting (possibly via prestige classes that advance it) versus taking Sublime Chord levels
That change in expansion philosophy alone (including the idea of the core manual as a single book between of 200 and 400 pages) means that even the beefiest of non-D&D-like RPGs have dramatically less "must-master" material.
would you conclude you need to have the inspire courage ability to use it?
or that you don't ?
Benefit: When you use your bardic music to inspire courage, you can choose to imbue your allies with dragonfire. This choice made when first activating the ability, and the choice applies to all allies affected. Special: Each ally so inspired loses the standard morale bonus on weapon attack rolls and damage rolls. Instead, he deals an extra 1d6 points of fire damage with his weapons for every point of morale bonus that your inspire courage ability would normally add to the attack roll. For example, an 8th level bard using this ability would add 2d6 points of fire damage to his allies' attac…
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Cantrips scale automatically with character level. Weapon attacks only scale with ability score and any extra attack features you might get.
How could the damage of weapon attacks keep up?
Yes, they're broken. They've been broken in this particular way for a couple of years now. There's no neat workaround. One spoiler paragraph sitting in lonely isolation is always fine, but combining them isn't so easy.
What you did to break it (aka what to avoid)
Your problem was that you wrote...
For the sake of completeness, there is an RP way to be knighted and receive some mechanical boons for the knighted char.
Hiding it under spoiler, since planning char development for taking that route will require a meta-knowledge on a specific adventure, which you shouldn't probably use since i...
