I use the 5x5 grids to plan this out. Each cell will have a planned 'mandatory' transition to the next scene, a clue or whatever, that nobody will have to roll for.

Then the skill checks are to either jump over a scene, jump into a different thread or to acquire McGuffins for the final scene of a thread.

But if they're missed, the plot can just flow through the path of least resistance through the mandatory transitions

I think that kind of planning is not sufficiently functional in Fate.

Oh? It's how I did my last FATE game. :x

If I understand correctly from a google and your prior brief explanation... in 5x5, you plan 5 scenes and 5 things about each scene, right?

tbh I might not have understood it completely, I mostly found it on Google too :P

My take on it was 5 scenes with 5 clues.

well, i'm leaning on you for a yes/no around what you're suggesting

aha

Or edges/scene transitions/whatever

sounds a bit like Cthulhu Dark's five-layer model (the number being a coincidence)

I'd say it's not using Fate optimally, because Fate's working at its best when the GM doesn't have plot marks he's trying to hit: one of Fate's great strengths is its ability to roll with the punches and let the players take a lot of the control over what's actually going on and what will happen.

If the GM has a particular reveal or event he's expecting, that introduces artificial friction.

@BESW I agree with that. Your earlier suggestion to preparing context, not plot is pretty relevant.

I was using it more as a safety net/plot of last resort than a checklist.

I'm going to be experimenting with a slightly more railed version of Fate in our SG-1 campaign.

If the party is going off road, they have enough Clue to go on.

But if their Off Road journey hits a roadblock, then they can come back to the plan

It's just to avoid the game getting 'stuck'

What are you using it to avoid getting stuck on?

Getting stuck on a scene. Err...

I once started a session expecting the heroes to hit a particular story point (all be in a room with one villain and be sent out to resurrect her sister), and my intent on having the story play out just so had me obscure something one of the players had worked hard on (they'd snuck into the room to do Sneaky Things, and I hard moved to reveal them). Meanwhile, the players totally short-circuited what I'd expected would happen by instead convincin the villain to just get her a new plant body.

Finding oneself stranded without an obvious transition out of a scene

So my players came up with two big surprises, one I did toss aside completely without regard for the players who created it by having plot expectations, the other of which totally surprised me and took the plot in other (very fun) directions because I didn't disregard it.

Which is really easy if you're completely improving an Investigation scenario because you haven't actually gone through to make sure there's a transition everywhere there needs to be

@BESW I'd be interested in your learnings from what you're doing behind the scenes, whenever you're comfortable talking about it.

The Five Layer Model for Cthulhu Dark just suggests "these are the kinds of clues the players will find". The GM may have no specific clues in mind at all, but they know the kinds of things they should see, and through freeform will just be handed golden opportunities to show those types of clues.

[squint] Are you talking about finding a good endpoint for a scene, or about making sure that when a scene ends it's clear what the next scene should be?

Or something else?

Making sure that when a scene ends it's clear to the players what the next scene /could/ be.

One of the few things Fate really does leave almost entirely on the GM's shoulders is defining scenes.

@Tarinaky [rubs chin] That's a confusing sort of description to me, because usually we end a scene because we already know what the next thing is going to be -- and we decide we'd better put a scene break between those things, such as because of a timeskip.

Yeah, it's the GM who'll say "new scene" or "here's the scene" or annoucne, if someone asks, where the scene actually started.

Yeah, but what if the players go "I dunno"?

> sometimes you’ll have to come up with a scene’s purpose all on your own, such as the beginning of a new scenario, or the next scene following a cliffhanger. Whenever you have to do that, try going back to the story questions you came up with earlier and introducing a situation that’s going to directly contribute to answering them. That way, whenever it’s your job to start a scene, you’re always moving the story along.

I often think, "What haven't we been paying attention to recently? Let's have a scene where we're reminded why it's important."

It probably matters that I've never been one for the Spaghetti Plot.

I tend to come up with a Conspiracy first.

Which writes me into more of a corner usually.

I subscribe to a nuanced form of Chandler's Law.

But remembering that I like to be the Antagonist when I GM... It kinda suits me a lot more for the players to actually foil a plot I came up with.

Which you just can't do with a Sphagetti plot, because the party were chasing their own Shadow the whole time.

Is that really what you mean? Or are you talking about the PCs foiling plots your NPCs have come up with?

There's a massive difference between the GM's plot and the villain's plot.

Well, in order for the NPCs to come up with it, I have to come up with it.

And sometimes I'll come up with the plot first, and then create the NPCs to fill it.

50/50 which way around I've done it.

Mmm. What I mean is, there's a difference in investment. I want the PCs to foil the NPC's plot; in fact, their foiling it is part of my plot as GM.

By contrast, foiling the GM's plot means that they're defying how you want the game to go.

Would it be controversial of me to admit there's a small pleasure in getting one over the players?

It's the difference between making a lethal dungeon to kill the PCs; vs making a lethal dungeon to challenge the PCs. From within the fiction the villain who designed the dungeon may have exactly the same goal, but the first is adversarial while the second is being a fan of the PCs.

I mean, not making a lethal dungeon to /outright/ kill the PCs...

I guess like the Riddler always leaves clues, makes it solveable.

Being a fan of the PCs means giving them meaningful challenges to overcome because that's how they get a chance to be awesome.

Because part of the fun is the players /could/ have defeated you?

And trying to ride that edge as closely as possible.

Being adversarial means wanting them to fail, not wanting them to succeed.

(tbh I have no idea what either "defeating the GM" or "getting one over hte players" means or looks like as I read this)

@doppelgreener Neither do I, that's why I'm trying to be more descriptive and specific.

The specifics depend a whole lot on the actual game.

that one time we beat Sko-Larr had no rellation to whether we beat the GM (we neither beat nor did not beat the GM, the GM was just moving a story along and that is the way it happened to move)

Defeating the GM means the GM can "win" and the players can "lose."

That's totally different from the villain winning and the PCs losing.

If I ever ran a table where I could win at my friends' expense, they'd be absolutely right to walk out.

Yeah, but the GM is 'playing' the villain.

I don't know how that would happen in Fate and I don't think even, say, Gygax would have thought of his Tomb of Elemental Evil as a matter of the players or the GM winning - despite it being effectively a meat-grinder gauntlet.

It's no different to a boardgame imo.

You can lose at Settlers of Catan and still have a good time.

The players are not their characters, the GM is not the NPCs.

The villain gloats, the GM doesn't.

Correct.

I'm not suggesting you rub it in their faces or generally be a dick.

This is kind of like that thing where people write their questions saying "so what if I kill the other player..." when they mean "so what if I kill the other player character..." instead of meaning they reach across the table and thrust a knife into the other human player's chest.

Except you're rolling with that conflation 100% while BESW is trying to tease the two roles apart.

And it's really confusing and not helping.

Sorry.

BESW is trying to get you to speak about your actions as a GM separate to the NPC actions.

I guess I just don't understand the question.

Do you understand that you, as a GM, may have different goals, motives, and actions to the various NPCs you play, such that you are not all one and the same entity?

Right.

Do you understand that GMs like myself can see themselves as "winning" when the players defeat the villain and have an awesome story, despite the NPCs I played all being defeated?

Yes.

If you've finished a video game, did you defeat the game design team?

(specifically I "win" when we all have a good time, I have lost as a GM if the game sucked.)

@BESW It depends on the video game and what the design team were trying to do. Dark Souls memes.

When I beat dark souls I see that as having no effect on my relationship to the design team, personally.

I couldn't get into Dark Souls tbh.

That's hyperbole. Dark Souls is designed to be the way it is, and beating the game is a fulfillment of the design team's vision.

most games were designed to be beaten, regardless of how hard that was supposed to be

Even the most antagonistic RPGs are inherently collaborative actions of creation. Unlike boardgames and video games, their rules are incomplete and require group cooperation to turn into functional games. Every RPG group is a team of designers.

It's important to me that the scenario be, potentially, equally loseable as winnable.

Specifically as a player (of RPGs or video games) I don't see "defeating the GM" or "defeating the design team" ever being a thing. It is not a concept. I have defeated the obstacles they provided me so that I could have a good time they tried their best to give me; together we have eached helped each others' dreams come true and that's that.

If a group has an antagonistic GM/player relationship, that's a design choice they're making together.

Sure.

I don't see what your point/question is though?

You seem to be conflating GM agency with NPC agency.

NPCs are your tools for achieving meta-narrative goals.

And my meta-narrative goal is that I, personally, get a thrill if I outmaneuver the players.

The villain's goals were created by you, but they are not your goals.

By either throwing their plans wildly for a loop, killing some or all of the characters...

But in order for it to be an outmaneuvering, there have to be rules adhered to.

It has to be done /fairly/

I'll draw this back to the context it branched out from: we were talking about establishing scenes in mysteries and challenges in doing so, when being the antagonist as a GM came up.

Otherwise it isn't fun.

To put it differently, when you talk about the players "beating your plot", do you mean that they've thwarted the plot of the in-game villain, or that they've "beaten" your story? If the latter, was your story a story where the villain's plot succeeded and defeated the characters, and they beat your story by defeating the villain, or was your story the story of them defeating the villain, and they "beat" it by completing it, like a videogame?

I mean thwarting the plot of the in-game villain.

Which is... I think the same as saying "They beat the story by defeating the villain"

That's not the language you've been using.

@Tarinaky -- sorry for the sidenote, but have you ever considered that RPs exist where the villain, if you were to insist upon one existing, isn't even a character to begin with?

Hence the confusion.

shrugs I'm bad with words.

Nobody's magically proficient with jargon, but if you want to talk about these things it pays to learn to be precise.

To that end, our point earlier --

-- was being able to understand what you were describing with the words you were using, to help you with this --

@Shalvenay I think, in narrative theory, you can talk about non-anthropomorphic elements as being characters if they serve the role a character would ordinarily play in a trope.

But I might be wrong, I'm not a lit major.

-- which was throwing us for a loop because you were talking about wanting to beat the players.

... while we were talking about handling mystery games and scene management in Fate.

@doppelgreener I'm... not arguing...

@Tarinaky You were the one that said "point". I'm not arguing either. I am clarifying what is going on.

Okay.

It's why BESW and I are trying to address the "bad with words" thing.

@Tarinaky I used to apply a lot of literary analysis tools on RPGs, but eventually I realised that in almost every case the mediums are so different that I was mis-applying tools and making more trouble for myself.

If any other storytelling medium has analytical and structural tools which can be applied easily to RPGs, it's improvisational theatre.

Unfortunately I can only really go on what I learned in GCSE Media Studies.

Which is precious little I'm sure.

We may sometimes want to create effects reminiscent of literature in our RPGs, but the way we go about it is necessarily different.

...I wonder if Scott Shaw would be happier as a GM.

I have a very minimal, passing, awareness of Propp's theory, and precious little else and consequently have to get a /lot/ of milleage out of it when I try to talk about RPGs.

I tend to bring more epistemological and social structure tools to the table, myself.

But getting back to the Mystery stuff... If I run a Sphagetti plot, it's impossible for me (through the villain as a tool) to fairly outmaneuver the players.

I have training and experience in creating environments which encourage a social group to engage with particular goals.

Because there's nothing behind the curtain

It's cheating.

Are you using a data viewing model term to describe a kind of story structure?

I have no idea.

Then where did you get the term "Spaghetti plot"?

I'm not familiar with it except as a data viewing model and we've already had the talk with @Shalvenay about how that kind of crossover doesn't help.

I think I heard the term a long time ago on a podcast. When, as a GM, you take anything the party speculates about the mystery and declare it to be true.

So if one of the player's speculates that something is going on, or expects to find something, then they find it.

Yeah, that's not a common term. It sounds similar to "yes, and" improvisation though--and if you use that tool, the answer is baked right in there.

But I don't like it because I can't get the same thrill out of a game using it.

Because it becomes impossible to outmaneuver or surprise the players.

It's totally cool to prefer pre-planning one's plots. "Yes, and," is not cheating though, and it doesn't remove the ability to add details of one's own.

Heck, Fate's built around making it work.

It's cheating from the perspective of my goal to 'beat' the party.

Given I'm actually trying to beat the players, which is something most GMs are told not to do, I have to tread /very/ carefully so as to not do it in an unfun way.

And giving my NPCs the power of prescience, by adjusting their plots according to information they could not have... Would be unfun.

Just because you didn't know something until the players declared it to be true doesn't mean it wasn't true in the narrative all along, and something the NPCs would account for.

@Tarinaky they don't need to do this anyway. you can have details in the story the NPCs are not aware of and do not adjust to match.

It seems like you have very specific examples in mind which don't match the general descriptions you're giving.

So if the party have to protect a McGuffin from being stolen.

The party theorise the most likely routes for infiltration/exfiltration.

And prepare defences accordingly.

As GM, I have to come up with the NPC's attack plan before hearing the PC's defence plan.

Or at least, the broad strokes of it.

And then the dice fall where they may.

Why? You can come up with even more interesting and fun attack plans by making them after you know the defence, because as the GM you can make choices for the NPCs which will create tension at the maximally awesome points in the situation. That's not the NPCs cheating to get around the defences, it's you making choices for the NPCs to avoid things being boring.

After all "The perimeter is quiet all night but in the morning the diamonds are gone" would be a big let-down and make them feel like they'd wasted all their time and effort that session.

I'm not saying the En Garde! approach of each "side" making plans separately and then comparing them to see who wins is wrong or bad.

I should really go to sleep. I'm sorry.

I'm saying that the reasons you're giving for preferring them don't seem to require them.

G'night.

I feel like if the players plan that catastrophically the correction is to gently nudge them with "Are you sure?"

I feel the responsibility is the other way around.

It's not the only way to run a game.

"Are you sure you want to execute that perfectly reasonable plan, which doesn't address my totally hidden and unknown plan as the GM?" "Uh, yeah, sure, we don't know your plan." "Alright, well, the NPCs do secret stuff and you lose."

That doesn't seem all that fun, unless I'm given a compelling reason to find the story it produces exciting.

Straw man imo

Defence in Depth is a key part of any reasonable plan.

@Tarinaky I am responding to exactly what you're talking about here.

It's exactly what you're describing though.

Yes, and there.

As the GM, if I have a battle plan and the players are investing in something else, I should find a way to validate what they're doing -- by at least letting their characters realise that something's going on they didn't account for, and by trying to make what they did prepare be relevant to what happens next.

If they purchased a rocket launcher expecting a tank and a frontal assault, but a bunch of ninjas sneak in through the ventilation instead, I'd sure like to help them find out about the ninjas and use that rocket launcher somehow -- or else make the whole "oh no we got swindled, someone snuck in" plot exciting and, again, man, I want to see that rocket launcher used.

Right, but now the Ninjas are /behind/ them

hiya everybody

(for clarity I'm picturing an over-the-shoulder RPG launcher, rather than something installed in the ground -- but oh boy, I'd sure like to let them use that thing installed in the ground too if we're going with that)

@nitsua60 Hi!

Another example, the party had a water elemental stuck on them after they escaped from a car chase. The party decided to hole up in motel and one of the party announced they were taking a shower.

I don't need to explain what happened next.

They got really clean?

I'd decided on the water elemental ages in advance because I liked the visual of a monster pouring out of a faucet.

that doesn't sound bad at all.

that's different to plans that are catastrophic against the total unknown.

The best I can explain. It's not 'fair' if it's total unknown.

i mean if you asked me "are you sure you want to take a shower?" and i see no reason to be uneasy about that shower, uh, sure, i'm still gonna take it. maybe eye it a little closer first. if you make disaster befall me for it, cool, that sounds like fun plot development surprises. (as long as the disaster isn't "a bomb was falling on that shower. the room blows up. you're dead. i did warn you", which i presume/hope isn't what goes on.)

If the mooks can attack from the vents, the players have to know there's vents.

water elemental doesn't sound like it's a bad disaster, sounds like fun plot development surprises.

Yeah. But the serendipity made it fun for me.

Anyway. I actually need to sleep and I mean it this time.

Ok, goodnight.

night

OMG WotC finally realized that I would love to pay them for things I've (presumably, illegally) downloaded!

hey there @nitsua60

hiya

how're things going?

final push on grading

aaah...midterms :P

also, think that wild shape question is now in its third closable form (unclear, this time, after dupe and POB already happened today).

@Shalvenay actually, we're on trimesters so we're ending a term next week. Pushing to grade last of tests and projects because tomorrow's the last day of classes, and then it's term-ending exams.

That's the "Warthog"?

@nitsua60 yah

also, in fun work-related news: after six years of asking my athletic director will finally (next year) be allowing me to start an Ultimate team at my school

@nitsua60 nice.

@nitsua60 GASP! Is that a legally obtainable D&D 3.5e PDF I see?

[sound of greener fainting echoes... faintly across the Atlantic]

@BESW @trogdor The Crackening becomes ever more certain

lol

this is twice in one day two things which ought never have been possible have come to pass.

@doppelgreener the other being...?

idly wonders just how bad Smaug would look after an encounter with The Gun(tm)

@nitsua60 the impossible

=D

@trogdor the thing that could never be, it was me

@nitsua60 are you admitting to being the cause of the other thing? :P

@trogdor I agree

except it is happening

@nitsua60 What thing is this?

@nitsua60 I am missing the next two Saturdays of our groups Geek Night, this happening once is rather rare, and Greener is going to be there when I am not, which in itself is something I am not sure has ever happened

@trogdor for a moment I thought greener was flying in from London to ensure a quorum and was amazed at the coherence of the group. Then, while reading a message typed 11000 miles away, I remembered there's an internet.

Still, that's better group coherence than I manage in a 15-mi. radius some weeks =)

@trogdor I'm sure some kind of quantum superposition is the answer to this paradox

@nitsua60 well, I am usually there but most everyone else misses at least one or two weeks every month, if not more than that

@doppelgreener But you have to answer in the form of a question.

@doppelgreener I might just need to make a couple time copies of myself and run into them every once in a while to paradox time back into the alignment I want

I might skip the part of sticking them into a sword though

@nitsua60 it is also 13,000 miles away as the crow flies. (This particular crow getting blown off course partway around the Indian ocean and having to find its way back from Madagascar)

I will definitely skip becoming a vampire and dying twice

@doppelgreener from you or from me?

@nitsua60 I'm not sure the crow could tell us with certainty

=)

@trogdor sounds great. Couldn't go wrong.

@doppelgreener except it always does

until you do it the right way anyway, but that takes several loops

mk, I migh just be done making shameless Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver refferences for the moment

Any of you ever play that rpg where time travellers have to be really unimportant people in order to avoid paradoxes, so PCs are utterly unimpressive workers sent on earth-critical time-missions? What's it called?

@nitsua60 certainly an interesting take on it

never heard of it though

I've just heard-tell--never played it.

The idea being you get a half-dozen total schmoes trying to save a village from the Great Khan's army, for instance.

the most influential game I have played involving time travel, is the afformention Soul Reaver, in which time travel is a thing one particular person does to other people, and the main character of the branch of the series runs into at least two copies of himself stuck into a legendary sword and creates a time paradox every time it happens

ttrpg? crpg?

it's more platforming, puzzles, and some backtracking with powers you get from defeating bosses

so... megaman?

=)

it's just slightly more similar to something like Super Metroid or Castlevania, except it's 3d stuff

@nitsua60 yeah, except that it is a 3d game, not side scrolling

but yes, apt comparison

with an extra twist of traveling between the spirit world and materiel plane

@trogdor [burnishes medals] I didn't stop playing video games in 1991 for nothing....

and story based time travel

@nitsua60 lol

@trogdor I didn't realise! That game's on my list of old games to play.

@doppelgreener it's good

I dunno if the whole series is on your list or not, but I have not played any of the ones where Kain is either the lone main character or the co-main character

I played a demo which focused around a big cylindrical room with pillars in it.

but the ones with Raziel were all good (not that the others were not, I just have no personal experience with em)

@trogdor I wasn't aware there was a series actually.

@doppelgreener that sounds like the start

@trogdor I was going to say that FF(1) and Myst were the last console and computer games that I'd finished... then I remembered the greatest (by enjoyment to programming ratio) game ever: candy box

@doppelgreener the whole story starts with Kain when he first gets killed and then gets turned into a vampire, and from there it moves forward

but to be honest, if you just start with Soul Reaver you might still like it

but like me, you might not fully realize the backstory they reference every once in a while at first

It's a short list but it exists

but you could always like, read or watch some story stuff for that

@nitsua60 for me it was tomb raider, the recent reboot. Portal before that. [click]

Oh no what have I clicked into

I am pretty sure LOK Blood Omen had no spirit world or time travel hijinks in it because Kain and not Raziel

@doppelgreener it's amazing.

As close as I've come in real live to The Game from Ender's Game (book, of course)

@doppelgreener how many lollipops you have?

@nitsua60 well, zero

have you been eating all the candies?

I have been investing in a lollipop farm because this demon game has possessed me.

aha

that first epic quest is pretty epic, eh?

(ten seconds til my copper sword)

(think the goblins are going to kill me)

(yup)

@doppelgreener just imagine how many lollipops you'll have when you wake up!

@nitsua60 somewhere between 100-144 thousand unless some sleep mechanism stops it. Goodnight!

overnights were always good to me when I first discovered this game =)

@doppelgreener night!

@doppelgreener Actually, there's a whole bunch of legally obtainable 3.5e PDFs... the one you linked happens to be one of the few (for now) that is also available as print-on-demand

@Adeptus -- this is much, much bigger news for AD&D stuff

also, how can I search for questions that lack a particular tag?

is:question -[tagname], IIRC

yup. example

hey @Miniman

I'm looking at PHB errata (version 1, apparently) and I don't see anything about unarmed strikes not being weapons

I'm not saying I don't believe you, I'm just looking for a reference

which PHB is this?

5e

in particular: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/90430/…

in short, I asserted that a 5th edition warlock could summon an Unarmed Strike as a Pact of the Blade weapon, because it was listed on the weapons table

@JoelHarmon media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/PH-Errata-V1.pdf

under weapons it says unarmed strikes shouldn't be on the table; under combat it spells out how to treat unarmed strikes

I'm looking at that right now, @nitsua60

ah, great; I was re-reading the combat section in a confused manner, and had entirely missed the weapons section

so now it's more unarmed strike=thing you do, not thing you have.

right

I suppose that's what I get for trusting my book :)

anyway, it's past time for me to wander off

thanks for the catch, @Miniman

You're welcome - sorry I didn't reply quicker, I was afk.

no problem; seems to have worked itself out

mostly annoyed that it's 20 minutes I'll never get back

Yeah, I know that feeling.

ok, I'm out for real now; later all.

Cya!

Every time this comes up I'm reminded that unarmed strikes went from being stupid, inconsistent, and just generally janky in 3.5 to being stupid, inconsistent, and generally janky in a different way in 5e, then got errata that made them stupid, inconsistent, and generally janky in yet another way.

I think maybe it's time WotC admitted the sad truth. Punching things is impossible. If you want to hit something, use a weapon.

@nitsua60 That's a legit main-site question under the product-identification tag.

@Miniman Even in 4e, it was generally superior to use a weapon.

And if any D&D system had the opportunity to even out unarmed strikes, it was 4e.

It's disappointing that you say that, because I was fully expecting a comment along the lines of "In 4e unarmed strikes worked perfectly and weren't janky at all".

yeah, a fighter or a monk in 4E could do unarmed stuff

but as a fighter you would have to build a very specific way, and even then a weapon is still better

BUT you could get extra unarmed attacks

I don't know much about monk unarmed stuff

I think they still typically worked better with weapons though

the best fighter build for unarmed attacks that I know of involves a weapon in one hand and one hand unarmed

so certainly not a purest build there

@Miniman They worked fine, except for the one catch which always trips up special exceptions in D&D: extra options. If you specialised in a weapon you also specialised in a weapon type. That meant you had a number of feats designed for your school of weapon, dozens of enchantment options for improving it, options for the particular weapon you'd use within that school--and often further feats for that choice.

There were even whole paragon paths to add more cool stuff to what you could do with a given weapon school--for almost every weapon school you might pick.

If you were a spellcaster, you had fewer options. One to three implement types with associated enchantments, variants, and feats. Not many paragon paths. But a lot of implement feats weren't type-specific! So the breadth of options wasn't artificially narrowed, at least.

It was just--weapon classes could generally choose any kind of weapon and get trade-offs on accuracy, dice size, and extra features.

Casters had fewer range to choose from and your choice of implement offered less variety anyway.

Then.... unarmed strike. They're enhanced by a "ki focus," which is, roughly, a caster implement which can be enchanted to improve your fists as if it were them.

The options were dismal. Hardly any feats, hardly any paragon paths, extremely limited variety in types. You couldn't really distinguish yourself by your choice of ki focus and how you improved it.

So while technically, in the numbers game, unarmed strike was a middling fair choice, practically speaking it was a deeply limited and boring option with very little opportunity for displaying system mastery, making a character unique, or finding synergy with other features.

Heyyy... so, meta-question: "What's a good rule of thumb for CR level of a Paladin's steed?" is it too opinion-based?

@daze413 What edition?

5e

we got into an argument when the paladin hit 5th lvl. It turns out I have no idea how to adjudicate this. :/

Ok. So, you're planning to add a houserule that allows the Paladin's Find Steed spell to summon more powerful creatures as he levels?

And you want some guidelines for how powerful a creature he should be able to summon?

wait, so this is houserule territory? getting a more powerul steed is not RAW?

RAW says:

> a form you choose: a warhorse, a pony, a camel, an elk, or a mastiff.

Then it adds:

> (Your DM might allow other animals to be summoned as steeds.)

Personally, my assumption is that corollary is to allow greater variety, rather than greater power.

So I'd let a Drow paladin in the Underdark have a Giant Lizard steed, but I wouldn't let them have a Basilisk.

What is the purpose of this question? What situation are you facing which makes knowing the CR of the paladin's steed important?

@BESW No, he means what CR creature should he allow the Paladin to summon.

(This is, among other things, going to clear up whether you're asking about how powerful of a creature can become a paladin's steed, vs asking about how powerful a creature is once it's become the paladin's steed.)

@Miniman That's what I assumed, but then realised I don't actually see him saying that clearly.

@BESW no, the CR remains the same when the creature becomes a steed

Okay, I was imagining various situations like how to determine XP if you fight a paladin's mount in the stables while he's drunk in the tavern.

as to the purpose of the question. I am incredibly paranoid that if we just let go and have fun with whatever the PC can summon, the steed itself can overpower the encounters they face

What are the CRs of the listed animals?

I mean, the spell is great! It's forever until the steed dies, and the steed can attack while the paladin is mounted on it. see: "seamless unit of combat"

oh yay people are here

@BESW Varying from 1/8 to 1/2.

oh should i wait until you guys are done?

Warhorse - CR 1/2, pony - 1/8, camel - 1/8, elk - 1/4

@daze413 That's your question, then: how to prevent that.

That's what you're looking for actionable answers to solve.

@masa hi! Nah men, go ahead. It's not unusual for this chat to have 2 or 3 separate topics at once. :D

just one real question then

how much of an investment does it take to make inspire courage relevent

cause honestly the more i look at it the more i feel i would have no use for it unless i focus on it

and would be better off using inspire awe

@Masakan Depends on what materials are allowed, and what you consider an investment.

assume all books are on the table

and i feel this is the minimal investment one can take but is it enough

8 levels in bard 4 if you get vest of legends for IC 2

then a wand of inspirational boost

and badge of valor for a +4 to attack and damage

is that enough to justify it?

Words of Creation feat would double that.

i rather put a bigger focus on spellcasting and being the skill monkey

and i would be feat starved as it is

sides i dont know how many people would be ok with BoED

oh wait nvm

i just said it was all on the table

but still i just dont have the room

alright, I'll try asking it at the main site. Will have to let it simmer in my brain before posting though. Thanks! :D

@daze413 Happy to help!

@Masakan As always, it depends on your party, but for most parties, +4 to attack and damage for all party members is well worth your time.

Do you know what builds the other group members are going with?