@trogdor He's the most powerful being in Morrowind, and the main plotline requires you to explore his dungeon full of zombies and then talk to him. The twist is that if you attack even one zombie, he becomes hostile to you.
Side note: If you haven't played Morrowind, it's worth a look. We've talked at length about how much I hate open-world games, and even I love Morrowind.
so it's technically easier to leave the zombies alone dispite the fact they all want to kill you. than it is to do the quest without captain jerkface's help
@SPavel I have issues with games that contain about 5% unique gameplay, with the other 95% being made up of pointless objectives repeated over and over.
Question for the 5e-lovers in the room: if you were going to run one of the hardcovers (ToD (I know it's 2), PotA, RoD, CoS, SKT) for a group of new-to-RPGs players, which would you pick and why? I have one in mind, but I'm sure I'm missing some many things.
STALKER pulls off the "pointless objectives repeated over and over" angle pretty well, actually - you can just do story and forget about the sidequests, which are mostly things like "go raid this guy's stash" or "help dudes defend this area"
@Miniman yeah I am not a huge fan of those franchises either, they seem afraid to do very much different, but they insist on making more games anyway :/
@trogdor Yeah, @SPavel is right. I shouldn't conflate that with open-world. It's mostly a sentiment born from the frustration of seeing so many franchises moving towards that in the name of open world gaming.
"At this stage, Skywind is not available for public release anymore, due to its very alpha state. Please bear with us while we work on getting the mod to a more playable state."
@trogdor For example, in Morrowind, you can Levitate. There are no invisible walls, so you can go anywhere. But they took that out, and put invisible walls in, and the result is a game that is arguably more "polished", but less fun.
There was an item that let you jump so high you could cross the map in a single bound, but would die when you landed. They put that item in the game, right at the start.
That's a game that wants to let its players do whatever they want.
@trogdor There are a bunch of different ways to survive the fall, making it one of the most useful items in the game for transportation to places you can't get to easily.
So the two ToD hardcovers (whose names I'm blanking on and which are, like, eight feet away), PotA, OotA, CoS, SKT. I'm vetoing Tales because just stringing together some greatest hits isn't what I'm looking for. (Though if it were to be less than a full hardcover, I'd seriously consider Sunless Citadel.)
pretty good. just got back from a neighbor kids bday who had one of those arcade in a trailer things. Played some age inappropriate games with my 5 year old.
@Miniman So I'd thought to rule out OotA because, as much as I love the wilderness-part in the beginning, it doesn't strike me as a great intro for new players.
@nitsua60 We've talked about it a bit before - I found PotA very vanilla. Very much a straight dungeon crawl, and the dungeons aren't interesting or unique enough to relieve the blandness.
@nitsua60 Also, the openness of it isn't great for new players - lack of direction combined with the structure of the campaign means that a lot of the time, their only solid lead is to a deeper level that they're not remotely ready for yet.
And sure, my group knew from genre-savyness that they should clear out the 4 dungeons on the surface followed by the 4 dungeons just below the surface and so on, but most new players are going to see the tunnel leading down and figure it's the way to proceed.
@Miniman Not a bad point. I guess my group that I had take possession of spoiler, maybe? ended up playing it with enough meaty connection to a home-base that it didn't feel too open/hard to find leads.
I've heard good things about SKT, though, so if I was looking at a new group I'd probably be running that. (Because I don't want to run ToD again, and even if I did I lent my books to someone and don't even know who anymore).
@nitsua60 Oh, the leads are there. But newer players might not think to look for them, especially when there's a tunnel/staircase/etc right in front of them, just beckoning them to come in.
@NautArch I've got two campaign-in-a-binders hanging around that I could run, but I kinda want to model the idea that you don't have to be a campaign/world-builder in order to have a play-group. Also, my next homebrew I want to sink some real time into and do my own version of ANgry's megadungeon project.
@Miniman SKT, PotA, and ToD were my three first thoughts. I haven't played/run ToD, though, and had heard that it suffered from some growing pains.
@nitsua60 There are 2 campaigns I kinda want to run at some point - a Planescape one, and an Undermountain one. Both are way too much work to think about right now.
Since "why does this exist if there are wizards that do magic" is multiplied by a billion when NPCs are infinity demons from hell and not level 1 commoners
@NautArch They're a group of adult co-workers, nerds the lot of 'em, who all grew up aware D&D was a thing but have never actually tried it. They're keen to try anything, and don't have strong opinions that would discriminate among these "flavors" we're discussing.
Reading up on the 5e Monk Monastic Traditions for level 3. Everything seems to say Way of the Four Elements is the worst of the 3 but I don't quite understand why. To me it looks pretty well balanced
@Shalvenay evening or whatever time zone you dwell in
@nitsua60 I don't know yet. Was planning on being Chaos Neutral but I chose Tabaxi which makes me feel like my character would be sneaky because its a dirty cat. But I'm pretty open still. Leveled up to 2 yesterday so I have some time before Ill hit 3
I'm mostly trying to figure out why people think Elements is the weakest of the 3 monk styles. It looks pretty powerful to me
@Ryan Essentially what it boils down to is that, for the most part, the elements monk only lets the monk do damage. The monk is already better at doing damage via punching stuff than they ever will be at doing it with the crappy form of spellcasting the 4 elements monk gets, so why bother with it?
Whereas at least shadow gives some additional capabilities.
@Miniman Elemental gets free Elemental Attunement. Which is certainly weaker. But then all of the other elemental stuff seems pretty fairly priced and a lot better use of Ki then having better stealth
@Ryan I mean, I don't like shadow much either. But "giving the monk better stealth options" seems a lot better than "giving the monk overpriced, crappy damage options that have no synergy whatsoever with their existing ones".
I look at them more as utility options. Water Whip, Fly, Gale Spirits all seem like they would really come in handy. Shape the Flowing River too. 1 ki and your DM suddenly hates you because you froze his lake and are walking across it
its only 4 ki. At level 11 you have 11 ki. That leaves you with 7 to work with. And its also important since your argument seems largely to be that the cost is higher than other spell casters - Sorcerers and Wizards don't get theirs back on Short Rests
@Ryan I agree with most of what's said above, as far as evaluating options in a vacuum goes. But it's easy to think of use-cases where one'd prefer one archetype over the other, which is why I first asked what you're hoping to do with the monk. And if the answer's "I'm still pretty new, and I'm not sure," that's reasonable.
It's not just that 4 elements gets all their spells later and more expensively than a real spellcaster, it's that their spells compete for a resource that is a lot scarcer than it appears, and they don't hold up compared to the other options.
okay so at level 11 its 1d8. With Flurry I can do 3d8 of damage for 1 ki. With Fangs of the Fire Snake I can strike from 10ft away for 2d8+1d10 for 2 ki and if I really need to eliminate I can drop in more ki for additional d10s. How is that weaker?
@Ryan if you feel like time-travelling, here's the start of a conversation where Miniman showed me a lot about monks, and helped me see some of their strengths I'd not appreciated.
@Ryan They don't stack to the point of getting 6 attacks, but they do stack to the point of getting 4.
Ok, ignoring all other considerations, Fangs of the Fire Snake is spending 1 ki for 1d10 damage. Flurry is spending 1 ki for 1d8 + 5 damage.
So, on average, Fangs of the Fire Snake gets you 5.5 damage for 1 ki, where Flurry gets you 9.5 damage for 1 ki.
That's ignoring the increased chance of hitting with more attacks, the extra effects you can get from Open Hand, the extra opportunities to use Stunning Strike (one of the most powerful abilities in the game).
It's also ignoring 10 ft reach and the different damage type from Fangs of the Fire Snake, of course.
right but Elemental still has all of those things you're talking about. The only thing you're giving up is the Dex Save / Strength Save which is REALLY GOOD as is the wholeness of body but are they better than having the option to freeze water or fly?
I mean I agree that Ki is probably best spent 99% of the time on Flurry of Blows for Stun lock. Its the reason I chose Monk :) but the other 1% Elemental seems to give you better options for those odd situations that come up
You might be right, I suppose. Experience-based anecdote: I play in a campaign with an Open Hand monk. The DM decided that, since 4 elements only gives you new ways to use an existing resource, the monk could just have access to all of those options for free.
She's used a 4 elements ability once, ever.
And, even just using ki for flurry (she doesn't stunning strike much), she still runs out a lot.
@AnneAunyme I'm reminded of the card game Gloom, wherein your goal is to make tragic things happen to your own characters while inflicting good things on the other players' characters.
One point I forgot to mention - as a monk, you're generally better off maxxing Dex before Wis, which makes it 8 levels before the saving throws on element options go up.
Hmm. How expensive should I make healing lethal damage (where healing a single point would bring the target up to 1 HP at most) compared to non-lethal damage?
@Miniman As in, lethal damage means that healing it would not put the patient above 1 HP. In other words, if not healed, the patient is incapacitated if not dead.
to balance it (okay fine it was because I was feeling lucky) I did roll for my Hit Point Maximum when I hit level 2, increase instead of doing the average. It was not a great roll. My HPMax at level 2 is now 14
of course my Armor Class is 17 so I just laugh at the Goblins we've been fighting :D
@Miniman et al.: I just dupe-hammered this question, but I wonder if the dupe-direction might make more sense flowing the other way. Your thoughts? (cc: @SevenSidedDie)
