@nitsua60 I thought about ways to not need to breathe at all (lots) but it sounds like they specifically want to be holding their breath, not not breathing, if you see what I mean.
Btw, a long time back you helped me puzzle through my paladin-hack for Curse of Strahd. I'm happy to report that I think Ftr1/ClX worked exceedingly well. Defense or Protection on the Fighter side, Light domain on the Cleric side.
@Miniman Archery, longbow, action surge and second wind, trips and distracting strikes... basically all the combat effectiveness that I don't see rangers really having.
The game I'm running (which has now expanded to seven players, having originally been planned as 4) has a ranger in it. They've only just reached 2nd level, so she hasn't been outshined yet. I've looked into ranger optimisation, just in case...
The other I'm concerned about is the non-Sun-domain cleric. It's an undead-heavy campaign, so I was going to suggest the Sun domain cleric take Radiant Servant PrC. But that will really outshine the other. (pun absolutely intended)
Radiant Servant gets extra uses of Greater Turning (undead that would normally be turned is destroyed), boosted healing, and an extra domain. It's one of the better PrC's for clerics.
@eimyr I just ran across something that reminded me of a rule-of-thumb test for protagonism: the character who has the strongest desire and faces the biggest obstacles is the protagonist. (This is why so many movies have more interesting villains than heroes; by many standards the villain better fills the role of protagonist.)
Another test for protagonism is revelation; a character who learns important things which change their choices or motivations is going to feel more like a protagonist than a character who starts off knowing everything or who doesn't change in response to new knowledge.
(This is an accusation leveled against Riddick, and is one reason he feels like a boring RPG character.)
I'm....still trying to process it, but those tests seem to offend my conceptualization of what a Protagonist is.
@BESW As much as I'm understanding this one, it seems to me that this test suggests Syndrome is the protagonist of The Incredibles. I'd argue that not only is the antagonist, he's such in a rather classic and quintessential way.
@godskook That's good. It signifies that neither your concept, nor these tests, effectively encapsulates an artificial category applied post-hoc to storytelling as if it were a coherent system rather than a collection of disparate, organic narrative tools.
But elements like "strongest desire" are a major element in why some progatonists are more engaging than others, and why sometimes we remember the villains more than the heroes.
It's also useful to remember that not all stories are told from the perspective of their protagonist. See Sherlock Holmes and Ex Machina.
I dunno. In the world of Die Hard, emotions are given a LOT of narrative weight. McClane's desire to protect and reunite his family is much more powerful than Gruber's desire for money. Die Hard III reinforces this by upping the stakes with the first enemy who's emotionally invested in McClane's downfall.
"Strong desire" is obviously a subjective judgement, but I think the early Die Hard franchise makes a good case that within its universe love and family are the most powerful motivators.
And yeah, there are going to be places where these guidelines fall apart (I really LIKE the Riddick franchise, in part because it's gleefully ignoring basic wisdom about scripting characters and shows a film can work without them).
But I pinged eimyr about this because of his previous questions about whether a player's immersion leads directly or necessarily to narrative importance.
So that's the perspective I'm coming from: assuming strong investment, what effects on the character's role in the story does it imply or cause?
And I'm saying that, yeah, a character who's portrayed with deep investment in their goals is going to gravitate toward the center of the story because that ties into a common understanding of what indicates who the main character is.
It's about a man with a failing marriage, facing ridiculous unrelated obstacles which give him an opportunity to re-evaluate his own character (via, among other things, the "cowboy" speech which reflects why he put his job over his family in the first place, and the radio chat with the cop about facing tragic choices head-on) so that he can reach an emotional place that lets him rejoin his family.
@godskook I feel like that has some merit,..... but he overcame all his obstacles off screen, and I would argue his desire to kill supers was not as strong as an entire families desire not to be killed or see family get killed
not that I in any way don't see why you would point to that, just that I think it doesn't fit quite perfectly
Hello, in case anybody is listening I need a bit of advice about how to word a question about DnD5e
Basically I read through the monsters handbook and noticed that every single monster I came upon that was resistant to slashing/bludgeoning/piercing damage then followed up with "by non-magical attacks"
Am I reading this wrong or is there really no monster capable of reliably standing in the way of a warrior with a +1 sword of "doesn't matter, the point is its magic"
But I guess when I put the question like this into a real question I'll propably get "closed coz unclear"
I'm not that active on this site and as far as I know they don't have a Sandbox but it does sound okay. It would be nice to use a citation. So pick one monster, cite the stat block where it says "resistance to bludgeoning damage by non-magical attacks" and then ask whether there are monsters that are reliably resistant without this addendum.
Oh, and if your question does get put on hold it's not the end - an edit will automatically put it in the reopen review queue. It takes a week without edits or so to go from "on hold" to "closed"
And even then, the change from "on hold" to "closed" is a purely cosmetic one. Posts are never too old to be improved.
It sounds like you're asking what the purpose of weapon type resistance is if it's overriden by an apparently common item it's reasonable to expect an average PC to be carrying.
>In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them. > - Orson Scott Card,
I was spooked there was some systemic error blocking their way to me. They got one Scandic letter in the address wrong but usually the post here is used to that kind of stuff.
If I'm looking at the list of questions over on the main site and I see that a question was "modified [X] hours ago by [John Doe]", but when looking at the question I see no evidence of that user in the edit history of the question/answers or in the comments, what does that usually mean? Attempted/rejected edit or something?
Off the top of my head (away from books at the moment): Dex and Wis as primaries--so we're probably looking at wood elf as the "best" race, though I'm always partial to variant humans, too. Put a pin in that. (Feat if human: Athlete has nice flavor, even though it sucks so hard. Ditto keen mind. Mobile? Observant? I'm not sure any of those are *so* must-have as to weigh in on the race-question.) Folk hero background: animal handling and survival are perfect, flavor fits. Probably fighter1 (even though there'd be no "optimized" save and the heavy armors won't matter) just to satisfy my narra…
@godskook I think the hug counts =)
(Or is that 2 I'm thinking of?)
@CTWind If you can link the question, I have a way of peeking under the hood and seeing more detail on touches than just the revision history.
Sure, I saw that IronHide77777 modified this one and given that he was the one having trouble with that the other day I was curious what he did in that question.
@nitsua60 At the end of Die Hard 1, she introduces herself as Holly McClane to Powell as I remember it, and that's the "aha" moment that you assume that they're going to try to work things out.
@BESW So the protagonist player is the one with the strongest desire to push the narrative and the one willing to get into the most difficult circumstances to achieve it?
@nitsua60 That's where I got tripped up. Had thought initially they would be the nature loving person who realized they could better protect nature by being a better fighter. But I didn't love the look of starting Druid. So I switched it up to a Fighter who made a pledge to protect nature.
on a personal note...our campaign got shortened last night when our Pholtan cleric asked his god to Gate someone needed directly to us. Rolled a 1% and it happened.
I showed the Apocalypse World books to my colleague who is interested in RPGs but has never played one. He found it amusing that the "healer" playbook Angel is suggested to sabotage the others to keep themselves wanted and relevant :)
They get animal friendship and speak with animals as circle spells, get to grab a druid cantrip and one of {Animal Handling, Nature, Survival} as a free skill.
And heavy armor, lord knows why?
So for your original concept (" the nature loving person who realized they could better protect nature by being a better fighter") Cleric (nature) 1 going into fighter could work pretty well.
Not crazy about nature cleric's CD at level 2 (present their symbol to charm all beasts w/in 30'), but the nature-lover getting to turn undead's pretty nicely thematic.
@NautArch So druids originally are a subclass of clerics (1e). Their defining characteristics are (a) strict adherence to True Neutrality, (b) nature-theme to their spell list, (c) eschewing metal (pushing them away from the front-line type of cleric), (d) the ability to change into an animal form.
So now let's fast-forward to 5e: alignment couldn't matter less, a nature cleric gets functionally the same spell list, so Wild Shape is really left as the defining characteristic for a druid to hang on to.
@NautArch Do you mean battlefield control, or broader control?
So I'm looking at the druid list: thorn whip, entangle, faerie fire, fog cloud, t'wave, gust of wind (meh), moonbeam, spike growth, plant growth, sleet storm, wind wall, grasping vine, ice storm, wall of fire, a-life shell, insect plague, wall of stone. (That's just up to 5th-level spells.) And lots of conjurations. I'm wondering what else you'd want from your circle? (Honestly? Because I can see that eschewing WS would buy you "room" to get some other things.)
I'm not that deeply into fantasy fiction, but what tropes should a druid be expected to fulfill? The only example that pops into my head is the druid from Asterix, and all he does is provide sage advice to others and brew the magic potion.
And as much as I like Asterix, I don't really believe in characters whose main abilities are downtime crafting in DnD contexts.
@godskook My first DnD character ever was a cleric, and I intend to get back to it! But then again, we play quite different DnDs...
Especially since that cleric of mine was in 4e.
I used to play the Alchemist class in old ToME (back when it was still about Middle Earth) quite often, it got quite easily into "just make good potions for money to buy more ingredients to make more potions with".
Then you'd use some 30k worth of potions to destroy some high-level overland creature, get more exp and make even better potions!
"Fireball!" [actually casts *produce flame*] "Dude, your fireball sucks." "It just avoids all insects in the area. Doesn't leave it much room to work."
"Also, the bats look at me weird when I ask for guano. So I don't like to take too much."
Hmm, I wonder if an alchemist-style playbook could be adapted from the Hoarder limited ed playbook in Apocalypse World...
The Hoarder has a hoard (duh) that they can go to to get something useful, but the hoard grows hungry if things are taken from it. The hoard can be made less hungry by returning taken items and depositing new ones.
The flexibility of having a pile of "pretty much anything" but the limitation of only being able to take so much before it needs to be resupplied with something (eg. herbs, intestines, rare minerals) could work for an alchemist.
@nitsua60 Hmm, maybe things like call lightning, chain lightening, lightening bolt, control weather, control winds, cone of cold, tidal wave and maybe things like lightning arrow, lightning lure.
I think they mostly avoid giving the Druid non-concentration damage spells; druids seem to heavily be based around picking the right long-term damage or control spell for the fight.
One of the land circles gets Lightning Bolt, I think, and a couple others get Blight, but that's almost all the druid can get by 5th level spells, IIRC.
@NautArch They've got control weather, it's just higher-level than I got around to listing. They've got control winds too, but I was looking a t PHB, not EEPC.
@NautArch The other ones don't really strike me as "control" as much as "nature-themed damage." Which could be cool, just that I thought we were looking more at control.
I could see a circle that lets them expend wild shape 'charges' on spells/effects they don't normally have access to, like burst damage non-concentration spells, without needing a significant class rework.
@nitsua60 looks like the block quote was taken from roll20. The capitalization on their version of the item matches the one the user employed. D&D Beyond agrees with your edit though.
Paladin really gives you a lot of options for how you want to play any given encounter. Go smashy smashy? Check. Healer? Check. Magic Dispeller? Check. Buffer? Check.
the past two major encounters, our DM has thrown monsters at us that won't stay on the ground so I've spent more time healing and dispelling magic than I did attacking.
Yeah. I personally have somewhat of a dislike for fighters since they're implemented so poorly in DnD 5e, while I wouldn't mind playing a "normal" sword hero otherwise.
Thrown melee weapons would use your strength to hit anyway, so I guess bows are out. But you still have your spears/trident if you really really need it.
the options that other archetypes tend to give usually amount to "This makes me better at hitting stuff with my sword" Which, I mean, they're fighters. So that kind of makes sense.
@Adam It's not the hitting things with swords that's dull, it's that it's mechanically unvaried.
My baseline for what I'd expect from a fighter comes from my days in 4e, where Fighters have as many special abilities (called "Exploits") as casters have spells. They're still "hitting things with swords or whatever" but with more variance in both choice and outcomes.
@kviiri I used to think that mechanically simple was a failing of the Fighter class(in 3.5, but same problem), until I started DMing for players who preferred Fighter to Warblade because of the mechanical simplicity.
In 4e, the suggested fighter build has two at-will special attacks at 1st level: Cleave (deals minor damage to one additional target after hitting the primary target) and Reaping Strike (Deals minor damage even if the attack roll misses). The suggested Encounter power (once per battle/short rest) is Covering Strike (deals high damage and allows allies next to the target to shift two tiles), and Daily power (once per long rest) is Comeback Strike (spends a surge to heal).
@godskook When my fiancee played, she chose champion fighter. Because all she wanted to do was roll dice and kill stuff. She didn't care about save DCs, or maneuvers, or learning spells, or anything like that. It was the perfect choice for her.
@godskook Yeah, I don't doubt that some people prefer it simple, but it's also a trap for players who don't realize how monotonous playing one in combat is.
To some extent though, I find that everybody has their go-to flow that they use. Rogues will always try to sneak attack, spellcasters have their preferred spell or combinations of spells that they will use over and over again, paladins will melee and smite the big bad, etc. I find my players don't use all of the options they're given, they just like the idea of having those options at all
I think the ask isn't for fighter to be more options/fewer but to offer both. You can have the champion archetype for those who want the simplicity, but offer some other options that let a fighter feel more well rounded
Overall, I don't subscribe to the idea that DnD should include classes or options for all kinds of players in the first place. Trying to please everyone usually ends up being worse or more difficult (or both) than just fixing certain assumptions about the game or the players.
@Adam I'd agree, but I also think they're not as interesting as a fighter could be. The maneuver limitation resource is really pretty big, but eldritch knight raises some interesting ideas. I personally like the bladesinger more than the EK.
I guess I'd like more options for the maneuvers and more chances to use them.
@NautArch I can understand that. At least they were nice enough to have your superiority dice recharge on a short or long rest instead of just a long rest. I do like how, of the options a fighter does get, many of them recharge pretty often.
@godskook Quite possibly I'm among the intended target audience, but no, I don't really find myself enjoying DnD 5e. If it weren't the system of choice of my friends I wouldn't be playing it at all.
I would posit that the target demographic for 5e is a subset of players who enjoyed or who would've enjoyed 3.5, and are wanting an updated and more balanced experience that still "feels" like 3.5, to some degree.
And by contrast, I would posit that 5e is *NOT* for players who vastly preferred 4e to 3.5.
@godskook Yeah, I guess the 4e fans (not sure if I count as one, because I mostly like it when contrasted with 5e) out there feel massively let down by WotC's action regarding 4e.
In a way I'd hope they'd make DnD 6e that was like updated 4e but I think the baggage is too much for WotC to bear...
@godskook Historical baggage. WotC got a lot of flak from the fans of earlier editions because of the dramatic deviations 4e took from the old format, so I doubt they'll want to take the same risk again.
@NautArch Right, that's what I thought, but is that explicitly written somewhere? I can imagine a decent argument of "I'm making the save now, so I use the calculated DC now"
@MikeQ Not as far as I know, but it's such an edge case it might've escaped me.
Current score model makes sense if you model the spell as a continuous struggle between the caster and the target. Original score makes sense if you model the spell as a lingering force of its own that the target is trying to shrug off.
Both interpretations make sense and the rules don't seem to say much about it at all! Quite a pickle.
@kviiri I had always made the assumption it's the DC when it was cast and think that's probably the intent. But I could just as easily make the case for it's dependent on your INT.
@nitsua60 Agreed. But it's probably something that I would be least likely to stick with up to lvl 20 if the game ever went that long.
Like if I knew that my game was ending at 5th or 6th level, I might choose it. But if I was playing a multiyear game with the same characters, I don't think I'd go pure 20 levels of champion fighters
That being said, that's with me now about 2 years into table top gaming. When I first started the game, I'd probably pick whatever seemed coolest to me and go from there.
And I'm not disparaging that. I'm just...."warning" you that by my experience, there's not a lot of pathfinder experience discussed in this room, and so I don't expect htere to be a lot of people who'd have the experience you're looking for.
Oh. Well for reference, OA introduced some very strange gameplay mechanics in their new classes. Occultist is arguably the most bizarre class so far, with the exception of some inevitable unplayable prestige classes.
Only two of the new classes are relatively easy to comprehend: Psychic, the int-based sorcerer, and Mesmerist, the anti-bard. For the other classes, I haven't seen any of them played, and I'm having difficulty determining what they were designed to do.
I think that 5E's classes are better presented. You can sort skim over a class description and its features, and get a good sense of what it's going to look like in play.
So I'm in a party with no healers, which is fine if I remember to buy potions of healing. But they cost 50g. I assume they're at the price that they are because the balance team assumed you'd be playing with a healer and therefore potions would be emergency healing on top of that.
Would any of you consider lowering the price of a potion of healing for no-healer parties where potions are likely the main source of healing (outside of resting) rather than an emergency or slot-saving alternative?
That could depend on the GM's personal style. For me, I'd prefer to have the players "earn" it - perhaps they find potions in a chest at the end of a puzzle, or looted from the bodies after a combat.
@Yuuki I usually have shops in towns where the players have helped out, or where they agreed to help out, offer a discount. Especially if the owner is the one who is helping them.
If the person giving them the quest could sell them healing potions, I would probably sell them at 25 -35 gp from that one npc until the quest is complete. Then 40 gp after that.
A spike in demand creates a short-term drop in supply. Scarcity and high demand results in a higher price. If supply is easy to create, then the market will adjust by increasing production, which results in an increase in a supply. If the production of supply matches the demand, then the price won't really change.
If production is lower than demand, a short-term drop becomes a long-term shortage.
In this case, magical healing is the scarce resource, and potions are the alternative. Cure spells generally restore more HP than standard potions (2d4). So a cleric would charge more, but a potion vendor would charge less... I think. Unless potions are rare too? It's very possible I'm getting the theory mixed up.
@MikeQ Well, now we're talking about competition. Given that potions and cure spells accomplish the same result (moar hit points), it's likely that the cleric will still price his/her services lower to stay competitive with the potion market even if magical healing is scarcer.
How would you quantify "higher quality"? More hit points at once? If you're purchasing healing, it's not very likely that you're concerned with the magnitude of the healing spell.
Ah whatever. I've forgotten macroeconomics and this is kind of a tangent from Yuuki's original question - how should the GM adjust potion prices based on the players' healing ability, rather than markets and such.
The GM has the right to wave the magic GM wand and declare that the market price for potions is cheaper. I doubt this would unbalance the game too much, as long as potions still cost something reasonable.
mmm. D&D's never been particularly interested in economics. Stuff is priced for gating accessibility to things based on predicted usefulness to adventurers in a dungeon setting.
That's true. Also, a party doesn't need a healer to thrive. In general, having no easy-access healing forces the PCs to play smart; in some instances, having a healer PC can mean the other PCs rely on them as a crutch and don't learn to survive on their own.
@Yuuki Personally, I've found that potions of healing are far too cheap.
You can compensate by making them scarce, but players complain about that a lot.
D&D is a game that leans heavily on resource management, and if the party can fully heal after every fight without expending their characters' resources, it becomes difficult to provide them with an interesting challenge.
You end up with fights only mattering at all if they are putting the party at risk of death in and of themselves.
The tag game-systems is apparently a synonym for game-recommendations. I think that this should be changed is self-evident. Please fix this.
