That question about Warlock spells over 5th level bums me out.
It's entirely obvious what the querent is talking about, but unless they come back and add a tag without getting frustrated and leaving, we can't help them.
@Venture2099 I've been out of chat all day so I don't know if I missed much, but I've played/run a couple of different RPGs for kids from 4-9. Feel free to ping me if you're curious or want to bounce ideas around.
@goodguy5 @DavidCoffron sincere question: who cares what JC's answers are? At this point in the development cycle, with the amount of time people like us spend Talmudically deconstructing and reconstructing everything, who's to say he's got more expertise? He's not infallible--we've all seen it.
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I mean, if we want to ask "what was the idea here?" or "how do you evaluate whether you're going to bring something from UA to canon" those would be totally interesting questions. But rules questions? For a quick ruling I trust a couple of the players at my AL table over him, personally.
So there must be something I'm missing?
@Anaphory Just wrote and ran one of these last month, working on another one this month. We've started running "epics" for the three local schools' RPG clubs to come together for one-night adventures. They have a blast and I definitely have some tips to share. Ping me if interested.
To be honest, I wish they weren't sometimes as like you said, people like us (and likely your AL friends) do a better job of understanding his game, but there is a source officially released on the website that indicates his twitter statements are canon to the rules. I'll try to find the source.
I keep running into quoted tweets from this 'Jeremy Crawford' guy in 5e answers. My understanding is he's sort of in charge of the edition, like James Jacobs with Pathfinder. It makes sense that his opinion has a lot of weight, but people seem to take his tweets as sacrosanct-- using them to de...
Okay. (Sorry, this is a common source of befuddlement to me and I'm hoping someone who's shown themselves to be pretty good at explaining their thinking--like you--can help me figure out what I'm missing.)
Okay. Here is a cursory quote while I keep looking. "The PDF not only collects Sage Advice questions to date, but also lists the sources of the game’s official rules. Even better, we’ll expand that document every time we publish Sage Advice (the questions at the end of this column are also included). The PDF will effectively become the FAQ for the game." This seems to imply that all the most important of JC's rulings (the ones that are official) will eventually make it into the document.
Good for him. He also tweets contradictory things. And I mean that literally: we've got collected on site here places where to the same question he's tweeted "the answer is A" and "the answer's not A, it's B."
But the core question was why care what he says? He's clearly shooting from the hip plenty of the time and doesn't demonstrate more expertise (in the rules, again; design is a whole different kettle!) than gold-badgers around here.
If he had the self-control to use twitter to mostly say "check PHB p.187" or "that's in SA already" or "that's a great question, I'm going to think about it and talk it over and answer tomorrow," I'd be a fan.
Why, "At this point in the development cycle, with the amount of time people like us spend Talmudically deconstructing and reconstructing everything," do we care what's official or not?
Like, I said, I prefer well-reasoned answers like the ones we do here. Frankly, if I can find a better answer than Crawford I use that one in my games.
But when I can't see an obvious answer (or get helped to one by other experts like the folks here or my friends), I resort to the official rule-answerer
(And also because 4e "official" changes/rulings tended to explain themselves and make sense within the context of their stated design goals, mostly fixing or clarifying things that otherwise contradicted those goals--so I cared about "official" because "official" could be trusted to have my play goals in mind.)
I'm a devout Catholic. And one of the things I really love about my religion is the tradition and scholarship of the Doctors of the Church. Because I firmly believe that (a) it's my responsibility as part of canon 1 to struggle to understand the truth of God's love and (b) while I'm figuring it all out, it's awesome to have the help of millions of also-devoted and -caring and -brilliant people's thoughts on the matter.
dnd.wizards.com/articles/sage-advice/… "where I answer questions every week. Many of those answers eventually end up in the Sage Advice Compendium." (emphasis mine)
But yeah I think you are right. The tweets should not be considered official rulings until they appear in Sage Advice Compendium. At best, they are one experienced DMs rulings, which is no better than any other's
Well he is certainly knowledgeable. I've seen him answer difficult rules questions in minutes (when I have to dissect the rules to agree with him), but like any other human he is fallible.
I'm not saying the guy doesn't know D&D well, nor that he's got some ill intent, nor that I don't appreciate him working full-time at stewarding this beloved property. But he's not infallible.
@Adam They would have. And they did. They wrote letters and postcards to them all the time, and even called the Gygax house. (Source: Empires of Imagination.) The key differences are that in the one case they took their time, sorted through, and answered selected questions weeks-to-months later in Dragon, in writing, in paragraphs. In the second case Gary chatted with people, had context, and told them what he'd done in similar situations. None of that sounds like twitter to me.
In case you care: in the "room" menu (up above the line of avatars in the room) there's a "create bookmark" option. That allows you to select two messages--start and end--and it creates a link to a purpose-built transcript holding only those messages, which you can name.
The utility here would be that if the beginning weren't compelling to star, you could link the bookmarked conversation in its own message and star that.
@nitsua60 the "problem" is that JC is marked as a canon source of information. So, while I don't directly care what he says, I can insofar as people spouting nonsense "because JC said so"
@goodguy5 Where? Which info? I ask because his tweets, if you read Sage Advice Compendium "can" be official; it's never been made clear which are and which aren't; and some contradict others.
But really, my strong belief is that the ruling that a gm and their players come up with, jot down, talk about afterward, riff and build off of, &c... is a thousand times better than anything JC tweeted, published in Sage Advice Compendium, or even in the rulebook. (But that's a style-thing, personal.)</soapbox>
@goodguy5 @DavidCoffron sincere question: who cares what JC's answers are? At this point in the development cycle, with the amount of time people like us spend Talmudically deconstructing and reconstructing everything, who's to say he's got more expertise? He's not infallible--we've all seen it.
Has this been clarified in a Sage Advice Compendium entry, or in an Errata? Or is just based off of a tweet from Jeremy Crawford. It's also not really addressing the question. It's instead addressing the "do these spells count as <insert class here spells>"? — illustro46 secs ago
@illustro I don't think you're being criticized; the chat just had a semi-extended discussion about the inherent value of JC tweets as answer sources and the conclusion is generally negative.
JC tweets have their own vitrue, but their being spouted as Gospel (before inclusion into the "canon" that is the SA compendium) strikes me as premature, but is also a symptom of "instant gratification" and "point scoring" mind sets fusing for a variety of reasons.
@KorvinStarmast [pictures religious-studies students a thousand years from now purchasing copies of A Synopsis of the Four Gospels: Gary, Monte, Mike+Jeremy, and Becky.]
@Ben Vile heresy, good sir! A hot pocket is industrialized processed rubbish, whereas a proper unleavened flour tortilla, made by your local citizen in a taqueria, is a glorious holder of the breakfast taco. Manna from heaven was never so good ...
@Ben Get thee to Texas with all haste, brother Ben, and nourish thine soul upon the gloriousity of the breakfast taco, done Tex Mex style. And if ye dare, have barbacoa for your second .....
There is a little known scripture, called the canon of Masa, in which it is written "for mine breakfast taco is true food, and ..." but that fragment seems to have been chewed upon the the Chupacabra, so it's provenance remains unclear ...
@Ben It's an allusion to an old philosophical question about "how many angels can dance on the head of the pin" which was meant to poke fun at the pedantry of various Christian theologians arguing about obscure points of doctrine or belief.
@KorvinStarmast I'm not sure how accurate it is, but I once heard it was a way of expressing the idea of the infinite without words or prior allegories about it.
Speaking of broken exploits, there's a poster at GiTP called Malifice whose solution to Wish/Simulacrum exploit is IMO hilarious. (He speaks from view of DM)
Every so often, I get the idea that Malifice and DaleM here are either the same guy, or channel the same muse.
The link to me is the clarity in their prose style.
@JoelHarmon Hence banned from 5e I'm not even sure it's possible to build him in 5e, what with the strictly limited ability scores and all by bounded accuracy.
Whether or not a spell is on a class list is relevant for various game features (like Q: Can the sorcerer replace one spell at level up with another? A: only if it's on their class spell list). Is there a general rule that says characters can only use their spell slots to cast spells that are on their class spell list? If so please quote it, as that would back up your assertion. — illustro9 mins ago
I looked for this... there is no hard mention, or one rule that a caster must use their respective spell list.
> Sorcerer: An event in your past, or in the life of a parent or ancestor, left an indelible mark on you, infusing you with arcane magic. This font of magic, whatever its origin, fuels your spells. See chapter 10 for the general rules of spellcasting and chapter 11 for the sorcerer spell list.
Also the Spell slots sections of the classes state some variant of: "The Bard table shows how many spell slots you have to cast your spells of 1st level and higher. To cast one of these spells, you must expend a slot of the spell's level or higher. You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a long rest."
The various in class rules for knowing/preparing spells specify what spells you have access to by virtue of being in that class, how you select them, and how you can have them ready for use with spell slots
For example, page 114: "at first level, you have a spell book containing six 1st-level wizard spells of your choice." You then go to ch 10, and lo and behold, there is a list called "wizard spells." Seriously, how hard is this?
@illustro At this point, I think this is delving into deep territory here. An inherently "magical" creature like a tiefling or an elf would have minor magical abilities, outside of their class.
@Ben yes, but my question is, if said creature also has the spellcasting class feature, can they cast those spells using the spell slots they have gained access to
@goodguy5 @DavidCoffron et al. Don't fret too hard about unclarity in JC's rulings, though: apparently all of Quebec's Laws are unofficial, too. (Bullet #2.)
> Before a spellcaster can use a spell, he or she must have the spell firmly fixed in mind, or must have access to the spell in a magic item. Members of a few classes, including bards and sorcerers, have a limited list of spells they know that are always fixed in mind. The same thing is true of many magic-using monsters. Other spellcasters, such as clerics and wizards, undergo a process of preparing spells. This process varies for different classes, as detailed in their descriptions.
These features that let you use an ability without a spell slot are an exception to this general rule- they say you can cast the spell a limited number of times through the trait, but do not also say the spell counts as prepared/known for you, so you cannot expend spell slots on them. You can just cast them through the trait.
Sidenote: similar to how cheese is used to cleanse your palette when wine tasting; the Power Rangers theme song can be used to rid yourself of "that song stuck in your head"
I'd like to see an answer on the 2018 community survey about user retention, as it's clearly an important issue. Unfortunately, I'm unfamiliar with (or lack access to?) the various tools to put one together myself. I'm left with only my own vague impressions, which are a lot less useful than data...
@nitsua60 I'm honestly surprised that Crawford did not get any mention in the 2018 community meta. I would have if I had found a way to phrase my concerns, but I think other people have a better ethos about the matter.
I think there is definitely a tension in the community about these and I wonder if it is going to cause trouble down the line.
@Ben I wonder though if this is something that the community needs to come to terms with and decide and not something that should be a matter of policy though.
@Rubiksmoose Yeah that's what I mean. Like, at the moment, the general rule is that they are considered official, but following the discussion, there is no hard evidence of this, other than a bit of a "hand-wavey" response saying that he is considered official by WoTC
But as a community driven site, we should have our own understanding of how they should be treated. I.e. they are "official", but until they are printed in the books...
But why would the community need to have or express any coherent stance on it? As it stands answerers can cite him or not, voters can upvote or downvote and comment howver they like, and axe-grinders like me can say whatever Nice things they like in their own posts or on mets. What's not working?
I suppose what I'm saying is perhaps the opposite of what I initially implied. JC is not really anything, he is a resource that can help support an answer, but he is not the answer
@Ben I mean he did have a large part in literally writing the books. So it is not completely unreasonable to think that one could fill those shoes. But yeah, I think he is a little overconfident sometimes with his rulings.
In my 5E campaign we are a mixed alignment party with diverse values. With a common goal and we are all from the same city.
My character is lawful evil. (the general of our kingdom) the problem member is a chaotic good (king of our kingdom) everything was fine until he became king and appointed...
I don't know. I want to clean it up but I am just too darned tired.
" My character is lawful evil. (the general of our kingdom) the problem member is a chaotic good (king of our kingdom) " I did think this line was interesting. Regardless of the truth of the matter in this case it is the complete reverse of most party alignment issues I've dealt with.
@Rubiksmoose I VTC'd as opinion-based. It's an inter-party conflict that's very dependent on the specifics of the campaign, and the whole mess is riddled with "my guy" syndrome. Also, it's a "what should I do" question, where nearly any answer could be given with a half-decent argument to support it.
I'm trying to examine my close tendencies to make sure I'm not just blindly closing questions that aren't about rules. But this...just doesn't seem to be a good question for RPGSE as written.
@MikeQ I wouldn't honestly. As much I love me some good tongue-in-cheekiness the comments are really not the place for that. Especially not for a new user.
Although I'm sure a better answer would go along the lines of 1. If you don't want inter-party conflict, then don't attack, and 2. Players should not use alignment as a crutch for antagonizing other PCs
@Rubiksmoose It actually came up a few times in my last session, and I had to remind my players that their characters are not aware of concepts like alignment
@Ben It is very much my opinion though. I'm sure that some players and DMs would prefer that players do rely on listed PC alignment for their decision-making process. So at best, I would be giving very biased advice.
A personal example of this was one player had a PC that was lawful neutral. Then they were placed in a situation that strongly conflicted with the players morals.
If the player was restricted by their PC's alignment, they'd be forced to do something they did not like, or agree with - leading to a bad time
And fundamentally, D&D is meant to be fun for everyone
The situation was that a scientist was "growing" and genetically altering dogs, for clients. The player is strongly opposed to animal cruelty.
I object to alignment because 1. it imposes arbitrary restrictions on some character concepts and 2. it reduces a lot of complex choice-making into a cartoonish "Jedi vs Sith" binary question
@Ben and (that brings me to) 3. it presents a character's sense of morals as a package deal
@Rubiksmoose The 3×3 alignment grid is a bit too catchy. For some reason, it's among the few things non-players (and by extension, beginning players) seem to consistently know about DnD.
I wonder if Same Page would be as well known if we shoehorned it into a 3×3 grid...
The seller didn't have a DMG as I thought he would but now I've got PHB 1 and 2, Monster Vault (includes the Essentials Monster Manual) and two sets of floor and terrain tiles.
@nitsua60 Funny you should mention Talmud. I have a great (but amateurish - I am not a rabbi!) interest in the Jewish law and exegesis, and I was just reading about The Oven of Akhnai whose story has a very similar issue with single authority as our community has regarding Crawford's role.
@kviiri That is a great share, tht I really enjoyed reading, thanks very much. I studied Biblical Hebrew and the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha as part of my undergraduate degree. I won't star - as I'm not sure that it has broad appeal.
Currently I'm imagining prepping a set of small challenges (“fight off that incursion”, “capture one of these unkillables so we can study it and find a way to get rid of it”, “find the portal”, “cast a ritual to alert a nearby kingdom”, whatever), each of which has 0 or more other challenges (possibly connected by “or”) as pre-conditions.
@SPavel Yes. That would not be unexpected. We will need some player buy-in to start with, and a sufficiently low quota of characters prone to that.
(Also, good luck trying to ally with fey.)
The projector should show the end goal, the open challenges, the challenges currently attempted and the challenges completed, and by whom.
I'm thinking of the map of sectors in FTL, just it has to work for multiple groups and allow stepping back or sideways.
The penultimate column of challenges would be a column of things that need to be done in parallel (“close a portal”, “be a distractions”, “protect a breach in the walls”) with pretty deep dependencies.
To make it dynamic, the enemy might cross off challenges that could not be attempted any more at some rate.
(The last column would be the wrap-up and mop-up.)
This would mean structuring our prep starts by designing that penultimate column, and thinking about the conditions for each of these ca. 3 challenges.
In particular given I normally run low- or no-prep-games.
Every challenge of that column should probably be unlocked by 2-out-of-4 of previous challenges, where unlocking more than the 2 required ones gives a bonus.
The way I imagine it right now, I need a big projector screen that shows the progress, a way for GMs to communicate “challenge taken” and “challenge resolved in favour of the players” and “challenge resolved in favour of enemies” to that screen, and runners to get handouts with bonus information to the players.
Assuming that every challenge takes about … say, half an hour to an hour, with 4 hours total to fill, that's not running very often, that's a thing the a GM might be able to do himself.
I'm writing a 4e dungeon (while not working on my thesis) and I have a bit of difficulty reconciling my instincts with the expectations of the game at times.
So far I've been thinking of using a time management rule (eg. the one by AngryGM) to cause trouble if the party lingers in the hot zone for too long, and a "one long rest per dungeon" mode. I don't want to outright discourage exploration, but I want some counterweight against the completionist mindset usually encouraged by GMs (voluntarily or not)
@Tiggerous Not really mega - hopefully enough for a single adventuring day :)
It's a Dwarven mountain stronghold that has been taken over by someone who claims to be a high priestess of Albolg, the self-styled god of filth and decay.
@kviiri I'm not familiar with 4e, but if anything I've noticed the problem of XP in decision making. FOlks like to advance and it can be hard to willingly avoid the traditional combat generating XP. The smart move may be to avoid it, but it stinks that making the smart move is effectively an XP penalty.
@NautArch We've agreed not to use XP, but rather leveling per quest or "whenever you feel like you've really earned it". My SO took a while to convince... she likes numbers ;)
@NautArch Well, sorta - because at some point you'll have the exact same problem with treasure :)
I mean, of course the incentives are different, but "we should kill them to get more XP" is a similar kind of a problem as "we didn't explore the cleaning cupboard on level 3, I don't really care about it but there might be a +1 warhammer there".
@kviiri hmm. I can see that. I guess I've never been a big treasure-focused player. Even though my characters have been wanting the shiny shiny, I've never expected treasure at every turn. Also because 5e is supposed to be more limiting with magic items, so I actually balk a bit when a DM hands out what I think is "too much".
@Tiggerous Murderhoboism has nothing to do with XP; it's as much about things not done (the "hobo" part) as it is about the murder (and don't forget the looting)
@NautArch Yeah, I'm not too big on the usual type of treasure either. +X to Stat isn't really very cool. This game I'm going to run is a slight exception because we'll be playing a fairly combat-heavy campaign - choosing which items to unlock is going to be an important part of the players' agency.
I'll need to think of ways to balance the exploration stuff though. I mean, usually (by my experience) exploration is free and the only reasons players ever try to avoid it are "pure RP" or OOC boredom. I fear that with time management systems, I'll tip the scales too much.
@Rubiksmoose never done it, but like the idea of it. Seems more story-telling based. But we've had issues even doing RP. We'll see how things go with the new DM if we ever finish the campaign with the current DM.
But then again, everyone involved I haven't done this in a long time and a lot of the things I'm doing are novel to me, so I'll at least have the gift of their patience on my side :)
I try to avoid behaviors I like being there because of role-playing only - if I want to see a behavior happen more often, I want to find a way to reward it. In this case, I want to reward both exploration AND skipping exploration, which... can get tricky.
@Rubiksmoose I don't think we'll ever do it, but for the campaign we're on now it would have been perfect. It's been years in real life with a long story. He could easily have created points where he wanted things to get 'harder' and make those levelling.
@kviiri I think that puts a lot on you in giving obvious cues (which is clearly the hard part)
@SPavel Exactly - I plan to use a time rule to make every activity that takes "some time" cause a chance of something bad happening. Might be a torch burning out, a random enemy patrol, or being forced to make a check against the elements or such.
@Tiggerous My experience in general suggests that new players are quite often the best ones. :)
@NautArch So basically my format has ~three-ish available quests at a time. The players, when choosing their quests, will know the rough type of the main opposition they'll be facing (for example, "undead", "charmed animals", "elementals"), what the Big Prize is ("a level 7 Symbol of Hope") and how success in this quest will change the world for the better ("the dwarves can return to their home and start crafting weapons and armor against Baolug the conqueror").
One option I was thinking of is, the "random" treasure they'll find is more or less mundane enough to keep my players from stressing about it and focus on the Big Prize instead. I hope. :)
The format is actually inspired by a video game, Invisible Inc where one gets to choose from a set of randomly-generated missions and each mission is associated with a certain type of reward. However, every mission can and will yield something outside the focus too - eg. a prison break for an extra agent can also score items, software and money, although seldom in amount or quality that one'd get from a dedicated mission.
@kviiri Ehh I think exploration activity should cost effort rather than just time. "Go down the hallway" is not interesting. Things like traps, puzzles, whatever are more engaging.
In my 5E campaign we are a mixed alignment party with diverse values. With a common goal and we are all from the same city.
My character is lawful evil. (the general of our kingdom) the problem member is a chaotic good (king of our kingdom) everything was fine until he became king and appointed...
