@ColinGross Oops I thought the feat did something different... Looking at it again, it seems the only benefit over a Dex ASI is the ability to draw or stow 2 weapons. Not too impressive, unless we're dealing with a strength-based build with medium/heavy armor.
An item can be attuned to only one creature at a time, and a creature can be attuned to no more than three magic items at a time. Any attempt to attune to a fourth item fails; the creature must end its attunement to an item first.
@LukeSommers That's part of why I wish Brute keyed off of STR-based weapon attacks, not just any weapon attack. Adding brute force to a dagger strike, or rapier thrust, feels antithematic to me.
@ColinGross I liked the free action ring combo with the elemental command so I could walk through stone walls at 30' move, but my DM has yet to throw a magical effect at me that the ring would have stopped. And an extra +2 to my attacks and damage would be pretty nice.
"You can make exceptions; a character might be able to wear a circlet under a helmet, for example, or to layer two cloaks." Imagine having both the Manta Ray cloak and the Bat cloak, accidentally grabbing both at the same time. What would happen?
So it seems that a couple of my Masks players might be attempting to do a semi-legit comic adaptation of our adventure. One of them even already wrote up a script for one. Regardless if they ever do it, it still makes me so happy to know that they are enjoying themselves.
@LukeSommers Pathfinder is very bloated with all of its books and build options, and it tends to nonpolynomially explode at higher levels
As a player, that becomes frustrating because there are too many ways to build yourself into a corner, and the system punishes you if you want to change out of a (bad) build
As a GM, it's a bit frustrating if you're the type of GM who custom-makes NPCs, so you must undergo the extensive process of researching and comparing feats for every NPC, not just a single PC
Another possible GM frustration is when some players have superpowerful builds and others have rather weak builds, so the party imbalance makes it tricky to create fair encounters. But that's a problem with any system that has huge disparity between character options.
@ColinGross My Paladin currently has a +8. Will move to +10 once I attune that fire giant belt. But i'll take the -5 to hit for +10 damage every attack except for a Sentinel strike to prevent someone from getting close.
A while back, our party went into a mine that was crawling with undead that were being animated by a magic emerald. Purely for flavor, the DM decided to include a mine canary , still in its cage, as among the undead. Certain members of the party decided to keep the undead canary as a pet and keep the emerald so it could still be animated.
A while later, we were fighting a Wild Magic sorcerer. In lieu of the standard wild magic table, the DM decided to use a d10000 table that had gotten popular online. One roll that came up was that the nearest non-intelligent creature would gain human level intelligence. Yes, that would be the canary.
We had a spellbook from that sorcerer but upon using Identify, we realized it was cursed. It would drive anyone insane that tried to read it. Those same certain members of the party thought it would be a good idea to let the canary read the spellbook as an experiment.
Before long, the canary was turning the pages himself with Mage Hand.
I'm playing a Mystic, and I use my telepathic abilities to serve as the party WiFi.
The canary tapped into it was was speaking on the WiFi with my deliberately including him.
Keep in mind, this is a brand new intelligence, like a child, with no concept of morality or other people having their own wants and needs.
All he knew was that he liked power and magic, and discovered a taste for killing things.
"You enter the lair of the reported lich." "You did not expect the lich to be between four and five inches tall, but he does have the robes and unholy aura you'd expect."
At the end of the last session, he had started casting Blight on our rations. So it was decided he has to go. We're going to try to take him out next session.
One spell that we know he has is Arms of Hadar
We were going to do it the next morning, but we caught him casting blight on our food again and the one who was cooking declared the fight immediately. And of course, I'm down to half my Psi points from curing people's food poisoning from the first time.
The one who called the fight immediately is one of the characters who thought it would be a good idea to keep him and give him the magic book in the first place.
As an aside, in another game, this same player, as a Goliath Barbarian, decided it would be a good idea to stick our immovable rod in a magic lock that had already melted someone's thieve's tools. The rod also melted.
Concept - I was looking for inspiration on a character I'd like to play and while watching The Grudge with my girlfriend the other night, I thought of a character concept based around Kayako's skill set. A person who focuses on mentally tormenting and terrorizing their enemy, then lunging from th...
@BESW Oh, yeah, no concern about upvote+closevote. It's "upvoting, even though I don't want to send a message that this is a good question for the site" that feels a little duplicitous.
Remember that chat rep might lag behind mainsite rep, so if a new user's in this situation y'all might want to let them know it might take a bit, or poke a moderator. :)
The last part of the post (regarding the race and multiclass options) could be on-topic, if we knew what are the goals of the build. The backstory stuff is entirely up to you, and doesn't really have much of a mechanical impact, which is why the question was closed as opinion-based.
About "Dark vision is wasted on a Shadow Sorcerer (unless this doubles it)" - no it would not double your dar vision and therefore it is indeed wasted.
@MikeQ The goals are mainly to make a character that fits the concept. A social sorcerer who focuses on mind games and illusions that is durable enough to rush in, sneak attack, and get out. If she takes a hit, she just needs to be more careful for the rest of the fight rather than just being down and out.
I've actually been tinkering with a similar build for a Drow whose entire gimmick is that she's a wanna-be assassin with shadow powers. The build I was sitting on was a Sorcerer(Shadow)16/Rogue(Assassin)3/Fighter1. You start with Sorcerer, obviously, and stat for Dex>>Con=Cha>>>>everything else. I went Dex17/Con15/Cha16, but you can drain away some Con and put it in Wisdom or Intelligence if you already have a dedicated tank.
@Lucid That's pretty important. Your builds are for 20th, but if they're going mid-level, then I'd aim for having your character concept 'come online' early and build in strength as you approach level 10ish.
@nitsua60 I don't get to talk to the DM all that much since he's out of town for a family trip so I don't know much about the setting or anything and the other players are still trying to figure out what they want to play, but all of them don't really like playing controller-type characters.
For my build, you go Sorc until 4 and pick up Elven Accuracy to bump Dex up to 18. You'll get a Rapier at level 1 (Drow have Rapier proficiency, and Rapiers have Finesse, meaning they can use Dex for Attack/Damage rolls), and once you hit level 3, things begin popping off. You use Eyes of Darkness to cast Darkness on your Rapier, and you gain permanent Advantage against any creature that doesn't have blindsight, which becomes Double-Advantage at level 4, with Elven Accuracy.
For the skill proficiencies for your half elf version that might fit (or just be useful) you could consider Perception (always useful) and Performance (for playing mindgames maybe)
@Lucid I'm not sold on mastermind... at 3 (or even 6) levels all you're getting is the imitative speech feature and ranged Help. I feel like Swashbuckler--despite the name--fits the dash in-dash out model you're going for better.
@Lucid With multiclassing, you are likely giving up the really meaty stuff of a class - especially if you're not going high level or staying low level (in my opinion). I generally prefer to stick with a class unless you've got a great roleplay reason or the mechanics work out early and often for it.
You pick up Booming Blade + Green Flame Blade as cantrips, and Quickened + Twinned metamagics. For 1 Sorc Point, you can Twin Booming Blade to hit two targets with a very high power melee attack, and for 3, you can do that, AND quicken a Green Flame Blade to hit both those targets again.
@nitsua60 Yeah, it's hard to turn that down. It's easy to do it early on, but then you realize how far you have to make up for it later on with XP to get the juicybits of your main class.
Build is basically built around using Font of Magic to burn high level spell slots into more Sorc Points, to refresh Darkness if it goes down, or to twin your melee attacks for extra damage.
Tbh I'd suggest single-classing sorcerer for a while, and have your spell selection be mixed between solo buffs and close-range melee spells (to support the hit-and-run style) as well as control and utility (which is where arcane casters tend to shine)
I'm not too good at choosing how I should build my character when it comes to the level-up, which is why I plan so far out. Otherwise, I may gimp the build I want.
Planning builds can be a trap though, especially when you have to play through the low levels before it achieves its main abilities. It's not like MMOs where you prepare for endgame and then grind your way up.
I do plan on having feats, maybe several. I know Darkness can interfere a lot with the rest of the party, which is why I want to use it primarily as a sort of last-ditch spell or if I can use it in an open area. I'm not really planning on it being a primary part of her style, just something that is good for a pinch.
@Lucid I haven't yet 'planned out' a full build. My characters tend to grow more organically as their own story develops. It often surprises me how I ended up with what I have now :)
@MikeQ That's why my planning spreadsheet--for the one character where I ever did this--was optimizing against a goal's time-weighted average over the character's career =)
@BESW don't worry, in the event of a fire, all the correct authorities have been bribed and will completely overlook my culpability for everybody's fiery demise.
Eyes of Darkness can be a really powerful feature of Shadow Sorcerer if they're melee based. Enemies can't make AOO, you get advantage (Double-Advantage with Elven Accuracy), they get disadvantage (if they even know where you are!) and you become untargetable for single target spells.
We rolled but I got rolls that were a bit too good. We were going to do level one and then end in mid-level. It was going to be my lowest stat is 13 if I went with the rolls but I cut all the stats down. Strength and Intelligence are 10, Dexterity and Wisdom are 14, Constitution is at 12, and Charisma is at 16. This is after any and all racial bonuses because I felt that no stat should be over 16 and that I should only have one over 14.
I'm actually looking at feats now to figure out what I think would be good.
@Lucid Lol, if your DM allows rolls, I'd take the good rolls and run with them. Good on you for trying preserve some semblance of balance. Strong case for a Half-elf if you want to be focused on your spellcasting rolls.
@Lucid If you go elf/half-elf, then Elven Accuracy is really powerful for Shadow Sorcerers, given their ability to gain nearly-permanent advantage against their targets.
@nitsua60 When it comes to building characters in tabletop games, I suggest asking "How much time will I spend playing a character I enjoy?" rather than "How powerful will my character be at the end of their progression?"
@Lucid I'm almost wondering if a Monk/Bard combo would work. I know I said i'm not into multiclassing, but it's an interesting combo that may work well with your character thoughts.
@Xirema That was one of the ones I noticed immediately. War Caster seemed worthwhile as well as Spell Sniper. Maybe Sentinel and Lucky as defensive measures?
@NautArch Maybe, but how much of a dip into Bard would it be? I haven't looked too much at Shadow Monk
Based on what Xirema's suggesting, it sounds like you can implement the character as an elf shadow sorcerer, and maybe multiclass later (with only 12 Con, and d6s from sorcerer, you should dip into something with d10s) if it adds something to the existing build
@Lucid Hmm, i'm second guessing myself. That may be too difficult to build well...and I gotta run. Good luck and enjoy this part of the gaming. Character Generation is a lot of fun, but definitely don't feel locked into what you decide before you play. The game itself will likely change your designs and plans :)
@NautArch Thanks, I will. I learned a long while back not to try and nail down a specific personality or how they handle things beyond why I chose this alignment or that one. I've had characters that were "supposed" to be angsty as all hell turn out to just be bubbly but quiet just because of how things went lol. Now I just focus on how they fight and backstory.
@MikeQ Yeah. The Tiefling idea is something I just feel is interesting. The real debate for me is the Eladrin (ToF) variant vs a Half-Elf.
Eh, maybe. Tieflings don't have to be edgy, and edgy characters don't have to be tieflings.
In terms of backstory, I usually recommend (for my players and others) to have 2-3 sentences that act as a rough guideline for personality, motives, and biography. Focus on what they do in game, not so much on whatever details happened off-screen.
@MikeQ For sure. I had one idea for a Tiefling and I don't think there was really any "edge" to them at all. They were going to be a Warlock with a Celestial Pact. It stopped there, though, because I couldn't figure out how to make that make sense lol.
I'm mainly assuming in terms of D&D lore. Maybe I'm misremembering, but aren't Tieflings essentially shunned by everyone who aren't Tieflings due to their infernal heritage? I figure that would extend to Celestials as well and as a result, I don't really see why a one would want to form a pact with a being that is stereotypically "always going to be evil".
Tieflings don't have to be evil any more than other races.
It's mechanically sound (the charisma bonus helps, plus extra spells) and supports a "good-evil inner duality" concept that could result in some interesting motives and RP.
Back in 3.5 tieflings had a "usually evil" thing going on, but 4e came up with a MUCH more interesting backstory for them which involved making them easier to use as player characters by lifting alignment recommendations, and while 5e trashed the backstory they kept the ease of use effect.
@MikeQ I know they don't have to be. I just had a hard time coming up with why they would turn to a celestial to make a pact with since the character didn't have any shame in being a Tiefling, doesn't have any desire to be anything but good. My original thought was, despite not having shame in being a Tiefling, she wanted to be a celestial as well so she seeks to emulate them as much as possible.
@trogdor's 4e tiefling became a fey warlock because he was in a very difficult situation and a fairy queen took advantage of his desperation to get him obligated to her.
When he met that obligation, the character became a paladin of freedom as a result of the principles he'd come to value during that difficult situation.
One of the tiefling's traveling companions was a palace guard who'd been "volunteered" for an unpopular and potentially career-ending mission because he was a loud-mouthed bigot and his bosses were happy to throw him under the bus.
(Half-orc fighter, specialized in pushing and debuffs because of the "palace guard" flavor.)
I like it but wouldn't that mean the pact is broken and would result in them losing the powers granted since they're no longer doing what the fairy queen demands of them?
I have a hard time coming up with backstories that aren't explicitly tied to their class or race. I always wind up assuming it's "too generic" and, as a result, would be too boring. I can do it with antagonists and NPCs even though I royally suck at DM-ing, but it's difficult for me to do for PCs.
That same group had a disgraced prison warden illegally hunting down an escaped prisoner; he joined the party's mission because they were going in the same direction and being part of a black ops group made it harder for the authorities to track him down (dragonborn warlord/shaman hybrid).
"My character is a dwarf, and his defining personality trait is that he always mentions that he's a dwarf. He's obsessed with honor and drinking and other Tolkien dwarf stereotypes."
True, but I think it falls to why they want to be come one to make it interesting. The necromancer who is "clearly" evil and wants to become a god of death, but the motivation is that they want to find a way for the living to interact with deceased loved ones is always more interesting than the ones who just want a skeleton army worshipping them.
@DanielZastoupil Ah, I see I accidentally played the pronoun game with an ambiguous "they". I meant that when the character concept is based on class/race, the character is often roleplayed in a generic way. Which is fine. Not all characters need compelling origin stories and motivations.
I had a dual-class cleric/wizard librarian monk (human) who started adventuring to find new books for his library, and became an archlich (lich with good motives) because his old age was preventing him from fulfilling an oath to protect the library.
I remember trying to play a barbarian that didn't act much like a barbarian. He made plans, came up with escape routes, helped out. He was big and strong, but wasn't reckless, and the consensus from my group was that my guy was weird.
...it may not be surprising that my group has found much more satisfying RPG experiences with non-D&D systems that put characterization in the center of the mechanics.
@DanielZastoupil Bubblegumshoe, many flavors of Fate, Golden Sky Stories, Lady Blackbird... even 13th Age, as much as it's a D&D-like, uses Icon relationships, Backgrounds instead of skills, and the One Unique Thing, to push characterization closer to the center of play.
Recently I've been playtesting a friend's Cortex Prime hack that does interesting things with character creation, and it's making me itch to play Faith Corps too.
@Lucid DMing can be beneficial for folks with anxiety. You get to practice communication, being assertive, managing groups, etc., all within the safe structure of the game context. And presumably, the players are people you like.
@DanielZastoupil This is another reason I stopped playing D&D. So many other RPGs don't have so much GM overheard--or any overhead at all, or a GM at all!
I've had similar challenges, both with getting group buy-in to try new systems and with getting people to feel comfortable GMing anything at all.
My solution was a long-game process of changing the "landscape" of how people at the table viewed their role in the game. I didn't set out to delibera...
That's sort of a loaded question. It uses the same d20 System engine as D&D 3.5, but with fewer fiddly subsystems and a few of 4e's better innovations. There's also some really innovative dice-reading features that I love, and the Escalation Die helps avoid drawing out combat too long.
@MikeQ I usually can do that, it's just I tend to be in a wreck after the fact. I was a general manager for a while and eventually had to step down because I wanted to not have that level of stress after going home. For whatever reason, it gets worse when I'm around people I don't work with. Only very recently have I been someone who actually tries to roleplay a character. Before, it was just me being a nervous wreck and then going "I attack" rather than seeming like I'm actually having fun.
@Lucid Oh for sure, it's exhausting, but it's still useful practice. GMing has really helped me with confidence, improvisation, and handling groups of people.
One really cool thing about 13th Age is the Backgrounds: instead of a set list of skills to choose from, you divide points between a few short phrases that describe something about your character's past.
When you want to do something that isn't covered by the other rules, the GM will ask you to tell a quick anecdote about your past that explains how you can justify using one of your Backgrounds to modify the die roll.
@MikeQ The biggest trigger for me, I think, is I focus too much on showing people a good time and worry that I won't provide that. So then I go in to set up a fight with a giant that, while it has thematic tiers (like it drops to a knee at 2/3 health and gets more frantic, for example), turns out to not be a real threat to a party of four PCs. Getting the balance right is difficult for me without resorting to just cheesing them.
I guess what I mean to say is, how does your roll influence the target? If I want to disorient my target, do I say how I disorient them? Can I knock them over, or convince them to stop fighting?
Are those predefined things in the game, or do I make them up on the fly?
DND 5e, for instance, has a shove (which can knock an enemy back or down), has a grapple (keeps them from moving) has fear abilities that can hurt you, but also has fear abilities that just make you run away.
There are conditions, and existing mechanics for applying them in some common situations, and the GM can allow them to be applied in other situations as appropriate.
Let's say I want to run a short campaign where the players are the (possibly monstrous) inhabitants of a typical fantasy dungeon, responsible for maintaining traps and keeping out adventurers, and things would play out in a "slice of life" comedy style. Would Maid be a good system choice for this?
Fate works for pretty much any game about competent, proactive, dramatic protagonists whose goals get them into trouble and whose competency gets them out of trouble--provided that the group has a clear shared vision of what they want the game to be.
An InSpectres hack might be fun.
InSpectres would bring the resource-management and blue-collar vibe I think you're looking for.
