TRPG General Chat

7:00 PM

@NautArch None of those either :(

We have a Bard but he doesn't have that

Hmm, Seeking Arrow requires to have seen the target recently too. We've only seen what's probably an illusion of Strahd during our delve.

NautArch

@kviiri ah, yeah. I didn't know if you had 'fought' him yet or not.

kviiri

Apparently Find the Path is 6th Level too so beyond CoS levels

Intentionally, no doubt! x)

NautArch

@kviiri sneaky sneaky!

kviiri

7:15 PM

I am not really a fan of this campaign and Ravenloft isn't my type of a dungeon at all, but it's been more fun than I expected regardless.

It improved considerably when our GM made some non-isometric maps to show on a projector, complete with proper blocking of yet-unseen bits. Before that we were using slips of paper on the complete, isometric map. It was a bit of a pain to follow.

GreySage

7:35 PM

@kviiri What do you mean by isometric in this context?

Sdjz

@GreySage Curse of Strahd's Ravenloft maps are isometric maps such as this

(Which makes them a nightmare both for the DM to understand certain parts and for actual play)

doppelspooker

@NautArch I am not trying to say "ask like this", just "it's an answer because it's what you asked for."

NautArch

@doppelspooker that may be my bad then because I send folks to the meta all the time :(

doppelspooker

The alternative is some weird practice where answers are invalid unless they do things that are stated nowhere in the question.

Requiring that would be setting up a trap most people would not satisfy because they don't know about it.

NautArch

but in some ways, I think not having that answer be the way we want folks to interact with homebrew means it's even looser and more difficult to manage than it was before.

doppelspooker

7:45 PM

@NautArch I mentioned it's the responsibility of voters to sort by helpfulness, and you may want to see which answer is currently on top and what it's doing.

It's providing guidance on how to improve and it's on top because it's the most helpful.

Xirema

@doppelspooker Would you or another mod be able to move the comments on my answer to that Spell Mastery question? All of us collectively pretty obviously violated the "do not use comments to discuss answers" rule. =P

I flagged one of the comments to bring it to mod attention, but I'm not sure that's how the system works...?

NautArch

@doppelspooker Okay, I guess i'll just think about a meta on this or not. If we're saying we want this site to be a place where folks can get homebrew help, but not provide any real means for how to ask for it, then we're left in the position we are now. Whether that's positive or negative depends on the user.

doppelspooker

@Xirema Thanks. That was perfect, I just hadn't checked flags yet. I've moved them to chat now.

@NautArch We have 2 topics right now on how to ask for it:

9

Q: How should I ask about my D&D 5e Homebrew being balanced?

We've had a number of D&D 5e homebrew questions that present a piece of homebrew (a race, a class, etc) and ask if it is balanced. Some get closed as too broad or primarily opinion-based, others are readily accepted and get answered. If I needed to ask about whether my homebrew thingy is balance...

11

Q: How can I ask a good homebrew review question?

I'd like to post some homebrew material I've made, and I want people to review it so I can ensure it will work well. How can I ask a good question like this? What are our guidelines for handling these questions well as an asker?

support questions homebrew

NautArch

And very few posters actually follow any of that. So not sure what we can do.

doppelspooker

But this is advice. We need to fall back on standard practice: ask what you want to find out, answer the question.

If there are "correct" ways to ask for a homebrew question, then we start creating problems where they do not currently exist: questions get closed despite being valid because they're not asking the "right" way.

Xirema

7:49 PM

@doppelspooker Thank you!

NautArch

And "Is this balanced" is specific enough?

because I'd say that a something that includes multiple things to review for 'balance' is too broad.

doppelspooker

@NautArch Yes:

9

Q: Are "is this balanced" questions on-topic?

Before I start: I thought about the matter when reading this answer to the How is the community doing? [2018] post, which claims a larger percentage of negative reactions towards homebrew questions compared to other questions, and also urges more open-mindedness towards homebrew questions. The la...

discussion questions on-topic homebrew

NautArch

Ok, then I give up :).

doppelspooker

@NautArch Maybe. There seems to be a thing where people are submitting classes that are too big, usually because they also contain like, 4 archetypes and/or a custom spell list or something. That's worth taking a look at.

GreySage

@kviiri I assume the better maps were top-down style?

NautArch

7:51 PM

ok, but I think i'm going to give up on this (for now.) If someone else wants to pick up the torch, I may follow, but I'm not going to lead.

doppelspooker

@NautArch Part of where I'm coming from here is a sort of Tao philosophy that asserts criminals exist only when the law creates them. When there are no laws, there are no criminals. That doesn't work in its purest form though: we have ingrained senses of justice and good treatment that determine that some things must be recognised as criminal.

Colin Gross

@doppelspooker Plenty of legal acts are downright criminal.

doppelspooker

@ColinGross Yes, for sure, which is where morality and legality must differ.

NautArch

@doppelspooker And I guess where I"m coming from is I want this site to be as useful as possible to as many people as possible. Homebrew questions are inherently different than regular stack questions because while referencing the ruleset, the user is combining them in new ways. That's not a bad thing, but to be able to assess 'balance' you have to start with an even playing field and I'm not sure that's the case.

David Coffron

@doppelspooker did you see my proposed "good homebrew" question. I was testing how the advice in the homebrew metas would fare for a larger homebrew (a class)

doppelspooker

7:56 PM

The application here is that when we start creating extra rules around problematic answers or questions, if it catches things that are not actually causing a problem, it begins enlarging the problem by identifying previously-fine things as also problems. So we've got a bigger problem, and probably need more rules to fix that, right? And then those rules catch more things that weren't a problem before ...

Colin Gross

@NautArch I dunno... don't most people play some version of a homebrew? It seems like some amount of homebrew is the dominant playing style.

NautArch

In order to say if Homebrew Class X is balanced, we need to know if they are starting from the same rules as the rest of us. Any houserules can tip the scale. But if we're evaluating with a vanilla ruleset, then it may not apply to the user.

doppelspooker

@NautArch We're generally evaluating with a vanilla ruleset, yeah.

I mean, unless they say something about how their house rules are going.

But I imagine if it was relevant to their homebrew they'd say so.

NautArch

@doppelspooker That's an assumption, though.

People don't often think about all their houserules (and there are many houserules that people don't know are houserules.)

doppelspooker

Sure, but it's one we can safely make. We have to make it for almost all questions.

Colin Gross

7:59 PM

@NautArch double top secret house rules?

David Coffron

This is pretty much as intensive as a well constructed (fmpov) will get (includes only one subclass for analysis for simplicity), and I'll admit it's a long question. Which is why I think NautArch has a point about revisiting these types of questions

NautArch

WHat they are asking about is the specific homebrew they came up with and aren't necessarily thinking about how it fits into their world vs the vanilla world.

doppelspooker

"Can my wizard do X?", we have to assume they're playing in the vanilla ruleset unless they mention otherwise. And we do so.

Colin Gross

@DavidCoffron That's a 404 for me

NautArch

@doppelspooker Right, but those questions live entirely within the rules. Homebrew by it's very nature does not.

David Coffron

8:00 PM

@ColinGross requires deletion privileges

doppelspooker

@NautArch I want that too, but to that ends I want to find a way to help homebrew work and help the community here resolve whatever frustrations they have with homebrew questions, which a few months ago was most pressingly "have them quit editing their posts after they get an answer." So I introduced the idea of iteration.

Colin Gross

@DavidCoffron I only have backspace privileges

NautArch

@doppelspooker Maybe the right way to go about this it to Meta about what people think is problematic about homebrew questions and use that to help build a structure that works?

Colin Gross

@doppelspooker You want an acyclic graph? cause that's how you get a directed acyclic graph!

David Coffron

@NautArch well... homebrew spells, monsters, and skills are in the rules (but the rules are a little sketchy)

doppelspooker

8:02 PM

@NautArch I think this is falling into that "but there's homebrew in this questino, so all bets are off!" instinct people have that makes them dismissive of homebrew questions: rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7932/1204

NautArch

@DavidCoffron True, so maybe a questioner should start with their assessment based on using those rules and why they think they're out of balance or not.

@doppelspooker It may be, but the problem about receiving homebrew better stems from not knowing how to approach it from either end.

David Coffron

@NautArch I'm not sure including a balanced judgement in a question makes sense. It shows research effort but fits more as an answer (maybe even to an entirely different question)

doppelspooker

I can't get behind the idea that we need assurance they don't have house rules or a list of all their house rules that are at play, or even the assumption there must be such a list. Just work with what we're given.

They are adding a homebrew item to their game. That's it. That's all that's going on. Take it as such.

NautArch

@DavidCoffron I guess what I"m trying to do is get folks to put some more time into their homebrew before coming here. We aren't built for iterative design and we're trying to make it work here. If you're going to come here, it really should be as a final draft, not an early draft.

@doppelspooker Fine, I'll stop now. Thanks for listening.

David Coffron

@doppelspooker or if it has a weird interaction with another rule, mention it in your analysis (these are the kinds of things novice homebrewers want to know about, what are they missing)

doppelspooker

8:06 PM

"Can my wizard cast fireball?" can just as well inspire this fretting: "But what if they have house rules that affect wizards and fireballs and spellcasting?" -- ok, but, they probably don't, so we just continue under the default ruleset. We don't need them to tell us all their house rules just in case they do. And we all handle it that way. We should handle homebrew questions the same.

David Coffron

@doppelspooker although we do ask if feats and multiclassing are allowed for charop questions (optional rules not house rules so different realm but thought I'd mention)

doppelspooker

@DavidCoffron I have not seen this.

David Coffron

8:18 PM

@doppelspooker I made a hypothetical "proper" homebrew question to see if it would be better received, but decided to ask about it here first. I followed the guidelines in the various metas to arrive there. I decided not to undelete as it's so unwieldy.

doppelspooker

@DavidCoffron Oh, that one! I was not sure. I am not a D&D 5e player, so I am relying on the actual D&D 5e players to do the heavier lifting on this topic, but trying to provide them with tools and space to do that.

David Coffron

@doppelspooker yeah. I'm basically in the boat of "I want these to work, but they really don't quite fit in with the other type of questions." We found a satisfactory solution to the iteration problem (imo), but the size problem for full classes is it's own problem. Most subclasses, races, items, and variant class features do okay but the classes tend to be poorly received (small sample size so drastic action may be regretted, but it's an observation)

Xirema

9:23 PM

I really wish 5e had included an example Stealth scenario somewhere in its rules.

Trying to hash out the finer details of a stealth encounter is taxing, and I'm pretty sure I got something wrong somewhere in there. X(

It's not even the complication that bothers me; it's not more complicated than normal combat mechanics. What bothers me is that in order to work it all out, you have to pull in information from 4 different sections: the section on Combat Actions, the section on Light and Vision, the section on Cover, and the section on Ability Checks (where the rules for stealth aren't even directly adjacent to the actual description of the Stealth ability!)

2

There's so many contingencies too.

> Well, they PROBABLY have disadvantage, so you'll do this, but they might not, under scenario #574, in which case....

Bluh.

Carcer

9:44 PM

@DavidCoffron an entire class is a pretty big design and I'm not sure it fits well in SE purely layout-wise

kviiri

@GreySage Yuh

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