Slams my head into the keyboard "So basically this is a warlock with a fancier Pact of the Blade and complete garbage lore wise unless you have one of the actual Hexblades that are sentient

@KDodge nah Hexblade warlocks are awesome.

I think people are creating names for things that don't have names, and it's throwing me off. The relationship between a warlock and their pact weapon is the same for any patron, including Hexblade. Hexblade can add some bonuses to a weapon, that's it.

@KDodge but yeah the only way to get a sentient weapon is to find one yourself. Making a pact with Hexblade does not get you one.

@GreySage I meant the Hex Warrior feature, which lets the warlock use CHA with a specific weapon

tl;dr you're not Arthas, you're one of those gajillion undead that he controls with Frostmourne

@KDodge Hexblade patron just makes you a better front-line fighter.

@MikeQ Ok, just keep in mind that the Cha bonus isn't tied to a specific weapon, you choose which weapon you want after every longrest.

It in fact does not have to be your bonded weapon, IIRC.

@KDodge I'm also not sure what you mean by "garbage lore-wise" the lore is still there and in tact. And flavorful (if not a bit confusing). And a DM can do whatever they want with that.

Interestingly, since you cannot form a bond with a sentient weapon, even if you are Pact of the Blade, with Hexblade patron, wielding the incarnation of your patron (in the form of a sentient weapon), you wouldn't be able to attack twice with Attack, since Thirsting Blade only works with your pact weapon.

I don't know how to answer @Xirema 's question in an answer

So my understanding that a Hexblade Warlock is someone who indirectly made a pact with a entity from the shadowfell by making a pact with a sentient weapon they discover that was created by that entity and then get to fully use the sentient blade they discovered as a mark of their pact with that entity from the shadowfell is completely wrong

but for one thing, it favors right over left and caster-wards over caster-away drift

@KDodge Yes, that is wrong

^

yeah there's no sentient weapons involved

I didn't catch all that, but an example scenario could be: Bob isn't worthy of wielding the legendary Blackrazor, but he can form a pact to enroll in Blackrazor's 20-level training program to become a warrior with weird swordplay tricks. If Bob finds a sentient melee weapon during his adventures, he could select it with his Hex Warrior feature, but not with his Pact of the Blade feature.

Well that class just lost all appeal

@goodguy5 How do you figure? 5d6-5d6 has a mean of 0, so all effects should distribute around the center.

pact of the blade warlocks are even specifically forbidden from turning sentient weapons into their pact weapon

@MikeQ You don't wield Blackrazor, you become Blackrazor's servant and best buddy (maybe).

@GreySage That is really disappointing.

oh

I should read up even slightly before I join in conversations sometimes

@KDodge To be fair, that's all flavor and you can definitely try to convince your DM to utilize a different lore.

I just got home, can you tell

Might be a good idea Cancer

@Carcer But sometimes you have something to say NOW.

@Xirema the wording implies (to me) that you multiply the value on each d4 by it's face AND use the face to determine drift direction. So, a 4 drifts right more than a 3 drifts left.

To be clear, I'm not certain that all sentient weapons are created by Hexblade or are manifesting them. Just that they can be.

I don't think the "Hexblade" even has to be a weapon in the usual sense... it could be something like an ancient war machine.

but I often find that what I have to say has already been said five minutes ago

Then again, given this is high fantasy, a sufficiently enchanted sword is indistinguishable from a cataclysmic supermecha.

Well Im DMing a campaign and one of my players is Hexblade Warlock and the special sword I gave them has the sentience of an 8 year old girl who craves cookies. and Fire

@goodguy5 I think the intent was the face doesn't matter, the NSEW is based on the order of the dice rolls (first is towards caster, etc).

well as long as everyone is having fun there's no problem

@goodguy5 I can work on the wording, but you roll "four sets of 5d4", i.e. you're rolling 20 dice, separating them into four (ordered) groups.

did you ever play Baldur's Gate 2?

@KDodge That's still fine, just remember that the warlock doesn't necessarily need to select Cookiecutter as their selected weapon via Hex Warrior

there's a ... nice... sentient sword in that

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

@Xirema I misread it. got it

@MikeQ grrrr not bonded via Hex Warrior

@goodguy5 And now you understand the essence of why I posted that question. ;)

@GreySage fixed, I wasn't sure how else to refer to that particular weapon

The players having a blast but good to for the future

@GreySage hahaha they really didn't give us a great way to talk about all these things vocab-wise.

Minsc + Lilarcor + Ring of Charisma = FLAWLESS LEADERSHIP

So opinons, whats the best class to be Lvl 1 in a 2 member party? Ive been asked to help a dm learn to dm so ill be playing with another person to help him get his start

@KDodge Is the other class decided?

@KDodge Depends on the campaign and game elements, such as setting and expected difficulty/intensity

cleric would be the traditional answer, absent knowing anything else

@KDodge I think Barbarian is pretty good because Rages give you a lot of staying power. However, frankly, I'd play a four character party with each of you playing two characters.

Other class unknown, Fantasy setting is all I know

@KDodge Generally it's a good idea to ask about the game before agreeing to play it. How much combat to expect, how much social/skill-based challenges to expect, etc.

@KDodge Probably impossible to say then honestly. Even if we knew the setting and a bunch of other stuff, the best class for you will depend a lot on the other class chosen.

If there even is a best class.

Im aware but he got really excited and I just couldn't let him down

ok lets mod the question, what are the best 2 class combos for lvl 1 party members

@KDodge Doesn't matter. If the DM doesn't know what he is doing you have a high probability of being horribly killed. If its just a learning exercise then it matters even less, just pick something and have fun.

@KDodge FWIW I think it's cool that you're willing to help your GM learn <3

That being said, Barb, Fighter, Ranger, Paladin, or Cleric for high HP + armor

Shrugs, figured it'd be a good debate topic, and thanks kviiri and GreySage

I'd avoid Bard and maybe rogue. Apart from that I think you're good

and FWIW???

@KDodge "For what it's worth" :)

ah

@kviiri Bards are ok at level 1 if you want to do support and skill-focused stuff

rogue + something tanky isn't a bad combination

say maybe a ranged rogue and a melee cleric. You get tank/healing from the cleric, who wades into melee to set up the rogue for sneak attacks

@MikeQ The problem with Bard is that they lack particular specializations outside buffing their teammates with supportive spells and Bardic Inspiration... I think it might feel too much like playing a sidekick

I agree with @GreySage. If this is a one-time game, and it's only 1st level, then just pick any class that has fun features at 1st level. And if it's a high-magic setting with magical challenges, then at least one character should have some spells.

@Carcer Yeah, I don't think it's bad exactly, but since one only has one party mate to help get sneak attacks, it might be a bit tedious since one wants to always "follow the leader" in who to target

hm, true enough

there's good synergy but it does really force coordination

I'd like to reiterate my recommendation to play four characters though :)

personally if I was running a game with only two people I'd probably contrive them to be leading a party with a couple more NPCs in it (a level or two behind) and let them control the extras in combat

I mean, it's more like the usual DnD game that way and less prone to catastrophic failure

yeah, a lot easier to balance and more tolerant of misfortune

@Carcer The typical D&D adventure is usually structured for 4 players because it typically needs to cover at least 4 roles

For a 2 player game, it helps to run an atypical adventure

oh sure

I'm not saying it's impossible

you could have two rogues and run games which are entirely about stealthy heists and whatnot

Lvl 1 PCs die when you look at them wrong, and a new GM can quite easily underestimate the danger of encounters. The added benefit of "automatically" having a backup character isn't to be underestimated :)

@Carcer My first time DMing a 5e game, I had 2 players and I ran them through a buddy cop scenario. No dungeon crawling or bosses, just some improvised interrogation and combat scenes based on the tropes. None of us really knew what we were doing, but we had a blast.

but it is easier to run games that feature a more balanced party

sounds fun

They pulled a "Good cop, Chaotic cop" bit

@Cancer I have a thieves campaign where players do heist jobs on ancient tombs, museums, castles etc, the set up and prep to the heist as well as the getaway can be just as fun as the heist, especially if old npcs from former jobs come calling on your current job

But again, it only sort of worked because it wasn't a typical D&D adventure. We were flexible about letting players pick which skills, spells, and features to use in which scenarios - something that is not part of the traditional adventure design.

@KDodge definitely. "Doing a big heist" is basically the definitive Shadowrun adventure, heists can be great fun in basically any setting

I loved the Oceans series, The Italian Job, and other heist movies/shows, so making a dnd campaign for that type of game was fun

if you're flinging spells at thousands of feet you're probably doing it at an army

I suppose

An army of feet?

A feat of arms!

@Carcer ^

they call them foot soldiers for a reason

but I do have to come back to the "but why" ryan reynolds meme.

I gather the point is that it's obviously not accurate enough for you to specifically target any given creatures but it's a way of allowing spells to be threatening to massed forces at a great distance

@goodguy5 I actually have stats I calculated ahead of time on this.

-15:      1 (  0.0001%)
-14:     10 (  0.0010%)
-13:     55 (  0.0052%)
-12:    220 (  0.0210%)
-11:    705 (  0.0672%)
-10:   1902 (  0.1814%)
 -9:   4455 (  0.4249%)
 -8:   9240 (  0.8812%)
 -7:  17205 (  1.6408%)
 -6:  29050 (  2.7704%)
 -5:  44803 (  4.2727%)
 -4:  63460 (  6.0520%)
 -3:  82885 (  7.9045%)
 -2: 100110 (  9.5472%)
 -1: 112035 ( 10.6845%)
  0: 116304 ( 11.0916%)
 +1: 112035 ( 10.6845%)
 +2: 100110 (  9.5472%)
 +3:  82885 (  7.9045%)
 +4:  63460 (  6.0520%)
 +5:  44803 (  4.2727%)

I did my stats differently because that way confused me

also, shouldn't it go out to 20?

no

it 5d4 - 5d4

5d4?

oh, right. yea

duh

that's a maximum of 15 and a minimum of -15

because maximum is 20 - 5

I even did that

I think maybe splitting them out into separate steps is a confusing way of doing it

@goodguy5 It already has them added together. So the highest value is rolling 5 4's (20) with 5 1's (5), with one subtracted from the other.

@Carcer You are correct; hence the question. 8)

I guess one thing I'm trying to solicit from this question: if rolling 20 dice like this is too complicated to resolve, irrespective of the wording, then what would be reasonable?

@Xirema that seems an entirely different question, to which I think that TLJ has answered finely

Like, my first version was roll a d100 and d20, use the d100 for direction and the d20 for distance. That had two problems: too much trigonometry, and it's uniformly distributed (which makes the feature very weak).

@KDodge Two that people want to play. Seeing a barb-fighter pair struggle with a magical foe or two wizards of competing schools deal with a kobold mob is where the memories lie, man. No need to worry about covering all the bases.

@Xirema I still think a d8 makes for good positioning, then maybe 2d20 (1 in the d8's direction, the other in the reverse).

^ this new user needs brainstorming help. Can we bring them in chat for that?

@kviiri yeah... about that.

@goodguy5 His answer is terrible. I already know that the feature is poorly worded/cumbersome. I came here to fix that. Merely repeating that to me is incredibly unhelpful. I'm not trying to be mean to him, but that's exactly the kind of response I was trying to head off.

(while VtC'ing the question ofc)

@MikeQ For my current two-player game they have stumbled into some sort of Peter principle: they're nigh plot-immortal (since they're 9 year-olds) so they just keep getting captured by people higher and higher up on the evil org chart =)

@Xirema I agree and said as much. But his solution is a good one imo

@kviiri Bring them in I got ideas

@goodguy5 The "giving advantage on saving throws" is a possible thing to add, but it doesn't really resolve the issue.

Only a mod can give them read/write, but they have to come in themselves. Which means someone also has to invite them

@KDodge I'm not sure if that's technically possible tho, one needs 20 rep to chat... so I'd need four updoots on that. I'm not sure if mod invites override that?

If you insist on doing it with a mathematical distribution, I get it. But I don't that's the best route

what's "the issue" @Xirema?

@kviiri AFIK they do.

@kviiri afaik, mod invites override rep req

Anyone else find it really weird that Warlocks have 2 completely different and independent subclass axis? Their build depends on their Patron AND their Pact, which can be chosen independently and kind of interact, but not really.

I upvoted

@goodguy5 The Issue is that Xirema wants this thing and it is too clunky.

@goodguy5 I want to create a metamagic that allows long range spellcasting, but with an obvious downside that makes it (nearly) unusuable for precise targeting. I came up with one way to try to do that, but it results in a lot of math and some very clumsy wording (partly but not completely caused by the first problem), so how can I solve these issues?

So if you write an answer that basically says "this is incredibly clunky and unwieldy, and no DM would ever use this!", it's like.... Yes. I know. You aren't telling me something that is unknown to me.

If I thought this feature was perfectly understandable and usable as-is, I wouldn't have written a question for it. 8)

Just do a flat miss chance, or miss chance based on distance.

Can 1 more person give the question an upvote?

done

I'm still not certain that your distribution is as you think it is, tho

it is

anydice.com/program/12fb1

@goodguy5 Well, it generates a square, preferring the center. It's weird, but it is (very roughly) normally distributed.

I agree that it's normally distributed. but how "tight" do you want the distribution to be?

how likely/unlikely should success be?'

@goodguy5 The problem with "tightness" is that increasing it requires more dice, which means more math and slower resolution.

@goodguy5 Well, "success" is a nebulous concept in this context. The spell, like @Carcer suggested, is designed to be used on armies from long distance, i.e. "I don't need to hit exactly where I'm targeting, I just don't want to get within normal range of them"

@user51286 hey there. Sometimes it takes a bit for the system to catch up, but at somet point soon you should be able to type messages here.

@GreySage ^

@user51286 And hopefully we'll be able to help you get some ideas :)

@Xirema then why bother with distribution at all?

(I'm going to keep using the phrase "spell", but I actually mean "feature". Too much effort to keep it straight)

3d6-3d6 gives you same extreme ranges and a slightly flatter curve but is probably easier to deal with than 4d4

@GreySage Warlocks are altogether a weird and unique class

Hi, thank you guys so much for the help

hello

So Druids to be the MVP right?

yeah it was the plan

So right off I think of Blights, Vampire Spawn, and Vampires as monsters to use

@Pandora Just a heads up, if you want to link your message to a specific other message (like this one) and ping the user then you can click the arrow on the right side when you hover over the message.

or the left-hand dropdown and "reply to"

@nitsua60 My hobbit thief used to have a wand of wonder. Same thing as a wild magic surge table.

@Pandora One big thing I can think of is making sure you put a few creatures in play as your "final boss". One thing that always makes encounters really easy to take down (especially if your party is highly tactical) is giving them one big, uber-strong creature to fight, because there's always going to be some kind of spell or feature that just completely locks them down.

like so far they've fought an undead beholder, Mind flayers, human monk npc and Chimera among a bunch of other small encounters.

is there any mileage in having the big bad be another, eeeeevil druid?

Tarrasque

@Pandora Having more than one creature at least means that they're required to still deal with the encounter even if they lock down one or two creatures.

@Pandora as far as setting, depending on length of session id say use an infected forest the players are going to cleanse so its safe again, in the forest you deal with blights and find out vampires and a Green/Night Hag coven are at war in the forest

@Xirema The Starmast solution: 4 tables, one for each tier (1-4, 5-10, 11-16, 17-20) with increasingly powerful/bizarre effects as the tier increases. Similar to the tables for items in DMG

i actually thought about both the evil druid and the tarrasque

but i thought they'd be too predictible

Avoid the tarraque

@Pandora Xirema is right - An encounter versus multiple NPCs will be more interesting, and it gives you more flexibility in how to customize it. And I was joking about the tarrasque. They're conceptually and mechanically absurd.

are you trying to optimise for a mechanically interesting/novel fight or something thematically cool?

The terrasque is either cheesed down by the party, or results in a World TPK. So only put a Terrasque in your game if you plan for both of those two outcomes.

because birthday druid overcoming an evil corrupt druid and demonstrating the superiority of their good druidity is narratively very satisfying

or at least I think it is

@Pandora Evil druid that turns into a Tarrasque? (I'm not helping am I?)

obviously you know your players better than I do!

@Carcer valid but predictable as pandora said

i was hoping for something angled in the middle something that they can fight and come away from super excited about beating, but i'm liking the evil druid idea haha

They did mention the battles should be occurring in an arena setting

@Pandora Evil druid that turns into a Kraken?

@Pandora Could you give us a brief summary of the story behind this arena, and what the PCs are trying to accomplish?

even if it's based on a PC class you can always come up with some interesting unique mechanics for it

A druid that turns into a dryad, then a drow, then a draug... oh wait

the colosseum environment gives you stuff to work with if you make the druid a legendary creature with a lair and some fun lair actions

like her backstory is she's a far traveller far from home and is trying to learn all about nature and experiance life before she has to return home and take over her tribe, it's her first ever spell caster chara.

oh i dont know if this helps but she's falling in love with the tiefling hexblade in our campaign

@Pandora Does she have any specific enemies or nemesis?

if you want to make it memorable you should come up with some good ways to leverage the environment. Hitting things really hard is fun but knocking over a big stone column onto some big monster is even funner

@goodguy5 I may consider that. 1 point, increase the range by 500 feet, repeatable. % chance of missing per point spent.

she has a twin brother who left their tribe due to him wanting to run things more agressivly

Ok how about this, party learns about ancient lore in this ruin in the forest, make their way to it deal with blights, ruin is guarded by the evil druid, give him Lvl 20+ stuff and after they defeat him they deal with vampires on their way out that were the cause of the blights they fought on their way in

make the evil druid the brother/mentor of the brother?

Let's step back a bit before bombarding with specific ideas. @Pandora What are the PCs doing at this arena?

they were invited there by an old npc friend of theirs asking for help

Ok, help with what? Enter a fighting tournament and win a big cash prize? Fight the corrupt arena master and save the world? Rescue a slave who's imprisoned in the fighting pits?

Is the arena like the Roman Colliseum (filled with spectators and an official event), or a big deserted place in the middle of no where, or does it not matter?

the npc was a human bard who had had wanted to rebuild the colliseum and host competitions to make lots of money pretty basic i know

Ok. So they're basically at this arena for fun?

so it's pretty empty atm

yeah kind of

No that's good actually

i just wanted them to be able to go hard without worrying them about npc civillans

or killing anyone innocent

So what is causing a problem for the bard? monsters in the coliseum?

@Pandora Bard as entrepreneur. I like that angle.

was meant to be the idea, he and his small group of peeps got run out by monsters

ok so whats the area around this coliseum like?

Wait, this changes things. If the premise is that the arena is taken over by monsters, then a typical end-of-quest would be to defeat the baddies in charge. Right?

to determine if the monsters come from underground or surrounding area

Right Mike Q

@KDodge Cool. So if you're writing this campaign, who or what should be the baddies in charge? Dragons? Mages? Mind-bending horrors from beyond space and time?

That's what we are figuring out. I proposed vampires and blights but we are going through everything

it's pretty close to the city they started in called Silverkeep, orignally it was a litch who was in charge of the creatures because she's a nature druid i wanted her to feel like she balancing the nature scales. shes super into that

alright. I'm going to bounce-house. good luck @Xirema

it's surrounded by woods and nature cause of overgrowth

and welcome to the stack @Pandora , I hope you get what you need for your friend ^_^

thank you very much @goodguy5

@goodguy5 Thanks, the answer you gave was a lot closer to the kind of feedback I was looking for.

Forest or plains outside of the city around coliseum??

@Pandora Okay, so undead and blights seem thematically appropriate.

@Xirema I figured. it took a LOT of thinking about it.

@Pandora For the final combat proper, if you want to make it complex and interesting, then you'll probably want 2-4 NPCs to cover different roles: spellcaster(s), martial(s), etc etc

There's no better way to lay eggs, have fur, and look like a duck than to be a platypus. Even if being a platypus is a bizarre and clunky occurrence.

Example: spellcaster lich, a heavy-hitting melee blight, and stealthy vampire

that would actually be perfect they're pretty anti life which goes against what she stands for

i feel silly not really thinking of that

@mikeq blights are better in hordes over a large area rather than a single blight

@KDodge Blights are big corrupted plant-forms, no?

i could add skinwalkers?

yes but very weak

Either way, it's just an example. I haven't memorized the MM offhand so I don't remember the stats of all the high-CR monsters.

pretty sure they're homebrew creatures

seen them on another forum.

@Pandora Well once you figure out who the baddies are, then like @Carcer said, make the combat environment interesting. If it's an arena, then you'll have to get clever, and come up with something more dynamic than "big circular empty room".

@Pandora You can easily make a new monster called a "blight" that thematically is decayed plant based and fills the bruiser role.

Pandora how about this, forest setting outside of the city, a Lich has come up from the UnderDark and his monsters chased the bard out, deal with blights on the way to deal with him, epic Lair fight with the lich and his creatures, then on the way to the party the bard promnises upon their success a life-or-death battle against 2-3 vampires

The story and specific choice of monsters is up to @Pandora

Im aware im just proposing an idea

At best we can suggest how to choose those monsters, which is why I suggested splitting them up based on their combat roles

so the bard would have the vampires? it's a good idea i like it better than anything i have come up with so far

i wanted to let her have some fun and split her away from the party with the tiefling but their both so squishy i'd be afraid of downing them.

No, the vampires were in the area, the party messed with their blights on their way to deal with the lich and hence the vamps came to investigate

ah that makes more sense

okay so i have a good grasp now, i still kind of like the evil druid idea too. but i dont know if i could work him in without it seeming too forced. technically i made him a spore druid since he's ''Bad''

Evil vampire druid as a homebrew monster?

maybe actually. okay so i got the layout now. thank you guys so much. You've helped massively

So in detail, they are promised a party and rewards upon completion paid for in full by the bard, they venture into the woods and they discover there is a blight infestation in the woods which hinders their advancement towards the coliseum (keep these to easy or medium encounters) they arrive at their destination, they have epic boss fight with lich and waves of his minions (short rest after? cant miss the party) on the way back they encounter a Druid spellcaster vamp, a noble vamp, a

and a barbarian warrior vamp

@KDodge That assumes the PCs make those specific decisions and go to those specific locations

It gives the possibilities

@pandora come back anytime you need ideas

Just note that at 20th level, combat gets a bit crunchy, so adding many minions (let's say 8+ NPCs on the battlefield at the same time) is going to be slow

@BESW Aint no party like a 100 lbs rock party.

yeah that sounds pretty perfect against them. it has something for everyone our barbarian has a thing for wanting to be the strongest fighter he knows. maybe i'll make the vamp a girl see how he reacts. will do thank you all so much i'll hopefully be back to brainstorm again soon

dang

@Xirema I am sitting here with a hand full of cob webs that I had to scrape off of the memory (long term) in my head regarding that artillery question. I'll go and wash up now. :)

Is Handful of Cobwebs some genre mashup between Scooby Doo and Dirty Harry?

@KorvinStarmast Oof, I suspect my question may have made some deep cuts for some classical TTRPG players.

TBH, I'm kind of surprised something like this hasn't been officially adjudicated in 5e D&D before: we have ships in this edition. We have cannons, and other kinds of siege weapons, thanks to the sourcebooks. You'd think that at some point, something like this would have come up for non-magical reasons.

@MikeQ There is not a single thing about this sentence that I don't find hilarious.

@Xirema I'll check Colville's book, I just down loaded it yesterday but did not review. Will let you know. I think he may have sieges in there.

@MikeQ That was Fistful of Cobwebs, Sergio Leone and Hanna Barbera. :)

@MikeQ PS, RL chuckle erupted out of me when I read that ...

Alright, quick sanity check:

I'm still not at the "balancing this OP BS" stage yet, just trying to find something that is understandable.

I'm not familiar enough with Sorcerers to know how much 5 Sorcery Points is. I'm sure there are better and more hard-hitting options for blowing something up at extreme range though.

5 is a lot

@Yuuki Starting at 2nd level, they should have at most 1 per level

If it helps, this doesn't become available until level 10. Again though; not thinking about balancing right now.

@Xirema "Area of Effect that isn't yourself"?

@MikeQ IIRC, there are spells with an Area of Effect centered on the caster.

@MikeQ The AOE for Line spells is Range of "Self (100'/200'/400')". I could try to find a way to include those spells, but if I don't add that restriction, it just means creating a 2-mile-long line of lightning.

Which, like.... Yes. All of the yes.

(But also that would be incredibly game breaking, and we all accepted that that is bad for the game)

Maximum visibility range seems like a lot, and wouldn't that penalize them a bunch if they're trying to cast at a finite distance less than that, e.g. 2x normal range?

@MikeQ You'd just use the Distant Spell Metamagic instead.

TBH, I was trying to head off responses like "this is so brokenly overpowered, why would you allow this in any game?!?!".

Having people suggest it might be underpowered/too expensive is surprising, to say the least.

Since my original plan was to make it cost 10 Sorcery points, and I thought "Maaaaybe that's too much. We'll dial back to 5 and then consider bumping it up again afterwards".

@Xirema Yeah, 5 Sorcery Points and a spellcasting ability check with minimum DC 20, that's rather expensive

Is the d100 to determine the distance offset from the original target, or distance offset from the caster?

@MikeQ From the target.

My general sense is that under normal use cases, this would never hit the caster. You'd have to use it, and then target a spot like 100 feet from you.

Is there an intended difference between "visible range" and "visibility range"?

Normally when I think of artillery, I'm thinking about hitting targets that I can't see.

:48415916 I've been imagining the spell in the form of "okay, I'm on the Moon, let's hit that mountain on Earth."

That was the original reason I decided to have the feature scale its retargeting based on the caster's own distance.

Yeah ignore that comment, I misread it that the DC was based on the caster's maximum sight distance, not the new distance of the target (which I believe is your intent?)

@MikeQ Ah, gotcha.

@MikeQ Yes, the intent is to base the DC on the distance between you and the target, not you and your theoretical "nuke the sun from earth" distance. 8)

If we are going to get into the "rebalancing this feature" discussion, how do we feel about a DC minimum of 15 and a cost of 4 Sorcery Points?

@Xirema 4 seems reasonable; even Quickened is only 2 points

Okay, so you're asking about how easy it is to parse the metamagic description?

@Yuuki Yeah. Like we saw with my actual question, there was a lot of confusion over how it actually worked (which, in my eyes, was the real problem).

I mostly get it but I'd like to understand what is meant by "visibility range". Like is this metamagic completely useless in a dense fog?

@Yuuki Good point. This ability is very circumstantial.

@Yuuki By my original intent, yes, fog would disrupt this feature.

Change my mind. ;)

I saw a character a very long time ago who used arrows for his spell ranges: in order to cast any spell, he had to hit the target with an arrow.

"Heal!" twang

Like I mentioned earlier, when I think of artillery, visibility isn't really a factor. You target a location and calculate a firing solution that will hit that location.

@Carcer Yes.

"Protection from Arrows!" Schroedingian twang

Whether or not you're in a dense fog, you should be able to fire a howitzer on target if you know the coordinates.

I was just about to say I think it would make more sense as an item, if possible

@Carcer Yes. Generally speaking, very circumstantial abilities should be put in items, not class features.

this sort of artillery bombardment is so far outside normal combat that I don't think you want to tie up limited character resources in it, yeah.

@MikeQ I've left out the rest of the Homebrew to keep the focus narrow; but this is being offered as an "Advanced Metamagic" feature only available after level 10, and isn't part of the normal selection of Metamagic features available starting at level 3.

sure, but a sorc still only gets to choose 3 metamagic features

four sorry

taking this one means giving up something which will be useful lots of the time for something only useful in very very specific circumstances

it's going to hurt them

anyway gotta go collect mai husbando

@Xirema So you'd need to target a fireball over 3000 ft away for the DC to be anything other than the minimum.

@GreySage 2,250' if we use the minimum of 15 instead. Fireball has a range of 150 feet.

Alternately, if you want to make it so that this feature is only used for extremely distant targets, you could also introduce a minimum range.

@GreySage I'll admit, I haven't actually looked at the printed WM table very much--I have my 2e one printed in the PHB taking up that screen real estate =)

@Yuuki My prototype did specify a minimum range of 1 mile, but I got rid of that.

Spellcasting ability check = d20 + prof + spellcasting mod yes?

@GreySage By my intent, yes. If it means something else, someone please tell me.

First Dragon+ stream of the year with Bart Carroll and Jeremy Crawford is about to start

(sorry, misfire)

twitch.tv/dnd

@Carcer ^ for context.

Again, I didn't link those before to avoid casting too wide a net.

But this is for a complete overhaul of how Metamagics are handled; one change being that the Sorcerer becomes able to change their Metamagics.

But I'm still iterating on that design. Not sure if I like it.

Again I think the whole "max visibility range" is just extra confusion, considering that most ranged spells require line-of-sight anyway

So at level 10 you have prof = +4, lets assume a low spellcaster mod of +3 (you've had at least 2 ASI to pump it up), so you'd need a 13 or better to hit directly on target, less the better your Cha is.

@Xirema Under Advanced Metamagic, it says you "learn" an advanced meta, but then it says you can change which one you have "prepared". Those should be in agreement.

@GreySage Noted.

@GreySage And fixed.

@Xirema Yay, I'm helping!

Actually, as long as I'm here, let's put the entirety of my bad ideas on Blast, so you can see how bad of a game designer I am. ;) homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/print/Sk7UiePukE

What's with the opposite elements? Wouldn't it be Lightning <-> Thunder and Acid <-> Poison?

There's still a few changes that haven't gone into that version though: Delayed Spell is either being removed or reclassified as a regular Metamagic.

@MikeQ I think the justification was L + T and A + P are complementary, rather than opposite

@MikeQ I wanted to emphasize "Opposites" and those don't really feel like opposites. Poison acts silently whereas Thunder is loud and bombastic. Acid corrodes and eats away at things, whereas Lightning is instant.

Meanwhile, Thunder often follows lighting. Acid and Poison aren't complimentary in any scientific capacity, but I don't see them as opposites either.

D&D elements don't have clear opposites, no matter how much 3.5 tried to pretend otherwise. They aren't even a good wheel.

@BESW Also this. Some of them fit really well, some don't.

This is more of the "D&D is based on random stuff the designers liked, and later designers try to turn it into a coherent scheme" thing.

Following that, acid damage is usually earth-ish, and lightning is usually air-ish, so I guess Lightning<-> Acid has some precedent

Fire↔Cold, Radiant↔Necrotic, Force↔Psychic are obvious, easy shoe-ins. But Lightning, Thunder, Acid, and Poison are a bit weird.

It bugs me that Fire isn't Heat.

Or that Cold isn't Ice, one of the two

@GreySage Yeah. Like, it is, but it isn't.

Pretty sure acid is poison. /s

@Yuuki It's all green barrels with toxic symbols on them, I don't see what the problem is.

OSHA symbols in a DnD campaign: Everything has a red 'DO NOT TOUCH' sign on it.

* quietly retrieves their science textbooks and burns them.

@Yuuki Acid is chemical reactions, Poison is the result of biological reactions

@Xirema Ahah, acid and poison are both just forms of radioactivity!

Then again, this is a setting with magic, so scientific nuances don't matter

If you reverse a spell that does thunder damage, instead of doing poison damage, it should just do thunder damage twice.

Since thunder is sound and you're re-versing the spell.

At least I have a mastery of "blaming other people for my mistakes"-ese.

@Yuuki I have no Mouth and I must Sigh.

Acidity is a fixed chemical property, whereas toxicity (poison) is relative to who or what is being poisoned

e.g. chili peppers are acidic. they're poisonous to most rodents, but non-toxic to most humans.

I don't know where I'm going with this. Someone please interrupt me.

@Carcer Boss Monster?

@Yuuki I played that game a few times with my brother, it's pretty fun.

I hope the new contributor asking about lunchtime D&D stops in... I've been there and done that.

I did lunchtime RFS once...

The first time I posted this homebrew, I got a lot of feedback that stuff like Instantaneous Spell and Discounted Spell would be absurdly OP. Not sure if you guys feel the same way, or if you were around for that iteration.

@Xirema I'd assert that Instantaneous is actually too costly

@MikeQ Noted.

Discounted seems fine because only a 20th level character has 20 SPs to spend, and pretty much anything goes at 20th level

see: Moon druid

@MikeQ When in doubt: Wish

The only spell you can't replicate with Wish and that has a costly component is Gate, at 5000gp.

"I wish for the ability to Wish for Gate"?

@Yuuki Sure, make a Spellcasting check for reality-altering induced stress.

@Xirema right okay - as an option that can be changed pretty readily, I guess balance concerns about specificity are moot