TRPG General Chat

oddly, minotaurs seem to be one of the few official races in D&D 5e that don't have an Age section under their traits

both the book and the D&D Beyond version are missing it

1:35 AM

hello @user522257 welcome to the rpg lair!

@V2Blast Interesting because it is in the UA - Waterborne Adventures. - "Age. Minotaurs enter adulthood at around the age of 17 and can live up to 150 years."

Shalvenay

hey there @user522257, welcome to the RPG.SE lair :)

@linksassin good find. though oddly not in the Centaurs and Minotaurs UA: media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/UA-Centaur.pdf

@V2Blast Presumably that was the version that got taken forward to print and that's how it got left out.

yeah

Weird though because Centaur's have an age traits in the same UA.

2:05 AM

yeah, probably just an oversight

user15026

2:19 AM

@BESW I want "My Steel Neko" to be real so I can watch it.

2:38 AM

@Ash it's definitely got potential as a name

Glazius

2:53 AM

@Ash Good news, for certain values of good! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Purpose_Cultural_Cat_Girl_Nuku_Nuku

Lol I figured something like that existed, but it doesn't have the title

A shame really XD though that title is also great

user15026

3:33 AM

@Glazius hahaha of course this exists

Yeah

There was no way this wasn't somehow a thing

SmokeDetector

3:58 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer, messaging number in answer, pattern-matching email in answer (434): How are resources recovered during a long rest that was interrupted? by Ruth balle on rpg.SE

Rubiksmoose

@V2Blast I do see how that question was not a dupe sadly moments after I closed it. Misread the letters.

Q: If an enemy monster charms one PC and tells them to attack a second PC, and then the second PC charms the monster, what happens?

@Rubiksmoose Haha, no worries. Took me a few reads to understand it myself :P

Rubiksmoose

Good call on the reopen. :)

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer, messaging number in answer, pattern-matching email in answer, +1 more (504): My players are using Create Memories to rob everyone blind by Ruth balle on rpg.SE

SmokeDetector

6:01 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected, toxic answer detected (160): Tentacles to arms? by roblox prisonlife on rpg.SE

Hot RPG Questions

6:26 AM

3

Consider the following example: Character A, Character B, and Character C are in one room. Character A is an eladrin (MToF p. 62) of 3rd level or higher. C is a succubus. Characters A and B are allied. C is a foe. First, C charms B (using the succubus' Charm action), and tells B to attack A. Th...

6:59 AM

I know that DFA's Mantles are HOT in the #Fate RPG world but have you seen Roles in Shadows of the Century? Just as flavorful without all the fuss of writing/balancing conditions. Stunt lists FTW.

Tweeted by amazingrando on May 5, 2019 at 11:53 PM

Today's fun fact: armour for whales weighs TWICE as much as armour for humans!

Someone_Evil

@Miniman I also enjoy that the barding rules don't account for size of creature

@Someone_Evil I'm looking forward to seeing the answers to this one. Should be good.

Someone_Evil

Somehow that armour of mammoth and a mastif have the same cost and weight. Which is dumb.

oh for a second I was like "nuh uh" but then I realized this is some game rule stuff

XD

7:13 AM

Honestly the whole "animal companion, mount, barding" part of 5e feels like an afterthought.

None of the rules work that well or make much sense

@linksassin Especially the animal companion, mount, and barding rules? :P

zing!

But yeah. Same as underwater - there's a lot of stuff that feels like someone threw it in without spending any real time on it.

@Miniman In the current context, just those rules. Though there are certainly other that fall into that category

It looks like somebody just hastily and ruthlessly cut the chaff out of the 3.5 barding rules, but maybe cut a bit too much.

7:23 AM

Oh, wow. So they literally took the entry in the table for Large nonhumanoid and called it a day. That's a really cool find.

@BESW ouch, jeez

I hope that isn't what they did XD

Also, I think you just wrote a pretty solid answer, if you wanted the points.

I haven't studied 5e much, but almost every time in chat somebody goes "Gosh, these rules are weirdly deficient," I can find a ridiculously overdeveloped 3.5 subsystem which 5e has sawed out part of but hasn't filed off the edges and fitted it neatly into the new edition.

4

@BESW Yup. That's 5e in a nutshell. Fix the stuff you use all the time, steal and bandaid the rest and hope no one would notice.

@BESW having only looked at a little of it unfortunately that is often what it feels like

7:30 AM

@Miniman Who, me? "It's 3.5 but worse" isn't an answer to "what is the most effective way to accomplish it?"

and also the mutilated ghost of 4e sometimes

yeah, 4e seems like it's more haunting some of the design principles.

Which is interesting; the text of 5e is a deliberate throwback to pre-4e.

4e text has a quality distinct from other editions and they don't copy-paste that into 5e.

no they don't

but as I have mentioned before, they have taken at least a couple mechanics from 4e that just don't fit into 5e the same way

I mean don't get me wrong, I do actually like HD healing in 5e better than 3.5's natural healing

but,... because I played 4e I can see how much more it could have actually been,... tied into other mechanics instead of just being a thing that's nicer than a thing 3.5 had

@BESW Well, no. "Here's where 5e got those numbers if you want some more numbers" is one, though.

@trogdor It certainly does feel like a mechanic missing a system. But slightly less so that 3.5 or PF. My DM and I have toyed with homebrew uses for them a few times but never come up with anything we liked.

7:34 AM

well, making a consistent ruleset wasn't a design goal for 5e.

@Carcer Well, it was.

@linksassin yeah I don't know if you played 4e, but I have mentioned here before how the HD healing type thing was actually touching several mechanics

@trogdor I haven't played it. I know it was used for more things but don't know anyone with the rules to look it up for what it was used for.

ah ok

so it was replenished by daily rests, 5e has that

but that's where it ends

there were also powers that used them, and ones that didn't, that also came back either from daily rests (or short rests)

oh also you could spend them during short rests which 5e also has I forgot that part

but you could spend those powers that used them during those too

and you got racial bonuses depending on race that interacted with how much they healed, or possibly how many you had

and defender classes I believe generally had more

and there were feats (which 5e seems to disincentivise as a mechanic which also irks me honestly) that could give you more of them or make them heal for more or even let you use yours for other people's healing

@trogdor Verily. Defender gameplay had actually neat mechanics in 4e. in 5e, it's supposed to just emerge, but it doesn't really pan out as well.

7:45 AM

@Miniman I'll just leave this here.

@kviiri yeah in 5e as a paladin I basically just get close to enemies and threaten them with OA's

or block them from moving past me if I can

> A set of rules that unites all the previous editions, and the players of those editions. [...] A system that allows players to use much of their existing content, regardless of the edition. [...] Imagine that the game offered you modular, optional add-ons that allow you to create the character you want to play while letting the Dungeon Master create the game he or she wants to run.

sounds a bit Peter Monteneux to me

I suspect that stuff like barding being sloppily copied from 3.5 is an artifact of those original design goals, and the stuff they didn't care about didn't get tightened up later when they realized they'd overreached.

oh, most of those comments are from Mearls

7:53 AM

The official WotC statement was "a universal rules system that takes from the best of every edition," so I don't think we can attribute it to one guy running off at the mouth independently.

I didn't meant to imply that

but I was trying to pun on monte cook/molyneux

Mearlyneux!

it works

[shrug] I'm sure somebody here gets the reference.

I get the Molyneux part

Peter Molyneux is infamous for making grand claims about the features of games he is developing which then fail to materialise

the features, not the games. The games exist.

he's made a lot of grand promises for games that didn't turn out the way he promised

7:58 AM

sounds like my RPG campaigns

I'm impressed that 5e managed to out-do 4e in terms of grandiose opening goals.

4e was supposed to get a dedicated online service that was basically Roll20 but with 3D dungeons for online FP/OTS perspective play.

Oh yeah

had they heard of Neverwinter Nights

They wanted.... that, but with GM control.

Then 5e came along like "unite the factions! The new edition will be a universal connector for all previous editions! Pathfinder apostates will return to the fold! players and GMs can all individually choose which variants to use! ALL WILL LOVE D&D NEXT AND DESPAIR."

XD

ah the dark times whispered of in the prophesy, those times are now

sorry I couldn't help myself on that one

8:09 AM

2

lol

that is perfect

dang. I have been restrained by my cat

That's a buff cat

And what we got was... a janky "it's not broke if we tell the GM to fix it" edition that sheepishly cribs from 4e for the best bits, and blatantly pads itself out with copy-paste from other editions.

I don't want to sound mean but that isn't too far from what it looks like to me

8:13 AM

Though I'm still convinced I'd probably like it better than 3.5.

I think you would

But that's not much of an endorsement

No, that's a bar an arthritic dachshund could hurdle.

is the bar below ground level?

No: I would rather play D&D 3.5 with certain people than not play with those people at all.

I still am enjoying 5e

But I don't really want to play it past the campaign we have going atm

8:21 AM

@Carcer Given the choice, I wouldn't play any edition of D&D ever again. But there are games I wouldn't play under any circumstances, while I have yet to run into an edition of D&D I can say that about.

To be clear: I don't regret or begrudge my time spent playing D&D with my friends. We had fun and that doesn't get retroactively changed when my opinion about the franchise changes. And I absolutely believe that many people today derive joy from D&D and I'm glad it gives them joy.

For myself I've found ways for RPGs to give me more joy, more easily, with fewer undesired side effects and more desired side effects, without D&D--regardless of edition or playstyle.

yeah

and I don't want anyone who enjoys 5e more than I do (which isn't as much as I enjoy many other systems but is some amount) to think I think they shouldn't be allowed or expected to like it

I just don't derive the enjoyment of it so much that I want to prolong it past the campaign of it I am currently in

8:38 AM

I stand by my opinions of 5e as a haphazard unhappy compromise on overweening ambitions until I'm convinced otherwise, but a thing being flawed does not, itself, make it bad to find joy in the thing. Otherwise we'd all be completely miserable.

3

Yeah fair

10:05 AM

Oh, also: I suspect Wizards had to pitch amazingly overambitious concepts to Hasbro in order to compete for funding for new editions alongside Hasbro's other, less niche properties.

So I'm not giving the devs guff for not fulfilling their pitches on either 4e or 5e.

And I should include my usual observation that if you want a d20-leaning mashup of 3.5 and 4e, 13th Age is probably a better choice than 5e.

I will also continue my policy of endorsing 13th Age XD

you should try it if you have a group ready to try relatively new things

I should try it

it's pretty cool

If I ever must play again in a D&D-like setting with D&D-like mechanics, 13th Age will be my first choice.

I would prefer 4e personally but 13th Age is an extremely close second

and honestly 13th Age seems like it would be easier to manage

10:29 AM

If the old 4e resources were still available I'd be a bit more inclined to consider it an option.

Ender Look

Any idea what means HR in the context of an RPG? "Looking at Wish, it looks like I'm going to need to HR that spell as well."

Someone_Evil

@EnderLook Humanoid Resources?

joke aside, what is your actual context?

Ender Look

"I'd set the casting time at least to 1 minute, if not 10. I'd also require this to be cast in a place that has been sanctified to the PCs god. I'd also add the penalty of reducing your Con to 5 until a long rest.

Looking at Wish, it looks like I'm going to need to HR that spell as well."

It's a commment made to a wish-like spell I published in reddit as a cleric's wish variant: miracle.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/bl11wf/miracle_spell_a_6thlevel_spell_wishlike_for/emmr73g?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x

@EnderLook with that context it almost certainly means "houserule"

Ender Look

@Carcer ahh, that can be possible. Thanks

10:40 AM

That's what I'd guess.

Hit Rice

(no, seriously probably house rules)

Heatedly Revile.

Half-arsedly Review

Hand-Rewind

Tangentially related to TTRPGs, I spent some hours last weekend playing the videogame classic: Angband

aka the game I occasionally mock with comments like

Jan 10 at 18:04, by kviiri

I think Angband is terrible, in its own, adorable way. I love to hate it, but I also love it quite a bit.

Quite peculiarly it's taken steps in its later developments that are clearly influenced by actual design sense --- it still retains its grind-heavy gameplay but it's considerably more focused on the more fun parts of that grind

They've dropped the stat of Charisma, which was all but useless anyway. Under the default settings, shops no longer buy items, reducing the tedium of dungeon sweeps (you get bigger money drops instead)

11:00 AM

@BESW yeah that is a big blow to the game

Derpy

11:52 AM

@kviiri ye oldie Ultima Online times, when you would go as far as selling killed npc brigands shoes to get some more coins...

@Derpy Angband at least has a really limited inventory size, so you're essentially forced to only bring only good stuff to sell. Not non-magical junk

Shops not buying items was earlier familiar to me from Crawl, where I found it initially off-putting but later came to appreciate

Derpy

@kviiri to be fair, Ultima was pretty open in regards to what you could do... so it isn't like you HAD to get the shoes, it was just "want to buy house (with house == CASTLE most of the times)" syndrome

Q: Long rests can be interrupted for up to 1 hour without having to restart the rest; is this limit per-rest or per-interruption?

@Derpy I can't say I know Ultima because I don't, but my SO has the thing where she just can't bring herself to use fast travel in games where it costs any money (eg. Elder Scrolls: Morrowind)

Despite the fact that fast travel is so cheap, you make the money back easily in the time saved

I don't think Morrowind is even a game where you really need the money for anything

Derpy

@kviiri the original Ultima Online - the one you would play on the official servers had a no-class system.

You just had skills - and a skill cap

since every skill could go up to 100 (technically, 120, but that is another story) you was just limited by the fact you could just have 700 allocated points in total.

So, even if some activities were far more profitable then others, the gameplay wasn't broken because technically you had access to every potential build

That.... was usually the first game balance the unofficial servers utterly broke by attempting to force the players in a more traditional class-based gameplay.

Hot RPG Questions

12:16 PM

12

I just read this question about long rests being regularly interrupted and this one about how resources are recovered at the end of an interrupted long rest, and another question came to me. Is the 1-hour limit for an interruption for a long rest the total limit of all interruptions, or is it th...

dnd-5e time rests

Apparently there's a Pedagogy of the Oppressed as well as a Theatre!

12:44 PM

@kviiri Spellmaking and enchanting.