He specialized in quirky and slightly unsettling 32-page high-concept fantastical-realism books filled with beautiful and bizarre graphite illustrations.
He's also the author of The Mysteries of Harris Burdick and Bad Day at Riverbend.
I like a lot D&D vampires. I even bought Curse of Strahd. But something I always wandered is "What is running water?"
Rivers are running waters, since it is used as an example in others editions. But how about rain (no answers are accepted on the related question)? How about a bottle? How about...
War Magic PHB pg. 75 states:
When you use your action to cast a cantrip, you can make one weapon attack as a bonus action.
Counterspell states:
You attempt to interrupt a creature in the process of casting a spell. If the creature is casting a spell of 3rd level or lower, its spell fail...
I've got a wizard with 11 Dex and I'm trying to figure out what my most efficient use of spell slots is to help me from getting hit.
We typically have 2-4 very difficult encounters per day and I want to balance my spell slot uses where I can provide as much firepower as needed. The monsters are...
The Warlock Invocation "Improved Pact Weapon" from Xanathar's Guide allows the warlock to summon a ranged weapon:
Finally, the weapon you conjure can be a shortbow, longbow, light crossbow, or heavy crossbow.
Does this include the associated ammunition (arrows or bolts)? Or will the warloc...
@Rubiksmoose They are singular bowed structures, liquid, gas or solid letters, or treefolk which existed before to the Civilisation games, respectively
@Someone_Evil Good thing you told me that it helped a lot ;)
user15026
Bus update: Well, the union and the region reached a tentative bus deal. So now they vote to ratify in 2 days, and then the regional council meets to consider it if the vote passes, then if all that works, we get a date of when buses will be back.
user15026
Still too many points of failure for my liking but...progress
I recently started playing with a large group of about 7-8 people. I noticed that, in our group, a couple of the people are very active: whenever there is a chance for the group to do things, it only takes them a second or two to come up with an action for their character and narrate it. On top o...
If a question /should/ be a duplicate of another, but the later's answer doesn't actually cover the situation in the first, should votes to close still be cast?
This question about Arcane Trickster spell slots: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/163807/how-do-spells-known-work-in-multiclassing-in-5e
was marked as a duplicate of this one about multiclassing spell slots: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/151000/if-i-multiclass-into-2-or-more-spellcasting-classes-how-do-i-determine-my-known
@Himitsu_no_Yami Are you proficient with shields? (If so, how?)
@BradleyLindsey Oh man, I read that ages ago. I recall it being very weird but good. I think I had a few dreams inspired by it.
@Ash Good luck!
@Adeptus It's been broken for ages.
@jgn ...Neither of those questions is about spell slots. (I should know, I wrote the second question and the answer on it. :P) That's also why I rolled back your edit to my answer.
The first question you linked specifically says:
> I know how spell slots work, to a degree, when multiclassing, but I'd like a better understanding of "spells known".
@Glazius Oooh. I'm sure we have a meta or two about MathJax tables... It'd be good to have that link somewhere more permanent and easily searchable than chat.
I suppose the original "MathJax is live" post isn't exactly a typical Q&A, so this might be suited to an answer on it:
We have MathJax
In this meta we discussed, requested, and gathered evidence for the utility of MathJax in RPG.SE posts.
Now it's time to use MathJax
For those familiar with LaTeX it will likely suffice to say that \$ ... \$ are our delimiters ($$ ... $$ for equations centered on their own lin...
Alternately, it might be worth asking and self-answering a meta post specifically about how to format tables using MathJax, maybe including both an explanation of the MathJax syntax relevant to formatting such tables manually and a link to that page for auto-generating such tables.
(Alongside your description of the linked resource, it might also be worth suggesting manually cleaning up the formatting to make it more readable and easier to maintain - by which I mean things like hitting enter at the end of each row of the table to mark where each row begins.)
@V2Blast I read the last part of the question as asking about spell slots "do I prepare those, and then cast from my Arcane Trickster spell lists as normal and just keep track of which is which" casting spells is about spell slots to me. Your answer is about 75% about spell slots, so it may be worth covering the remaining 2 classes, especially since the only other question about AT/EK spell slots isn't very broad in scope.
Well, you've misunderstood the Arcane Trickster question, then. It's entirely about spells known. The querent's talking about whether they need to keep track of cantrips and known/prepared spells separately for each class. At no point does their question relate to spell slots aside from saying it's a thing they already understand.
And my answer to the spells known/prepared question is also entirely about spells known/prepared; the only time I mention spell slots are when I reference each class's spellcasting rules (which state that your spells known/prepared for the class must be of a level for which you have spell slots), and when I quote the Pact Magic multiclassing rule (which is silent about spells known/prepared).
There could be a separate question about determining spell slots for multiclassed casters, but that one ain't it.
(I don't think the issue of how to determine spell slots has really come up much, so there hasn't been a need for a canonical question addressing that.)
Would this chat be ok with dnd5e character build questions? (i.e. something like "are 3 levels of rogue worth it for an archery ranger that wants to increase their damage output?)
I'm building a level 4 archery-based character with a spy background. I'm going for 4 levels of Ranger as a start, and will certainly take the 5th level too for the extra attack. At that point, level 6 is notoriously bad so I was thinking to take a dip into Rogue for the sneak attack and cunning action. At that point, the 3rd level would give me access to the assassin subclass and an extra sneak attack dice, so it seems worthy at a glance.
I have to pick ranger over fighter because the party is very small and having another character able to cast cure wounds is required - I'm willing to change class if I can get a semi-reliable access to cures and fighting primarily with a bow
tl;dr is a ranger 5/ Rogue 3 better than a Ranger 8 in terms of damage output?
if yes, what would be the ideal level progression?
mostly because I know that we tend to face groups more often than single big baddies, and they tend to group up in front of our front-line cavalier fighter
Horde Breaker: Once on each of your turns when you make a weapon Attack, you can make another Attack with the same weapon against a different creature that is within 5 feet of the original target and within range of your weapon.
It's not, unless something like "Multiattack Defense: When a creature hits you with an Attack, you gain a +4 bonus to AC against all subsequent attacks made by that creature for the rest of the turn." is so major to be a dealbreaker for a character, from your perspective
I can't guarantee that we're going to face many Large enemies (some, for sure) but I aim not to be attacked in the first place, if I can avoid it, so Giant Killer might be off :)
also, as an archer I'd rather not be within 5 feet of a Large+ big bad enemy
the special abilities depend too heavily on you definitely being able to go first and enemies being surprised, which is difficult to engineer for most parties I have played with
for a rogue dip I'd probably suggest taking Scout as the archetype, the Skirmish ability to just nope away from any enemy that gets close to you as a reaction is very good for keeping your distance
True. But rather than scout I'd probably go Mastermind, to help out the frontline tank, if I don't go for assassin. That would still increase damage output, even if very indirectly.
in complete honesty it seems more likely you guys have misunderstood some rules somewhere to get those numbers because they're dramatically higher than we would expect, so if you go through your working we can see if it's right or not.
@Someone_Evil When I did this one it was fighter (for Archery and precision BM dice), rogue (for bonus-action Hide and SA dice), and Magic Initiate for healing word.
a 1st-level wizard might be able to do 64 damage with one spell if they manage to drop a burning hands on a perfect cluster of enemies but they're hardly doing that as average damage
regardless there's not much point in us speculating
@nitsua60 Yeah, I thought about suggesting MI for healing word or cure wounds, the problem is you only have one per long rest, and if you need the second one, you might really need it
@NautArch I'm by no means saying MI for a healing spell isn't good (and having it as a BA is really good), I'm saying there's an argument for taking healer instead. Comes a bit down to threat modelling, I suppose
@RandomDudeWithAKnife I'm not sure a dead goblin qualifies as a pet. I think a rock is better for that end
Others primarily, and yes. The other party members are a Cavalier Fighter and a Lore bard, so having another source of magical/special healing is required. Potions aren't extremely common for us (as of yet)
Healers are generally not very important in the normal course of action in DnD 5e except as exception-handlers (reviving KO'd characters)
Of course your mileage may vary, esp. if the campaign has a somewhat less common threat profile. If the bulk of the damage comes from environmental hazards you can't fireball your way through, healing certainly beats offensive magic and bashing :)
It's mostly a matter of basic redundancy. With a half-healer only in the party, we'd need someone to be able to revive them if they go down for any reason
@STTLCU 5e doesn't really support the "designated healer" trope where a character spends a lot of their daily resources doing healing. (Of course you can do it, but that's seldom even close to optimal)
@STTLCU hmm, you're going to have to make some compromises, because high ranged weapon damage and good healing may not be something you can totally realize together.
And bards are definitely capable of being full healers. WIth the spell slots, healing word, and cure wounds, they're good at battlefield healing to keep allies up and fighting.
@STTLCU check out this build. It's more about ranged damage, but the cleric dip gives you some healing. But the spell slots are really more about bless for yourself to increase your damage chances.
But yeah, to rephrase what I tried to say earlier: there is really no way for healing magic to keep up with the expected damage outputs of various mobs (even before accounting for the fact that healing consumes daily resources in almost all cases, while competing attacks are often free). Therefore the best places to concentrate healing on are reversing KO's (or preventing imminent ones), although the option to convert slots to HP over a non-combat stretch can be handy at times.
I agree with @kviiri, @STTLCU. Healing in-combat is really a last resort thing to bring people back into the fight to kill the enemy. It's a short-term solution. Almost always, the better choice is offense over healing. Kill the thing that's damaging you and you won't be damaged anymore.
So you're all saying I should make a Fighter Archer (I'd assume BattleMaster) with maybe or maybe not a dip into rogue, and maybe keep a potion or two for emergency revives?
@STTLCU for pure archery options, fighter is generally the best. But hunter rangers deal some good consistent damage with some other spell control options, too.
I personally don't love the rogue dip, i'm not sure it's worth it.
But going sharpshooter for the -5/+10 and having way like bless to mitigate the -5 is the path to high damage.
Oh right now I remember. In that one episode Mr. Burns' power plant was under threat of closure because of a safety inspection and Burns offered to settle for a washer-dryer or something like that, "or you could trade it for this mystery box!"
@goodguy5 I sure hope so, an Ethiopian coworker from a few years back used to complain some Ethiopian restaurant in Helsinki charges extra for the bread so most people ate with a fork and a knife!
Ethiopian cuisine has this delicious bread called injera, a bit like our sour breads up here but a tad more fruity in aroma and softer in consistency. Very nice stuff
@NautArch Hmm... I'm tempted to give my ol' "figure the expected number of hits +d6 - d6" answer. But that's a bunch of time I don't really have today =\
@NautArch It was good, thanks. Squeezed in a run, had a double-length department meeting, memorial service, rehearsal, and watched a show with my wife. Solid.
@NautArch It feels a little like an answer-in-comment, but if you say it's good, I'll leave it.
This is effectively the reverse of How can I end combat quickly when the outcome is inevitable?
Lame duck scenarios in game design occur when a player cannot win, but the game isn't over yet. They're obviously undesirable, and good game design would seek to minimize it.
I'm interested to see ho...