TRPG General Chat

MikeQ

15:00

If a DM ended a session partway due to entirely in-game factors, I'd expect players to be annoyed. Sessions can be costly to schedule, and cancelling at a whim is kinda disrespectful to players' time.

Axoren

Best quote from that session was "Why did you make a Bard that didn't have Feather Fall?!"

The response was "Why did you think I was a Bard?!"

Most recent one-shot was one I ran to cover for a sick DM, which was where the Isekai and Foot soldier joke came from. I transported the party to another world, but it was just somewhere else in the same world. There was a demon foot soldier named Iisk, and he collected the legs of his victims and the party had to fight undead legs.

The one before that was another one that I ran, which was us trying another system, Shadow of the Demon Lord, and that game was VERY well-received. It went from a one-shot to a full module in length.

MikeQ

For example, if a DM asked me to set aside 6-8 hours for games (including 1-2 hours of commute), and we ended after 30 minutes because the dice rolled a certain way, I'd see that as very inconsiderate to my time, and would very likely leave that DM's games for good. So I expect my players to give the same treatment for my games.

Axoren

There were I think 3 player deaths in that one-shot and it ended up getting dragged out to 3+ sessions.

And people loved it. There's a whole mythos about it now.

However, the players agree that for a long-term campaign, Horror and Insanity mechanics are a bit much

A few years back, we had a DM in the group who ran Christmas themed one-shots in multiplicity so that everyone from the grander group could take part in the session at least once.

That sort of dwindled out, but I remember one of them very vividly, as I played Will Ferrell from Elf, Buddy, who was an Excitement-based Barbarian

Instead of Rage, I was "excited"

We tried something called "Guild" which was designed to be bite-sized hour-long missions for undersized parties where people would just drop in, one person would host, a pair or more of people would play, and then it would be recorded in a sort of ledger to keep track of who's been doing what in the Guild

But then it devolved into everyone showing up and wanting to play at the same time, so it was a regular 8-man group that needed to stop or be reorganized.

Eventually, someone just became the DM of "Guild", and it was revisited as a proper campaign.

That weekly flexibility gets us to experiment a lot.

GcL

@Axoren That's a big group. Was it virtual table top or in person?

Axoren

Virtual. Transcended from Skype to Mumble to Discord and then settled on Discord.

GcL

15:12

@Axoren Is it voice only?

Axoren

It's been a long-time going and it's not always the same people, but it's a vast network of people who all know eachother directly at this point

@GcL Roll 20. We don't do the webcam thing for the sake of 50% of people wanting to go shirtless at the end of a rough workday.

At least 16 people still in my discord server have been in games with me. There's a couple of other servers and some people have left for greener pastures (or been asked to leave)

There was a time when I was running an in-person group that devolved into us just broing out until 5 in the morning after a session deciding "Hey, let's drive absolutely way too far and eat Denny's for breakfast"

We did not live anywhere near a Denny's.

GcL

There was no closer greasy spoon? or just not one open when the Sun rose to judge your life choices?

Axoren

We wanted Denny's specifically.

AncientSwordRage

DND 5e soft question - there's a bunch of feats that share out some class abilities, like Martial Adept, but nothing that does so for sorcerer's metamagic?

MikeQ

Not officially, no. I've seen some homebrew attempts to give metamagic as a feat.

Axoren

15:17

I think everyone but me was high that night, and I didn't need to be high to think that that was a perfect idea.

NautArch

@AncientSwordRage thta's really a very special part of being a sorcerer. THere are also no feats that provide smites.

AncientSwordRage

@NautArch true, but a sorcerer or paladin could also take that to focus in on that ability

GcL

@AncientSwordRage Usually feats don't step on class feature toes. The unarmed strike one, brawler? doesn't scale as the Monk feature does.

BESW

Pandemic Positivity is a cozy-things-only chat room for social distancing support.

8

AncientSwordRage

@GcL what about martial adept/magical initiate?

Axoren

15:19

@AncientSwordRage Martial Adept gives access to a subclass feature. It does not give access to a signature vanilla fighter feature like Extra Attack

NautArch

@AncientSwordRage I don't think that those are really major class features.

AncientSwordRage

@Axoren that is a good distinction

@NautArch they're major to the subclass/early levels of a set of classes

GcL

@AncientSwordRage Limited spell list and number of castings don't scale with level. I think it's probably the scaling with level that makes them like lighter versions of a class feature.

AncientSwordRage

@GcL this is true

but getting 1 metamagic point and a limited number of metamagic abilities could be balanced?

Axoren

I would say that if you wanted to make a Feat for Metamagic that was balanced, it would require too many moving parts

NautArch

15:21

@AncientSwordRage Sure, but unless you're a variant human, you've got to wait (and take the hit on your Ability score) in order to get that access.

GcL

Seems like a reasonable thing to do with a single or couple points and limited subset like martial adept does.

NautArch

And even then, getting a few cantrips is nice. Getting a spell you can cast 1/day is kinda nice. BUt it's not the same thing as the access.

GcL

@NautArch Losing the ASI is for reals.

AncientSwordRage

@GcL in my day we didn't get ASIs at all!

NautArch

@GcL I'm not in total agreement on that with bounded accuracy.

I personally would rather often take feats (depending on my build) then improve my score.

Axoren

15:22

There's too many ways that a feat that grants a metamagic is too strong.

GcL

@AncientSwordRage In my day you needed a dozen henchmen and at least half as many 10' poles

Axoren

It's a 3-level dip in place of an ABI boost

GcL

@NautArch That +1 to saves and casting ability adds up over time.

Axoren

Martial Adept is actually too strong in this regard

AncientSwordRage

@Axoren I think the 'answer' is a feat like spell sniper, that imitates a metamagic feat

@Axoren do tell

GcL

15:24

@Axoren ehh... the battle maneuvers are neat martial equivalents of spells that you can do in full plate armor.

@AncientSwordRage Spell sniper! good one. That is basically a metamagic feat.

AncientSwordRage

@GcL I can't think of others that would work the same way without overstepping though

also spell sniper is 'always on' right?

GcL

@AncientSwordRage Yeah. It's the range bonus.... which rarely comes up unless the story is being designed for it.

@AncientSwordRage You could probably do a limited number of re-roll dice to emulate empowered spell.

like, two damage dice can be re-rolled per long rest.

The sorcerer version scales with cha bonus and number of uses with their level... so it would be a light version, but two dice reroll is about about where a sorcerer would start.

AncientSwordRage

@GcL yup, that sounds good. I'm not sure if the source I'm looking at is HB or not because it says you get some extra stuff too

GcL

I think that's the only one that scales with the Sorcerer's level and abilities.

Axoren

I've had 3 people say stuff to me, but I'll have to respond later. I accidentally got a papercut on my nipple and it's fairly incapacitating.

Gonna deal with that now.

GcL

15:32

Careful spell scales with the cha bonus as well, so giving a limited use of careful casting could work without stepping on the toes of the class feature.

Carcer

@Axoren that's not how you appreciate books

AncientSwordRage

@GcL these could be wrapped up in one feat with options

GcL

@AncientSwordRage I'd probably leave it as two separate feats for clarity. Choose the neat trick you want to get to do, but you can't have both.

As sorcerers only start with two neat tricks

Axoren

@AncientSwordRage Spell Sniper does something very specific. It makes Attack Spells double in distance. It does not make Touch spells reach out to 30 ft. It does not allow you to cast Hold Person from twice as far away.

AncientSwordRage

@GcL what I mean is it could be "Pick one of these." but leaving as two for clarity works as well

Axoren

15:37

Learning a cantrip and being able to bypass cover are considered reasonable extras to be thrown in with Races and Feats.

AncientSwordRage

@Axoren this is true, and the extras seems decent

I don't know what extras you'd throw in with the HB feats we're discussing here.

Axoren

Being able to convert Touch spells to Ranged spells is something that has no precedent as a feat and is a REALLY strong feature.

So, even just letting people cast a spell with Distant Spell metamagic is fairly strong.

AncientSwordRage

@Axoren agreed

I have to go rescue a damsel in distress

Axoren

Martial Adept is strong for Spell-less Rangers and Battlemaster Fighters in that it's effectively a feat that grants an extra "Spell Slot", but that's still within power because they're effectively Martial Warlocks with lower damage output per resource.

Giving someone the ability to do one of two bonuses to an attack per short rest isn't all that strong in terms of combat power, but it's very strong in terms of build power.

A character that wants access to a maneuver doesn't have to dip for it.

And having access to Commander's Strike once per short rest is akin to dealing an extra Sneak Attack from a rogue, because there's a rogue in your party.

If you have a Sharpshooter or Great Weapon Master party member, their damage is your damage.

And that immediately beats the curve in terms of combat contribution per Feat/ASI

nitsua60

@Axoren (And a two-level dip, at that--it's not even like SA or a fighting style that one could obtain with just one level.)

Axoren

15:46

@nitsua60 2-level dip if revised classes are allowed, 3-level dip if not.

Cantrips are generally considered fine because they don't overshadow most sustainable combat contributions. You're trading performing the Attack Action or Cast a Spell action to cast this cantrip instead.

nitsua60

@Axoren Actually, that's just me misremembering which classes get their archetypes at 2 vs 3 =\

Axoren

Classes with Extra Attack can do 1d6+5, 1d6+5, 1d6 with TWF. This is more than competitive with 2d10 from a Firebolt.

GcL

Does action surge let you cast two non-cantrip spells in a round?

Axoren

@GcL Yes.

The stipulation with two non-cantrip spells is that doing one of them as a Bonus action is what causes the problem.

The ruling is a mess, the designers made a huge oversight, and I think the ruling needs different wording.

So bad to feat extras: Things like cantrips are really only just bridging a gap between people without that Extra attack, which is normally casters.

GcL

Haste doesn't let you do two castings in a turn. So it's only action surge that gets a caster two full action casts in a round?

Axoren

15:52

Getting Firebolt as a Bard moves you from 2d4 to 2d10, which is a +3 per die on average, but getting Firebolt as a Cleric only gives you +1 per die on average.

@GcL Haste is very explicit with what you can do with the action it grants you.

NautArch

@GcL right

Axoren

Calling it an action is a very big mistake on the part of the designers. They should have just said "You can do one of these things per round for free."

Getting Martial Adept as a non-battlemaster allows a character to exchange 1d6+5 for a larger attack from another player, such as a Rogue or a -5/+10 character, or even just a Cleric with Holy Weapon

This is WAY above the curve for a Feat.

GcL

@Axoren How do you feel about working on a formal ontology for 5e? /S

Axoren

You're gonna need me to look up the word Ontology to make sure I understand you correctly, first.

GcL

@Axoren Essentially a set of terms and their precise relationships. Often arranged by hierarchy of mutually exclusive "is a" relationships. E.g. a dog is a canine

that sort of thing

Axoren

15:56

I actually have an 3100 word essay/script for a video about Damage in 5e which does exactly that

I've settled on things like Sustain and Burst for activities which do and do not require resources; Wide, Tall, Long, and their opposites for styles of damage dealing (Wide = more targets, Tall = more damage per targets, and Long = that damage across time).

DoTs are Long damage options, but not all Long damage options are DoTs, which was a really interesting discovery when I was doing the analysis, which is why I prefer the term Long as it encompasses more than just DoTs

GcL

You could write it in owl format if you're feeling particularly formal and masochistic

Axoren

I'm a masochist, not a sadist.

Medix2

I just tried reading a question in desktop mode with dark mode on....

Axoren

Those quotes need to be more visible.

It blends too closely with the background

Medix2

Even in light mode the quotes are hard to tell, but that genuinely confused me

Though, tbf, numbers and bullet points are also near invisible in dark mode, and i don't think a small thing on a specific version of a mobile browser is something that'll make them care anymore than other answers under the blockquotes update post already should have

nitsua60

16:14

@Medix2 Definitely worth posting to the MSE answer about blockquote formatting--it's not something I saw mentioned in any of the other answers.

(And I thought I saw a big post about... nvm. That was Discord.)

Yuuki

@Axoren Portuguese man o' wars are actually not jellyfish.

nitsua60

16:30

@Yuuki That's PMoW propoganda, trying to lull you into a false sense of security.

(he he he)

kviiri

Not jellyfish but pudding polyps

Medix2

@nitsua60 I'll go on and do that in a few hours (in the middle of some things at the moment)

KorvinStarmast

16:49

@Carcer My celestial warlock chose revivify at 5. It was a conscious choice.

The Oracle

17:23

0

Q: Should there be official guidlines on poorly-balanced homebrew?

This is a follow-up to this question. I'd highly recommend giving it a read before proceeding. I'm posting this as a new question because DaleM brought up a good point that, in dramatic fashion, left my question in shambles: it turns out that homebrew questions receiving "significantly more down...

Hot RPG Questions

5

Q: What lore exists to explain tieflings with blue skin?

Tieflings (in 5e, at least) have either "human skin colour", red skin, or somewhere in between. I think 4e changed how tieflings look between 2/3/3.5e and 5e, standardising the red skin/Asmodeus look, but I believe that the tiefling's skin colour has always been within this range from the little ...

dnd-5e dungeons-and-dragons lore tiefling

AncientSwordRage

18:23

@HotRPGQuestions that's quite interesting

I hadn't considered rakshasa heritage for tieflings

Yuuki

@nitsua60 i dunno, "jellyfish" sounds friendlier than "cnidarian" or "siphonophore".

goodguy5

Work From Home Life!

Yuuki

Words I can't pronounce are scientifically proven to be more terrifying than words I can. It's why it's "Cthulhu fthagn" not "yo, squid man wassup".

2

goodguy5

Words YOU can't pronounce, or words that one is unable to pronounce?

Axoren

18:50

About to be in a job interview, but someone from my group said that if we replace dying with Mortal Wounds, thematically, the Shadow of Death should just menacingly loom until we deal with our Mortal Wounds

And I REALLY like the idea of it thematically.

JohnP

@Yuuki Nice Aladdin reference.

kviiri

@Axoren Dungeon World has something like that

When you "die", you get to make a special move. Hard success brings you back to life, so I should recall. Hard fail, Death claims you as your own. You have some time to set your business straight, maybe return home from the quest, have one last party, say goodbyes, and then you're gone.

(the GM's discretion)

Soft success grants a rather interesting outcome of being subject to a deathly bargain

What would Death want? Maybe a limb, maybe the life of a loved one, maybe swearing an oath to never wield an axe again. Something like that.

kviiri

19:10

sorry, wrong chat. I'm too quick with the tab keys...

→ 1 message moved to Coronavirus Chat Zone

AncientSwordRage

19:32

Does this seem balanced? tribality.com/2015/02/02/…

kviiri

Flight speed at level 1? I'd wager no.

MikeQ

@AncientSwordRage All of those options are dominantly better than the original dragonborn's breath weapon. Especially the 1 minute blindsight.

AncientSwordRage

@MikeQ they did look very strong... I think they are meant to replace the existing features, and they make a comparison with tieflings...

goodguy5

19:58

Man, the latest Last Week Tonight is so weird without the audience laughter.

kviiri

20:19

@KorvinStarmast Related to the Pandemic chat room: in one of my campaign notes I had the bad guys control three massive airships: the Mikado, Pinafore and Penzance. (the last one had actually been felled and presumed lost --- reclaiming and repairing it would've been a major goal of the game)

KorvinStarmast

@kviiri Yes!!!! Goodness!

kviiri

Of course my players are a lot less cultured bunch than I am so those ships would probably have... flown right over their heads ;)

KorvinStarmast

But did any of them burn during a leap year?

kviiri

@KorvinStarmast That'd've been a great idea. Except I don't usually do calendar stuff in my games

I've probably said it before but I prefer punny or otherwise funny names for things in RPGs, they tend to be easier for everyone to remember than Faux-Elvish or such

KorvinStarmast

@kviiri yeah, I do that a lot. When I get a groan out of the other players I know I have succeeded. :-)

Axoren

20:29

@kviiri Job interview went alright, but I feel like I might never wield an axe again, regardless.

KorvinStarmast

@kviiri It took our gaming group about five sessions to grok why I had named my life cleric Florence. She had the entertainer background, and sang like a nightengale ...

@Axoren switch to halberd.

Carcer

@KorvinStarmast sick Florence + the Machine reference, bro

KorvinStarmast

When the guy who played our wizard woke up to it, he looked at me and said "no, you didn't!"

Axoren

@KorvinStarmast That's just a long axe and you know it.

KorvinStarmast

@Axoren It is axually a cleaver on a pole with a spear point on it.

@Carcer It is, but my aim with the name was healer on a battlefield .... :)

kviiri

20:36

@KorvinStarmast snrk

KorvinStarmast

@Axoren There was a neat youtube video a while back where they demonstrated/hypothesized that the halberd, on the battlefield, was more often used like a pike/spear formation, with the axe being a way to clear out/obstruct opposiong spears pionted their way. An interesting look at formation tactics and techniques

kviiri

I like including normal mundane things as character names too. Tends to get people's imaginations running to figure out the background of the unusual name.

Eg. my previous DnD character would translate into English something like "Pocket-Ormond". Or when he was feeling particularly fancy, "Ormond-of-the-Pockets". Why pockets? Perhaps he invented them.

KorvinStarmast

"And deep down inside Ormong of the pockets, was a magic ring ... that he'd swallowed as a child and it got caught in a bend in his small intestine ... "

JohnP

Is it just me, or does the aardwolf look like a weaponized dachshund?

KorvinStarmast

@JohnP The RL aardwolf, or one in a game? The RL one looks too tall to be a dachshund.

V2Blast

20:52

the what now

I just noticed that we have multiple design-related tags on Meta: design, site-design, and user-interface

Axoren

I'm going to use the following Town-name Generator from now on: fakesachusetts.glitch.me

JohnP

@KorvinStarmast Ok, so a weaponized chihuahua.

And the RL one.

kviiri

21:11

Friendly reminder:

Oct 25 '19 at 8:19, by kviiri

We were discussing neo-Latin etymologies over some beer a while back. Eg. the taxonomic names are neo-Latin: one of my favorites being the brown bear Ursus Arctos, where "ursus" is Latin for "bear" and "Arctos" is Greek... also for a bear.

Bear bear.

With these news, I'm off to read a bit and then to sleep. G'nite, stay safe and comfortable!

Medix2

TIL you can edit comments after a post is deleted (when within the 5-minute comment-edit window)

Axoren

@Medix2 Now people won't see the mistake you made on the comment they won't see.

JohnP

@kviiri bear bear? I can't bear it.

AncientSwordRage

21:52

@kviiri also they are only the word for bear because the bears appear in the north, we stopped using the word for bear out of fear of them

^ dubious fact

BESW

22:12

in Pandemic Positivity, 7 hours ago, by BESW

I'm glad last year's Correspondence Jam exists! Correspondence jam is for epistolary games! What does that mean? Any game where the main mechanic is players writing letters back and forth! This can mean a game played through dms, through email or shared documents, through snail mail, or any other message sending system!

in Pandemic Positivity, 32 secs ago, by BESW

Oh, another useful collection from last year: Discord RPG Jam. We’re already playing RPGs & chatting with our game friends on Discord, why not make some RPGs specifically designed to play on Discord?

Ben

23:53

Shower though for the day: wonder if I've ever bought milk from the same cow twice

Someone_Evil

Probably, unless you're sourcing your milk artisinally (in which case you'd know), any carton (or other container) you buy of milk will contain a small amount of milk from a lot of different cows, so you're likely to get duplicates over time

trogdor

yeah it seems likely, especially if you have bought plenty of milk over time

Medix2

@Ben Aaaaand now I'm wondering how long a single cow's milk remains in circulation...

Someone_Evil

@Medix2 How much do you circulate your milk?

Medix2

@Someone_Evil Yeah I don't even know how much that happens, but presumably it does happen

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