TRPG General Chat - 2020-04-26

« first day (3496 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (1450 days later) »

12:01 AM

@BESW And MSE is on it's own separate network as well! @Someone_Evil

user image

12:16 AM

@Someone_Evil Do they need another another vote, or has chat occurred?

The user was briefly in chat about an hour ago, in the list of user icons

2 hours later…

Hot RPG Questions

1:48 AM

5

Q: Can you cast eldritch blast two times in the same turn with metamagic's quickened spell?

Someone has been telling me that I cannot cast eldritch blast twice a turn because by some rule you are only able to cast one spell and one cantrip a turn, regardless of casting time. I trust his judgment, but I want to confirm. I have always been familiar with the stuff you get during combat: On...

dnd-5e combat spellcasting

5 hours later…

6:48 AM

Does anybody own a recent printing of the 5e-dnd PHB? I'm wondering what Wild Magic Surge currently says. In particular whether the errata (first page, right column) is accurate to recent printings.

7:26 AM

@Medix2 How recent would the book need to be?

@Medix2 Well, either way, my book (I couldn't figure out when it was printed) has the exact paragraph written as it appears in the errata.

2 hours later…

Hot RPG Questions

9:24 AM

7

Q: In Ghosts of Saltmarsh, how do the players obtain a ship?

In Ghosts of Saltmarsh, there is a lot of information about ships, naval combat, and the sea in general. However, I can't find any information on how to get a ship in the first place. I want to run this adventure compilation, and I don't want to have to sideline the game for 30 minutes to find ou...

dnd-5e published-adventures vehicles ghosts-of-saltmarsh

4 hours later…

Hot RPG Questions

1:12 PM

5

Q: Is a bigger creature automatically stronger?

I had a discussion with my DM about how to compare the Strength score between two creatures of different sizes. Lets say I have an Orc and a Troll with 20 Strength each, and they engage in some sort of Strength-based contest or check. My DM thinks that the larger creature must necessarily be str...

dnd-5e creature-size size-scaling

1:36 PM

@nitsua60 And the first big rain will... ;-)

@GcL a key issue is "will you show up for every session" ...that's all I'm gonna say.

@Medix2 I'll need to check but I think my second one (part of a package deal I got for a friend who ended up having a different PHB gifted to them) ...

1:54 PM

@Xirema Yeah I'm not entirely sure, my friend found a rather different wording on a site that otherwise seemed quite accurate to the books. Certainly could be the site was flatly wrong, perhaps DnD Beyond would know...

@Medix2 It's certainly correct for the 10th printing

Wild Magic Surge
Starting when you choose this origin at 1st level, your spellcasting can unleash surges of untamed magic. Once per turn, the DM can have you roll a d20 immediately after you cast a sorcerer spell of 1st level or higher. If you roll a 1, roll on the Wild Magic Surge table to create a magical effect. If that effect is a spell, it is too wild to be affected by your Metamagic, and if it normally requires concentration, it doesn’t require concentration in this case; the spell lasts for its full duration.

That is what is on ddb

it appears to me to match

2:26 PM

Awesome! Thanks everyone. Guess I can ask about what that "once per turn" really does in a question

@Medix2 I will guess that it prevents using twin spell to activate it, or to prevent haste from activating it? Not sure.

And if you had a reaction with war caster feet, it would not be able to activate it? Hmm, yeah it would, since that is on someone else's turn, right? (Like rogue sneak attack)

Say you cast two spells on your turn. Can it not occur twice? Does Tides of Chaos ignore this limitation? Does rolling a 01-02 ignore it? But Twinned Spell is still one spell so it's not doing anything to that

The once per turn is on rolling the 20 to trigger though, not on actually rolling on the table

One thing it does is stopping the 20 being rollable on a spell cast because of a WMS table result

Yeah so it seems like the only way to have mutiple Surges in a turn would be Tides of Chaos or rolling a 01-02 on a previous turn

And ToC only works once per long rest so I think there's just no longer an infinite by any means

Yes. And I'd like to point out that Tides of Chaos is actually the important causer of surges

@Medix2 No, you regain the use of the feature when it triggers a Wild Magic Surge

2:38 PM

Oh yup yup, so just a really kind DM

@Medix2 Sure, making you cast a fireball on yourself is an act of kindness

If you're not willing to give your WM sorcerer multiple uses of Tides of Chaos you should have told them not to play a WM sorcerer

Hot RPG Questions

4

Q: If I have cast the Fire Shield spell, and then I cast True Polymorph on myself, what happens to the fire shield?

If I cast Fire Shield, and afterwards cast True Polymorph, does the new form still have fire shield protection?

dnd-5e spells polymorph

2:57 PM

IMO, the roll for a 1 ought to be every time a spell of 1st level or higher is cast. That will make the WM sorcerer a poor fit for some parties, but for a variety of parties, it adds to the fun. I'd like to play one for about 10 or 12 levels to get a feel for it, but I don't think that's ever gonna happen.

I just realized that it would make tides of chaos "turn on" a great many times, so perhaps my idea isn't a great one. (In terms of what this does to power)

@KorvinStarmast Yeah, that struck me as odd, too.

Rolling a 1 and tides of chaos aren't linked. You get tides back when your DM has you trigger a surge, irrespective of the 20 roll

On the other hand, spreading that around tothe party might be a great way to be a support sorcerer ...

@Someone_Evil I didn't say they were. just the act of rolling seems to reset tides.

@KorvinStarmast rolling on the table, not rolling for rolling on the table

rolling on the table requires a 1 to be eligible

3:09 PM

@KorvinStarmast Why?

@Someone_Evil You don't get to roll the d100 unless the d20 comes up a 1

@KorvinStarmast Except Tides of Chaos can have you "roll on the Wild Magic Surge table" to regain the use of it

That's not how I interpret that rules text, but I'll get back to you. doing something else right now.

3:38 PM

@Someone_Evil which takes us to the meta game of Player to DM discussing when to reset the tides. What was behind my original idea was Tides resets when the surge causes a table roll, and the table roll is contingent on the 1d20 triggering a WM surge. That surge resets the tide. The other idea was that casting a spell might reset the tide, with the inherent risk of triggering a surge, but as I noted above that would appear to give the WM Sorc too many advantage rolls as spell slots increase

@KorvinStarmast But very few at low levels

Yes, three per long rest max.

Where does the 3 come from?

My 2d level sorcerer. I suspect they looked into that during development, and saw the sorcerer power spike at later levels and did not adapt that. I'd be interested in seeing "reset the tides based on sorc's proficiency" but maybe that tried that too

Heck the 2d level sorc could squeak a fourth out if thei

They used Sorc Points to create another spell

Which scenario/rules interpretation are we talking about now?

3:47 PM

@Someone_Evil I am talking about how to make the Wild Magic and the Tides work differently/better. I think that sub class really needs a particular kind of player DM relationship to work; feedback from some folks at GiTP is that for AL it's a really unpopular choice.

As I read it now, you don't get to have that second Tides Advantage and then the WM surge goes off, it seems that you get one, and the the DM needs to trigger the surge and then you get Tides Reset. Or, it triggers off of a cast spell ... maybe. Just too fiddly for my liking.

I wonder at all of the different options they tried during development before they settled on this. I think it would be fun to talk to Mike Mearles about that process.

I'd also like to talk with whomever decided not to keyword Wild Magic Surge, which I think would have made those two features way easier to understand

@Someone_Evil yeah, I agree. It's one of those "they got really close to capturing that wild magic thing" but ... not quite.

@Someone_Evil I am also talking with my son on how he thinks Barbarian Sub Class Storm Herald needs tweaking. I think that once initiated, it should not take a bonus action to keep going. I am trying to discern the "why" of needing to burn that bonus action to keep that aura going

It seems penal.

Do barbarians do a lot of other stuff with their bonus action?

if they go with two weapon fighting yes they do. If they have a feat like shield master, yes.

4:29 PM

@KorvinStarmast The time I've had fun with it is when every casting generated a roll, and the player was totally into (and the party was enjoying their) roleplaying (of) the whole "point, squint, and pull the trigger" nature of their magical abilities. We even went with cantrips doing it for that group, because it was fun enough that we wanted to be sure to see a surge each session.

@nitsua60 cool, sounds fun if the whole gang are on board with it.

Wild Magic Surges happen too infrequently and too often have negative effects. This means the "oh my gosh we're finally having wild Magic" can be followed by "and it obliterated everybody, party included..." It's like getting a critical hit and rolling all 1's but even worse because getting to roll at all happens far less often than critical hits

Someone did a chart, less than 40% results were negative. I think that chart was on GiTP somewhere.

Yes I know. But that's plenty enough

When it's this cool fun and exciting thing and then a third of the time it flops. Compare this to crits, fun and exciting things that happen more often and flop far less often (or at least less extremely)

4:56 PM

I've always felt wild magic was disappointing.

2 hours later…

7:10 PM

I houseruled in my campaign that Wild Magic Surges have a proportional chance of occurring to the level of the spell cast.

So the DC to "prevent" a Wild Magic Surge is always (Spell Level x 2). So a 1st level spell only triggers a surge on a natural 1, but 2nd on a 3 or lower, 3rd on a 5 or lower, and so on.

I also started augmenting the surge table with some older, more powerful 3.5e effects, like Anti-Magic zones.

7:25 PM

@Xirema I like that!

@Xirema I also use an older table--the 2e version, for me.

It's got almost all of the 5e table, but it's got a hundred distinct entries rather than fifty.

2 hours later…

9:41 PM

Speak the Sky has three ways to produce inverted bell curve results using only dice (Twitter link)

2

1 hour later…

10:46 PM

What Artistry This Wilderness by Sealed Library is a simple travel encounter subsystem for fantasy RPGs. It's a celebration of landscapes and our art depicting them.

I'm thinking about this concept and how to bring it into my own ideas about landscapes and their portrayal.

@BESW Iiiiiinteresting.

Guess Whodunit? by Tyler Crumrine is a low-prep storytelling game in which a murderer and a detective hunt each other down, fleshing out their characters’ identities in the process.

« first day (3496 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (1450 days later) »

Transcript for

Apr '2026

TRPG General Chat

Main chat room for tabletop role-playing games. Anyone can ask...

dice pen-and-paper roleplaying

join this room
about this room

00:00

06:00

12:00

18:00

all times are UTC

site design / logo © 2024 Stack Exchange Inc; legal

mobile