@waxeagle ah, damn. I'd missed that....

@Khashir Hi

@Khashir yeah, hiding often isn't worth it because it's expensive

@Miniman Heya!

@waxeagle now I see even greater value in Cunning Action... Too bad dipping 2 levels is so terribad.

Although one could argue that Cunning action is almost worth a feat....

the ability to hide and attack, or disengage and attack... that's pretty sweet

@Khashir yeah Cunning Action is a tremendous feature. And really makes the rogue feel roguish

:)

I'll be out, gents

ciao.

have a good one, talk to you guys later

ok, Elemental Adept is only good if you expect to meet people with resistance to your chosen damage type...because treating 1s as 2s just isn't a great feature.

and really, you can fix resistance by grabbing a second and even third damage type and moving on.

@waxeagle yeah, that's what it seemed. Otoh, unlike Empower Spell, Meteor Swarm gets a bit of love with EA ;)

Thanks for the analysis :)

@Khashir on half it's damage, it gets an extra what...3 damage per target?

well, I meant you're rolling 20 fire dice that go from 2-6, instead of 1-6

so, unlike Empower, it actually scales

still not worth it

but yeah...

yep

Definitely not seeing it as a reward for a damage type focus. It seems more like "keep me from being useless" type feat to fix a bad build

yep, but even sorcs get enough spells to spread around the elemental love

so, hopefully no one will be caught in the trap

8)

(unless they want flavour).

(say, a single element build, with Elemental Affinity)

War Casting asap, and I'm hoping I can delay the +2 Cha (for a Sorc) at least one level...

Not sure if I'm really killing the char during those levels...

Since the cha mostly only affects your AC and spell DC...You're probably OK letting them go a bit

I think one of those thing about ability increases, is since you're usually only going up by about 10% over the life of your character, it's not as essential to do them

(at all even)

really?

huh

interesting

I don't recommend it...but you're only at worse going to be 10% worse than you otherwise would be

I guess I'm harking back to the 4e days of uber optimization

where to-hit was everything

true

right, in 4e, if you didn't start at 18 or 20...you were going to run 5-10% behind the whole game. And depending on how MAD you were, maybe worse than that over the long haul.

But in 5e, everything is more centered distribution wise, and yeah, you might have trouble hitting that tarrasque if you're not at 20...but you were going to have a hard time anyways

jajajaja

damn, that monster

but like even in the mid to high CRs you'll still see monsters with ACs in the low to mid teens...

in 4e, a monster's AC was 14+monster level, and that was that

good point

the big place you want to make sure you keep up is in damage, and since a sorcy isn't adding stat to damage most of the time, delaying CHA increases isn't a big deal.

well,

the core of the build is around elemental affinity-lightning

so... =P

Witch Bolt is pretty sweet with Elemental Affinity

get adv. on the attack, hopefully you hit

autodamage from there onwards

my problem with witch bolt (and was same problem in 4e, though the range was longer), you can just walk away from it

yes... though I'd be careful in determining which enemies know this

otherwise, it's metaknowledge =P

unless I'm being overly biased

it's a spell available to several different kind of casters, anyone with an int over 12 who knows they've been affected by it should know to walk away

I don't see why an enemy with no magical training would know that the spell dissipates beyond 30 feet

in battle, enemies tend to move towards the source of the pain (aka, aggro)

they might try to break Con

centration

I can see that being much more realistic

especially a beast

:)

no, worth examining, so we have 3 types of casters with L1 access...I guess you have to ask yourself how common are wizards in your world, and how much general knowledge of arcana would an average, smart, or very intelligent being have.

yeah, I was trying to think about NPC Arcana checks

DC 15 to know what spell you're being affected by, 20 to know common remediation?

since there's no Skill Proficiency for npcs, maybe have them roll 2x Int Mod vs. 15/20

@Khashir there is though

Oh, I guess I didn't realise... lemmec heck

check

Nice! Hadn't paid much attention to the skills part of teh block

excellent, there you go

Arcana check with those DCs sounds reasonable

(hmm, speaking of the tarrasque... it's a huge pain in the ass for casters... ranged spell attacks don't affect it, it has adv vs anything with a save... so, melee is the only 'efficient' way of dealing dmg... scary)

it's intended to be insanely difficult to deal with

yeah, but damn...

think about it, it's supposed to be a hard challenge for a party of L30 PCs...L30 doesn't even exist

yeah, that's true

i don't know why i'm thinking about this...

8)

over-preparedness OCD

Here's the thing with a tarrasque. It actually shouldn't be a combat monster. Giving it stats is a genuine mistake. It's a campaign device, and should remain such. Basically the final confrontation shouldn't be the PCs vs the Tarrasque, it should be the PCs mobilizing the world, or continent's resources to defeat the monster before it consume the entire planet

you build a whole 1-20 campaign around it. Giving it stats is basically an exercise in theoretical extremes.

ah got it

Makes sense

I saw a tongue-in-cheek post about the terrasque when it's 5e stat block was shown. It said that since the terrasque lacks a ranged attack and it doesn't have it's crazy regeneration that all you need to theoretically kill it would be a flying mount, a +1 bow and a lot of arrows and time.

@MonkeezOnFire It's true.

A Ranged fighter, with a flying mount, with a +3 bow could take care of it quite easily.

Also, if you're in the market for a tarrasque mini. I present Khanjira the world breaker from Reaper minis: reapermini.com/Miniatures/previews/latest/77380

(will be on sale early next year)

(will be on my doorstep in the next few months)

All this tarrasque stuff reminds me - I never worked out why people were making such a big deal out of the Intellect Devourer.

You're joking, right?

8)

It's a CR2 creature with an Int save-or-suck ability that can take over one PC

and by take over, i mean 'turn the PC into a husk'

It's also pretty easy to kill, the save is not particularly hard, and can only be done in melee.

Lack of a ranged attack is a huge deal in a monster.

Well, you're metagaming

unless the PC somehow has knowledge of the ID

chances are at least one will engage in melee

and probably the one with the lowest Int

;)

once Body Thief hits

the party needs True Restoration I think?

don't have books nearby, and need to finish prepping for our hotdq in one hour

Hmmm, I see your point. I tend to play classes that are intelligent, cautious, and long-ranged.

And you're also assuming that you'll be facing only one.

And that it's not an ambush - yeah....

Given that it's Cr2, a higher-level party can be "fairly" matched against several, and chances are... at least 1 PC will be consumed

"Body Thiefed"

anyway, gtg

ttyl :)

Cya

@waxeagle I know about Action Surge, but the spellcasting rules are pretty specific, and they don't say anything about gaining additional actions

@Miniman the main issue is that if, for any reason, it manages to make it to one of the party members who doesn't have high int, they're probably going to die.

and then become puppets.

sure, it might be pretty easy to kill, but there may also be other threatening enemies in the room and the players can make bad rolls or bad tactical decisions.

@doppelgreener Yeah, DC 12 sounds pretty low to the Wizard but I guess for the Barbarian it's probably gonna require a roll of 13 or higher

yep, if you're an INT-based class you're fine.

That said, there are a lot of ways to boost a die roll as needed now

and yeah, you've hit the nail on the head there: if you're a class that doesn't care so much about INT, there is a CR2 creature that, most of the time, will kill you.

> The target must succeed on a DC 12 Intelligence saving throw against this magic or take 11 (2d10) psychic damage. Also on a failure, roll 3d6: If the total equals or exceeds the target’s Intelligence score, that score is reduced to 0. The target is stunned until it regains at least one point of Intelligence. - Intellect Devourer

half the time, 3d6 will be 11 or higher.