D&D 5e Overflow - 2014-08-20 (page 1 of 3)

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12:08 AM

PHB is the top selling book on Amazon right now.

12:21 AM

0

Q: How to determine surprise when only part of a side is stealthy?

Here’s the basic rule for Surprise (Player’s Basic Rules, p. 69): If neither side tries to be stealthy, they automatically notice each other. Otherwise, the DM compares the Dexterity (Stealth) checks of anyone hiding with the passive Wisdom (Perception) score of each creature on the opposing ...

dnd-5e surprise

Joshua Aslan Smith

12:37 AM

@waxeagle If only it didnt have to come at such a cost as all the pervasive 4e bashing Im seeing everywhere when I see reviews of 5e

@waxeagle how much was HOTDQ on amazon?

Hey guys, it’s D&D chat now eh?

My FLGS had the PHB early, picked up a copy on Sunday. ($20 more than Amazon, but I don’t mind supporting local business.)

I had basically ignored all of the D&D Next hype, read the Basic rules lately, and was surprised by how much I liked it.

Seems like “AD&D done right” more than “D&D Next” to me.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@BraddSzonye good on you for finding the right chat

serious 5e discussion is currently contraband in main chat

Oh! I didn’t even notice this was a side room.

I was just responding to the previous discussion.

Yeah, there was drama. It got silly.

What's the drawing event for?

Ah, I can imagine.

Joshua Aslan Smith

12:50 AM

So my perspective is that I came into RPGs in college playing some kinda whitewolf game (some of us were vamps or wolves but there were also mortals)

but didnt get serioiusly into them until after undergrad via 4e

hardcore 4e player and GM

I did the whole playtest through

@tridus have you read grace's meta post

@JoshuaAslanSmith World of Darkness. It's actually multiple "games" using one system that fit into the same world.

Joshua Aslan Smith

15

Q: RPG Stack Exchange D&D 5th Edition Contest - Player's Handbook Edition

Monster Manual Raffle Open Now August 19th marks when the Player's Handbook's major release came out. The Monster Manual comes out in September, though close enough to be October. So until the day, post good upvoted questions about 5th Edition for a chance to win a free copy of the Monste...

discussion site-promotion

@tridus yeah I know this Im just not sure what book we ran

or if the GM used an amalgam of books

@JoshuaAslanSmith Oh, that'd do it. Thanks.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@BraddSzonye there are things I like and things I dont about 5e so far

the primacy of magic users for multi-target damage is still a bit overwhelming

also I know in basic that magic users got way more utility

not sure how it shakes out with the other class options in PHB yet

On the one hand, “Fighters Linear, Wizards Quadratic” has long been a problem for D&D.

12:59 AM

@waxeagle My FLGS sold out of their entire first shipment of Player's Handbooks after having them for 1 day.

On the other hand, it used to be “Wizards Difficult, Fighters Easy” which helped with introducing new players to the game. And D&D4 made it “Fighters Just As Difficult”

That's what I was thinking. The idea of people expecting D&D where full casters aren't supreme at high level is kind of odd to me

A happy medium would be nice.

I gotta say, reading the PHB has gotten me excited about a bunch of different characters. I read through the different class options and kept going, “Hey, this is a nice take on the classic class, and – WHOA NINJA MONKS”

@Dyndrilliac That's great. Nice to see a game selling well

WHOA BATMAN PALADINS

1:06 AM

@Tridus Indeed! It used to be that the only thing that the store was able to make decent money on was MtG and Warhammer. The D&D release has allowed them to break profit records.

@Dyndrilliac That's great!

I've got a few months on the 3.5 campaign I'm running, so I'm not in the market for new books yet. By time I am, all three core ones should be out

So that's nice

1:19 AM

@JoshuaAslanSmith like $23ish?

@JoshuaAslanSmith yeah...it's a shame. I chalk most of that up to crappy marketing + pathfinder's success at continuing 3.5 grognardom

I also suspect 4e's superficial similarity to MMO mechanics which were popular at the time offended a particular group of players (I don't think they perfectly overlap with "grognards") who felt that TRPGs were inherently superior to CRPGs.

@Tridus Yea, I'm waiting for the Monster Manual. As soon as it is out I can convert the last of my existing 3.5 campaigns to 5th. Until then I've suspended it to run official content for both my personal home group ad ly local store's chapter of the Adventurer's League. I've also spent a few sessions introducing my home group to Shadowrun 4th and 5th but they both didn't go over as well due to the rather complex rules involved.

Seeing the flagship TRPG use some MMO-style mechanics must've been a wake-up call to people who used the difference in mechanics between TRPGs and CRPGs as the lynchpin of their belief in the superiority of their chosen medium.

@BESW yeah, that would be a bit of a stunner

And, well, 4e made it very clear it wasn't going to be supporting any playstyle which didn't have "tactical combat simulation" at the heart of the experience.

And some people felt it was necessary to be offended by that focused playstyle choice.

1:31 AM

I’ve been through several edition changes, and every single one has had the current and previous edition fans getting vicious on each other.

@BESW Speaking as someone who hated 4th edition, it wasn't the tactical nature of the game that I didn't like; I've been using grids and minis/tokens since AD&D in the 90's. It just didn't feel like D&D to me. It was like some alien thing that was trying to conquer my species. I felt the same way about 4th edition as I did about the Star Trek TNG brain parasite body snatcher slugs that try to take over Star Fleet.

I liked D&D4 quite a bit, it was a fun game, but combined with my friends’ play styles it left me desperately wanting more role-playing and less tactical combat.

@Dyndrilliac Yeah, I also agree with the “not really D&D” criticism. I mean, in some ways it obviously still was, but in other ways it was the Pod Person version of D&D.

I liked the difference, because I'd gotten very tired of 3.5; I resisted 4e for years after it came out until I was totally fed up with trying to make 3.5 work for my group.

Eventually I realised that neither 3.5 nor 4e was going to accommodate the playstyle I wanted (nothing like D&D can), but 4e's organisation and coherence was a breath of fresh air after the morass of ill-fitting parts that was 3.5.

@BESW Yes, exactly! I was really, really tired of 3.5 when D&D4 came out. I’d run a D&D3 group to epic levels and it exhausted me as a DM.

As a player I like customization options, but as a DM that either means a lot more work, or guessing whether the crap you left out was important.

I felt like 4e was at least honest with me about what it did well and where its shortcomings were, while 3.5 desperately pleaded with me to believe that it could do anything, it just needed a few more subsystems to make it work.

1:36 AM

That’s one thing D&D4 got right. They gave players lots of choices, but for the DM it was like picking from a menu unless you really wanted to customize the important stuff.

Personally, I found that the superficial resemblance to MMOs annoyed people more than its actual mechanics.

(something subtle about the books from this edition compared to last. The contrast is toned down. the page are darker, the text is basically all black on a subtly patterned off white, vs 4e's stark white pages)

Eventually I decided 4e wasn't a good match, but we parted on good terms while my break with 3.5 was messy and dramatic.

I think the biggest part of the problem with 3.5 were the power-curve/splat-book relationship and the situation with the dozens of different skills. Fortunately, those are more easily fixed by a DM than the problems with 4th edition, IMHO.

@waxeagle I’m noticing that too. My 42-year-old eyes desperately need glasses, and they are not appreciating the graphic design of D&D5.

1:37 AM

@Dyndrilliac Yeah, the first time I saw an artificer was a big wake-up call that all wasn't perfect with 3.5.

@Miniman Yup. Once I actually sat down and gave it a chance, 4e's MMO appearance faded away. Granted, I was trying it after Essentials.

@BraddSzonye bummer. I'm finding it easier to read. Switching back to a 4e sourcebook a minute ago was a bit of a shock

slightly smaller text in d&d5 too

@BESW Yeah, I still couldn't quite get myself over it. But that stems from my problems with MMOs, which is a rant this chat doesn't need...

I’m also taking a while to warm up to the new illustration style.

@BraddSzonye And when a DM did want to customise, it set no precedent. Using totally different stats for monsters and for PCs meant I could give monsters whatever I needed without PCs going "Hey, I want to do that!"

1:40 AM

Yes, that was nice too!

About halfway through my 30-level 4e campaign, I threw out all the premade stuff and invented almost all my own monster powers. It was AWESOME. Also draining. But so much fun.

I always really liked making NPCs with PC rules. Great way to burn some of the urge for your own character

I recall using some cool controller-villains in D&D4, that got my players to go WHOA COOL and start looking forward to their controller-type powers.

@BraddSzonye This is the biggest reason I hope they decide to release a graphically stripped down digital version of the book in PDF. I tend to favor the Printer Friendly versions of the freely available documents.

I liked creating strong monster synergy in encounters.

1:42 AM

@Dyndrilliac I recall there being printer-friendly versions of the Basic rules. I should probably get those.

@BraddSzonye it's an odd mix to me. Some of the art is the highly produced (for lack of a better word. It's really clean feeling) art. And a lot of it is more hand drawn, fady line stuff that looks like you're seeing it through a bit of a haze. I generally like the art, but the mix has struck me as odd

Best example is the priest who did a massive AoE of very minor psychic damage, and the mind flayer who could teleport next to anyone who took psychic damage once each turn.

@waxeagle Yeah, the blurry illustrations are a bit strange

@BraddSzonye There are, I find them much easier to read primarily due to the lack of the "Parchment" background they use in the regular versions. Better contrast IMO.

@Dyndrilliac And often they're easier to copy-paste from, for some reason.

(As a book designer, I'm taking notes on the contrast stuff.)

1:44 AM

@BESW That's to do with the crazy behind-the-scenes formatting of PDFs.

some of my favorite art is the conditions section though. great stuff

@waxeagle I really like the class illustrations, they did a nice job of showing some different archetypes.

I have a lot of problem copy-pasting from the v0.2 rulebook, it’s like it’s got some weird stuff going on to prevent copy & paste

@Miniman I should really study that more... [sigh] I'm much happier on the print side of things.

@BESW @BraddSzonye Honestly the easiest way to copy/paste from PDFs is using a screencap or snipping tool

Joshua Aslan Smith

1:47 AM

@BraddSzonye 4e fixed that which is why it feels like back-sliding in 5e

If shipping out here weren't so expensive, I'd be more inclined to just have physical copies of everything and happily type out stuff by hand.

@JoshuaAslanSmith The D&D4 cure was worse than the disease in some ways, though.

@BESW The fact I could do this was a big deal for me in my brief time as a 4e DM. D&D 3.x monster stat blocks are... ridiculously complicated. Like, stupidly, awfully, overly complicated. As an inexperienced DM, it seems like 3.x tried its best to make things difficult for me. But 4e made things pretty simple. And monsters were simple. And I crafted a few of my own, taking bits from other monsters and modifying them, and it was simple enough I could understand what I was doing.

(For context to others: A few sessions into 4e, I too realised that no edition of D&D was going to support the kind of story I wanted, so I moved to Fate.)

Making fighters and wizards equally difficult to play made it tougher for us to bring new players into the game once we got past chump levels.

@BraddSzonye From my perspective playing with newbies (all of us being newbies), all the classes - fighters and wizards, we had both - were easier to play.

Every class having their powers listed inside the class itself, in order was a big help.

1:51 AM

@BESW having delved somewhat into generating PDFs programatically. This way lies madness

Joshua Aslan Smith

@BraddSzonye patently disagree as BESW said 4e was upfront and honest about what the system was meant for, a heroic party of adventurers cutting their way through evil monsters to attain glory and greatness in a tactical wargame-esque setting

4e had very resilient core rules and classes were balanced very well

@BraddSzonye One of my players (Trogdor on this site) was brilliant at making characters in 4e; I asked him to make the simplest possible PC for new players, and he delivered even at the highest levels of play.

Joshua Aslan Smith

yeah I also feel like the 5e monster stat blocks are backsliding as well

very complicated

/difficult to read at a glance

vs. 4e style

I played both D&D3 and D&D4 to level 20ish. I had new players join both campaigns around that time. For D&D3 that was manageable. For D&D4, it was overwhelming, because the new players had just way too much to choose and learn, just to get started.

Joshua Aslan Smith

I literally convert all 5e monsters I use into 4e style stat blocks using power2ool

1:53 AM

It took some effort on his part, but the final result was a PC with almost no moving parts to keep track of (Essentials Slayer class).

New players couldn’t really play a paragon-level character unless you played it for them, and they definitely couldn’t create one.

@JoshuaAslanSmith Mmmm, power2ool.

@BraddSzonye The same is true of 3.5, though.

A new player probably couldn’t create a mid-level AD&D2/D&D3 character, but there were lots of builds they could play if you did the build for them.

If anything 3.5 was harder because each new PC build often required learning entirely new subsystems, so it took longer to be able to get proficient with character creation as a general concept.

D&D5 looks especially good for that usage.

AD&D1 was by far the best for jumping into the game midstream (if your DM gave you reasonable magic items)

D&D5 looks about equally good for that.

I never really mastered building D&D4 characters, so I don’t have a good feel for whether it was better or worse than building D&D3 characters. I enjoyed both, but then I also enjoy building Hero System characters.

2:00 AM

@BraddSzonye Once you got half a dozen tools into your bag in 5e, building L1s is a relative snap. Building heroic tier characters is still fairly easy (Specially if you did E-classes). By Paragon there was enough choice that it would take a couple of hours, and building to epic was quite a bit more of a chore.

@BraddSzonye I dunno, I didn't experience this. I'll take fighter level 1: here, there's a mark. You get some class features. You get these powers. Now, out of these, pick an encounter and a daily.

(obviously character builder + compendium + WOTC char-op boards are assumed there)

@doppelgreener I’m not talking about Fighter 1, which is pretty easy in all versions of D&D, although a little trickier in D&D4.

Sure, they have more bits to work with, but that's not an awful lot to learn (not more than all of 3.5e's subsystems, anyway), and for me at least, the relatively small power list is less intimidating to deal with than the enormous library of feats available.

I’m talking about Fighter 15.

2:01 AM

Oh, right. Yeah I would not expect any newbie to have an easy time diving into level 15 all on their own.

Teaching an RPG newb to play a Fighter 15 in D&D4 was just not possible for us, even when we built it for them.

Then again, I wouldn't take Fighter as the simple class to begin with xP

Like Trogdor! His newbie build wasn't a fighter.

@doppelgreener Fighter (Slayer), the Essentials striker version of Fighter.

Not all newbies like playing simple bashy fighters, but lots of them do.

@BESW \o/ essentials would've made that a lot easier

2:02 AM

It used melee basic attacks only, and had no daily powers.

(I wouldn't even recommend playing a fighter for newbies in other editions!)

And it was pretty easy to find PP/ED options that just gave raw numbers and a couple extra encounter powers. The trick was finding feats which didn't increase complexity.

@BESW this.

(and items too)

We didn’t have Essentials when I played. :)

@BraddSzonye it's my go to set of classes for new groups.

2:05 AM

We got back into D&D4 briefly after Essentials came out, but it just never gelled.

starts easy, stays fairly easy 1-30

Joshua Aslan Smith

love me some e-classes

The knight is arguably the easiest class in the game (maybe the e-sorc)

Rebooted our campaign a couple times after TPKs and general character dissatisfaction, but we just didn’t have the time and motivation to get it off the ground again.

Joshua Aslan Smith

tpks?

tpks should be rare in 4e

@BraddSzonye Yeah, 4e is definitely not a casual system to use.

Joshua Aslan Smith

2:06 AM

hmmm yeah I could see them happening often enough if everyone is not suitably optimized

Near-TPKs were not uncommon for us in D&D4, especially at 1st level.

@JoshuaAslanSmith Or in Dark Sun. Trogdor wiped us several times in Dark Sun.

Joshua Aslan Smith

Love me some dark sun

were you guys getting alt rewards enough?

Yes.

Joshua Aslan Smith

they should, like magic items, be handed out fairly often

gotcha

its true mathwise there is a light decrease with inherent

2:08 AM

@BraddSzonye Ah, yeah. 4e had some very bad advice about encounter balance for boss fights, and it was most painful at level one; Keep on the Shadowfell's first miniboss is infamous.

@BESW My group did OK there but almost TPKed near the beginning of KotS.

It was actually the Red Box starter adventure that TPKed them when we came back to the game.

They aggroed dragon + other stuffs and then got very unlucky with the timing of their barbarian bloodying the dragon.

It basically got a double breath weapon with everyone crowded in a small room.

@BESW Anyway, at first glance D&D5 looks like a much better casual RPG than D&D4 was.

Which I like a lot.

D&D4 was a great game but I’m iffy on it as an RPG.

@BraddSzonye The goblin Irontooth, right?

Joshua Aslan Smith

@BraddSzonye have you tried the most casual of D&D systems?

aka

dungeon world

If dungeon world had grid combat, whooo might have to divorce my wife just to marry it

@BESW They did OK with Irontooth. It was the first big bunch of goblins when you got inside the actual keep that they had trouble with.

Heard of Dungeon World, have a copy of Apocalypse World.

Ah, yeah.

2:13 AM

I like it but I don’t think it’s a good fit for most of my gamer friends.

Joshua Aslan Smith

its based on the apoc world system but in many ways it does its own thing

many conventions in apoc world dont exist in dungeon world

there arent really class specific social moves, basically no PVP going on except the general aid or interfere move

my selling point is the system feels and plays like what you imagined D&D to be before you actually played D&D

That’s a tough sell because I first encountered D&D because my friends were playing it. In 1980ish.

My first real knowledge of D&D was hearing a bunch of my friends playing Castle Amber and wondering what it was about.

Joshua Aslan Smith

thats what I mean, like what you imagined D&D would be like based on stories and marketing material

everyone is cool, everyone does cool things, cool things are always happening

No, really, I can’t relate to that at all.

Joshua Aslan Smith

Dungeon World is very much about cool stuff

gotcha

2:18 AM

When I was a kid, most of the buzz around D&D was from Pat Pulling, not TSR marketing.

I just saw people playing, and jumped in with it, and had fun.

And there were other RPGs, but not many, because that’s when they first started to proliferate.

I’ll definitely have to check out Dungeon World sometime, but if the feel is anything like Apocalypse World then it does not line up much at all with my D&D experience or expectations.

My first exposure were the NES and SNES video games in the early 90's based on AD&D. I soon realized that they were a poor substitute for the real thing.

Later folks! Dinner time.

Joshua Aslan Smith

2:33 AM

its pretty different from the tone of apocalypse world

3:03 AM

Bone Devil.

Hooked polearm is decent. Otherwise it's yet another claw-claw-bite monster.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@Magician so many claw claw bite monsters

5e players guide, silver your weapons as soon as you are able to

Is there any downside?

Joshua Aslan Smith

nope

just money

let me triple check that though

Also, have we seen any higher level monster that's resistant to only, say, piercing but not bludgeoning or slashing?

Joshua Aslan Smith

Si l v e r e d W e a p o n s
Some monsters that have immunity or resistance
to nonmagical weapons are susceptible to silver
weapons, so cautious adventurers invest extra coin to
plate their weapons with silver. You can silver a single
weapon or ten pieces o f ammunition for 100 gp. This
cost represents not only the price o f the silver, but the
time and expertise needed to add silver to the weapon
without making it less effective.

100 gp is laughably easy once you get a few levels

3:11 AM

So, a golfbag of silvered weapons.

Lovely.

Joshua Aslan Smith

especially if you can haggle with your DM to let you halve the price if you provide sufficient silver (art loot anyone?)

which is sorta bull considering no electroplating

@JoshuaAslanSmith What do you mean, "no electroplating"?

And now, because I'm evil, a bone devil from 13th Age:

Large 9th level troop [devil]
Initiative: +12
Bone claw +14 vs. AC—80 damage, and the bone devil can make
a doom venom sting attack as a free action.
Doom venom sting +14 vs. PD—20 damage, and the target can’t
use recoveries, even involuntarily (save ends)
R: Bone javelin +14 vs. AC—50 damage
Devil’s due (Free!): When you choose to add the escalation die to
an attack against a bone devil, one bone devil in the battle can
teleport to a nearby location it can see as a move action once
later this battle. Multiple attacks accumulate into multiple

Joshua Aslan Smith

Electroplating is a process that uses electrical current to reduce dissolved metal cations so that they form a coherent metal coating on an electrode. The term is also used for electrical oxidation of anions onto a solid substrate, as in the formation silver chloride on silver wire to make silver/silver-chloride electrodes. Electroplating is primarily used to change the surface properties of an object (e.g. abrasion and wear resistance, corrosion protection, lubricity, aesthetic qualities, etc.), but may also be used to build up thickness on undersized parts or to form objects by electroforming...

@JoshuaAslanSmith I know what electroplating is: What do you mean, "no electroplating?"

Joshua Aslan Smith

3:13 AM

I make some assumptions about D&D but maybe because this edition is 3ish inspired theres full on steampunkness going on and im wrong

Im saying youd have to wrap the blade in a thick enough layer of silver that it would compromise the performance vs. a full steel counterpart.

There's evidence electroplating technology is 2000 years old in the real world, and we don't have people who can shoot lightning from their fingers.

Joshua Aslan Smith

hahaha

So again: What do you mean, "no electroplating?"

Joshua Aslan Smith

I feel this is like ancient batteries in that we have examples from a few civilizations, but nothing widespread enough to impact the course of human development in any sufficent form

even with electroplating the edge of the weapon should be compromised

silver will bent very easily compared to steel

Aye, but this is where it stops being useful to compare D&Dland to the real world.

3:16 AM

Silvering a weapon used to give it -1 to damage.

Joshua Aslan Smith

I guess I care about all this more post-witcher because why not just carry 2 swords

1 is for monsters

D&D has magical weapons, and any metalsmith who wants electroplating can pay the local witch to twiddle her fingers at the thing.

Joshua Aslan Smith

1 is for mundane

I guess I like to minimize the steampunk aspect of D&D as much as I can

Throw in rituals/spells that allow magical manipulation of forms...

I think I know what you mean, but I've no idea how that's steampunk, or even magipunk.

Joshua Aslan Smith

I tend to think of D&D as a very close to the original Shannara trilogy

3:18 AM

0

Q: (D+D 5e) Does a reach weapon allow you to threaten squares 10 feet away?

In D+D 5e, does a reach weapon allow you to threaten squares up to 10 feet away for the purpose of Opportunity Attacks or does it just allow you to attack squares up to 10 feet away? There is some confusion because PHB p.147 says that a reach weapon adds 5 feet to your reach when you attack with...

dnd-5e opportunity-attack

Wait... "Damage Resistance: bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical weapons that aren’t silvered." So by level 9 you need to have either a magic or silvered weapon to deal with this thing? Oh-kay.

Joshua Aslan Smith

yeah

@Magician yeah, there is also a monster that requires magic or adamantine weapons

and resist or immune to non magic weapon damage types is fairly common

Joshua Aslan Smith

yeah its super common from what I saw even in next at levl 6

to the point that it really really gimped the paladin who started with magic armor instead of a magic weapon

especially because paladins are MAD

So, on the face of it, mid-level monsters can be overcome with a golfclub of weapons of different types and materials, but all those worries fade as soon as you get a +1 weapon of choice.

3:26 AM

yep

DM mental note: no +1 weapons ;)

why would they even bother

seriously what is the point of even making a level 9 creature immune to nonmagical weapons

Yeah, I have to say. If you want to play the game of desperately matching weapons to monsters, don't give such an easy out.

"ha-haaa! your weapon is completely mundane and therefore inferior to all other weapons! such weapons can't hurt me!" - but it couldn't hurt you very well anyway

@doppelgreener I... guess they stand by their "you can play without magic items" promise. Which is... good? Mind you, it's D&D, magic loot is a huge part of it.

3:28 AM

@Magician you can play without magic items like you can play with a character who has no limbs and is blind

doesn't mean it should be done

Don't forget, they're trying to get back to their roots with 5e. Magic items were originally very rare

@Miniman But are they in 5e after level 6?

@doppelgreener I think that's firmly in the "GM decides" land. Which is where 5e dwells.

Going off the starter set, they're definitely rarer than they were in 3.5

I'll be interested to see if HotDQ hands them out like crazy or keeps them significant

@Miniman Starter only goes to 5, which is about the same as level 1 or 2 in 4e in terms of power, I'm told. I don't think we can draw conclusions from it.

3:33 AM

@Magician Magic item rarity is always up to the GM, with the exception of a published campaign. I think it's reasonable to draw conclusions about published campaigns from a published campaign

@Miniman It's a published campaign which goes to level 5, we can't draw conclusions from it on magic item rarity in higher levels. Such as whether it's reasonable to expect 9th level party to have +1 weapons.

Well, sure, everything is always up to the DM. That's half of D&D's tagline: we can do whatever, so long as the DM is willing to fiddle with things. But the question is, what actually comes naturally to the system? What's supposed to happen? What do the adventures do?

stuff gets written based on assumptions. for example, monsters get written on the assumption the players have bothered to take levels.

@doppelgreener That's why I was using the starter adventure as a source of information. Obviously HotDQ will be a better guide to magic item rarity

which is a pretty reasonable assumption mind

@Miniman right, ok.

@doppelgreener Now I have this weird mental image of a party refusing to level up because they don't want to be a non-prime numbered level

Joshua Aslan Smith

3:38 AM

silliness

thanks WOTC for making reach ridiculously complicated in how you describe it

and having to reference 3 different pages to get the lowdown

@JoshuaAslanSmith I... want to quote 13th Age on the topic. It's becoming a habit.

Joshua Aslan Smith

I want to quote dungeon world

haha

or 4e

Lets compare, shall we? :)

@JoshuaAslanSmith Reach is bad enough, but 'threaten' is so complicated it's ridiculous

Reach Tricks
Adventurer Tier: We don’t want to bother with ticky-tacky rules for reach and reach weapons as they exist in other games. But if you are the player who loves using halberds and longspears to get unexpected advantages in combat, and your character already knows how to use those weapons, take this feat.
Once per battle, tell the GM how you are using your weapon’s reach to perform an unexpected stunt. To use the stunt, you must roll a 6+ on a d20. (Examples would include getting an opportunity attack against an enemy who disengaged and then moved, striking a nearby enemy you are …

Joshua Aslan Smith

3:41 AM

OPPORTUNITY ATTACK: OPPORTUNITY ACTION

Melee Basic Attack: An opportunity attack is a melee basic attack.

Moving Provokes: If an enemy leaves a square adjacent to you, you can make an opportunity attack against that enemy. However, you can’t make one if the enemy shifts or teleports or is forced to move away by a pull, a push, or a slide.

Ranged and Area Powers Provoke: If an enemy adjacent to you uses a ranged power or an area power, you can make an opportunity attack against that enemy.

One per Combatant’s Turn: You can take only one opportunity action during another combatant’s turn,…

its super explicit about everything

4e Above, Dungeon World Below....

Defy Danger

When you act despite an imminent threat or suffer a calamity, say how you deal with it and roll. If you do it

by powering through, +Str
by getting out of the way or acting fast, +Dex
by enduring, +Con
with quick thinking, +Int
through mental fortitude, +Wis
using charm and social grace, +Cha

✴On a 10+, you do what you set out to, the threat doesn’t come to bear. ✴On a 7–9, you stumble, hesitate, or flinch: the GM will offer you a worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice.

You defy danger when you do something in the face of impending peril. This may seem like a catch-all. …

I love dungeon world because of how often I as a GM get to offer hard choices

Is it just me, or is there no good way to control an outsider summoned via gate? Magic circle can contain them, but I can't find a way to gain their services. Without it, gate would seem to be limited to good characters summoning good celestials to do good deeds.

Or evil characters summoning demons because "screw that town and everyone in it".

Joshua Aslan Smith

hah

@Magician True! A very important use that I didn't think about

Joshua Aslan Smith

from a GM/DM perspective deals deals deals

the demon should definitely offer mephisto level bargins

3:56 AM

Like this, but with magic:

user image

Joshua Aslan Smith

and the good aligned creatures should be willing to help out good causes but impose a cost or oath on the party

Yeah, I suppose it's still useful. I'm gonna miss those free wish spells though

Joshua Aslan Smith

there is a mercenary nature to D&Ds patheons, it should cut both ways

@JoshuaAslanSmith And when making deals with chaotic creatures, it should just cut in the direction of the player :)

Joshua Aslan Smith

eh?

4:01 AM

Lawful creatures keep their deals (sometimes). Chaotic creatures almost invariably don't

Joshua Aslan Smith

players should always get something, otherwise why make the bargain at all, but what they bargained for may just turn out to be a little bit different, this is a classic devil's agreement situation

I feel like with chaotic it should be you got what you want but its not what you wanted

like you got it x 10

Devils, yes. Demons, don't alter bargains so much as ignore them

Joshua Aslan Smith

it all depends on the lore of the setting for how binding these agreements are

though Dead in Thay had a pit fiend say, remove the sword and I will crush your enemies, and if you did he does, but he says he will save you for last

Well that's the kind of spell I was looking for to accompany gate, something which would hold a creature to a bargain.

And yep, devils are experts at twisting deals in their favour

Joshua Aslan Smith

obligatory followup to conan video

3 hours later…

7:02 AM

0

Q: Are there Race/Alignment restrictions for classes in the PHB?

I'm looking through the PHB and I notice that none of the Classes explicitly state an Alignment or Race limitation. There is flavor text, but there is nothing that looks like a rule. I see some stuff scattered around, e.g., Alignments lists Paladins under Lawful Good. This seems like an actual r...

0

Q: Does a cleric's alignment have to be close to their deity's?

Exactly what it says. Is there any requirement that the alignment of a cleric be the same or close to that of their deity? (Obviously, for RP reasons it would be preferred, but I'm asking if it has to be.)

2 hours later…

9:12 AM

it says there's a PHB giveaway in 11 hours, but when I click it it brings me here...

9:43 AM

0

Q: Does D&D require magical weapons?

In the Legend and Lore articles where Mike Mearls explains the design goals of D&D 5e, he mentions in one of them that there will be no assumption that character acquire magical weapons and armor. First, we don't assume magic items are part of a character's abilities. The math behind the sys...

2 hours later…

11:27 AM

0

Q: Is there a PARRY option on DnD 5e?

In the basic set there is an NPC, a fighter that has a Parry reaction that makes him to roll 1D6 and reduce damage, and I also remember in some beta test see the parry power/action. I dont have (yet) the PHB, is somehting like that? A feat maybe? I always liked the idea of parry for all charact...

11:43 AM

wasn't 5e supposed to me less legalistic than older editions of D&D?

← 1 message moved from RPG General Chat

@MrLemon It was, why?

4

Q: Does a reach weapon allow you to threaten squares 10 feet away?

In D&D 5e, does a reach weapon allow you to threaten squares up to 10 feet away for the purpose of Opportunity Attacks or does it just allow you to attack squares up to 10 feet away? There is some confusion because PHB p.147 says that a reach weapon adds 5 feet to your reach when you attack with...

dnd-5e opportunity-attack

apparently not everyone got that memo

Edge cases happen, and this could be clarified with future errata/FAQs. I do greatly prefer the other game's approach (see a bit higher in this chat).

Joshua Aslan Smith

12:01 PM

@mrlemon I think its a case of them trying to use "plain english" and not caring what the table decides that means at home

of course because people want to play right (myself included) and because of organized play we will need to get some of this hashed out

12:12 PM

Organized play is a good point, and I see that this question is actually valid, because the designers screwed up more than just this one sentence apparently

I have no idea how organized play would work, seeing as how GM fiat is a central part of 5e. But then again, I've never participated in any organized play.

I play some Pathfinder Society, and even there it's kind of messy. Recurrent issues get a "Word of God"-Ruling by the Campaign coordinator there, but far from everything is clear.

Do you get a consistent GM, or do you show up and get assigned to a group that's available on that day?

@gatherer818 the drawing will be held in here

its organized as a chat event

@JoshuaAslanSmith "plain English" is, ironically, less clear than technical English with strict conventions

or perhaps that isn't ironic

because like

magic the gathering would be incomprehensible if it were not so technical and formalised

12:29 PM

different forms for different purposes. Technical writing has it's purpose as does florid prose

"plain english" is...as easily understood as it is misunderstood.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@doppelgreener Oh I agree

many common words have multiple meanings based on context

ok, gonna go train for a while, see if I can figure out where I went so wrong on this module yesterday

Joshua Aslan Smith

that earlier question about surprise round because the designers choose to say "a threat" vs. "any threat"

style guides people

if you write a game, make a style guide

have the style guide describe how everything is referred to

and refer to something only the way the style guide says

Joshua Aslan Smith

Basically people think anything written in conversational english is easier to understand because, hey, they use those words all the time every day, they know what it means, they don't have to invest into learning the taxonomy or lexicon of a system then. Its false though because more blood and ink will be spilled over it (and all the time to do so) than if you had just written in a defined jargon.

12:33 PM

Wiio's laws are "humoristically formulated serious observations about how human communication usually fails except by accident" made by Professor Osmo Antero Wiio in 1978. The fundamental Wiio's law states that "Communication usually fails, except by accident". The full set of laws is as follows: Communication usually fails, except by accident. If communication can fail, it will. If communication cannot fail, it still most usually fails. If communication seems to succeed in the intended way, there's a misunderstanding. If you are content with your message, communication certainly fails. If a message...

conversational english fails except by accident

Joshua Aslan Smith

@doppelgreener I have to believe this was a conscious choice given how Mearls rode herd on both this and essentials. Dude clearly knows how to write a technically worded set of documents that interlink

@JoshuaAslanSmith maybe insufficient editing/reviewing

so something just slipped through the cracks?

Joshua Aslan Smith

Maybe? but the whole point of the staggered release was for better editing and review for each books to cut down on errata

I think they choose to make it conversational because grognards but also in an appeal to newbies/the average person

because 5e has had the swell behind it popular media that no previous edition ever did

oh did they shirk convention in general?

Joshua Aslan Smith

12:50 PM

I wanna strangle RSConley

@JoshuaAslanSmith one of those days...

on happier thoughts, @JoshuaAslanSmith did you see that the Dungeon Scape crew is trying to get beta live in "the next couple of weeks or so"

I'm a bit stunned they didn't go beta at GenCon...but it's consistent with everything else around 5e, the "it's done when it's done" mentality

Wait, they don't have a basic character builder out to coincide with the PHB release?..

@Magician nope

they had form fillable sheets out shortly after Basic, so you can do a character that way, but no, digital character builder beta is still pending

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