User Xirema | chat.stackexchange.com

Xirema

May 9 15:23

@Pyrotechnical It's an impossible situation they created for themselves by choosing not to just do a clean break and go for a 6th Edition instead.

Xirema

May 9 00:19

Things I like: Weapon Masteries, All Feats are now Half Feats, some general re-tuning of classes/subclasses that were underperforming.

Things I dislike: the homogenization of subclasses (makes no sense for Sorcerers & Warlocks to get their subclasses at level 3), some general lack of polish on spells/features (do a google search for Conjure Minor Elementals)

Just to name the stuff immediately on my mind, could probably name some other stuff (in both categories) if I spent more time thinking about it

Xirema

May 8 23:05

@Otaku There's more things I like in 5e2024 than things I dislike, overall, so my group did convert over. But for sure there's a lot I don't like.

Xirema

May 6 21:56

Which it might very well be a solution, but as you've already observed, it's much less flavorful and interesting overall

Xirema

May 6 21:55

@Axoren Well, yes, that was the eventual point I was getting to: they tried to solve this problem by reducing the complexity of the problem, which, as you said, takes away responsibility.

Xirema

May 6 21:53

But it is yet another example of 5e offloading too much responsibility for game design onto DMs.

Xirema

May 6 21:52

@Axoren Not saying it's not.

Xirema

May 6 21:49

Which is all viable IF the DM is thinking about that

Xirema

May 6 21:48

@Axoren implying your campaign is going to lead you somewhere where there's a functional blacksmith, or that your party is willing to spare the money to get silvering done

Xirema

May 6 21:47

In a game with more magic items, that's not a problem because you just replace it in a few weeks, but in 5e's economy, you might just be completely screwed out of having an answer to a really difficult kind of opponent

Xirema

May 6 21:46

SO, this creates a lot of problems where the DM might issue you the one magical sword you're getting for the next 3-4 months of play, and that one sword is good at dealing with some damage resistant foes, but not others

Xirema

May 6 21:46

Namely: the baseline 5e rules make magic items pretty scarce. They've tried to "fix" that a little with the supplemental books (Xanathar's, Tasha's, etc) but even if DMs are actually using those (not as much as they probably hoped) the amount of items going around is still low.

Xirema

May 6 21:44

@Axoren It's a knock-on effect of 5e already having an underbaked core for DMs to spring off from—the specific context in this case being magic items

Xirema

Apr 16 16:48

The way I've always done it is you just implement it as a regular 2d grid, but offset where tiles are physically located when you render it

Xirema

Apr 16 16:48

@GcL I've done it in various programming languages, never Java specifically

Xirema

Mar 28 13:53

I've taken up lurking as a hobby

Xirema

Jan 28 22:11

I'm not sure who at WotC looked at Bladesingers and said "we should make this class stronger" 🤣

Xirema

Jan 28 22:10

@V2Blast The new UA lets Bladesingers use INT for their weapon attacks & damage—but only while Bladesinging.

Xirema

Sep 23, 2024 17:32

Str/Con/Int: Artificer, Eldritch Knight
Str/Con/Cha: Paladin, maybe certain kinds of Bladelock
Str/Wis/Cha: Paladin
Dex/Int/Cha: Arcane Trickster, Bladesinger, Bladelock

Xirema

Sep 20, 2024 15:48

Which begs the question: what are the missing Backgrounds?

Xirema

Sep 20, 2024 15:46

Name		Str	Dex	Con	Int	Wis	Cha
Soldier		X	X	X
Artisan		X	X		X
Sailor		X	X			X
Entertainer	X	X				X
[???]		X		X	X
Farmer		X		X		X
[???]		X		X			X
Guard		X			X	X
Noble		X			X		X
[???]		X				X	X
Criminal		X	X	X
Guide			X	X		X
Charlatan		X	X			X
Scribe			X		X	X
[???]			X		X		X
Wayfarer		X			X	X
Sage				X	X	X
Merchant			X	X		X
Hermit				X		X	X
Acolyte					X	X	X

Xirema

Sep 20, 2024 15:46

I put together a table showing off all the different combinations, and the four missing combinations.

Xirema

Sep 20, 2024 15:45

So looking through the new PHB2024, there's an interesting wrinkle in that the backgrounds cover almost every combination of three ability scores that you could choose from to increase—but not all of them.

Xirema

May 8, 2024 20:20

@GcL FoundryVTT has been my primary virtual tabletop for years. Occasionally groups try to use something like Tabletop Simulator, and they end up getting converted to Foundry pretty quickly.

Xirema

Feb 6, 2024 21:17

Xirema

Feb 6, 2024 21:17

@Phoenices giantitp.com/comics/oots0677.html

Xirema

Jan 6, 2024 02:50

I have found one way to get players to remember that they have Inspiration & try to use it, and it's through a roll macro I use at dawn each adventuring day, where a d100 is rolled, and a 20 or lower means they can't use the help action, and an 81 or higher means they gain Inspiration for the day. Then there's modifiers that can be added or subtracted to the roll based on various RP things that might or might not have happened during the previous day.

Xirema

Dec 21, 2023 02:13

@ElvinaMoonlight Like, in terms of what kinds of physical dice to buy?

Xirema

Dec 12, 2023 17:22

@KorvinStarmast Spooky Necromancer Voice: I aGrEeEeEeEe......

Xirema

Nov 2, 2023 21:52

It won't happen the first or second time, to be clear: it'll take three separate incidents before the lesson is learned, probably by three different major companies.

Xirema

Nov 2, 2023 21:52

I'm guessing it ends when the third major AI-related incident occurs and a bunch of companies realize that outsourcing their talent to a language model was a bad idea.

Xirema

Nov 2, 2023 21:51

The entire tech industry is entering/in a squeeze period right now.

Xirema

Oct 24, 2023 21:13

I think I'm at 200 hours a year on D&D, between a weekly session that usually goes about 3 hours, plus a "whenever we can get together" campaign that usually goes about 4 hours once a month.

Xirema

Oct 18, 2023 18:04

So a lot of the campaign is split between the south-western side of the continent, where there's plenty of dangers but lots of places to stay and rest (so it's more like normal D&D) and the north-eastern half of the continent, where it's basically not safe to rest anywhere, and it's more of a Gritty Realism adventure where resources are limited and have to be conserved more carefully.

Xirema

Oct 18, 2023 18:03

@GcL Yeah, that's kind of been the premise of my current campaign: the continent is split in half, and on one half is "civilization", and on the other half, the continent is overrun by demons and a fiendish "Creep" that is spreading out from a portal that opened up in the [former] capital city.

Xirema

Oct 17, 2023 23:58

So encounters tend to be shorter, especially if the party is trying to take them down before they risk their health.

Xirema

Oct 17, 2023 23:58

Well, we tend to get lots of combats between long rests. We're using a rest variant that's kind of a compromise between "gritty realism" and the normal rules (Short rests are still 1 hour, Long Rests are still 8 hours, but you only get Long Rests when resting in stable towns/cities, not when you're out in the wilderness) so combat is more of an attrition game and managing resources than a matter of whether one particularly powerful encounter will doom the party.

Xirema

Oct 17, 2023 23:55

@GcL It varies a lot. Sometimes only half an hour if it's meant to be a pretty quick encounter, but when you have 6 players you want to make sure they all get something to do, so I usually aim for something that's closer to an hour or two. Occasionally combat stretches across two sessions (especially when we're close to wrapping up an arc) but even then that usually only happens if combat starts near the end of a session.

Xirema

Oct 17, 2023 23:40

So I can give them the overall city map, and substitute in "Alchemy Lab the party is visiting because they're trying to purchase some specialized medicine" an hour or two later when the party is done fighting the guards who caught them sneaking into the city without a permit.

Xirema

Oct 17, 2023 23:37

Well, the party can't teleport yet (not reliably anyways: they have one recorded teleportation circle, and it goes to a place that's not usually very useful for them to be at), and the world map isn't constantly evolving, so even if I don't have the exact location the party is headed to, I usually at least have an approximate idea, and can substitute something in in the meantime.

Xirema

Oct 17, 2023 23:33

I've gotten away with, once or twice, generating a map mid-session as I get an inkling that the party is going to be headed in a different direction than I expected.

Xirema

Oct 17, 2023 23:29

But I also have a bank of generic battle maps I can use for different regions so if combat breaks out we at least have something that makes sense for the context of the fight

Xirema

Oct 17, 2023 23:29

Yeah, if the players go really off-script I have to just improvise a bunch lmao

Xirema

Oct 17, 2023 23:27

And there's a lot of descriptions/exposition you can elide because you have a Dungeondraft map I spent a half hour putting together that at least gets the gist of things across.

Xirema

Oct 17, 2023 23:26

I created a macro to help with Ability Checks to make sure modifiers get calculated correctly—especially helpful since I use the "Skills with Different Abilities" variant rule a lot, so instead of the player having to second guess what modifiers a "Constitution (Perception)" check should have, there's a few buttons that correctly add things together.

Xirema

Oct 17, 2023 23:24

Well, we're using a virtual tabletop (we're scattered across the continent IRL) so there's a lot of fiddly stuff that just gets reduced down to "press this button to do your attack + damage roll".

Xirema

Oct 17, 2023 23:05

@ThomasMarkov About the same as always. In the middle of a D&D campaign that has 6 players (not including myself) lol

Xirema

Oct 10, 2023 17:31

It doesn't have to be, though, is my point. They nixed Standardized Subclass Progression, as an example, because "well, we don't want to have to redo old subclasses". So don't do it! They put rules in one of the playtests for how to convert older subclasses into the new progression model, they could have just done that.

Xirema

Oct 10, 2023 17:25

That's debateably better than WotC, who are so afraid to do anything interesting with OneD&D that half of the good stuff they proposed is getting cut because they want to preserve backwards compatibility with 5e, even though integrating the new stuff with 5e stuff would be really painless. 🙃

Xirema

Jun 29, 2023 16:08

We're using an extensive system for handling Critical Hits instead of just doubling damage dice, so that damage type matters more and crits are more exciting.

Xirema

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