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Author Topic: Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: COBRA!!!  (Read 825337 times)

Loud Whispers

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #8490 on: December 13, 2020, 02:48:18 pm »

In order to balance out the edginess of my current party, I've made an honourable centaur cleric who always tries their best to help others and never backs down from a fight. Greatly respects perseverance & nature, finds personal sacrifice to be foolish, competition as wasteful, pride distasteful and has an extreme hatred for cowardice and dishonourable conduct. Comes from a wholesome family background where they learned herbalism and alchemy, to make potions, tonics and spirits to tend to the various normal folk living around.

This is in contrast to two amnesiacs with tragic backgrounds that are steadily being uncovered as the weight of their past actions catch up to them, one exiled prince who has gotten himself trapped in the spirit realm (ironically saving him from the many, many enemies he's made throughout the campaign through a series of unnecessarily bloody actions), and a tiefling assassin with the mental age of a child who believes the world persecutes them for being a devil descendant, and not because they are a chronic thief-murderer. It has been such a fucking fun campaign for everyone.

My cleric centaur is steadily converting the atheist amnesiac wizard to her Earthen God in the name of justice, bountiful plenty and righteousness. Working together with the edgy amnesiac paladin to make him live up to the tenets of his oath, so that he can finally be the good man he says he is. Even managed to make headway with the edgy tiefling, telling him that the God of death he serves takes his time to take lives, so he should think his actions through too. And whilst she hasn't convinced him to return his stolen wares, she has convinced him to not treat violence as a matter of first resort.

Mechanically, I never liked 5e DND magic for a bunch of reasons. The main gripe being it had too many anti-roleplay "I win" buttons that just skipped over problems in exploration, combat or social arenas. The other main reason being it's very easy to outshine anyone else not using a spell list, as DND magic just provides a breadth and depth of power & versatility that renders the non-magical classes fairly vestigial as the campaign goes on, and the wizard renders the non-wizard magic people fairly vestigial in their own domains.

I always played barbarians, rogues, fighters, monks and so on because I liked the roleplay element of heroes succeeding on their merits instead of on magic, but was fairly disappointed at how 5e didn't let you make a char that could hold a candle to a hero like Diomedes, Odysseus or Hercules, or even Conan the barbarian. In short, it's easier to make a Greek god than it is to make a Greek hero... Which is strange?
So as a side interest I tried making various interesting multiclasses or various stupid multiclass specialisations that created mechanically inferior but roleplay goldmines, relative to doing a straight class progression. Things reached hilarious ends in two campaigns when my DM and fellow players accused me of making ridiculously OP multiclasses, and both times I showed them I was just playing straight monk and straight rogue. At this point my DM said he realised I wasn't pulling tricks on them, I was just the only one in the group who read the rules xD

Eventually however, we reached the point in a year and a half long campaign where our party had to either deal with finding some way up a waterfall/cavern entrance, or going through a heavily defended passageway infested with undead. The wizard and paladin misty stepped up, the tiefling flew over the waterfall, whilst my barbarian climbed up through the waterfall. Cue an entire fight through a flooded temple where my character, whose entire theme for a year and a half was that they were a sea monster hunter who had just learned how to breathe underwater, was completely obsolete in almost every challenge and obstacle. Before I could even try anything it would always be resolved by magic, with many of the problems resolvable only through magic. Despite having a glorious moment to shine when he was successfully wrestling a boneclaw that nearly TPK'd the party, giving everyone else advantage on it with constant grapples and shoves, my friends even asked me if I wanted to change char because I spent three hours mostly watching them play whilst I had naught to do.

I took up the offer, and as my humble fisherman retired briefly from adventuring to go back to sea monster hunting, I deployed a horrifying gimmick build. I made it as a threat to my DM; it was either that, or the 4 int wizard orc wizard who casts fist, or the wise sagely archer centaur that can't miss. Instead I chose to make Cayetan Carota, the Fortunate Centaur, who embodied concentrated plot armour - a walking reality glitch that forced the universe to exhibit internal cognitive dissonance every now and then.

By chaining together a fuck ton of feats, cleric, wizard and sorcerer spells, I made sure that every turn and with every action I could manipulate the result as long as I hadn't expended my resources. Out of character, I made sure my DM and players were ok with this, and whilst my DM threatened to have me murdered IRL if it turned out to be horrendous, my comrades were delighted. Fortunately, my DM did not murder me, as I also chose my gimmick options to be as streamlined as possible. In character, whenever I buff myself or a party member to roll up to 3 d20 + 3d4 + 1d6, we roleplay it as freakishly unlikely successes occurring, as reality warps around the power of Cayetan the Fortunate One's existence - much to her own ignorance.

There are many feats and classes which manipulate rolls, rerolls, success chances, advantages/disadvantages. If anyone's interested I can dump all the spells, feats & classes which do just that. Nevertheless, a lot of these features have overlap which prevents you from squeezing the most rolls out in the shortest amount of actions, or else have a high resource cost that prohibit extended shenanigens. This is one of the more fun ones I found which avoids this overlap.

Using standard array, I started with a lvl 1 Unity Cleric (UA), 16 STR, 8 Dex, 10 CON, 13 INT, 13 WIS and 15 CHA. First level of cleric unity gives medium armour proficiency, a whole bunch of useful spells like healing word or thaumaturgy, ritual casting - and most importantly, buffs like guidance, resistance, heroism, shield of faith and bless. Debuffs like guiding bolt and bane are useful but our WIS is pretty suboptimal, so it's best to use CONC spells for buffing. The special emboldening bond allows me to give +d4s to my allies attacks, which can stack with bless, whilst the 16 STR means I can stay on the frontlines with the melee fighters without being dead weight. As such, the touch range on a lot of the cleric cantrip buffs isn't an issue, as Cayetan is usually always where they need to be to buff her allies.

2 levels of divination wizard give a whole bunch of useful utility spells like mold earth, shape water, find familiar, healing elixer as well as the buff gift of alacrity, which gives +d8 to initiative without costing a concentration spell slot. The class feature divine portent allows two d20s to be substituted a day with two pre-rolled d20s without using any action, which is vital when your paladin is jumping onto a dragon's back from an airship somersault and you have a 20 in reserve - or you want an enemy to fail their save for sure.

From there wild magic sorcerer all the way, taking up all the buffs you can. Enlarge/reduce, enhance ability, shield, mirror image, blink, haste, counterspell, skill empowerment all ensure your less magically inclined party members can't be shut down by magical monsters or enemy wizards. As the char doesn't use offensive magic, the lack of optimisation does bugger all to stop the FORTUNE CLERIC from using the entire party as an ever more deadly sword and shield.

Magical guidance (reroll failed rolls for 1 MM point), tides of chaos (gives advantage, use restored after every 1st lvl or higher SORC spell is cast) and bend luck (spend 1 MM point to add or subtract d4 to a roll, costs reaction though - most importantly, can be used on enemies without save) drastically expand the options available to Cayetan. Feat: Wild Talent allows me to add a psionic dice that scales with level (d6 to d12) to my CHA rolls and attacks, amongst other things. Shield, enhance ability, enlarge/reduce, blink, mirror image and later on skill empowerment all also give me more options to make my teammates surely succeed whenever it truly counts. Feat: Lucky was also an obvious choice, which lets you get super advantage (an extra d20, which can be added on top of disadvantage/advantage) 3 times per long rest. Going halfling would've allowed for even more optimal fortune bending but alas, halflings don't get the great carry capacity the centaur does. As is, I'm carrying a crap ton of equipment, weapons, rations, supplies, kits (alchemist, herbalist, climbing), tents, common conveniences (mirrors, combs) as well as multiple changes of clothes, with plenty of carrying cap left to carry an unconscious teammate in a hurry.

Right now I have two options when it comes to level progression.
1. Continue straight sorcerer to get more sorcery points + some character appropriate roleplay spells, like otherworldly form (appear like an angelic servant of the Earthen God), Earthquake (obligatory) or wish (options!).
2. Get 3 levels in Rune Knight for more buff/debuff options, a battlemaster dice & at least 1 lvl in bard to access those inspiration dice, and maybe mage initiate or a class or two in warlock to get the talisman buffs. Warlock's not really worth it though.

As it stands my char's lvl7, and by lvl9 can with careful resource and action management using haste:
-Add to every ABI check, attack or save up to +3d4, +d8 (CHA only) advantage (+d20), super advantage (+d20), or subtract d4 to 2d4 per round.
-Replace two rolls per long rest.
-Provide any other utility benefits a high lvl spellcaster can.
-Immunities to a shit ton of conditions through things like heroism or environmental manipulation.
-The one downside is that the character itself is really maladapted for save or die spells, spell attacks and melee damage in general. This never bothered me as I hate save or die spells, spell attacks and damage counting to begin with, and the buffs you can add to your party mates or yourself more than compensate for the paucity of 20 tier stats. It also means you can make your multiclass-averse best friend shirk in horror as they finally find out the straight cleric they think they've been adventuring with has secretly been a cleric-wizard-sorcerer-fighter-bard the whole time.

Whether I decide to go the route of adding fighter/bard dice or not, I'd say I've been pretty satisfied with my first proper magic man character... Even if it's not a "proper" magic man who cries lightning bolts and sneezes fireballs. That'll come later, no doubt when I make a muscle wizard that only speaks in Ancestor and Bane quotes. What's even better is I'd say my focus on making other player chars shine instead of making my own shine has in turn led to less main character roleplay, and more team player roleplay. A L L   A C C O R D I N G   T O   K E I K A K U

Anyways this has been a way too large wall of text. Sorry if it bores; I couldn't decide if I wanted to talk about the social dynamic, the roleplay adventure or the dice rolling more.
*EDIT
It should go without saying that the theoretical maximum amount of dice roll hasn't happened yet, because in actual play it is much better to only use as many extra dice as your comrades need to succeed. To go all out leaves you rather unarmed for subsequent encounters, and has only happened once - whilst searching for a relic on a crashing airship in the middle of a dragon fight. After all, the help action is free advantage. I could also use find familiar owl help action shenanigens, but the charm of this character is that their in-character impact is them appearing with their God's banner held high and inspiring everyone to charge into the fray. Plus with a venomous snake familiar you can make plenty of snake milking puns whenever you're collecting venom for potion making. But yea, besides the unbelievable luck people experience around them, there's nothing empirical to prove as the result of Cayetan. The paladin player RPd perfectly in character how their char felt inexplicable strength and guidance helping them slay an ancient dragon. It's a very low fantasy kind of shenaniganery, where your impact is felt but not seen. I just love it, it actually feels like magic at work
« Last Edit: December 13, 2020, 03:11:56 pm by Loud Whispers »
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Kagus

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #8491 on: December 14, 2020, 03:09:01 pm »

Presumably a great deal of houseruling/homebrewing involved?


Honestly, I'm half inclined to agree with you on the point about 5e magic (not that previous editions have been any less guilty of making the mundanes redundant/irrelevant), but I think that comes down to a matter of how the book is worded rather than actual scope.

The spells have their utility expressly written out in more-or-less understandable language. Even "Swiss army spells" like Prestidigitation or Thaumaturgy have suggested boundaries that help refine the scope of specific usages. And when challenge rolls are called for, it's again made relatively clear what modifiers the roller is using and what modifiers are being rolled against.

Skills and tools? Much less documentation in the base book. As such, you get people wondering just what they can do with an herbalism kit, or a carpentry kit, or the like.

Of course, there's the obvious answer of "A carpentry kit lets you do stuff with wood!" which, yeah... But what stuff? How often? Is it just the crafting of items as per the section of downtime activities, or can I also use the included chisel to mark trees, or use it to rig some wooden palings for a trap (rather uncreative example I know, but bear with me)?

Naturally, the answer is a resounding "Yes!"... But it's also "No". There aren't any specific rules or wordings attached to it. As such, you have to rely on the DM seeing your way of things, and then having them define what DCs, modifiers, rolls etc. would be involved in such a situation. Heck, tools don't even have specific ability scores assigned to them in most cases! You may have though you were building a skilled carpenter, but then you hit the game and your DM feels that INT is the appropriate stat mod, not DEX.


Because of this uncertainty, people will gravitate towards the magical side of things because it offers relatively clear, concise uses that you can then actually build strategies and approaches around rather than wondering "but can I even attempt to do this to begin with?". I really would've liked to see more attention paid to the skills and tools in the PHB, to make them and their usage more obvious to players.

All that said, fuck Goodberry.

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #8492 on: December 14, 2020, 03:11:41 pm »

welcome to goodberry home of the goodberry may I take your order
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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #8493 on: December 14, 2020, 05:18:56 pm »

welcome to goodberry home of the goodberry may I take your order

Yeah I'll have the uhhhh...

Loud Whispers

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #8494 on: December 14, 2020, 07:18:14 pm »

Presumably a great deal of houseruling/homebrewing involved?
If you're talking about the build, nah no houseruling or homebrewing needed. There's some Unearthed Arcana multiclassing involved but you could get rid of the UA classes if your DM doesn't like them and just use players handbook classes like wild magic sorcerer, divination wizard, any cleric to get an identical effect. Lucky feat is also frankly broken (in the sense that there is no benefit/opportunity cost to taking it, whatever your character is) and the only feat I consider banning whenever I DM. I only use it now with a clean conscience because it's all part of the unbelievable fortune theme

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
It's a horrendous confluence of numerous design choices that make for nice dungeon crawling and bad campaigning. So if you use DND to play with dungeons and dragons, great. If you try to use it for a campaign... You're in the hands of the DM.

1. The problem of skills vs magic. Even if you overcome the danger of whether or not your DM will allow your skill check, the first issue is that magic always succeeds, at the cost of expending a magic bullet, in contrast to every skill check. With each skill check your DM first has to decide whether you can make the roll, then you're put in the hands of the random number God - and there's a 50/50 chance you'll roll above or below 10. Meaning its possible to fail at the things your char is supposedly skilled at with disheartening regularity - especially when an easy task is DC10. This is mitigated with the fighter's abundant ABIs or the rogue's skills, but even then you're dealing with oddities like the atheist wizard knowing more about the cleric or barbarian's religion than they do. The second issue is that creative roleplay solution you can do with a barb/fighter/rogue's skillset, you can also do with a druid/wizard/bard's skillset and magic. Top that all off with the problem of some DMs allowing continual skill rerolls upon failure and other DMs not, versus the certainty power of a spell always doing as advertised... It gets hard to stay relevant the more players have spell lists when a few don't.
I'll never forget how my fisherman barbarian couldn't actually get good at fishing mechanically because of his shit survival skill, then my wizard friend just shot the lake he was standing in with lightning to get all the fish.

Spoiler: personal ranting time (click to show/hide)

2. The game inherently divides what can be achieved by a hero relying on themselves versus a hero relying on magic. To bring up my earlier example in more detail, A lvl 20 barbarian or a level 20 fighter can't use (and in many instances, not even attain) the intelligence and cunning of Conan or Odysseus. A level 20 fighter can't win a fight with the god of love, the god of war and still end the day thinking he can fight the sun like Diomedes. Yet a level 5 spellcaster starts dropping Zeus's lightning bolts or Saruman's fireballs, and it while Billy the Spearman is struggling to match the feats of an ordinary human athlete at lvl20, your spell list boi is causing Poseidon's earthquakes, bringing people back from the dead, stopping time or reshaping reality. Just kinda sucks when one guy gets another attack whilst another guy can summon a black hole.

In short, guys without a spell list become more powerful fighters + more specialised in their niche. Whereas guys with a spell list become more powerful fighters, have all of their existing choices increase in power, gain access to more powerful choices and gain access to even more choices to develop their skillet/toolset. A lvl 20 fighter is an overcharged lvl 5 fighter, but a lvl 20 druid really is a lvl 20 druid with Prospero or Pan level power - both in terms of world impact and the breadth of options they possess for dealing with any problem.

2.1. As an extension of this problem, DND's magic ignores its own rules. An archer can miss, but save or die spells do not. All martially orientated classes are balanced against HP bloat, armour classes, tankiness and save weaknesses, but magic orientated classes can choose spells with guaranteed damage/effects, spells that target enemy save weaknesses and spells that eliminate enemies from fights or overcome obstacles without any need to think.

2.2. Interesting situations rapidly become mundane when teleportation, lie detection, supply conjuration is as easy as snapping your fingers, turning moral or logstical problems into "do you have the 'I win' button or not?" Even worse when there are magical problems which can only be solved by magic. My DM fucking loves my characters because I deliberately avoid picking teleportation magic and make my chars weigh too much for a flying character to carry. It means the party has in character reasons to not keep dancing away from his lovingly crafted encounters :[

2.3. The "anything you can do I can do better, and I can do it with magic." The one stat the casters use all provide much more skill points than STR or DEX, whether it's INT, CHA or WIS. This severely contributes to the irrelevance of the other classes in mature campaigns; the spellcasters are innately skilled, capable of dominating combat, and have a whole host of exclusive abilities on top of abilities which replace the other classes' core features. A rogue's expertise skill monkeying vs a bard's expertise & jack of all trades skill monkeying for example. Even between spellcasters and halfcasters you can see how you could play a bard and get expertise, jack of all trades, and gain access to the ranger's spell list before the ranger could. Or how you could play a wizard and never need a druid, cleric, bard, sorcerer or warlock.

Lastly, this one may just be personal taste though, but I find there's so little magical about DND magic. You don't feel like you're messing with arcane forces, God's power, the wrath of nature, eldritch ancestry or a faustian pact. You feel more like a technician who knows exactly what their capabilities are, exactly what their results will be, managing a ledger of magic bullets you get for free everyday. Whilst this may work for roleplaying a warlock who is being given an explicit list of what they can use and when they can use it, for everyone else it's just nowhere near as chaotic as the rest of the d20 philosophy for skill checks. Add a dark heresy psyker mishap table however, or other equally spicy changes like spell channeling or spell improv, and it brings that magic back to the tabletop

welcome to goodberry home of the goodberry may I take your order
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uhhhhhhhhhhh.... Does that... No... uhhhhhhh... Yeah uhhh can I get a goodberry with the goodberry special?

Iduno

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #8495 on: December 14, 2020, 10:28:14 pm »

Yeah, that sounds like TTRPGs (magic is better, magic can solve nonmagical problems even though only magic can solve magical problems, the GM asking for more rolls means you're less likely to succeed, the GM being too permissive or not permissive enough hugely changes the game, etc.), especially D&D.

I don't know if the advice is still in the DMG, but the original 5e documents suggested ignoring all modifiers, and base success or failure on whether or not the player rolled well (above 10). Just make it a d2 game.
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MrRoboto75

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #8496 on: December 14, 2020, 10:34:53 pm »

I wonder if the problem was better or far worse in old-school TSR D&D.  Back then outside of 2nd's optional non-weapon proficiency rules, nobody outside of the thief class had explicitly defined skills, much less chance to succeed.

It might have also helped that magic users had less spells per day, and leveled up slower than a fighter or thief did.  Fighters were the only ones to get more than one attack per turn, too.
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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #8497 on: December 15, 2020, 08:42:41 am »

Leveled up slower and game was generally deadlier, old school doesn't rely on defined skill checks as much as adjudication by the DM.  When I'm playing old school I rarely roll for skills, if you explain what you're doing and it makes sense, unless there's significant consequences for failure you just do the thing.  The problem with that is it can turn into a mother-may-I thing, but the ultimate solution to this is to play a different game, or to play D&D within a constrained context (e.g. levels 1-7 or 1-11 for 3.5), or to not let the PCs rest constantly.

A wizard can open any lock automatically, but that's a spell slot he could've used on something else (I do not like the changes 5e made to the spell slot system for wizards).  Unless you're setting up encounters so PCs can regularly rest, it's kind of stupid to waste a limited resource on things other party members can do with no limit, even if there's a chance of failure (Pst, just bring back taking 20), especially if you're still playing 3.5 where the wizard actually has to prepare the redundant utility spells at the expense of things only a wizard can do.  If I was a wizard I just wouldn't prepare knock because we have a rogue in the party.  I'd prepare something a rogue can't do.  Obviously at like level 15 this isn't really an issue anymore with spell slots, but why would you ever play D&D that high, it doesn't work that high.
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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #8498 on: December 15, 2020, 12:13:43 pm »

If you need balance between players (or at least enough that the mage isn't always taking the spotlight), and all/no spellcasters game would be best.
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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #8499 on: December 15, 2020, 12:17:53 pm »

If you're talking about the build, nah no houseruling or homebrewing needed.

Alright, was asking because I don't think it works quite like how you seem to be describing. For one thing, you don't just automatically get back Wild Magic's Tides of Chaos by casting a level 1 slot or higher.

Quote
Any time before you regain the use of this feature, the DM can have you roll on the Wild Magic Surge table immediately after you cast a sorcerer spell of 1st level or higher. You then regain the use of this feature.

So 1) it's reliant on the DM deciding you can get it back, and 2) you have to roll on the surge table. ...I suppose it technically doesn't say that the rolled effect takes place, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a DM who'd just let you roll on the table without it doing anything :P

Also, if you're at 7th level with 1 in Cleric and 2 in Diviner... You have at most 1 feat under base (optional!) rules. 2 if you're a variant human, but this example is a centaur so no go as far as that's concerned. Also you're learning Dunamancy spells without specializing in either Chronurgy or Graviturgy, which are the specializations that normally get access to that list. There is however this suggestion listed:
Quote
However, the Dungeon Master can consider allowing other spellcasting classes opportunities to learn a handful of dunamancy-themed spells as rewards. Perhaps the characters uncover a cache of magical contraband, among which is a couple of spell scrolls, or a traveling acolyte takes some downtime with a friendly cleric character and opens their mind to some of the stranger secrets of the universe, unlocking a spell or two.

So I suppose that might have happened. Or the DM just doesn't mind, especially seeing as UA content is being allowed.


Also I'm wondering where that +3d4 on checks is coming from... +1d4 from Bless, +1d4 from Bond of Unity, +1d4 from... What? There's Bend Luck, but that's a level 6 class ability for Wild Magic Sorc, which unless this level 7 example has skipped Diviner, it doesn't have.

As an aside: "According to Crawford..." (:P) you can actually just use disadvantage on a roll and then apply Lucky, which will let you select any of the three d20s rolled. Thereby turning disadvantage into super-advantage. So if you need to make a tricky shot, just "believe in the guidance of the divine!", close your eyes, and shoot. Blind for disadvantage, Lucky for super advantage. Balance, yay! (gotta admit though, that is kinda cool fluff)

Saves some resources, if your DM lets you play "the way it's intended".



One thing I thought of though when looking at your build... Dumping CHA might actually be a fun way to play Wild Magic Sorcerer. Most of the negative rolls on the surge table trigger a saving throw, so if you trash your save DC you can much more freely trigger surges and then just roll your way through the shitty DCs. Focus on spells that don't rely on your spell attack or save bonuses, and surge the fuck outta those class abilities!


As for the ranting... Christ alive man, that sounds awful and I am here for that rant. I mean, the first might just have been misguided, the second possibly only inexperienced and rail-roady, but that third dude definitely sounds like he had an outright vendetta against you. Good lord.

I'm definitely with you as far as 5e magic not seeming particularly... "Weighty". I haven't gotten to play any Dark Heresy, but presumably the magic system is more or less the same as in WFRP. For all its "You are now extra-dead. Roll a new character", I still really liked the way it was handled as a general concept. Sure, you can try and use magic to cover all your needs, and there's not even an arbitrary maximum number of times a day you can do it! ...but if you do, you run some serious risks. Better make sure it's worth it, mageling.

Not only that, but it even featured material components that actually meant something, as opposed to 5e's system of just "lol fuck it".


Also yes, having a specialist suffer that high of a failure chance when doing specifically the thing they're good at is another pet peeve I've been coming across in 5th. I ended up using one of my portent dice in a session because my character was transcribing ancient draconic writing on some stone ruins we discovered after a fight. To note: My character has been studying magic, religion, and specifically ancient tribal religions for his entire academic career (i.e., his life). He specifically has been looking into this region, with the help of an anthropologist who specialized in precisely the dragonborn tribes in this area. I was asked to roll.

Considering how important this discovery is to my character and his goals, I opted to just burn a portent die for the sake of making sure I didn't fuck it up and doodle penises all over the parchment I was trying to write down the inscriptions on.

Later, we ended up in a fight and I decided to check out the enemy spellcaster because I am also a spellcaster and maybe the spellcaster had some fun spellcaster things on his person. Roll Investigation. Okay, I have +6 to Investigation, this should be... total of 8. I find three gold pieces.

Then the +0 Investigation Barbarian comes over, searches the same body, and comes up with a scroll of Expeditious Retreat for me.


And since I've been playing a Diviner, I will absolutely agree that portent dice are a solid part of everything wrong with 5e spellcasting. Our last combat encounter was ended almost before it began because I identified the enemy as a threat, and decided to give this fight everything I had! ...which means "I cast [broken disabling spell] with a DC of 14. They roll an 11".

Rolan7

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #8500 on: December 15, 2020, 12:47:15 pm »

Call me crazy but rolling the wild magic surge table and discarding the result sounds a little fun tho
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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #8501 on: December 15, 2020, 12:54:15 pm »

Probably shouldn't be asked to roll investigation for searching a body thoroughly, unless you're in a hurry (IE, have to get it done in a single round cause the cops are after you) or the item you're looking for is particularly well hidden. Though, if the GM disagrees with that notion, what can you do? :v
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Rolan7

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #8502 on: December 15, 2020, 01:07:54 pm »

Actually yeah, 3.5e has rules for this!  You can take 10 on actions when you aren't distracted or threatened, and it doesn't even take more time.  It's perfect for situations where your modifiers are good enough that you don't need a great roll.

Taking 20 takes 2 minutes for full-round actions, codifying that you can totally keep trying most (obviously not all) skill checks.  It suggests that it does work for escape artist, open lock, and search.

Looks like that was all dropped for 5e  :(
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scriver

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #8503 on: December 15, 2020, 01:11:47 pm »

Probably shouldn't be asked to roll investigation for searching a body thoroughly, unless you're in a hurry (IE, have to get it done in a single round cause the cops are after you) or the item you're looking for is particularly well hidden. Though, if the GM disagrees with that notion, what can you do? :v

Roll to see if you *dare* to search the corpse *thoroughly*
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Egan_BW

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: The Barren Snowflake Wastes
« Reply #8504 on: December 15, 2020, 01:18:04 pm »

Actually yeah, 3.5e has rules for this!  You can take 10 on actions when you aren't distracted or threatened, and it doesn't even take more time.  It's perfect for situations where your modifiers are good enough that you don't need a great roll.

Taking 20 takes 2 minutes for full-round actions, codifying that you can totally keep trying most (obviously not all) skill checks.  It suggests that it does work for escape artist, open lock, and search.

Looks like that was all dropped for 5e  :(

Assuming I'm a GM, I'd prefer 5e because it's less rules lawyering towards me and I don't need special rules to tell me the obvious: that unless you're in a big hurry, thoroughly searching a single drawer isn't really possible to fail. And really, if failing a roll would be vastly less interesting than succeeding, or just make the player keep rolling then it's a waste of time and you should just let it succeed for story reasons.

Assuming I'm a player, of course, those rules for obvious things are useful, because I can rules lawyer them at the GM to get the result I want. :v
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Down at the bottom of the ocean. Beneath tons of brine which would crush you down. Not into broken and splintered flesh, but into thin soup. Into just more of the sea water. Where things live that aren't so different from you, but you will never live to touch them and they will never live to touch you.
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