Oh man, when we played we had one of those guys who takes forever to make up his mind, forever to roll the dice and all that jazz. Of course he was playing a wild mage so he had more rolls to make and more things that had to be tediously looked up in books. Felt like taking a nap whenever his turn came up.
You think that's bad? Try having a 3.5e 20th level True Necromancer roll with a horde of undead while the other two players were fighter types. It was nuts. And as DM, the players needed hordes of paladins and clerics to contend with the necromancer and his goons. Fights would take entire days. The final battle was an entire weekend! Silver dragons, deathless, living Heal spells roaming the battlefields obliterating entire chunks of undead while healing the living. It was nuts and lessons were learned (a big one...don't let your party have access to items from the Book of Vile Darkness willy nilly....and also be prepared for whininess when you hit them back with stuff from the Book of Exalted Deeds) In my defense though....everyone had a great time playing that game.
High level 3.5e play like this only cemented my desire to play 4e. I wanted to rein in the ridiculousness of 3.5e high level splat book play. Sadly, my IRL players didn't share that desire. It was the last campaign I will ever run for 3.5e. I'll play in my friends other campaigns (if it happens, our new hotness is IKRPG) but I won't put in the effort to run a game in a system I don't even want to play in anymore.
My hopes for 5e (which I have not seen the PHB or played yet) is that it meshes the consistency and balance of 4e with the less "structured" or "rigid" scent of 3.5e. And I know those words are not the right ones also not necessarily true, but my feeling are hard to explain...I want the new and shiny but I want it my way. I don't quite know what that it yet, but I'll know it when I see it. And until the DMG comes out, I'll reserve judgment. That said, I really do like advantage/disadvantage on paper, but how it plays at the table is really the key.
Oh man, when we played we had one of those guys who takes forever to make up his mind, forever to roll the dice and all that jazz. Of course he was playing a wild mage so he had more rolls to make and more things that had to be tediously looked up in books. Felt like taking a nap whenever his turn came up.
You think that's bad? Try having a 3.5e 20th level True Necromancer roll with a horde of undead while the other two players were fighter types. It was nuts. And as DM, the players needed hordes of paladins and clerics to contend with the necromancer and his goons. Fights would take entire days. The final battle was an entire weekend! Silver dragons, deathless, living Heal spells roaming the battlefields obliterating entire chunks of undead while healing the living. It was nuts and lessons were learned (a big one...don't let your party have access to items from the Book of Vile Darkness willy nilly....and also be prepared for whininess when you hit them back with stuff from the Book of Exalted Deeds) In my defense though....everyone had a great time playing that game.
High level 3.5e play like this only cemented my desire to play 4e. I wanted to rein in the ridiculousness of 3.5e high level splat book play. Sadly, my IRL players didn't share that desire. It was the last campaign I will ever run for 3.5e. I'll play in my friends other campaigns (if it happens, our new hotness is IKRPG) but I won't put in the effort to run a game in a system I don't even want to play in anymore.
High level 3.x was just horrible. You had this monstrosities with a billion buff spells on them making them unstoppable to which people replied "Dispel them!" So you do, and then a fucking hour later you've resolved a single spell. Alternatively they said fine, "Disjunct them!" and you got to watch all their magic items evaporate after making 30 will saves to find out which ones go away. I liked the idea behind it but in actual play it was a nightmare.
My hopes for 5e (which I have not seen the PHB or played yet) is that it meshes the consistency and balance of 4e with the less "structured" or "rigid" scent of 3.5e. And I know those words are not the right ones also not necessarily true, but my feeling are hard to explain...I want the new and shiny but I want it my way. I don't quite know what that it yet, but I'll know it when I see it. And until the DMG comes out, I'll reserve judgment. That said, I really do like advantage/disadvantage on paper, but how it plays at the table is really the key.
Those are not words I would apply to 5e. In some senses they were the opposites of design goals.
On the subject of balance, let's do some math on a party of level 5 adventurers beating on an imaginary target in full plate (AC 18). Feel free to correct me if I've left anything out - I've read through the player's handbook a couple of times but have not actually sat down to play, so I might be missing something.
The Rogue, with 18 dex and a rapier, gets to attack with a +7 (+4 from dex, +3 from proficiency) for 1d8+4 damage, with an extra 3d6 from sneak attack if he has advantage or if he has an ally adjacent to his target. We'll assume that there are always allies adjacent, so he gets to hit on an 11 or better (50% of the time) for 1d8+3d6+4 (an average hit of 19 damage), for an average of 10.5 damage per turn.
The Fighter has a wider range of options. Let's assume he's a Great Weapon fighter with a Greatsword. He's also rocking a +7 attack (+4 from strength, +3 from proficiency), but his damage is 2d6+4, and he gets to re-roll his first 1's and 2's on his damage dice, and he gets to attack twice per turn. His average damage per hit is just under 13, he gets two hits per turn and has 50% accuracy, so his average damage per turn is about 13. We'll be charitable and assume that he's using the Riposte maneuver every turn (even though he can only use it 4 times per combat and only on the condition that someone attacks him and misses), which gives him another attack at the same bonus with an extra 1d8 damage, bumping his average damage per turn up to about 21.
The Druid uses his third-level spell slots for Conjure Animals, and summons 8 CR 1/4 Wolves.
The wolves only get +4 to attack, and only deal 2d4+2 damage...but they get Advantage on their attacks if they have an ally adjacent to the target, and if they hit the target has to make a DC 11 STR save or fall prone. Since we assumed the rogue would always have an adjacent ally, we'll assume the same for the wolves (plus there's eight of them, so it's not like they're gonna spend a lot of time all alone.) That means the wolves will hit our 18 AC target if either of their rolls is a 14 or better, which gives them 58% accuracy - better than our actual players! Plus, again, there are eight of them, so they get to attack eight times. 2d4+2 is an average of 7 damage per hit, times 8 is 56, times our average accuracy is about 32 damage per turn. They're also extremely likely to knock their target prone, since an average of 4 DC 11 STR saves per turn gives us about a 75% chance that the target will fail one assuming he's got a +5 to that save. (Even if he's got a +8 to the save, we still knock him prone about 50% of the time).
Granted, the wolves have only got 11 hp each, but they'll be surprisingly resilient since everything will tend to die pretty quickly, since all melee attacks against prone targets have advantage, so the wolves not only will the wolves be doing enough damage to kill a reasonably hard target in ~2 turns, but they will also be responsible for boosting both the Rogue and the Fighter's damage per round by about 30% (making them worth about another 15 dpr in this example - possibly more or less depending on party composition). Also, standing from prone eats a lot of movement and prone creatures have disadvantage on attacks, so if you're really attached to keeping your wolves around there's a lot that can be done by strafing them in and out of melee, because they have a speed of 40 and you can use half your movement, attack, and then use the other half of your movement - putting you 20 feet away from a target that probably has 30 speed and spent half of it to stand from prone. You'll need to leave at least one thing in melee with the target to get your free advantage, but hey - at this point, what else are you bring that armored-up Fighter for? As a bonus, if the target tries to chase your wolves, the fighter gets an OA, which will push his damage numbers high enough that he can be worth, like, at least 4 or 5 wolves - over half of a level 3 spell!
They're summons, which means they can't be around all the time - but they can be around a lot, since the summon lasts up to an hour and can be cast twice a day at level 5 (3 times, if the druid is a Circle of Land druid). And also they're summons, which means we're doing more damage than the Rogue and the Fighter combined and haven't actually started looking at what the druid is doing with his turns yet.
The druid might be a Circle of the Moon druid and wildshaping into a Brown bear so that he can double attack at +5 to hit for 1d8+4 and 2d6+4 damage, with the free advantage all his wolves are providing.
Or wildshaping into a Dire Wolf so that he can do the same stuff as his wolves, but with bigger numbers (plus, the flavor!)
Those options do a lot of damage, but since the best strategy to fuck with this particular druid is to punch him until his Concentration breaks, it's probably smarter to be a Circle of Land druid with Mirror Image as a circle spell (which thankfully doesn't require concentration and so can be maintained alongside the summon, and is conveniently a level 2 spell so it doesn't infringe on the druid's level 3 summon spell), hanging out at range and being pelting people with cantrips and CC spells while soaking up fire from targets that probably can't close to melee with him and can't hit him at range because of his images.
(Wizards can do something similar to this with Animate Dead - Skeletons don't get to knock stuff prone or get free advantage, but they DO get a ranged attack, so they'll stick around for a lot longer; plus, since they're not actually summons they don't require concentration, leaving you free to concentrate on other stuff...like the Conjure Elementals spell you'll get at level 7, where you augment your skeletons with a shitload of little elementals.)
TLDR: Summoner builds (which, with the extremely limited options presented by having only the player's handbook to work with basically just means "literally any dude who can cast summoning spells") have 2-4 times the damage output and better battlefield control than trying to play a non-caster, starting as early as level 5.
Basically action multiplication through summons has always been an exceedingly powerful strategy in DnD. 5e decided the flatten the math curve a lot so that smaller monsters could still be threatening...which, as a consequence, means that already-powerful summoning strategies are even more powerful than they used to be, because you can get away with summoning larger numbers of smaller creatures and still have those creatures be threatening. This is further exacerbated by the fact that Advantage represents a very large accuracy increase that can significantly ablate the relevance of linear attack modifiers as long as you stay within a reasonable range. (If only there were an edition that had already figured out a good way of representing monsters as small, minor threats that the DM could deploy in large numbers to create interesting encounters...)
They DID manage to implement Concentration in a way that keeps you from casting multiple summoning spells at once...but then printed their summoning spells in a way that allows you to summon nearly a dozen (or more!) creatures off a single spell if you're so inclined (and immediately gave wizards Animate Dead, a summon-like spell that doesn't require Concentration.)
This is all also just with the options provided in the player's handbook. Imagine how silly the power disparity is gonna get when they inevitably print options that let a caster Concentrate on more than one spell at a time, or add buffs to their summons (The Necromancer wizard focus already does this, by the way - high five!), or buy scrolls of Conjure Animal, or avoid losing Concentration to damage, or summon a wider variety of more-powerful creatures via existing summon spells, or any of the other obvious design spaces that feats and class options and magic items and monster manuals are virtually guaranteed to explore. And it's not like we're talking about some unreasonably high level, here. This is level 5 - exactly the point at which the Fighter has a power breakpoint and gets to suddenly become twice as good as he was during the previous level.
I talked a friend into being the DM for once, and still figuring out who from my character folder to revise from NPC into PC. He's putting some interesting house rules on character creation. Some of them are about combating low-level lethality, but some are just about him wanting us to be more badass than typical for adventurers, so he doesn't have to hold back as much while he learns how to calibrate appropriate challenges this edition.
- 35 points for point buy.
- Everybody starts with one feat. Humans start with two.
- At levels with an attribute gain, characters get only one attribute point, but also get a feat, no need to choose between the two.
- Everyone starts play with bonus temporary HP equal to 2x their starting total. He has indicated that there will be a story reason for this in the first session.
- Everyone has one free rez, which will re-apply their bonus temporary HP if they've already used them up. This takes roughly the duration of a short rest to catalyze, and must be activated by a living person. He described like a mystic tattoo that vanishes once the magic has been used up. Presumably it's from the same story source as the temp HP in the first place?
- Automatic max results on hit dice when you gain 2nd and 3rd level. Roll hit dice as normal after that.
Realizing lately that I don't really trust or respect basically any of the moderators here. So, good luck with life, friends! Hit me up on Twitter @DesertLeviathan
not ignoring your main , but the fighter also gets action surge and can also recharge abilities on a short rest vs the long rest for both maneuvers and action surge, iirc. I'm not AS familiar with a rogue, so I'm not sure what other abilities the sub classes get.
not ignoring your main , but the fighter also gets action surge and can also recharge abilities on a short rest vs the long rest for both maneuvers and action surge, iirc. I'm not AS familiar with a rogue, so I'm not sure what other abilities the sub classes get.
True. Action surge lets them spike periodically, but only a few times between rests - and some of the value of that spike was rolled into the generous math on the maneuvers.
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Short rests are a lot more demanding than they were in 4e, requiring an hour's rest instead of 5 minutes, which means most parties probably won't get them between every encounter like they used to, so the value of the faster recharge isn't as high as it looks at first - much of the time, if you have the time/security to hang out and catnap for an hour, you probably also have the time/security to hang out and sleep for 8.
...recharge abilities on a short rest vs the long rest for both maneuvers and action surge...
Short rests take an hour. The pacing of a typical dungeon, fortress, or wizard tower invasion doesn't allow for an hour breather after every fight. In fact, we know this is intentional because a number of classes with "encounter" resources at later levels gain the ability to regain those resources without taking a short rest. So chances are the fighter needs to treat his maneuvers like spell slots.
absolutely. short rests are more rare. but I would also say they are less rare than long rests.
I completely understand that people are wary of melee being weaker than casters once again. I'll keep an eye out for it in my game.
it just hasn't happened yet to me.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
So finally had my first session of the DnD Adventurer's League. The DM was running the first chapter of the Hoard of the Dragon Queen campaign book. I'm guessing he sent away to Wizards, because all the participants got folders documenting a faction of his or her choice, which actually come with consumable magic items.
We spent about 45 minutes doing character creation, and then the session was about an 75 minutes, with a clean break at the end. Our party was Paladin, Ranger, and Wizard, and the DM had us rescue some Commoners to act as guest NPCs in the party so we would be evenly matched. Although, at low levels, Sleep is pretty absurd in how it basically wins the encounter in one turn.
There's not a WHOLE lot you can do at level 1. The Paladin basically stood in the way and soaked up hits, and got to heal once with Lay On Hands. The Wizard used his two spell slots, and then Cantrip spammed. The Ranger sliced and diced everything with Dual Wield. A good start, though I was hoping for one or two more people to show up.
So finally had my first session of the DnD Adventurer's League. The DM was running the first chapter of the Hoard of the Dragon Queen campaign book. I'm guessing he sent away to Wizards, because all the participants got folders documenting a faction of his or her choice, which actually come with consumable magic items.
We spent about 45 minutes doing character creation, and then the session was about an 75 minutes, with a clean break at the end. Our party was Paladin, Ranger, and Wizard, and the DM had us rescue some Commoners to act as guest NPCs in the party so we would be evenly matched. Although, at low levels, Sleep is pretty absurd in how it basically wins the encounter in one turn.
There's not a WHOLE lot you can do at level 1. The Paladin basically stood in the way and soaked up hits, and got to heal once with Lay On Hands. The Wizard used his two spell slots, and then Cantrip spammed. The Ranger sliced and diced everything with Dual Wield. A good start, though I was hoping for one or two more people to show up.
We ran through Chapter 1 last week, similar party - Paladin, Ranger, Warlock, and me as a Rogue. We found it to drag a bit in the middle (we are less experienced so it took us a couple hours to get through the session) and some of us, mostly the warlock and paladin, were definitely feeling a lack of options with lvl 1 characters.
It ended really strong though and our Paladin died in that final encounter which really bonded the party. Without giving spoilers, it was pretty great.
We're playing chapter 2 tonight, at level 2, and the Paladin is rerolling as a cleric. I can't wait
absolutely. short rests are more rare. but I would also say they are less rare than long rests.
While I get what you're implying I think Long Rests are guaranteed to happen once a day while short rests not so much.
I'm actually not sure I like the tension between short rest classes and long rest classes. If 3/4th of the party only needs a short rest I wouldn't expect Mr Long Rest getting a lot of sympathy in some groups. Same if the numbers are reversed. Rather not have rules that push parties into internal conflict.
absolutely. short rests are more rare. but I would also say they are less rare than long rests.
I'm actually not sure I like the tension between short rest classes and long rest classes. If 3/4th of the party only needs a short rest I wouldn't expect Mr Long Rest getting a lot of sympathy in some groups.
Everybody needs long rests, if only to recover hit dice. Admittedly, they're only regaining half of them, which is stupid. Can you imagine only recovering two healing surges in 4e? Madness.
absolutely. short rests are more rare. but I would also say they are less rare than long rests.
I'm actually not sure I like the tension between short rest classes and long rest classes. If 3/4th of the party only needs a short rest I wouldn't expect Mr Long Rest getting a lot of sympathy in some groups.
Everybody needs long rests, if only to recover hit dice. Admittedly, they're only regaining half of them, which is stupid. Can you imagine only recovering two healing surges in 4e? Madness.
Well the "once a day" long rest...also known as "sleeping" is probably going to happen regardless. It's the question of whether short rests exist at all would be the point of contention. They're so long they're a big investment and for some characters have no upside.
HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
edited September 2014
I am starting a 5e campaign soon that will begin at level 1. I do not find high lethality at low levels intrinsically bad -- it's not my preferred play style, but I can adapt. I will definitely be advising my players to not think suuuuper hard about their character backgrounds until that character has survived a few levels.* I am also planning adventures that include a lot of NPCs that a player will be able to control temporarily if their own character dies during the course of the adventure. My inspiration for this approach is the video game Left 4 Dead, in which if your character dies during a level your teammates will be able to find a "new" survivor (who is just a clone of your dead character) locked in a closet somewhere later in the level, and once that new survivor is freed you can rejoin the game. In my low-level adventures I will strategically have places where an imprisoned NPC ally could spawn if the party gets to that area and the party is short a PC. Players will have the option of either creating a new character when the adventure is over or continue playing the former NPC indefinitely. I am hoping that this will remove the least fun part about character death -- the player will not have to sit out the session twiddling his thumbs -- while also making character death sufficiently scary.
I also hope that the DMG provides helpful guidance for handling character death at the table. I believe that clear guidance in printed rulebooks go a long way toward creating good norms for DMs. In the absence of those norms, a lot of DMs become monster dickasauruses.
*Even in less-lethal systems, I actually think it's a good idea to not write a fully fleshed-out history for your character until you've actually played that character for a time. Sometimes you think your character will have one personality, but it turns out you want to take her in a whole new direction. So it can be a good idea to hold off on the character's personal history until the concept is more fully realized for you.
absolutely. short rests are more rare. but I would also say they are less rare than long rests.
I'm actually not sure I like the tension between short rest classes and long rest classes. If 3/4th of the party only needs a short rest I wouldn't expect Mr Long Rest getting a lot of sympathy in some groups.
Everybody needs long rests, if only to recover hit dice. Admittedly, they're only regaining half of them, which is stupid. Can you imagine only recovering two healing surges in 4e? Madness.
Well the "once a day" long rest...also known as "sleeping" is probably going to happen regardless. It's the question of whether short rests exist at all would be the point of contention. They're so long they're a big investment and for some characters have no upside.
Exactly. For a number of the characters that don't benefit from short rests, those rests actually have a substantial cost, even - not only do you not regain spell slots, but there are a number of valuable spells with hour-long durations (like the summoning spells).
An hour-long spell is more than long enough to plow through several encounters (or even an entire dungeon, depending on its scale), but will end (without restoring its spell slot) if you take a short rest.
Spellcasters DO get to spend hit dice to heal during short rests, in theory, but in practice those are also exactly the characters that are going to be out of melee, using other characters to screen for them, running defensive spells, and generally not taking damage in the first place. More than likely, if the martial characters want to rest for healing, the spellcasters are going to tell them to take a couple hits off a wand of Cure Wounds and keep going.
Party dynamics aside, from a practical standpoint, the kind of DM that 5e's 'old-school' high-lethality simulation-esque play pattern appeals to is probably not also the kind of DM that is consistently going to let a party of adventurers knock down the front door of the Bad Guy Lair, kill all the dudes in the front half of the building, then stop outside the Hall of the Murderthrone for an hour-long nap without trouble or disturbance while the Murder King twiddles his thumbs inside.
however there are wandering monster rules for people who do need to take breaks, heal etc. we had our rogue post sentry while we rested because she hadn't been hit during the combat and also didn't need the rest, and we got interupted. saying it never makes sense to take an hour break mid dungeon is a little much for me.
just think of Die Hard, McClain always took a break mid fight.
And since it can only eat your brain if you've been incapacitated by the int damage, you'll have a -5 on the save.
I'm sort of impressed, in a way. It's might have topped That Damn Crab for most misleading CR.
Speaking of hilariously low CRs, does any one remember the metal bugs ( I think they were money themed) in the 3.5 Monster Manual 2, which had the queen get disintegrate at will at level 9? Even back when I was just learning how to DM, I knew something was jacked.
And since it can only eat your brain if you've been incapacitated by the int damage, you'll have a -5 on the save.
I'm sort of impressed, in a way. It's might have topped That Damn Crab for most misleading CR.
Speaking of hilariously low CRs, does any one remember the metal bugs ( I think they were money themed) in the 3.5 Monster Manual 2, which had the queen get disintegrate at will at level 9? Even back when I was just learning how to DM, I knew something was jacked.
Actually, it doesn't say "by the int damage." It just says "incapacitated." So, you could just be hit on the head with a blunt object and he can decide he wants a new home.
am0n on
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
Even if it got the drop on you and knocked one party member to 0 Int right off the bat, three level 2 characters might be able to kill it before it got another chance to act.
And since it can only eat your brain if you've been incapacitated by the int damage, you'll have a -5 on the save.
I'm sort of impressed, in a way. It's might have topped That Damn Crab for most misleading CR.
Speaking of hilariously low CRs, does any one remember the metal bugs ( I think they were money themed) in the 3.5 Monster Manual 2, which had the queen get disintegrate at will at level 9? Even back when I was just learning how to DM, I knew something was jacked.
Actually, it doesn't say "by the int damage." It just says "incapacitated." So, you could just be hit on the head with a blunt object and he can decide he wants a new home.
Or just taking a nap, even.
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
How would you regain Intellect once it drops to 0?
Hopefully the Dungeon Master's Guide will have rules for ability score damage and recovery.
Christ, I can't believe I just typed that sentence.
Incidentally, a character killed by the intellect devourer's brain-eating power cannot be restored to life by either revivify or raise dead; these spells specifically do not restore missing body parts. So a character whose brain has been destroyed must be raised by resurrection or its more powerful sequel, true resurrection.
And since it can only eat your brain if you've been incapacitated by the int damage, you'll have a -5 on the save.
I'm sort of impressed, in a way. It's might have topped That Damn Crab for most misleading CR.
Speaking of hilariously low CRs, does any one remember the metal bugs ( I think they were money themed) in the 3.5 Monster Manual 2, which had the queen get disintegrate at will at level 9? Even back when I was just learning how to DM, I knew something was jacked.
Actually, it doesn't say "by the int damage." It just says "incapacitated." So, you could just be hit on the head with a blunt object and he can decide he wants a new home.
It's sort of insane how literally people take the rules.
I've run two separate groups of two through the first chapter of the starter set adventure, "Mines of Phandelver" and it's been wonderful how differently they've played out. People who try to break the game with insane amounts of summons and getting into the legal fine print of rest breaks and death are really missing the point and/or have DM's who aren't helping tell a very interesting story.
If you're a high level wizard with 18 pets running around behind you just trying to min-max the shit out of the game, your DM is doing it wrong and you might look at why you're playing role-playing games in the first place.
I think they're basing the challenge ratings on pure stats, without bothering to account for special abilities etc.
It's really the only way that CR makes any sort of sense….
It's sort of insane how literally people take the rules.
I've run two separate groups of two through the first chapter of the starter set adventure, "Mines of Phandelver" and it's been wonderful how differently they've played out. People who try to break the game with insane amounts of summons and getting into the legal fine print of rest breaks and death are really missing the point and/or have DM's who aren't helping tell a very interesting story.
If you're a high level wizard with 18 pets running around behind you just trying to min-max the shit out of the game, your DM is doing it wrong and you might look at why you're playing role-playing games in the first place.
Yes. Clearly it's the DM's fault that the rules are vague and players want to be powerful. Clearly.
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
It's sort of insane how literally people take the rules.
I've run two separate groups of two through the first chapter of the starter set adventure, "Mines of Phandelver" and it's been wonderful how differently they've played out. People who try to break the game with insane amounts of summons and getting into the legal fine print of rest breaks and death are really missing the point and/or have DM's who aren't helping tell a very interesting story.
If you're a high level wizard with 18 pets running around behind you just trying to min-max the shit out of the game, your DM is doing it wrong and you might look at why you're playing role-playing games in the first place.
How do you suggest the DM solve this problem? Just start blanket banning spells?
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
The best part is the guy who just got killed is used as a meat shield around it while it kills the rest of the party. Even if somebody takes getting their brain eaten out of their skull for not killing it in 6 seconds the subsequent beating of his animate corpse by his former friends is gonna break some hearts.
Even if it got the drop on you and knocked one party member to 0 Int right off the bat, three level 2 characters might be able to kill it before it got another chance to act.
Hmm, it has 21 hit points which would require a little bit of luck to get to...
It's sort of insane how literally people take the rules.
I've run two separate groups of two through the first chapter of the starter set adventure, "Mines of Phandelver" and it's been wonderful how differently they've played out. People who try to break the game with insane amounts of summons and getting into the legal fine print of rest breaks and death are really missing the point and/or have DM's who aren't helping tell a very interesting story.
If you're a high level wizard with 18 pets running around behind you just trying to min-max the shit out of the game, your DM is doing it wrong and you might look at why you're playing role-playing games in the first place.
Please don't badwrongfun people over how they play make believe.
It's sort of insane how literally people take the rules.
I've run two separate groups of two through the first chapter of the starter set adventure, "Mines of Phandelver" and it's been wonderful how differently they've played out. People who try to break the game with insane amounts of summons and getting into the legal fine print of rest breaks and death are really missing the point and/or have DM's who aren't helping tell a very interesting story.
If you're a high level wizard with 18 pets running around behind you just trying to min-max the shit out of the game, your DM is doing it wrong and you might look at why you're playing role-playing games in the first place.
How do you suggest the DM solve this problem? Just start blanket banning spells?
If only there were some way people could hire a team of expert game designers to build a balanced and coherent system of rules so that all those inexpert DMs would have an easier time doing it right. That way, all those subpar DMs could just pay for books outlining the game so that they could focus on telling a very interesting story - instead of having to spend all their time patching the obvious and substantial underlying flaws in the system. Then everyone would be able to play a fun, compelling game without every DM having to become a game design expert first.
I wonder what such a thing would look like.
Edit: Oh hey, while we're talking about summons and intellect devourers: You can't summon it yet, but keep an eye out for the very-likely eventual addition of a summon spell on the Conjure Beasts/Woodland Beings/Minor Elementals template that allows you to summon Aberrations instead - at CR 2 it's in summon range for those spells, and it'll be a lot of fun to Sleep an opposing spellcaster, then have your pet aberration burrow into his skull and pilot him around at your command - especially since things being controlled by the devourer explicitly retain their spellcasting abilities. The only thing better than being a wizard is being two wizards.
It's sort of insane how literally people take the rules.
I've run two separate groups of two through the first chapter of the starter set adventure, "Mines of Phandelver" and it's been wonderful how differently they've played out. People who try to break the game with insane amounts of summons and getting into the legal fine print of rest breaks and death are really missing the point and/or have DM's who aren't helping tell a very interesting story.
If you're a high level wizard with 18 pets running around behind you just trying to min-max the shit out of the game, your DM is doing it wrong and you might look at why you're playing role-playing games in the first place.
I remember when people made these kinds of arguments all the time.
In 2006.
I remember being so glad that all of this was finally put to rest.
In 2008.
Now, in 2014, I find myself repeating words I uttered over and over ten years ago:
It's not the players' fault the goddamn game doesn't work properly.
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This is the kind of monster that looks at the crappy low level monsters of 3rd and 4th and laughs at them. It's almost like if I was going to play "Complaints with 5E design bingo" this monster would hit almost all of them. A CR that is utterly meaningless against how hard it actually is? Yep. Comes at the worst possible pair of levels to face anything remotely dangerous? Yep. Has ridiculous abilities that can instantly knock a PC out of the fight? Yep. Is capable of preventing your character from ever being resurrected? Yep.
And to cap it all off, it actually manages to throw in 21 HP on top of being resistant to all weapon types that martial characters have. Meaning it even manages to make sure the only people who are spellcasters are remotely relevant against it.
So yeah, at this point I'd scream Bingo and then promptly run from the room on fire. Or something. Seriously, I think a handful of these might be far more terrifying than even the lower level dragons. 4th editions legendary frogs of doom have nothing on this guy.
Edit: This does tell me that CR is back to being an entirely meaningless concept. Again.
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You think that's bad? Try having a 3.5e 20th level True Necromancer roll with a horde of undead while the other two players were fighter types. It was nuts. And as DM, the players needed hordes of paladins and clerics to contend with the necromancer and his goons. Fights would take entire days. The final battle was an entire weekend! Silver dragons, deathless, living Heal spells roaming the battlefields obliterating entire chunks of undead while healing the living. It was nuts and lessons were learned (a big one...don't let your party have access to items from the Book of Vile Darkness willy nilly....and also be prepared for whininess when you hit them back with stuff from the Book of Exalted Deeds) In my defense though....everyone had a great time playing that game.
High level 3.5e play like this only cemented my desire to play 4e. I wanted to rein in the ridiculousness of 3.5e high level splat book play. Sadly, my IRL players didn't share that desire. It was the last campaign I will ever run for 3.5e. I'll play in my friends other campaigns (if it happens, our new hotness is IKRPG) but I won't put in the effort to run a game in a system I don't even want to play in anymore.
My hopes for 5e (which I have not seen the PHB or played yet) is that it meshes the consistency and balance of 4e with the less "structured" or "rigid" scent of 3.5e. And I know those words are not the right ones also not necessarily true, but my feeling are hard to explain...I want the new and shiny but I want it my way. I don't quite know what that it yet, but I'll know it when I see it. And until the DMG comes out, I'll reserve judgment. That said, I really do like advantage/disadvantage on paper, but how it plays at the table is really the key.
High level 3.x was just horrible. You had this monstrosities with a billion buff spells on them making them unstoppable to which people replied "Dispel them!" So you do, and then a fucking hour later you've resolved a single spell. Alternatively they said fine, "Disjunct them!" and you got to watch all their magic items evaporate after making 30 will saves to find out which ones go away. I liked the idea behind it but in actual play it was a nightmare.
Those are not words I would apply to 5e. In some senses they were the opposites of design goals.
The Fighter has a wider range of options. Let's assume he's a Great Weapon fighter with a Greatsword. He's also rocking a +7 attack (+4 from strength, +3 from proficiency), but his damage is 2d6+4, and he gets to re-roll his first 1's and 2's on his damage dice, and he gets to attack twice per turn. His average damage per hit is just under 13, he gets two hits per turn and has 50% accuracy, so his average damage per turn is about 13. We'll be charitable and assume that he's using the Riposte maneuver every turn (even though he can only use it 4 times per combat and only on the condition that someone attacks him and misses), which gives him another attack at the same bonus with an extra 1d8 damage, bumping his average damage per turn up to about 21.
The Druid uses his third-level spell slots for Conjure Animals, and summons 8 CR 1/4 Wolves.
The wolves only get +4 to attack, and only deal 2d4+2 damage...but they get Advantage on their attacks if they have an ally adjacent to the target, and if they hit the target has to make a DC 11 STR save or fall prone. Since we assumed the rogue would always have an adjacent ally, we'll assume the same for the wolves (plus there's eight of them, so it's not like they're gonna spend a lot of time all alone.) That means the wolves will hit our 18 AC target if either of their rolls is a 14 or better, which gives them 58% accuracy - better than our actual players! Plus, again, there are eight of them, so they get to attack eight times. 2d4+2 is an average of 7 damage per hit, times 8 is 56, times our average accuracy is about 32 damage per turn. They're also extremely likely to knock their target prone, since an average of 4 DC 11 STR saves per turn gives us about a 75% chance that the target will fail one assuming he's got a +5 to that save. (Even if he's got a +8 to the save, we still knock him prone about 50% of the time).
Granted, the wolves have only got 11 hp each, but they'll be surprisingly resilient since everything will tend to die pretty quickly, since all melee attacks against prone targets have advantage, so the wolves not only will the wolves be doing enough damage to kill a reasonably hard target in ~2 turns, but they will also be responsible for boosting both the Rogue and the Fighter's damage per round by about 30% (making them worth about another 15 dpr in this example - possibly more or less depending on party composition). Also, standing from prone eats a lot of movement and prone creatures have disadvantage on attacks, so if you're really attached to keeping your wolves around there's a lot that can be done by strafing them in and out of melee, because they have a speed of 40 and you can use half your movement, attack, and then use the other half of your movement - putting you 20 feet away from a target that probably has 30 speed and spent half of it to stand from prone. You'll need to leave at least one thing in melee with the target to get your free advantage, but hey - at this point, what else are you bring that armored-up Fighter for? As a bonus, if the target tries to chase your wolves, the fighter gets an OA, which will push his damage numbers high enough that he can be worth, like, at least 4 or 5 wolves - over half of a level 3 spell!
They're summons, which means they can't be around all the time - but they can be around a lot, since the summon lasts up to an hour and can be cast twice a day at level 5 (3 times, if the druid is a Circle of Land druid). And also they're summons, which means we're doing more damage than the Rogue and the Fighter combined and haven't actually started looking at what the druid is doing with his turns yet.
The druid might be a Circle of the Moon druid and wildshaping into a Brown bear so that he can double attack at +5 to hit for 1d8+4 and 2d6+4 damage, with the free advantage all his wolves are providing.
Or wildshaping into a Dire Wolf so that he can do the same stuff as his wolves, but with bigger numbers (plus, the flavor!)
Those options do a lot of damage, but since the best strategy to fuck with this particular druid is to punch him until his Concentration breaks, it's probably smarter to be a Circle of Land druid with Mirror Image as a circle spell (which thankfully doesn't require concentration and so can be maintained alongside the summon, and is conveniently a level 2 spell so it doesn't infringe on the druid's level 3 summon spell), hanging out at range and being pelting people with cantrips and CC spells while soaking up fire from targets that probably can't close to melee with him and can't hit him at range because of his images.
(Wizards can do something similar to this with Animate Dead - Skeletons don't get to knock stuff prone or get free advantage, but they DO get a ranged attack, so they'll stick around for a lot longer; plus, since they're not actually summons they don't require concentration, leaving you free to concentrate on other stuff...like the Conjure Elementals spell you'll get at level 7, where you augment your skeletons with a shitload of little elementals.)
TLDR: Summoner builds (which, with the extremely limited options presented by having only the player's handbook to work with basically just means "literally any dude who can cast summoning spells") have 2-4 times the damage output and better battlefield control than trying to play a non-caster, starting as early as level 5.
Basically action multiplication through summons has always been an exceedingly powerful strategy in DnD. 5e decided the flatten the math curve a lot so that smaller monsters could still be threatening...which, as a consequence, means that already-powerful summoning strategies are even more powerful than they used to be, because you can get away with summoning larger numbers of smaller creatures and still have those creatures be threatening. This is further exacerbated by the fact that Advantage represents a very large accuracy increase that can significantly ablate the relevance of linear attack modifiers as long as you stay within a reasonable range. (If only there were an edition that had already figured out a good way of representing monsters as small, minor threats that the DM could deploy in large numbers to create interesting encounters...)
They DID manage to implement Concentration in a way that keeps you from casting multiple summoning spells at once...but then printed their summoning spells in a way that allows you to summon nearly a dozen (or more!) creatures off a single spell if you're so inclined (and immediately gave wizards Animate Dead, a summon-like spell that doesn't require Concentration.)
This is all also just with the options provided in the player's handbook. Imagine how silly the power disparity is gonna get when they inevitably print options that let a caster Concentrate on more than one spell at a time, or add buffs to their summons (The Necromancer wizard focus already does this, by the way - high five!), or buy scrolls of Conjure Animal, or avoid losing Concentration to damage, or summon a wider variety of more-powerful creatures via existing summon spells, or any of the other obvious design spaces that feats and class options and magic items and monster manuals are virtually guaranteed to explore. And it's not like we're talking about some unreasonably high level, here. This is level 5 - exactly the point at which the Fighter has a power breakpoint and gets to suddenly become twice as good as he was during the previous level.
- 35 points for point buy.
- Everybody starts with one feat. Humans start with two.
- At levels with an attribute gain, characters get only one attribute point, but also get a feat, no need to choose between the two.
- Everyone starts play with bonus temporary HP equal to 2x their starting total. He has indicated that there will be a story reason for this in the first session.
- Everyone has one free rez, which will re-apply their bonus temporary HP if they've already used them up. This takes roughly the duration of a short rest to catalyze, and must be activated by a living person. He described like a mystic tattoo that vanishes once the magic has been used up. Presumably it's from the same story source as the temp HP in the first place?
- Automatic max results on hit dice when you gain 2nd and 3rd level. Roll hit dice as normal after that.
True. Action surge lets them spike periodically, but only a few times between rests - and some of the value of that spike was rolled into the generous math on the maneuvers.
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Short rests are a lot more demanding than they were in 4e, requiring an hour's rest instead of 5 minutes, which means most parties probably won't get them between every encounter like they used to, so the value of the faster recharge isn't as high as it looks at first - much of the time, if you have the time/security to hang out and catnap for an hour, you probably also have the time/security to hang out and sleep for 8.
Short rests take an hour. The pacing of a typical dungeon, fortress, or wizard tower invasion doesn't allow for an hour breather after every fight. In fact, we know this is intentional because a number of classes with "encounter" resources at later levels gain the ability to regain those resources without taking a short rest. So chances are the fighter needs to treat his maneuvers like spell slots.
I completely understand that people are wary of melee being weaker than casters once again. I'll keep an eye out for it in my game.
it just hasn't happened yet to me.
We spent about 45 minutes doing character creation, and then the session was about an 75 minutes, with a clean break at the end. Our party was Paladin, Ranger, and Wizard, and the DM had us rescue some Commoners to act as guest NPCs in the party so we would be evenly matched. Although, at low levels, Sleep is pretty absurd in how it basically wins the encounter in one turn.
There's not a WHOLE lot you can do at level 1. The Paladin basically stood in the way and soaked up hits, and got to heal once with Lay On Hands. The Wizard used his two spell slots, and then Cantrip spammed. The Ranger sliced and diced everything with Dual Wield. A good start, though I was hoping for one or two more people to show up.
We ran through Chapter 1 last week, similar party - Paladin, Ranger, Warlock, and me as a Rogue. We found it to drag a bit in the middle (we are less experienced so it took us a couple hours to get through the session) and some of us, mostly the warlock and paladin, were definitely feeling a lack of options with lvl 1 characters.
It ended really strong though and our Paladin died in that final encounter which really bonded the party. Without giving spoilers, it was pretty great.
We're playing chapter 2 tonight, at level 2, and the Paladin is rerolling as a cleric. I can't wait
While I get what you're implying I think Long Rests are guaranteed to happen once a day while short rests not so much.
I'm actually not sure I like the tension between short rest classes and long rest classes. If 3/4th of the party only needs a short rest I wouldn't expect Mr Long Rest getting a lot of sympathy in some groups. Same if the numbers are reversed. Rather not have rules that push parties into internal conflict.
Everybody needs long rests, if only to recover hit dice. Admittedly, they're only regaining half of them, which is stupid. Can you imagine only recovering two healing surges in 4e? Madness.
Well the "once a day" long rest...also known as "sleeping" is probably going to happen regardless. It's the question of whether short rests exist at all would be the point of contention. They're so long they're a big investment and for some characters have no upside.
I also hope that the DMG provides helpful guidance for handling character death at the table. I believe that clear guidance in printed rulebooks go a long way toward creating good norms for DMs. In the absence of those norms, a lot of DMs become monster dickasauruses.
*Even in less-lethal systems, I actually think it's a good idea to not write a fully fleshed-out history for your character until you've actually played that character for a time. Sometimes you think your character will have one personality, but it turns out you want to take her in a whole new direction. So it can be a good idea to hold off on the character's personal history until the concept is more fully realized for you.
Exactly. For a number of the characters that don't benefit from short rests, those rests actually have a substantial cost, even - not only do you not regain spell slots, but there are a number of valuable spells with hour-long durations (like the summoning spells).
An hour-long spell is more than long enough to plow through several encounters (or even an entire dungeon, depending on its scale), but will end (without restoring its spell slot) if you take a short rest.
Spellcasters DO get to spend hit dice to heal during short rests, in theory, but in practice those are also exactly the characters that are going to be out of melee, using other characters to screen for them, running defensive spells, and generally not taking damage in the first place. More than likely, if the martial characters want to rest for healing, the spellcasters are going to tell them to take a couple hits off a wand of Cure Wounds and keep going.
Party dynamics aside, from a practical standpoint, the kind of DM that 5e's 'old-school' high-lethality simulation-esque play pattern appeals to is probably not also the kind of DM that is consistently going to let a party of adventurers knock down the front door of the Bad Guy Lair, kill all the dudes in the front half of the building, then stop outside the Hall of the Murderthrone for an hour-long nap without trouble or disturbance while the Murder King twiddles his thumbs inside.
just think of Die Hard, McClain always took a break mid fight.
http://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/MM_IntellectDevourer.pdf
Instant death attack plus reanimation. CR 2.
2.
2.
This monster will end friendships.
More importantly, how would you regain your brain once it had been devoured.
Really?
A Wish.
I'm sort of impressed, in a way. It's might have topped That Damn Crab for most misleading CR.
Speaking of hilariously low CRs, does any one remember the metal bugs ( I think they were money themed) in the 3.5 Monster Manual 2, which had the queen get disintegrate at will at level 9? Even back when I was just learning how to DM, I knew something was jacked.
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Actually, it doesn't say "by the int damage." It just says "incapacitated." So, you could just be hit on the head with a blunt object and he can decide he wants a new home.
Or just taking a nap, even.
Hopefully the Dungeon Master's Guide will have rules for ability score damage and recovery.
Christ, I can't believe I just typed that sentence.
Incidentally, a character killed by the intellect devourer's brain-eating power cannot be restored to life by either revivify or raise dead; these spells specifically do not restore missing body parts. So a character whose brain has been destroyed must be raised by resurrection or its more powerful sequel, true resurrection.
CR 2.
It's the gift that keeps on giving.
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I've run two separate groups of two through the first chapter of the starter set adventure, "Mines of Phandelver" and it's been wonderful how differently they've played out. People who try to break the game with insane amounts of summons and getting into the legal fine print of rest breaks and death are really missing the point and/or have DM's who aren't helping tell a very interesting story.
If you're a high level wizard with 18 pets running around behind you just trying to min-max the shit out of the game, your DM is doing it wrong and you might look at why you're playing role-playing games in the first place.
I think they're basing the challenge ratings on pure stats, without bothering to account for special abilities etc.
It's really the only way that CR makes any sort of sense….
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Yes. Clearly it's the DM's fault that the rules are vague and players want to be powerful. Clearly.
How do you suggest the DM solve this problem? Just start blanket banning spells?
I seem to remember something like that from somewhere in D&D, five minute breathers that is.
A thing of malignant beauty.
The best part is the guy who just got killed is used as a meat shield around it while it kills the rest of the party. Even if somebody takes getting their brain eaten out of their skull for not killing it in 6 seconds the subsequent beating of his animate corpse by his former friends is gonna break some hearts.
Hmm, it has 21 hit points which would require a little bit of luck to get to...
Ah, well to be fair you said "characters" and we all know that fighters and rogues are much more like henchmen than characters.
Please don't badwrongfun people over how they play make believe.
It's just a bit silly.
If only there were some way people could hire a team of expert game designers to build a balanced and coherent system of rules so that all those inexpert DMs would have an easier time doing it right. That way, all those subpar DMs could just pay for books outlining the game so that they could focus on telling a very interesting story - instead of having to spend all their time patching the obvious and substantial underlying flaws in the system. Then everyone would be able to play a fun, compelling game without every DM having to become a game design expert first.
I wonder what such a thing would look like.
Edit: Oh hey, while we're talking about summons and intellect devourers: You can't summon it yet, but keep an eye out for the very-likely eventual addition of a summon spell on the Conjure Beasts/Woodland Beings/Minor Elementals template that allows you to summon Aberrations instead - at CR 2 it's in summon range for those spells, and it'll be a lot of fun to Sleep an opposing spellcaster, then have your pet aberration burrow into his skull and pilot him around at your command - especially since things being controlled by the devourer explicitly retain their spellcasting abilities. The only thing better than being a wizard is being two wizards.
In 2006.
I remember being so glad that all of this was finally put to rest.
In 2008.
Now, in 2014, I find myself repeating words I uttered over and over ten years ago:
It's not the players' fault the goddamn game doesn't work properly.
This is the kind of monster that looks at the crappy low level monsters of 3rd and 4th and laughs at them. It's almost like if I was going to play "Complaints with 5E design bingo" this monster would hit almost all of them. A CR that is utterly meaningless against how hard it actually is? Yep. Comes at the worst possible pair of levels to face anything remotely dangerous? Yep. Has ridiculous abilities that can instantly knock a PC out of the fight? Yep. Is capable of preventing your character from ever being resurrected? Yep.
And to cap it all off, it actually manages to throw in 21 HP on top of being resistant to all weapon types that martial characters have. Meaning it even manages to make sure the only people who are spellcasters are remotely relevant against it.
So yeah, at this point I'd scream Bingo and then promptly run from the room on fire. Or something. Seriously, I think a handful of these might be far more terrifying than even the lower level dragons. 4th editions legendary frogs of doom have nothing on this guy.
Edit: This does tell me that CR is back to being an entirely meaningless concept. Again.