RE: Prices, I don't have my 3rd edition core rulebooks any more to check, but I know the Eberron campaign setting was $40, and even the thin ass little splats like magic of Eberron or whatever were $30, and those books were like 1/3rd the size of a full rulebook.
And while 4es were $34.95, they also had a quite different business plan, because during that edition they were still trying to make D&D like magic where they were just constantly pumping out new material to sell. The $50 price tag on 5e's books also seems a lot higher than it effectively is too, because they know everybody is just going to buy them on Amazon for $30. MSRP on books means nothing any more.
Splats were absolutely more. The quote I linked was talking about how they intentionally took less profit margin on the "core" books to sell more splats. It's why that price is lower than all the rest adjusted into today's value. I'm trying to remember but do not if the 3.5 books went the same route. I'm thinking they did not.
The higher price of the 5th books seems to indicate the opposite of what Dancey proposed. Less a handle and razor blade model and now a "Buy them both and stop bothering us" model.
As for Amazon, Amazon was totally a thing for 4th and even 3rd. I'm murky on the distribution deals but Amazon doesn't really take a slice of Hasbro's portion of the money, they take it out of the retailers like your neighborhood game store and middleman distributors like Alliance and other companies that retail consumers never hear about.
On the plus side I was close to killing at least a couple of other party members, but my rolls were crap (as they had been all night)
Oh and yes it was absolutely, completely my fault. Like, 100%. I walked right up to the wraith and tried to stab it with a torch, and then saw a prettyshiny and left myself open for its attack. So I wasn't even remotely angry, just perfectly "welp" about the whole thing.
It's largely irrelevant anyway, we've only got maybe two more sessions and then holidays and then babbies (current DM and wife both play, and she's pregnant, and another player's wife is pregnant), so we'll likely be on hiatus for at least a little while.
RE: Prices, I don't have my 3rd edition core rulebooks any more to check, but I know the Eberron campaign setting was $40, and even the thin ass little splats like magic of Eberron or whatever were $30, and those books were like 1/3rd the size of a full rulebook.
And while 4es were $34.95, they also had a quite different business plan, because during that edition they were still trying to make D&D like magic where they were just constantly pumping out new material to sell. The $50 price tag on 5e's books also seems a lot higher than it effectively is too, because they know everybody is just going to buy them on Amazon for $30. MSRP on books means nothing any more.
Splats were absolutely more. The quote I linked was talking about how they intentionally took less profit margin on the "core" books to sell more splats. It's why that price is lower than all the rest adjusted into today's value. I'm trying to remember but do not if the 3.5 books went the same route. I'm thinking they did not.
The higher price of the 5th books seems to indicate the opposite of what Dancey proposed. Less a handle and razor blade model and now a "Buy them both and stop bothering us" model.
As for Amazon, Amazon was totally a thing for 4th and even 3rd. I'm murky on the distribution deals but Amazon doesn't really take a slice of Hasbro's portion of the money, they take it out of the retailers like your neighborhood game store and middleman distributors like Alliance and other companies that retail consumers never hear about.
No doubt their model with 5e involves fewer books. Mearls said in his AMA even campaign settings are just going to be 2 books, a DM book and a player book, and likely they'll be an adventure on top of just a resource. And of course amazon was around for the past 2 editions, but their stranglehold on all things books just gets stronger as time goes on. My point was just that the MSRP doesn't mean anything. I just looked up my old orders on amazon for D&D books, and for 3e I had orders ranging from $11 for books like Complete Warrior, to $28 for books like The Draconomicon. The 5e rulebooks are $30 on amazon, right in line with what I paid for the fat 3e books 10 years ago.
RE: Prices, I don't have my 3rd edition core rulebooks any more to check, but I know the Eberron campaign setting was $40, and even the thin ass little splats like magic of Eberron or whatever were $30, and those books were like 1/3rd the size of a full rulebook.
And while 4es were $34.95, they also had a quite different business plan, because during that edition they were still trying to make D&D like magic where they were just constantly pumping out new material to sell. The $50 price tag on 5e's books also seems a lot higher than it effectively is too, because they know everybody is just going to buy them on Amazon for $30. MSRP on books means nothing any more.
Splats were absolutely more. The quote I linked was talking about how they intentionally took less profit margin on the "core" books to sell more splats. It's why that price is lower than all the rest adjusted into today's value. I'm trying to remember but do not if the 3.5 books went the same route. I'm thinking they did not.
The higher price of the 5th books seems to indicate the opposite of what Dancey proposed. Less a handle and razor blade model and now a "Buy them both and stop bothering us" model.
As for Amazon, Amazon was totally a thing for 4th and even 3rd. I'm murky on the distribution deals but Amazon doesn't really take a slice of Hasbro's portion of the money, they take it out of the retailers like your neighborhood game store and middleman distributors like Alliance and other companies that retail consumers never hear about.
No doubt their model with 5e involves fewer books. Mearls said in his AMA even campaign settings are just going to be 2 books, a DM book and a player book, and likely they'll be an adventure on top of just a resource. And of course amazon was around for the past 2 editions, but their stranglehold on all things books just gets stronger as time goes on. My point was just that the MSRP doesn't mean anything. I just looked up my old orders on amazon for D&D books, and for 3e I had orders ranging from $11 for books like Complete Warrior, to $28 for books like The Draconomicon. The 5e rulebooks are $30 on amazon, right in line with what I paid for the fat 3e books 10 years ago.
Well I don't think it's quite right to compare core and non-core books. (Yes, I know I started it, that was probably not a good idea.) The main reason is economies of scale. The core books have massive print runs while most supplements get much smaller limited runs (and are thus more expensive per a unit to produce). Now my thesis is basically that there has been a shift in the concept of what the core books are for. 3rd treated them as not quite loss leaders, where making little money on them was acceptable because it would lead to later sales. 4th, to a lesser extent, seems to have reverted to the mean of making a middle line of decent profit on par with a supplement book with the economies of scale lowering the price a bit. 5th seems to be at the polar opposite of 3rd and trying to leverage the high volume of the core sales to rake in lots of profit right now.
To me this strikes as concern of immediate revenue generation without regards to long term revenue which I'm not sure I really care for. Though after 2 years of absolutely no sales I can't say I blame Hasbro for wanting to actually make some money from D&D.
Considering that, for as long as I can remember, D&D books on Amazon have consistently come in at 30-40% off MSRP at launch, the MSRP is still a factor even for Amazon, to say nothing of the FLGSes (whatever significance they still have) which are charging closer to actual MSRP. I don't have a litany of historical data, of course, but since the 3e days me and my group have known --- you want a newly-released D&D book, you can get it for around 2/3 the MSRP on Amazon. It matters less, maybe, but MSRP is still a factor and in many cases the best indicator we have of the state of the market and what it'll support for games.
You want to start poking holes in the post-Dancey world, I'd start with the number of people giving away d20-based games for free/extremely cheap, while WotC has closed their core mechanics and licensing, and inched away from their once-ubiquitous engine.
Edit for clarity: by "giving away d20-based games" I mean less the core rules themselves (because we have 5e basic, obviously), and more the ability to publish a product that hops on the edition's train without effort, which has been something WotC actively discouraged in 4e and has been pretty cagey about so far with 5e.
bss on
3DS: 2466-2307-8384 PSN: bssteph Steam:bsstephanTwitch:bsstephan Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e Occasional words about games:my site
One thing I will absolutely praise Wizards for is that game stores get new releases a week or two before Amazon. That is a brilliant move on their part.
I agree about giving some love to brick and mortar stores. I've paid full price for mine with little to no regret. I'd prefer to pay more to support a local store, versus giving money to Amazon.
I have a FLGS near me that is run by a great guy. But I still don't buy my D&D books from his shop, because he barely makes any money off tabletop books anyway. His shop is successful because of magic and comic books. It's definitely cool that they let shops get the books first to encourage people who really want them day 1 to support local gaming stores, but I'm always going to buy my D&D books at the lowest price I can pay for them.
silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
If you're actually hosting your D&D sessions at a LGS, I feel it's appropriate to purchase your books from that same LGS. Otherwise, he's not making any money letting you play in the store.
If you're actually hosting your D&D sessions at a LGS, I feel it's appropriate to purchase your books from that same LGS. Otherwise, he's not making any money letting you play in the store.
I think it depends. The places here (that I don't visit because I have no interest in playing in public) seem to offset cost by charging a nominal sum to use the space and selling concessions. Which is a pretty good way to go about it.
3DS: 2466-2307-8384 PSN: bssteph Steam:bsstephanTwitch:bsstephan Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e Occasional words about games:my site
Yeah, if I hosted D&D at the FLGS using his space i'd 100% buy my books from him, especially if he didn't charge for the time using it or whatever. I don't know how that works there because I've never played D&D at a store like that.
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JohnnyCacheStarting DefensePlace at the tableRegistered Userregular
if you don't buy your books here we reserve the right to give free magic boosters to your kids and girlfriends
#pusherman
re the 3 edition books they were priced VERY aggressively on launch deliberately, I think 19.99 a piece for the PHB, because DND had been stale for a while and they felt the need for a huge marketing push
@badpoet this would be the thread to make your arguments re: lethality in 5th edition. Not really an on-topic point for that thread (sort of, but it fits better here).
Actually, it was on topic, because he was worried about the lethality and how to deal with it as a GM. There's no point in discussing it in this thread, as well, because I was directly addressing concerns and questions the other poster had. If other folks want to discuss my point of view (I see the response in that thread), I'm not going to bother replying there because it's not on topic for that thread (but my advice was).
Actually, it was on topic, because he was worried about the lethality and how to deal with it as a GM. There's no point in discussing it in this thread, as well, because I was directly addressing concerns and questions the other poster had. If other folks want to discuss my point of view (I see the response in that thread), I'm not going to bother replying there because it's not on topic for that thread (but my advice was).
Thanks though!
I think you're way too worried about it
In practice it's not been a huge problem; a full first level HD, fairly forgiving stabilization rules, and a plethora of tanky healer options make knockdown likely but actual killing a player fairly rare. Doubly so if you treat 1st level as a very quick break in period - it's practical to level people to 2 in a single session or even part of one.
The best thing I can say about first level in 5e is that's over before you know it.
I personally like games where you either quickly sketch up a random background (warhammer fantasy) or your characters have some established backstory with the relative to man on the street skill level to back it up (like WW or Shadowrun). D&D often falls on the wrong side of making you invest a little too much in a guy that's a bit too weak to have that suggested backstory. (A folk hero "stood up to" an evil noble? HOW?)
That said, the key to early level D&D is to understand it represents the end of apprenticeship - especially in fifth, where you're very clearly still a "squire" or similar until about third level, and to understand that maxed 1st level HP and PC class training do actually make you stand out from Joe Villager a little bit - enough to at least hint you're fated for something big.
This actually seems plausible to me. That evil noble might not even have class levels, and the most elite soldier in his retinue is maybe a 5th level fighter. A peasant uprising is a credible threat to powers of that scale.
This actually seems plausible to me. That evil noble might not even have class levels, and the most elite soldier in his retinue is maybe a 5th level fighter. A peasant uprising is a credible threat to powers of that scale.
Also, stood up to doesn't by default mean that you whipped the piss out of him.
A folk hero who stood up, got arrested, got the piss whipped out of him, and then took to the road to become strong enough to go home and successfully beat up Baron Von Doodyhead could be a pretty fun character.
I had a great character in 3.5e similar to that. He came back to Nibenay (Dark Sun) in the epic levels at the General of liberating army, riding the head of the Tarrasque as his war wagon.
That mid level bureaucrat Templar guy never stood a chance.
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JohnnyCacheStarting DefensePlace at the tableRegistered Userregular
One thing I will absolutely praise Wizards for is that game stores get new releases a week or two before Amazon. That is a brilliant move on their part.
Except here in Australia. I haven't been able to find books at all pretty much until a couple of weeks after their release in the states. I only recently got Rise of Tiamat for example, which has some really great ideas in it BTW.
Thank you, Rend! Based on that I think the value for the books is pretty high now. Full color, quality art versus the shitty art and black-b-white we used to get. If only it was a ruleset I cared for.
I've got to check when I get home but pretty sure the basic 2nd edition books were $20. Plugged into the INFLATION-O-MATIC we get $38.68.
Though they were smaller and with less interior color IIRC. Things get weird with monster books as they did this stupid three ring binder thing.
So continuing this:
1st edition PHB: I think the code on the back means $12 bucks in 1980. So $34.58 today.
1st edition DMG: Again by code $15 in 1979, about twice the size of the PHB. So $49.06 today.
1st edition OA: Again by the code I think $15 in 1985. So $33.10 today.
2nd edition Tome of Magic, (not sure where my PHB went to,) is labeled $20. So $34.87
2nd edition PHB, (It went there) is labeled $20 in 93. So $32.86.
3rd edition is packed away but I am fairly sure they retailed for $20. So $27.58 today.
4th edition PHB was $34.95 in 2008. So $38.54 today.
5th edition PHB is $49.95 currently.
:whistle: One of these things is not like the others, One of these things just doesn't belong, :whistle:
Actually two things, but then I don't get to be grumpy! Also, inflation is a jerk.
Confirming thirds launch price led to some interesting comments from Dancey that shows the difference in philosophy:
> >> Just out of curiosity, how does this opinion match up with
> >> TSR's stated plans to publish the next edition of D&D books
> >> at $20 each?
> >
> >We're going to use price as a weapon.
> >
> >We've got the largest print runs of any hobby RPG. Once every ten years,
> >those print runs jump by a factor of five. This time, we're going to use
> >that advantage in the marketplace, instead of squandering it on short term
> >bottom line profit.
> >
> >We're putting stuff into the PHB and DMG that we haven't even announced yet.
> >When gamers see what we can deliver for $20, they're going to have some
> >really hard questions for publishers with $30+ rule books.
More here. Beware, it links to old usenet posts. You may suddenly feel insufferably old.
from what I recall, the only edition that compares to 5th, both in price and how shit awful it is, is 2.5 edition aka "Players Options". Those were so crazy expensive.
Attacked by tweeeeeeees!
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Rise of Tiamat has a 34 page, free download online supplement filled entirely with magic items, creature statistics, and spells? Intriguing
Edit: Unless these are all "things contained in the DMG and MM for those that don't have them", in which case, bleh.
Correct anything new like tiamats stats (protip, she will ruin your shit) are in the book.
Edit: Of course it's worth noting there are barely any guidelines for what you're supposed to do with Magic Items and I can't even tell what the goal is. The 5E Starter Adventure is a Monty Haul compared to Hoard of the Dragon Queen - which barely hands you anything over 8 levels.
Edit2: Oh dear, I am a bit worried after seeing the "Madness" section in the DMG under diseases and poison. I hope its treated respectfully and with good guidelines, ala how games like Call or Trail discuss mental illnesses. It's not something that should be thrown in for comedy effect or random lols, it should be a meaningful and well implemented part of the game...
So, I'm running a 5e campaign with my wife, my best friend, and his wife. Me and my friend are both P&P veterans, but the ladies have only come as close to it as MTG. As one might expect, making three characters up to level three in a system I've only barely got down took a long goddamned time. An hour later my group was negative two half-elf females.
If your DM impresses upon you to research what the difference between regular trolls and war trolls, make sure to take the information seriously. Otherwise you will be eaten.
Now I'm in the predicament that I don't want to spend the night playing munchkin because of how character creation is such a time sink. Luckily for me, I remember a book called Fantasy Craft, particularly the Cheat Death segment. Essentially, Cheat Death says that if your character dies ignobly, you roll on a list and see what bad shit happens to you; anything from scars, amnesia, losing limbs, or even having your family liquidate your assets. What makes this interesting is the way it's implemented.
So, you roll on the list, see what you get, and then make a story up on the spot. Everyone else at the table rates the story, 1-5 stars, and the ratings are averaged. The lower the rating, the more severe the drawbacks.
All in all, it worked rather well. I had them lose 1 ability point, plus one more for each star below 5 for their story. They both managed getting 4s, reduced some odd numbers to even, and we went on with the game. It felt like enough of a penalty to make death suck, but not so much that you wanted to reroll anyway.
would you give them more points? how would conversion into spell slots work? how many spell points can you put into a spell and are there any other limits like twinned And empowered? what spell level limits would be in place?
I mean if the player gets it, then I don't see whwhy not. this removes the converting slots into points, which isn't a big deal to me.
do you allow multiclass? how would spell casting work then?
Well for this particular potential scenario there would be no multiclass, although it wouldn't matter if there was, since you'd only gain spell points for gain sorcerer spell slots.
The initial problem is that we're only given "buy" values for spell slots up to 5th spell level, and extrapolating the data from there is somewhat difficult, but I only found one scenario where you get more than 10 points for a 9th level spell (and that was 11).
So running a few numbers I came up with basically getting points for a given spell slot equal to the slot's level plus 1. On top of that, you get points equal to half your sorcerer level (round down). You do not get the points listed on the leveling chart.
Below are some examples. The first column represents giving the character enough points to buy all its normal spell slots, plus the points they would normally get for their level. The second is like the first, but without the automatically gained points.
The third column gives points based on slot levels. You "sell" all your slots for points equal to the spell level plus one. Additionally you gain points equal to your sorc level (basically the automatically awarded points). The last column is you only gain additional points equal to half your level.
I only did through level 10 because after level 10 you start gaining level 6 slots and there's currently no official math on what they would cost to buy (though they can be extrapolated.
The tricky part is still figuring out how to assign costs to spell slots above 5th level. You could just not do that, and say you get those slotted normally, but then it begins to feel a bit too much like a warlock for me. Personally I think doing it more or less based on the last two columns, with costs equal to the spell's level +1, plus any metamagic costs. "Spell level" would, for these purposes, be the level you're casting the spell at, since you can cast using higher level slots.
AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
How would you determine spells known? As it stands: "The Spells Known table shows when you learn more sorcerer spells of your choice. Each of the spells must be of a level for which you have spells slots." Would a second level sorcerer be able to learn a 5th level spell because they could spend 7 sorcery points to gain a 5th level spell slot?
How would you determine spells known? As it stands: "The Spells Known table shows when you learn more sorcerer spells of your choice. Each of the spells must be of a level for which you have spells slots." Would a second level sorcerer be able to learn a 5th level spell because they could spend 7 sorcery points to gain a 5th level spell slot?
Spells known would be determined normally and don't directly interact with the number of slots you have, except to determine the highest level spells you can know, so it would essentially work like the warlock. You'd have a spells known column, and a "highest spell level" column, so to speak. That's a simple enough alteration that I feel like it should be considered obvious, especially since nobody in our group is the type of person who would try to break the game that way.
Edit2: Oh dear, I am a bit worried after seeing the "Madness" section in the DMG under diseases and poison. I hope its treated respectfully and with good guidelines, ala how games like Call or Trail discuss mental illnesses. It's not something that should be thrown in for comedy effect or random lols, it should be a meaningful and well implemented part of the game...
It looks like it's less Malkavian and more Cthulu, from the small part of that section I saw when I found the preview/spoiler on poisons.
In a fit of boredom, I got curious about barbarians. Specifically, I wondered if a raging barbarian was better off attacking with two smaller weapons or one large weapon. Spoilered for length.
I assumed a 4th level barbarian and ran the numbers for the following scenarios, compared across ACs from 10 to 20:
A Greataxe and a +2 to Strength
A Greataxe and the Great Weapon Master feat
A Greatsword and a +2 to Strength
A Greatsword and the Great Weapon Master feat
2 Battleaxes and the Dual Wielder feat (since they aren't light)
2 Handaxes and a +2 to Strength
The results fell more or less in line with my earlier analysis of Crossbow Master: you're better off throwing more dice. Even factoring in that offhand attacks don't get ability score modifiers (but DO get bonus Rage damage, unless I misread the rules), paired weapons consistently beat great weapons. Surprisingly, the paired battleaxes only had a slight lead against low armor classes, and fell behind handaxes above AC 13. The extra +1 to hit and +1 damage of the ability score increase was enough to balance out the extra potential damage of the battleaxes. At no point did Great Weapon Master beat out just taking the extra damage, though this analysis doesn't include its other ability.
Of course, the difference between the lowest (Greataxe with +2 STR) and highest (2 Battleaxes) average damage at AC 10 was a wopping 2 points, so it's really not THAT big a deal. Still, I wouldn't have guessed that a pair of handaxes would be the real champs of the Barbarian armament Olympics.
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
edited November 2014
So I have long since given up on the CR system, but for shits and giggles I decided to see how some of the encounters that I ran tonight would have fit into the system as written.
At one point, four party members -- bard, paladin, rogue, and ranger -- tried to solve a secret door puzzle but ended up triggering a trap that summoned a barlgura demon.
So this is four level 3 adventurers. According to the system as written, a single barlgura (CR 5) should have been a "Ludicrous" encounter.
In the first round of combat it rolled badly and only managed to connect with a single claw attack. Shortly after that it was incapacitated by the bard's hideous laughter spell. After that, the rogue sneak attacked, the paladin smited, and the ranger attacked with hunter's mark. The barlgura did not last two rounds.
Posts
Splats were absolutely more. The quote I linked was talking about how they intentionally took less profit margin on the "core" books to sell more splats. It's why that price is lower than all the rest adjusted into today's value. I'm trying to remember but do not if the 3.5 books went the same route. I'm thinking they did not.
The higher price of the 5th books seems to indicate the opposite of what Dancey proposed. Less a handle and razor blade model and now a "Buy them both and stop bothering us" model.
As for Amazon, Amazon was totally a thing for 4th and even 3rd. I'm murky on the distribution deals but Amazon doesn't really take a slice of Hasbro's portion of the money, they take it out of the retailers like your neighborhood game store and middleman distributors like Alliance and other companies that retail consumers never hear about.
Awesome!
On the plus side I was close to killing at least a couple of other party members, but my rolls were crap (as they had been all night)
Oh and yes it was absolutely, completely my fault. Like, 100%. I walked right up to the wraith and tried to stab it with a torch, and then saw a prettyshiny and left myself open for its attack. So I wasn't even remotely angry, just perfectly "welp" about the whole thing.
It's largely irrelevant anyway, we've only got maybe two more sessions and then holidays and then babbies (current DM and wife both play, and she's pregnant, and another player's wife is pregnant), so we'll likely be on hiatus for at least a little while.
No doubt their model with 5e involves fewer books. Mearls said in his AMA even campaign settings are just going to be 2 books, a DM book and a player book, and likely they'll be an adventure on top of just a resource. And of course amazon was around for the past 2 editions, but their stranglehold on all things books just gets stronger as time goes on. My point was just that the MSRP doesn't mean anything. I just looked up my old orders on amazon for D&D books, and for 3e I had orders ranging from $11 for books like Complete Warrior, to $28 for books like The Draconomicon. The 5e rulebooks are $30 on amazon, right in line with what I paid for the fat 3e books 10 years ago.
Well I don't think it's quite right to compare core and non-core books. (Yes, I know I started it, that was probably not a good idea.) The main reason is economies of scale. The core books have massive print runs while most supplements get much smaller limited runs (and are thus more expensive per a unit to produce). Now my thesis is basically that there has been a shift in the concept of what the core books are for. 3rd treated them as not quite loss leaders, where making little money on them was acceptable because it would lead to later sales. 4th, to a lesser extent, seems to have reverted to the mean of making a middle line of decent profit on par with a supplement book with the economies of scale lowering the price a bit. 5th seems to be at the polar opposite of 3rd and trying to leverage the high volume of the core sales to rake in lots of profit right now.
To me this strikes as concern of immediate revenue generation without regards to long term revenue which I'm not sure I really care for. Though after 2 years of absolutely no sales I can't say I blame Hasbro for wanting to actually make some money from D&D.
You want to start poking holes in the post-Dancey world, I'd start with the number of people giving away d20-based games for free/extremely cheap, while WotC has closed their core mechanics and licensing, and inched away from their once-ubiquitous engine.
Edit for clarity: by "giving away d20-based games" I mean less the core rules themselves (because we have 5e basic, obviously), and more the ability to publish a product that hops on the edition's train without effort, which has been something WotC actively discouraged in 4e and has been pretty cagey about so far with 5e.
Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e
Occasional words about games: my site
I think it depends. The places here (that I don't visit because I have no interest in playing in public) seem to offset cost by charging a nominal sum to use the space and selling concessions. Which is a pretty good way to go about it.
Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e
Occasional words about games: my site
#pusherman
re the 3 edition books they were priced VERY aggressively on launch deliberately, I think 19.99 a piece for the PHB, because DND had been stale for a while and they felt the need for a huge marketing push
Then they went up quite a bit.
I host a podcast about movies.
Thanks though!
I think you're way too worried about it
In practice it's not been a huge problem; a full first level HD, fairly forgiving stabilization rules, and a plethora of tanky healer options make knockdown likely but actual killing a player fairly rare. Doubly so if you treat 1st level as a very quick break in period - it's practical to level people to 2 in a single session or even part of one.
I host a podcast about movies.
I personally like games where you either quickly sketch up a random background (warhammer fantasy) or your characters have some established backstory with the relative to man on the street skill level to back it up (like WW or Shadowrun). D&D often falls on the wrong side of making you invest a little too much in a guy that's a bit too weak to have that suggested backstory. (A folk hero "stood up to" an evil noble? HOW?)
That said, the key to early level D&D is to understand it represents the end of apprenticeship - especially in fifth, where you're very clearly still a "squire" or similar until about third level, and to understand that maxed 1st level HP and PC class training do actually make you stand out from Joe Villager a little bit - enough to at least hint you're fated for something big.
I host a podcast about movies.
This actually seems plausible to me. That evil noble might not even have class levels, and the most elite soldier in his retinue is maybe a 5th level fighter. A peasant uprising is a credible threat to powers of that scale.
Also, stood up to doesn't by default mean that you whipped the piss out of him.
That mid level bureaucrat Templar guy never stood a chance.
did he have 6 fingers
I host a podcast about movies.
Except here in Australia. I haven't been able to find books at all pretty much until a couple of weeks after their release in the states. I only recently got Rise of Tiamat for example, which has some really great ideas in it BTW.
Edit: Unless these are all "things contained in the DMG and MM for those that don't have them", in which case, bleh.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
from what I recall, the only edition that compares to 5th, both in price and how shit awful it is, is 2.5 edition aka "Players Options". Those were so crazy expensive.
Correct anything new like tiamats stats (protip, she will ruin your shit) are in the book.
Edit: Of course it's worth noting there are barely any guidelines for what you're supposed to do with Magic Items and I can't even tell what the goal is. The 5E Starter Adventure is a Monty Haul compared to Hoard of the Dragon Queen - which barely hands you anything over 8 levels.
Edit2: Oh dear, I am a bit worried after seeing the "Madness" section in the DMG under diseases and poison. I hope its treated respectfully and with good guidelines, ala how games like Call or Trail discuss mental illnesses. It's not something that should be thrown in for comedy effect or random lols, it should be a meaningful and well implemented part of the game...
If your DM impresses upon you to research what the difference between regular trolls and war trolls, make sure to take the information seriously. Otherwise you will be eaten.
Now I'm in the predicament that I don't want to spend the night playing munchkin because of how character creation is such a time sink. Luckily for me, I remember a book called Fantasy Craft, particularly the Cheat Death segment. Essentially, Cheat Death says that if your character dies ignobly, you roll on a list and see what bad shit happens to you; anything from scars, amnesia, losing limbs, or even having your family liquidate your assets. What makes this interesting is the way it's implemented.
So, you roll on the list, see what you get, and then make a story up on the spot. Everyone else at the table rates the story, 1-5 stars, and the ratings are averaged. The lower the rating, the more severe the drawbacks.
All in all, it worked rather well. I had them lose 1 ability point, plus one more for each star below 5 for their story. They both managed getting 4s, reduced some odd numbers to even, and we went on with the game. It felt like enough of a penalty to make death suck, but not so much that you wanted to reroll anyway.
I mean if the player gets it, then I don't see whwhy not. this removes the converting slots into points, which isn't a big deal to me.
do you allow multiclass? how would spell casting work then?
The initial problem is that we're only given "buy" values for spell slots up to 5th spell level, and extrapolating the data from there is somewhat difficult, but I only found one scenario where you get more than 10 points for a 9th level spell (and that was 11).
So running a few numbers I came up with basically getting points for a given spell slot equal to the slot's level plus 1. On top of that, you get points equal to half your sorcerer level (round down). You do not get the points listed on the leveling chart.
Below are some examples. The first column represents giving the character enough points to buy all its normal spell slots, plus the points they would normally get for their level. The second is like the first, but without the automatically gained points.
The third column gives points based on slot levels. You "sell" all your slots for points equal to the spell level plus one. Additionally you gain points equal to your sorc level (basically the automatically awarded points). The last column is you only gain additional points equal to half your level.
I only did through level 10 because after level 10 you start gaining level 6 slots and there's currently no official math on what they would cost to buy (though they can be extrapolated.
The tricky part is still figuring out how to assign costs to spell slots above 5th level. You could just not do that, and say you get those slotted normally, but then it begins to feel a bit too much like a warlock for me. Personally I think doing it more or less based on the last two columns, with costs equal to the spell's level +1, plus any metamagic costs. "Spell level" would, for these purposes, be the level you're casting the spell at, since you can cast using higher level slots.
Thoughts?
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Spells known would be determined normally and don't directly interact with the number of slots you have, except to determine the highest level spells you can know, so it would essentially work like the warlock. You'd have a spells known column, and a "highest spell level" column, so to speak. That's a simple enough alteration that I feel like it should be considered obvious, especially since nobody in our group is the type of person who would try to break the game that way.
Good to know, anybody seen it yet?
It looks like it's less Malkavian and more Cthulu, from the small part of that section I saw when I found the preview/spoiler on poisons.
Just an FYI.
The results fell more or less in line with my earlier analysis of Crossbow Master: you're better off throwing more dice. Even factoring in that offhand attacks don't get ability score modifiers (but DO get bonus Rage damage, unless I misread the rules), paired weapons consistently beat great weapons. Surprisingly, the paired battleaxes only had a slight lead against low armor classes, and fell behind handaxes above AC 13. The extra +1 to hit and +1 damage of the ability score increase was enough to balance out the extra potential damage of the battleaxes. At no point did Great Weapon Master beat out just taking the extra damage, though this analysis doesn't include its other ability.
Of course, the difference between the lowest (Greataxe with +2 STR) and highest (2 Battleaxes) average damage at AC 10 was a wopping 2 points, so it's really not THAT big a deal. Still, I wouldn't have guessed that a pair of handaxes would be the real champs of the Barbarian armament Olympics.
At one point, four party members -- bard, paladin, rogue, and ranger -- tried to solve a secret door puzzle but ended up triggering a trap that summoned a barlgura demon.
So this is four level 3 adventurers. According to the system as written, a single barlgura (CR 5) should have been a "Ludicrous" encounter.
In the first round of combat it rolled badly and only managed to connect with a single claw attack. Shortly after that it was incapacitated by the bard's hideous laughter spell. After that, the rogue sneak attacked, the paladin smited, and the ranger attacked with hunter's mark. The barlgura did not last two rounds.
Ludicrous? Ludicrously easy, maybe.