Gamma World has a good method for this. Your primary origin gets an 18, your secondary gets a 16. Roll 3d6 in order for the rest.
I actually really kinda liked this, too, and fully plan to use this as an option for rolling stats in the game I'm kinda-sorta-sometimes-but-honestly-very-rarely working on.
The standard array is prioritize ability scores, then assign 0-5, which becomes your modifier. The alternate is prioritize Background, Race, and Theme, and assign a 5 and a 4. Then roll d4 for all other stats.
And yes I am somewhat borrowing from Mechwarrior character generation in that regard.
The reason I generally don't like rolling for stats, and prefer something like a point buy or array (PB > array), is that I almost never come to the table with no idea of what type of character I want to play.
I know that I want to make a Hoplite-inspired Artificer, and so I'll need enough strength to carry my gear and not be useless with the spear, balanced against my casting stats. While I could roll randomly and then just roleplay around the fact that I don't have enough strength to wear armor, or that I can't cast more than a 2nd-level spell, that's not the character I want to play.
If I don't know what character I want to play, I can use a d6 to assign the points from the point buy - if you roll a 1, increment Str; 2, increment Dex; etc.
The reason I generally don't like rolling for stats, and prefer something like a point buy or array (PB > array), is that I almost never come to the table with no idea of what type of character I want to play.
I know that I want to make a Hoplite-inspired Artificer, and so I'll need enough strength to carry my gear and not be useless with the spear, balanced against my casting stats. While I could roll randomly and then just roleplay around the fact that I don't have enough strength to wear armor, or that I can't cast more than a 2nd-level spell, that's not the character I want to play.
If I don't know what character I want to play, I can use a d6 to assign the points from the point buy - if you roll a 1, increment Str; 2, increment Dex; etc.
Yeah, same here. Maybe it's from DMing and writing a good bit, but I feel like I've got at least half a dozen, if not more, characters appropriate for most D&D/fantasy games in my head at any given time, and I desperately want to play them.
e: this is how they worked in 4e. Sorry, thought that's what you were asking about. Forgot which thread I was in :P
They have scaling costs depending on the specific type of healing potion. You quaff it, spend a surge, and regain Surge Value + X HP, where X is a set number based on the specific potion.
It's a nice way to get a little extra boost to your effective surge value, as well as a way to spend more than 1 surge in combat without a special power.
They have scaling costs depending on the specific type of healing potion. You quaff it, spend a surge, and regain Surge Value + X HP, where X is a set number based on the specific potion.
It's a nice way to get a little extra boost to your effective surge value, as well as a way to spend more than 1 surge in combat without a special power.
It's in the Equipment section of the PHB also, but I figured I would preface the rules with the mention it was on the free .pdf to avoid getting called out for posting rules.
Edit: Having the basic rules on my phone is super nice though. I absolutely have to give WotC props on that.
They have scaling costs depending on the specific type of healing potion. You quaff it, spend a surge, and regain Surge Value + X HP, where X is a set number based on the specific potion.
It's a nice way to get a little extra boost to your effective surge value, as well as a way to spend more than 1 surge in combat without a special power.
It's in the Equipment section of the PHB also, but I figured I would preface the rules with the mention it was on the free .pdf to avoid getting called out for posting rules.
Check me out with the missing things completely. Ladies
Party completed chargen yesterday, and it looks like there's going to be no healer, which should be super interesting. And also means I will have to be fairly liberal in distributing potions.
I'm split on the potion change here. That they're back to an expendable resource that provides additional healing regardless is a mixed blessing to me. That way leads to temporary buffing costing you long term power (in that gold is expended). Though I don't recall there really being much to spend money on in 5th. The DMG may help that.
The limitation on healing in 4th is something I actually liked though I prefer the modifier of "Every 4 significant encounters" than "day" for the reset point.
It's in the Equipment section of the PHB also, but I figured I would preface the rules with the mention it was on the free .pdf to avoid getting called out for posting rules.
Check me out with the missing things completely. Ladies
Party completed chargen yesterday, and it looks like there's going to be no healer, which should be super interesting. And also means I will have to be fairly liberal in distributing potions.
No healer at all? Or no primary healer? We've got a ranger and a bard in my group, and that's seemed good enough to not have any real issues.
It's in the Equipment section of the PHB also, but I figured I would preface the rules with the mention it was on the free .pdf to avoid getting called out for posting rules.
Check me out with the missing things completely. Ladies
Party completed chargen yesterday, and it looks like there's going to be no healer, which should be super interesting. And also means I will have to be fairly liberal in distributing potions.
No healer at all? Or no primary healer? We've got a ranger and a bard in my group, and that's seemed good enough to not have any real issues.
It is looking like Paladin, Warlock (elder god), Warlock (fiend), Ranger. The paladin's healing will be nontrivial of course, which will be good. Do rangers actually heal well?
It's in the Equipment section of the PHB also, but I figured I would preface the rules with the mention it was on the free .pdf to avoid getting called out for posting rules.
Check me out with the missing things completely. Ladies
Party completed chargen yesterday, and it looks like there's going to be no healer, which should be super interesting. And also means I will have to be fairly liberal in distributing potions.
No healer at all? Or no primary healer? We've got a ranger and a bard in my group, and that's seemed good enough to not have any real issues.
No primary. I'm playing a paladin in that game, so I have Lay on Hands. I can grab Cure Wounds at level 2, and I've set it up so dipping into Cleric wouldn't be an issue if extra heelz/whatever are needed.
We also have 2 Warlocks with differing pacts, and a Ranger. I'm not sure what the Ranger plans on picking up for spells at level 2 (I'm sure he won't know either until it comes up), but we could likely convince him to grab Cure Wounds as well if we are hurting. I imagine the potions will be a stop-gap for first level.
I'm split on the potion change here. That they're back to an expendable resource that provides additional healing regardless is a mixed blessing to me. That way leads to temporary buffing costing you long term power (in that gold is expended). Though I don't recall there really being much to spend money on in 5th. The DMG may help that.
The limitation on healing in 4th is something I actually liked though I prefer the modifier of "Every 4 significant encounters" than "day" for the reset point.
Maybe less binary rules on surges to begin with.... regain 1/6 your surges for every hour of rest maybe.
It's in the Equipment section of the PHB also, but I figured I would preface the rules with the mention it was on the free .pdf to avoid getting called out for posting rules.
Check me out with the missing things completely. Ladies
Party completed chargen yesterday, and it looks like there's going to be no healer, which should be super interesting. And also means I will have to be fairly liberal in distributing potions.
No healer at all? Or no primary healer? We've got a ranger and a bard in my group, and that's seemed good enough to not have any real issues.
It is looking like Paladin, Warlock (elder god), Warlock (fiend), Ranger. The paladin's healing will be nontrivial of course, which will be good. Do rangers actually heal well?
I can't speak for the early levels, since we converted from 4E, but the 12th level party was pretty well-served by their ranger doing some healing in between encounters during our last session.
I'm split on the potion change here. That they're back to an expendable resource that provides additional healing regardless is a mixed blessing to me. That way leads to temporary buffing costing you long term power (in that gold is expended). Though I don't recall there really being much to spend money on in 5th. The DMG may help that.
The limitation on healing in 4th is something I actually liked though I prefer the modifier of "Every 4 significant encounters" than "day" for the reset point.
Maybe less binary rules on surges to begin with.... regain 1/6 your surges for every hour of rest maybe.
I really liked surges as a resource mechanic. They were intuitive and made damage taken always have a 'cost' without the concern of having characters start fights at half-HP or whatever. Once they were well established, they worked as an alternate cost system as well, with powerful non-healing effects costing some number of surges - in particular, I think that Martial Practices were much better designed than Rituals (ironically, given that Practices were simply martial Rituals - a rare scenario where the non-caster system is better-designed and more powerful than the caster system!) in that they cost players a limited but renewable resource, rather than one that was much more abundant but non-renewable. Rituals suffered because gold costs were basically free in the short term and irreparably harmful in the long term, and setting them up to cost surges instead solved both of those problems.
Changing your resource refill to be 'whenever you hit a thematically appropriate time' rather than 'whenever the DM is unable to stop you from taking a rest' is a really good change for game pacing and makes the expenditure of those resources a much more meaningful choice, which makes it doubly unfortunate that they simultaneously decided to take more resources and place them outside that recharge system by disconnecting healing from healing surges, putting us back on a model where the only daily resource you really need to refill is spell slots.
I'm split on the potion change here. That they're back to an expendable resource that provides additional healing regardless is a mixed blessing to me. That way leads to temporary buffing costing you long term power (in that gold is expended). Though I don't recall there really being much to spend money on in 5th. The DMG may help that.
The limitation on healing in 4th is something I actually liked though I prefer the modifier of "Every 4 significant encounters" than "day" for the reset point.
The way it worked in 3.5/PF was you had each character buy 2-4 powerful healing potions, and then someone who could use a Wand of Cure Light Wounds would do the out of combat healing.
Potions in 3.5, PF, and 5e are pretty expensive if you want level-suitable ones. They also cost an action in combat (and an AoO/OA), which is pretty severe. I've never seen potions be a big problem, due to the aforementioned drawbacks.
The Wand of CLW, however, is literally the devil. It's practically required if you don't have a dedicated healing class (even if they aren't a dedicated healer), but it completely takes away the 'HP as a daily resource' mechanic from the game. As a DM, it's pretty easy to work around it by upping the encounter levels, but that can end up fucking (some) casters in the ass. In the end I think the WoCLW is a necessary evil, just because "Let's go back to town for healing" takes forever and breaks the mood. You can get around it by setting up a time frame (burning building, hostages, load bearing BBEG), but you can't do that all the time.
The Wand of CLW, however, is literally the devil. It's practically required if you don't have a dedicated healing class (even if they aren't a dedicated healer), but it completely takes away the 'HP as a daily resource' mechanic from the game. As a DM, it's pretty easy to work around it by upping the encounter levels, but that can end up fucking (some) casters in the ass. In the end I think the WoCLW is a necessary evil, just because "Let's go back to town for healing" takes forever and breaks the mood. You can get around it by setting up a time frame (burning building, hostages, load bearing BBEG), but you can't do that all the time.
Yup! I never had a 3.5 campaign where people bought potions (except occasionally 1-2 to used in emergencies) because the action it takes to drink one in combat is an inefficient way to use an extremely valuable resource - it's almost always better to use that action killing the guys that are hitting you in the first place. You can get around that action cost in a couple of ways
But I also never had a 3.5 campaign where the first magic item purchased wasn't a Wand of Cure Light Wounds (I even had one where no particular character bought it - the party simply pooled all their money together in the Wand Fund until the end had one, so that they'd be able to buy one as soon as the party had accumulated 1000g total, instead of having to wait until a single player had that much.) The gold/healing ratio is vastly better than anything else you can buy, and the only drawback (you have to spend a lot of actions casting the spell over and over) is irrelevant if you're not inefficiently trying to heal in combat - you just let it ride in-combat and then heal up at the end.
For the same reason, I also never once saw a "healing" class prep (or spontaneously cast) a healing spell (except in a few narrow cases of Clerics casting Heal...on undead). Spell slots are a valuable, limited resource and HP is not - so you don't waste your limited resource on replenishing an unlimited one; you prep real spells and bring a healing wand.
With healing separated from surges (or Surge Dice or whatever 5e calls them to pretend they're a different mechanic), that looks to be the dominant paradigm in 5e as well.
0
Options
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
If you never needed to slap down a heal in the middle of a fight in 3.5 or Pathfinder your DM was not putting enough damage in an encounter. Sounds like you weren't going up against credible threats.
If you never needed to slap down a heal in the middle of a fight in 3.5 or Pathfinder your DM was not putting enough damage in an encounter. Sounds like you weren't going up against credible threats.
If you never needed to slap down a heal in the middle of a fight in 3.5 or Pathfinder your DM was not putting enough damage in an encounter. Sounds like you weren't going up against credible threats.
Monsters can only deal damage to you if you let them hit you - at which point you've probably already made a play error.
Even then, people dropped on a semi-regular basis. It's just strategically better in most cases to let them bleed on the floor while you finish up the monsters, then heal them back to consciousness afterwards.
If you never needed to slap down a heal in the middle of a fight in 3.5 or Pathfinder your DM was not putting enough damage in an encounter. Sounds like you weren't going up against credible threats.
Monsters can only deal damage to you if you let them hit you - at which point you've probably already made a play error.
What...? People don't get hit when you play D&D? I am not sure how your group plays, but it sounds very different than mine, and very boring.
0
Options
Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
If you never needed to slap down a heal in the middle of a fight in 3.5 or Pathfinder your DM was not putting enough damage in an encounter. Sounds like you weren't going up against credible threats.
Monsters can only deal damage to you if you let them hit you - at which point you've probably already made a play error.
What...? People don't get hit when you play D&D? I am not sure how your group plays, but it sounds very different than mine, and very boring.
In the Pathfinder campaign I am in our party is comprised of a Wizard (me), a Druid, a Ranger and a Sorcerer as the core party with occasional backup by an Alchemist or a Ninja. Most fights boil down to Wizard+Druid laying down slowing/blocking terrain followed by debuffs from the Wizard and summons from the Druid while the Ranger and Sorcerer pelt the enemy with high precision arrows and ranged damage spells. It's not terribly often that the monsters even get to us, much less do enough damage that the Druid feels the need to stop summoning to heal.
If you never needed to slap down a heal in the middle of a fight in 3.5 or Pathfinder your DM was not putting enough damage in an encounter. Sounds like you weren't going up against credible threats.
Monsters can only deal damage to you if you let them hit you - at which point you've probably already made a play error.
What...? People don't get hit when you play D&D? I am not sure how your group plays, but it sounds very different than mine, and very boring.
In 3.5? Not often.
Between defensive buffs, crowd/action control, and alpha-strike tactics you shouldn't be getting attacked nearly as much as you otherwise would, and more of those attacks than normal should miss
If you never needed to slap down a heal in the middle of a fight in 3.5 or Pathfinder your DM was not putting enough damage in an encounter. Sounds like you weren't going up against credible threats.
Monsters can only deal damage to you if you let them hit you - at which point you've probably already made a play error.
What...? People don't get hit when you play D&D? I am not sure how your group plays, but it sounds very different than mine, and very boring.
In the Pathfinder campaign I am in our party is comprised of a Wizard (me), a Druid, a Ranger and a Sorcerer as the core party with occasional backup by an Alchemist or a Ninja. Most fights boil down to Wizard+Druid laying down slowing/blocking terrain followed by debuffs from the Wizard and summons from the Druid while the Ranger and Sorcerer pelt the enemy with high precision arrows and ranged damage spells. It's not terribly often that the monsters even get to us, much less do enough damage that the Druid feels the need to stop summoning to heal.
Personally that sounds super boring, both as a DM as a player. As a DM I would just go make every single monster have ranged attacks of some kind, I guess.
+2
Options
Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
If you never needed to slap down a heal in the middle of a fight in 3.5 or Pathfinder your DM was not putting enough damage in an encounter. Sounds like you weren't going up against credible threats.
Monsters can only deal damage to you if you let them hit you - at which point you've probably already made a play error.
What...? People don't get hit when you play D&D? I am not sure how your group plays, but it sounds very different than mine, and very boring.
In the Pathfinder campaign I am in our party is comprised of a Wizard (me), a Druid, a Ranger and a Sorcerer as the core party with occasional backup by an Alchemist or a Ninja. Most fights boil down to Wizard+Druid laying down slowing/blocking terrain followed by debuffs from the Wizard and summons from the Druid while the Ranger and Sorcerer pelt the enemy with high precision arrows and ranged damage spells. It's not terribly often that the monsters even get to us, much less do enough damage that the Druid feels the need to stop summoning to heal.
Personally that sounds super boring, both as a DM as a player. As a DM I would just go make every single monster have ranged attacks of some kind, I guess.
Our DM is running a pre-written module so there's only so much he can do. But I agree on the boring part, our group is taking a hiatus from Pathfinder to start a new 4th edition campaign more or less as a direct result of combat becoming completely tedious.
Edit: And let me assure you, my Wizard's toolbox is well prepared to deal with ranged foes in such a way that they are also made complete chumps. Which to bring it around is one of the reasons I am leery about 5th. While it is awesome to completely trivialize an encounter with well prepared magical mojo, being able to do it consistently makes the game boring, and 5th seems to be trending way harder towards giving spellcasters the options they need to do that than I would like.
If you never needed to slap down a heal in the middle of a fight in 3.5 or Pathfinder your DM was not putting enough damage in an encounter. Sounds like you weren't going up against credible threats.
Monsters can only deal damage to you if you let them hit you - at which point you've probably already made a play error.
What...? People don't get hit when you play D&D? I am not sure how your group plays, but it sounds very different than mine, and very boring.
In my experience high level 3.x/Pathfinder is all resolved on first round of combat.
In short: Whose spellcasters go first?
And it's every bit as boring as it sounds. Already see 5e going the same way.
If you never needed to slap down a heal in the middle of a fight in 3.5 or Pathfinder your DM was not putting enough damage in an encounter. Sounds like you weren't going up against credible threats.
Monsters can only deal damage to you if you let them hit you - at which point you've probably already made a play error.
What...? People don't get hit when you play D&D? I am not sure how your group plays, but it sounds very different than mine, and very boring.
In the Pathfinder campaign I am in our party is comprised of a Wizard (me), a Druid, a Ranger and a Sorcerer as the core party with occasional backup by an Alchemist or a Ninja. Most fights boil down to Wizard+Druid laying down slowing/blocking terrain followed by debuffs from the Wizard and summons from the Druid while the Ranger and Sorcerer pelt the enemy with high precision arrows and ranged damage spells. It's not terribly often that the monsters even get to us, much less do enough damage that the Druid feels the need to stop summoning to heal.
Huh. I think I just figured out why I always failed at 3.5. I tried to make a melee Rogue and Fighter.
If you never needed to slap down a heal in the middle of a fight in 3.5 or Pathfinder your DM was not putting enough damage in an encounter. Sounds like you weren't going up against credible threats.
Monsters can only deal damage to you if you let them hit you - at which point you've probably already made a play error.
What...? People don't get hit when you play D&D? I am not sure how your group plays, but it sounds very different than mine, and very boring.
In my experience high level 3.x/Pathfinder is all resolved on first round of combat.
In short: Whose spellcasters go first?
And it's every bit as boring as it sounds. Already see 5e going the same way.
Very very odd, as that has not been my experience with 3.5/Pathfinder ever, combats usually go very long, round after round after round. But it was always DM made campaigns, never modules, maybe that played a part.
+1
Options
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
No this was something I made myself.
Against basically five codzilla spellcasters. Essentially completely optimised. It was ridiculous what I needed to do to make adventures even remotely interesting.
And one turn could last absolutely fucking forever.
If you never needed to slap down a heal in the middle of a fight in 3.5 or Pathfinder your DM was not putting enough damage in an encounter. Sounds like you weren't going up against credible threats.
Monsters can only deal damage to you if you let them hit you - at which point you've probably already made a play error.
What...? People don't get hit when you play D&D? I am not sure how your group plays, but it sounds very different than mine, and very boring.
In my experience high level 3.x/Pathfinder is all resolved on first round of combat.
In short: Whose spellcasters go first?
And it's every bit as boring as it sounds. Already see 5e going the same way.
Very very odd, as that has not been my experience with 3.5/Pathfinder ever, combats usually go very long, round after round after round. But it was always DM made campaigns, never modules, maybe that played a part.
You didn't read that correctly; he's not saying that the combat is completely over in the first round (or that the combat only lasts 1 round). Rather, that it's basically decided in the first round - if your spellcasters did their jobs correctly, then the fight is basically already won, and you just need to spend a lot of time rolling dice to finalize the result (which is never really in doubt).
If you never needed to slap down a heal in the middle of a fight in 3.5 or Pathfinder your DM was not putting enough damage in an encounter. Sounds like you weren't going up against credible threats.
Monsters can only deal damage to you if you let them hit you - at which point you've probably already made a play error.
What...? People don't get hit when you play D&D? I am not sure how your group plays, but it sounds very different than mine, and very boring.
In my experience high level 3.x/Pathfinder is all resolved on first round of combat.
In short: Whose spellcasters go first?
And it's every bit as boring as it sounds. Already see 5e going the same way.
Very very odd, as that has not been my experience with 3.5/Pathfinder ever, combats usually go very long, round after round after round. But it was always DM made campaigns, never modules, maybe that played a part.
You didn't read that correctly; he's not saying that the combat is completely over in the first round (or that the combat only lasts 1 round). Rather, that it's basically decided in the first round - if your spellcasters did their jobs correctly, then the fight is basically already won, and you just need to spend a lot of time rolling dice to finalize the result (which is never really in doubt).
Well I guess I just have to count my blessings that I have never had to endure playing D&D with optimization obsessed players. To be frank I don't see the appeal. If I wanted to play a war game I would play a war game, not a roleplaying game.
Well I guess I just have to count my blessings that I have never had to endure playing D&D with optimization obsessed players. To be frank I don't see the appeal. If I wanted to play a war game I would play a war game, not a roleplaying game.
Char op is not an assumed feature of war games. Even pros will often focus on what does hilarious and fun things or what looks cool.
Well I found a new group for 5E at a local comic & wargaming store. The store's owner actually is the one who wanted to start the game, and found a few customers who wanted to play as well, so I met them all today. I didn't really know what to expect, so I came prepared with a small adventure and a few pregen characters. We sort of sat around and talked for a bit and it became pretty clear that they all wanted to play a weekly campaign instead of a one-shot so we spent the first session making characters. No one (not even the store itself) had another copy of the PHB, and they were really interested in looking through all the options before making any decisions. I made it more of a group format with them asking me questions and answering with the book to make it faster, but it still took about 3 hours. Somewhere near the start one of the players (who's young, 20 maybe?) suggested doing an 'evil campaign' and then giggled about it. I told him that if we're going to do an evil campaign, then we're going to do it right; no twirling mustaches and wearing black capes. They're all going to be selfish people with their own goals and the only thing keeping them together is the number of enemies they've already made. I also told them the only proper end to the campaign will be when one of them traps the other three in inescapable death and makes it out alive with the entirety of the party's wealth. Then the campaign will immediately end and we'll never run another evil one.
Thanks to Denada, I offered them the standard stat array or the ability to roll 4d6k3 in order, and allowed them to swap the primary stat of their chosen class with one of their other stats. They all decided to roll, and I'm happy with the results, though the barbarian player rolled 8, 14, 9, 7, 12, 9, so I just let him have the standard array instead (setting a bad example I'm afraid: I'm merciless when it comes to combat rolls). There wasn't a lot of party cohesion, so I started doing my usual thing where I had one player start describing his backstory and then interrupted him and let the other players take over. Eventually we came up with a Human Charlatan Rogue, the mastermind and ring leader of a traveling circus, a Black-dragonborn Sage Sorcerer, chased out of academia by a rival and traveling with the circus as a means of hiding, a Mt Dwarf Hermit Barbarian, outcast of the Diamond Hill clan, and a Lightfoot Halfling Criminal (smuggler) Monk, a purveyor of exotic and illicit goods. The first story arc of the campaign will revolve around a pair of black dragon eggs they must carry to the proper buyer. The rogue stole them, the sorcerer prevents them from hatching, the monk knows where to sell them, and the barbarian owes the rogue a life-debt. I've got the first adventure mostly planned out, and I did a bit of research on wetlands to make the setting more realistic.
It should be fun. Three of the players are newer and younger (early to mid-twenties) and the store owner is older (40s). The only thing that's really annoying me is that this is going on during business hours and the store owner constantly had to get up and attend to customers. I empathize with the guy: a FLGS is a tough business, but it's also really disruptive to the game, especially since he took all the face/interaction skills, and potentially will stop the narrative in its tracks. We'll see how it goes, maybe he can get some help for the day we play.
Edit: and I already have my first vein-twitching pet-peeve: "In 3.5 it worked like this." I'm going to start subtracting permanent HP values if they keep saying that. This is 5E. It's different!
Posts
I actually really kinda liked this, too, and fully plan to use this as an option for rolling stats in the game I'm kinda-sorta-sometimes-but-honestly-very-rarely working on.
The standard array is prioritize ability scores, then assign 0-5, which becomes your modifier. The alternate is prioritize Background, Race, and Theme, and assign a 5 and a 4. Then roll d4 for all other stats.
And yes I am somewhat borrowing from Mechwarrior character generation in that regard.
I know that I want to make a Hoplite-inspired Artificer, and so I'll need enough strength to carry my gear and not be useless with the spear, balanced against my casting stats. While I could roll randomly and then just roleplay around the fact that I don't have enough strength to wear armor, or that I can't cast more than a 2nd-level spell, that's not the character I want to play.
If I don't know what character I want to play, I can use a d6 to assign the points from the point buy - if you roll a 1, increment Str; 2, increment Dex; etc.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Yeah, same here. Maybe it's from DMing and writing a good bit, but I feel like I've got at least half a dozen, if not more, characters appropriate for most D&D/fantasy games in my head at any given time, and I desperately want to play them.
I could just, like, make all that up but I'd prefer to not change it arbitrarily when the DMG comes out.
They have scaling costs depending on the specific type of healing potion. You quaff it, spend a surge, and regain Surge Value + X HP, where X is a set number based on the specific potion.
It's a nice way to get a little extra boost to your effective surge value, as well as a way to spend more than 1 surge in combat without a special power.
Hey, what thread is this @Tox?
I've actually not looked at the free basic rules (obviously), since I've got the book. Thanks a lot for the reference!
Edit: Having the basic rules on my phone is super nice though. I absolutely have to give WotC props on that.
Mind your own business.
Check me out with the missing things completely. Ladies
Party completed chargen yesterday, and it looks like there's going to be no healer, which should be super interesting. And also means I will have to be fairly liberal in distributing potions.
The limitation on healing in 4th is something I actually liked though I prefer the modifier of "Every 4 significant encounters" than "day" for the reset point.
No healer at all? Or no primary healer? We've got a ranger and a bard in my group, and that's seemed good enough to not have any real issues.
It is looking like Paladin, Warlock (elder god), Warlock (fiend), Ranger. The paladin's healing will be nontrivial of course, which will be good. Do rangers actually heal well?
No primary. I'm playing a paladin in that game, so I have Lay on Hands. I can grab Cure Wounds at level 2, and I've set it up so dipping into Cleric wouldn't be an issue if extra heelz/whatever are needed.
We also have 2 Warlocks with differing pacts, and a Ranger. I'm not sure what the Ranger plans on picking up for spells at level 2 (I'm sure he won't know either until it comes up), but we could likely convince him to grab Cure Wounds as well if we are hurting. I imagine the potions will be a stop-gap for first level.
Maybe less binary rules on surges to begin with.... regain 1/6 your surges for every hour of rest maybe.
I can't speak for the early levels, since we converted from 4E, but the 12th level party was pretty well-served by their ranger doing some healing in between encounters during our last session.
I really liked surges as a resource mechanic. They were intuitive and made damage taken always have a 'cost' without the concern of having characters start fights at half-HP or whatever. Once they were well established, they worked as an alternate cost system as well, with powerful non-healing effects costing some number of surges - in particular, I think that Martial Practices were much better designed than Rituals (ironically, given that Practices were simply martial Rituals - a rare scenario where the non-caster system is better-designed and more powerful than the caster system!) in that they cost players a limited but renewable resource, rather than one that was much more abundant but non-renewable. Rituals suffered because gold costs were basically free in the short term and irreparably harmful in the long term, and setting them up to cost surges instead solved both of those problems.
Changing your resource refill to be 'whenever you hit a thematically appropriate time' rather than 'whenever the DM is unable to stop you from taking a rest' is a really good change for game pacing and makes the expenditure of those resources a much more meaningful choice, which makes it doubly unfortunate that they simultaneously decided to take more resources and place them outside that recharge system by disconnecting healing from healing surges, putting us back on a model where the only daily resource you really need to refill is spell slots.
The way it worked in 3.5/PF was you had each character buy 2-4 powerful healing potions, and then someone who could use a Wand of Cure Light Wounds would do the out of combat healing.
Potions in 3.5, PF, and 5e are pretty expensive if you want level-suitable ones. They also cost an action in combat (and an AoO/OA), which is pretty severe. I've never seen potions be a big problem, due to the aforementioned drawbacks.
The Wand of CLW, however, is literally the devil. It's practically required if you don't have a dedicated healing class (even if they aren't a dedicated healer), but it completely takes away the 'HP as a daily resource' mechanic from the game. As a DM, it's pretty easy to work around it by upping the encounter levels, but that can end up fucking (some) casters in the ass. In the end I think the WoCLW is a necessary evil, just because "Let's go back to town for healing" takes forever and breaks the mood. You can get around it by setting up a time frame (burning building, hostages, load bearing BBEG), but you can't do that all the time.
Yup! I never had a 3.5 campaign where people bought potions (except occasionally 1-2 to used in emergencies) because the action it takes to drink one in combat is an inefficient way to use an extremely valuable resource - it's almost always better to use that action killing the guys that are hitting you in the first place. You can get around that action cost in a couple of ways
But I also never had a 3.5 campaign where the first magic item purchased wasn't a Wand of Cure Light Wounds (I even had one where no particular character bought it - the party simply pooled all their money together in the Wand Fund until the end had one, so that they'd be able to buy one as soon as the party had accumulated 1000g total, instead of having to wait until a single player had that much.) The gold/healing ratio is vastly better than anything else you can buy, and the only drawback (you have to spend a lot of actions casting the spell over and over) is irrelevant if you're not inefficiently trying to heal in combat - you just let it ride in-combat and then heal up at the end.
For the same reason, I also never once saw a "healing" class prep (or spontaneously cast) a healing spell (except in a few narrow cases of Clerics casting Heal...on undead). Spell slots are a valuable, limited resource and HP is not - so you don't waste your limited resource on replenishing an unlimited one; you prep real spells and bring a healing wand.
With healing separated from surges (or Surge Dice or whatever 5e calls them to pretend they're a different mechanic), that looks to be the dominant paradigm in 5e as well.
Some players in the vault of the dracolich event were carrying 50 of these. Most had at least 20 each.
I quickly realized not to bother tracking them. I worked it out to be around 400 potions or so in total. Someone can retire now.
Or you had multiple wizards.
R*SC: BladeCruiser
Check out my GTAV-PC custom race tracks inspired by real life racing circuits!
Monsters can only deal damage to you if you let them hit you - at which point you've probably already made a play error.
Even then, people dropped on a semi-regular basis. It's just strategically better in most cases to let them bleed on the floor while you finish up the monsters, then heal them back to consciousness afterwards.
What...? People don't get hit when you play D&D? I am not sure how your group plays, but it sounds very different than mine, and very boring.
In the Pathfinder campaign I am in our party is comprised of a Wizard (me), a Druid, a Ranger and a Sorcerer as the core party with occasional backup by an Alchemist or a Ninja. Most fights boil down to Wizard+Druid laying down slowing/blocking terrain followed by debuffs from the Wizard and summons from the Druid while the Ranger and Sorcerer pelt the enemy with high precision arrows and ranged damage spells. It's not terribly often that the monsters even get to us, much less do enough damage that the Druid feels the need to stop summoning to heal.
In 3.5? Not often.
Between defensive buffs, crowd/action control, and alpha-strike tactics you shouldn't be getting attacked nearly as much as you otherwise would, and more of those attacks than normal should miss
Personally that sounds super boring, both as a DM as a player. As a DM I would just go make every single monster have ranged attacks of some kind, I guess.
Our DM is running a pre-written module so there's only so much he can do. But I agree on the boring part, our group is taking a hiatus from Pathfinder to start a new 4th edition campaign more or less as a direct result of combat becoming completely tedious.
Edit: And let me assure you, my Wizard's toolbox is well prepared to deal with ranged foes in such a way that they are also made complete chumps. Which to bring it around is one of the reasons I am leery about 5th. While it is awesome to completely trivialize an encounter with well prepared magical mojo, being able to do it consistently makes the game boring, and 5th seems to be trending way harder towards giving spellcasters the options they need to do that than I would like.
Amateurs.
Lesser Vigor is where it's at!
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
In my experience high level 3.x/Pathfinder is all resolved on first round of combat.
In short: Whose spellcasters go first?
And it's every bit as boring as it sounds. Already see 5e going the same way.
Huh. I think I just figured out why I always failed at 3.5. I tried to make a melee Rogue and Fighter.
Very very odd, as that has not been my experience with 3.5/Pathfinder ever, combats usually go very long, round after round after round. But it was always DM made campaigns, never modules, maybe that played a part.
Against basically five codzilla spellcasters. Essentially completely optimised. It was ridiculous what I needed to do to make adventures even remotely interesting.
And one turn could last absolutely fucking forever.
You didn't read that correctly; he's not saying that the combat is completely over in the first round (or that the combat only lasts 1 round). Rather, that it's basically decided in the first round - if your spellcasters did their jobs correctly, then the fight is basically already won, and you just need to spend a lot of time rolling dice to finalize the result (which is never really in doubt).
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Yep.
Char op is not an assumed feature of war games. Even pros will often focus on what does hilarious and fun things or what looks cool.
There, 3.5 optimized into caster initiative battles.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Thanks to Denada, I offered them the standard stat array or the ability to roll 4d6k3 in order, and allowed them to swap the primary stat of their chosen class with one of their other stats. They all decided to roll, and I'm happy with the results, though the barbarian player rolled 8, 14, 9, 7, 12, 9, so I just let him have the standard array instead (setting a bad example I'm afraid: I'm merciless when it comes to combat rolls). There wasn't a lot of party cohesion, so I started doing my usual thing where I had one player start describing his backstory and then interrupted him and let the other players take over. Eventually we came up with a Human Charlatan Rogue, the mastermind and ring leader of a traveling circus, a Black-dragonborn Sage Sorcerer, chased out of academia by a rival and traveling with the circus as a means of hiding, a Mt Dwarf Hermit Barbarian, outcast of the Diamond Hill clan, and a Lightfoot Halfling Criminal (smuggler) Monk, a purveyor of exotic and illicit goods. The first story arc of the campaign will revolve around a pair of black dragon eggs they must carry to the proper buyer. The rogue stole them, the sorcerer prevents them from hatching, the monk knows where to sell them, and the barbarian owes the rogue a life-debt. I've got the first adventure mostly planned out, and I did a bit of research on wetlands to make the setting more realistic.
It should be fun. Three of the players are newer and younger (early to mid-twenties) and the store owner is older (40s). The only thing that's really annoying me is that this is going on during business hours and the store owner constantly had to get up and attend to customers. I empathize with the guy: a FLGS is a tough business, but it's also really disruptive to the game, especially since he took all the face/interaction skills, and potentially will stop the narrative in its tracks. We'll see how it goes, maybe he can get some help for the day we play.
Edit: and I already have my first vein-twitching pet-peeve: "In 3.5 it worked like this." I'm going to start subtracting permanent HP values if they keep saying that. This is 5E. It's different!