Combat in any d20 game is as fast as your players are prepared when it is their turn. Nothing more, nothing less, because none of them deviate in any meaningful way from the "roll to hit, roll damage, apply effects" model.
That certainly explains the mini-discussion about Tripping earlier!
Combat in any d20 game is as fast as your players are prepared when it is their turn. Nothing more, nothing less, because none of them deviate in any meaningful way from the "roll to hit, roll damage, apply effects" model.
That certainly explains the mini-discussion about Tripping earlier!
Roll to hit.
There is no damage inherent to a trip attempt. (There are many permutations of trip + damage, however.)
Apply effect (knockdown).
I'm not being trite, but this is the system's core mechanic: Roll 1d20 + modifiers against a difficulty rating. Combat says "hey also do thing." In some systems magic says "hey also do thing." In some systems there is "pause to do unnecessary math" after each step.
It's a simple system, if you keep it stripped down (True 20, for instance). But given their druthers most people -- even game designers who should know better -- will add more and more steps and substeps to the engine.
I've found the lengthiest combat with my group tends to come from them forgetting important and simple tactical advice like "Focus on one target at a time". This happens no matter the system, in my experience, and despite my efforts, I still have to remind them damn near every session that just maybe, it'd be a good idea to kill the dude who is already hurt over dealing some damage to the other enemies.
My players did run into a bit of trouble focus firing the wrong target. They were getting waylaid by highwaymen, consisting of a Bandit Captain and several Bandits. They were only level 3, but it shouldn't have been an especially hard encounter. However, by focus firing the Bandit Captain (who has a ton of hit points) instead of the Bandits (who die in one hit), they always were TPK'd, since they were taking so many attacks a round.
Yeah, I've seen that a lot myself. People always ignore the small guys, wanting to get the "most bang for their buck" not killing the minions, only to take a boatload of damage when they could have just destroyed the minions in the first round or two.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
Question: one of my players (who normally plays a Fighter) asked if he could have a Druid PC character sheet prepared, and, in the event our Cleric can't make it, swap to his Druid so the party is not without a healer.
My initial reaction was: "What could possibly go wrong," which I always take as a warning sign that something could go wrong.
Could anyone see this causing problems in the group?
Question: one of my players (who normally plays a Fighter) asked if he could have a Druid PC character sheet prepared, and, in the event our Cleric can't make it, swap to his Druid so the party is not without a healer.
My initial reaction was: "What could possibly go wrong," which I always take as a warning sign that something could go wrong.
Could anyone see this causing problems in the group?
It depends on how much your players like consistency. Does your game play nice with "well the cleric is MIA and there is a Druid here instead of the Fighter"? Also, is your fighter actually good at getting between enemies. As strange as it sounds i think that having a high AC character to body block is a lot more important than it used to be since the AC and HP differential between PC's is so much higher and PC's have fewer defensive abilities in general.
It might be better to just have your most efficient player play the cleric as well. That way the party dynamic doesn't change, you don't have consistency issues.
My gut reaction when someone does this is its them saying "I don't want to play this character anymore, i want to play a druid" but i don't much have an issue with people not finding their characters fun
What I'd like is some reference cards that detail different common scenarios that occur during combat. Such as "Trip", "Grapple", "Push".
So like the power cards that DnD 4e suggested you make so you could easily keep track of what powers you'd used by just flipping them over, and could also easy keep track of what you could do?
Another option is for you to have an NPC available (or possibly just the same healer, being a bit more passive). Even a simple one that maybe just heals or buffs, and then you tune the encounter for the reduced number of players. Now, they are all who they have always been, but they still can survive even without their healer.
So, with the sun blade, I realized that warlocks are like, the best class to fluff into a jedi.
Variant human to take either defensive duelist or alert. Great old one bladepact (the force). You can take the jump invocation, and mage armor, thirsting blade if you want to be good with the blade. fluff eldritch blast and mage hand. GoO gets telepathy, and later telekenisis. it's a lot of fun.
not saying it's the most optimized character, but it was a fun thought experement.
5th edition fights being quicker are because of 2 things I think:
Combats last less rounds (2-3 is the expected I think?)
Characters have less to do - especially non casters, who generally just attack with a weapon for some damage.
There are a number of issues here, not the least is your misunderstanding of what the healing surge system was meant to do, but what valid complaints you have all greatly diminished as 4e's run went on.
Of course, if they lost you with the PHB you'd (and others like you) never found out about the stuff they did with later classes.
I think 4e is probably the most solid system for any version of D&D. I also think it was one of the worst presented since the early days, and it doesn't have the excuse of basically creating the genre out of whole cloth.
It's good that it got better! I recall that Healing Surges were an attempt to 1) reduce the "need to have a Cleric", and 2) Reduce the amount of healing accessible to the characters. I did waste 10 minutes trying to find the original Wizards.com article, but I wasn't able to track it down, sorry.
The short rest/long rest system seems like a better way to make healing less of a chore without being too accessible.
Better than what?
Healing surges served 2 purposes:
To serve as a long term daily resource outside of hitpoints (which were a short term encounter resource)
Create a central mechanic that all healing ran from, weather it was clerical, magic items or whatever else.
The goal wasn't necessarily "don't need a cleric" - it was "a cleric isn't essential" , "clerics aren't the only healers" and "if you are the healer, you can do stuff other than heal"
The current (imo) bad short/long rest system is a poorly thought out version of the system they had in 4th, which meant that for most fights you started with the max of your short term encounter long resources, which made constructing interesting encounters much easier as the party had a fixed expected power level.
How do combats only last 2-3 rounds. Enemy HP is comparatively low to start but a CR 1 monster has an AC around what? 15 and 40 HP? From levels 1 to 4 players do about 5 damage/ round which means a level 4 group should take about 8 rounds to go through an enounter with 4 cr 1 monsters.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
Question: one of my players (who normally plays a Fighter) asked if he could have a Druid PC character sheet prepared, and, in the event our Cleric can't make it, swap to his Druid so the party is not without a healer.
My initial reaction was: "What could possibly go wrong," which I always take as a warning sign that something could go wrong.
Could anyone see this causing problems in the group?
It depends on how much your players like consistency. Does your game play nice with "well the cleric is MIA and there is a Druid here instead of the Fighter"? Also, is your fighter actually good at getting between enemies. As strange as it sounds i think that having a high AC character to body block is a lot more important than it used to be since the AC and HP differential between PC's is so much higher and PC's have fewer defensive abilities in general.
It might be better to just have your most efficient player play the cleric as well. That way the party dynamic doesn't change, you don't have consistency issues.
My gut reaction when someone does this is its them saying "I don't want to play this character anymore, i want to play a druid" but i don't much have an issue with people not finding their characters fun
Well he's a Fighter/Rogue/possibly Paladin and/or Warlock multi-class assassin. So he's not 100% durable, but he does sport 16 AC and tear up melee something fierce with dual wielding. He is usually in the thick of things.
I'll have to ask him if he just wants to play a Druid, since he's seemed to me like he's been enjoying being an Assassin (in training, only level 4).
What the group has done in the past is I have a Bard NPC character that can back up heal, and either someone's friend will jump in on the session, or someone will play two characters, with the Bard just Bow attacking or Healing Word people back alive.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
How do combats only last 2-3 rounds. Enemy HP is comparatively low to start but a CR 1 monster has an AC around what? 15 and 40 HP? From levels 1 to 4 players do about 5 damage/ round which means a level 4 group should take about 8 rounds to go through an enounter with 4 cr 1 monsters.
When I think about an encounter, I take each monsters hit points and AC, and do a little math and figure out effectively how many hit points the encounter has (for example a monster with 40 HP that PCs hit 25% of the time has twice as many HP as one PCs hit 50% of the time). Then since I know how much damage my PCs can do in a round on average, I can calculate how long an encounter "should" take. So encounters are definitely as long as you want them to be.
How do combats only last 2-3 rounds. Enemy HP is comparatively low to start but a CR 1 monster has an AC around what? 15 and 40 HP? From levels 1 to 4 players do about 5 damage/ round which means a level 4 group should take about 8 rounds to go through an enounter with 4 cr 1 monsters.
I can see fights being three rounds if you start within 30ft of each other, and have perma-advantage. Or if there's particularly good spell placement (Web keeping three people out of the fight turn after turn). Outside of that, most combats have been at least four rounds, more if you're spread out.
Healing surges served 2 purposes:
To serve as a long term daily resource outside of hitpoints (which were a short term encounter resource)
Create a central mechanic that all healing ran from, weather it was clerical, magic items or whatever else.
The goal wasn't necessarily "don't need a cleric" - it was "a cleric isn't essential" , "clerics aren't the only healers" and "if you are the healer, you can do stuff other than heal"
The current (imo) bad short/long rest system is a poorly thought out version of the system they had in 4th, which meant that for most fights you started with the max of your short term encounter long resources, which made constructing interesting encounters much easier as the party had a fixed expected power level.
That's a good point, in a way. I think that I'm out, out of necessity. Analysing the rules in a vacuum is probably a good idea but not really how I see/play DND. As best I can tell we're making no assumptions whatsoever when it comes to DMing, and that's disingenuous because the vast, vast majority of people who DM play pen-and-paper games have previously played them and have a good grasp of the rules (and their lack).
The hidden assumption above "we need a central mechanic to open up healing" is entirely based on the idea that the game is played straight out of a rulebook, with no house rules, and that furthermore a DM won't see in advance that party composition needs help and once the problem appears will neither 1) tailor their campaign to the group nor 2) add an NPC character for the (well defined) roles that no player wants/enjoys.
We can take back a step and argue whether "anyone can heal" is overall a good thing or not (it might be), but we skipped right over that.
I'm personally interested in 5th Edition from the perspective of how it will help/hinder my current PF game, which is roughly 25% combat. It would be awesome to include more combat encounters, but they are slow and painful, and getting worse as the characters level up. If I actually used the PF rules as written it would be much worse, which is interesting in light of the discussion immediately above: other than classed player-race character opponents (Boss level unless they are incidental NPCs), my "mook" monsters don't even have a hit point total - they are defeated if and when 1) someone out-thinks them/causes rocks to fall, or 2) they have bled the party resources to the level I expected them to.
EDIT: Sorry, I forgot to add my 2¢ about the 5E "Rest" system: I like it, it's simple and a good catch all, although I'm sure that will be corner cases where it's not optimal. My feeling is that this is a stair step along the path toward eliminating the rest/study mechanics entirely. I wouldn't mind that at all.
I decided to bring a couple variant rules into my game, for flavor. I implemented the potion-mixing table, scroll mishaps, and lingering injuries; happily, we got to try lingering injuries right off the bat. I didn't want them to be super common, so I decided to combine two of the suggested options: you roll on the lingering injuries table if you're reduced to 0 hp and fail your first death save. In a fight with some Merrow, the dwarf paladin managed this accomplishment and gained some Horrible Scars. He now has disadvantage on persuasion checks, but advantage on intimidate checks. It was good that he rolled that one, too, as it's one of the injuries that requires higher-level healing to cure.
In other news, the rogue was trying to decide what kind of gear to buy, and I half-jokingly suggested a bag of ball bearings. He hadn't noticed them before, but wound up buying five bags. During the fight with the Merrow, he spread them out on the deck of the ship as the Merrow were climbing aboard, which led to several humorous rounds of the fish-men flopping around on deck while he stabbed them. I suspect ball bearings are going to feature prominently in his arsenal from here on out.
Also got to introduce a bit of custom currency. They're in a whaling port right now, and the locals use a fiat coin called skrim, which are flat discs of whalebone with unique skrimshaw carved into them. They're worth two gold apiece in town, but less elsewhere, and it's fairly easy to trade gold for skrim. Why is the local government trying to pull gold coins out of circulation and into their vaults? I haven't actually decided yet, but I'm sure no good can come of it.
Don't tell me we're back to "you shouldn't evaluate the published product because it can always be houseruled". At least this time it's in the context of whether or not a 4e rule is good, rather than if a 5e one is bad, I guess. :rotate:
While I'm chiming in, I just thought I'd say that I like how the minion and mook designs are tactical, effective ways to wean the game off of the "focus fire all the big things always" assumption. I think that is a really smart advancement of the game (so naturally it was dropped for 5e). Were I to run, or even be a player in, a 5e game, I would heavily stress their importance in combat design. Unfortunately I don't think it is a thing I would wish upon myself or another DM, to rejigger smart tech back into the game.
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Great ScottKing of Wishful ThinkingParagon City, RIRegistered Userregular
Don't tell me we're back to "you shouldn't evaluate the published product because it can always be houseruled". At least this time it's in the context of whether or not a 4e rule is good, rather than if a 5e one is bad, I guess. :rotate:
That's a good point. How are we evaluating it?
1) In a vacuum, as a RPG product?
2) Compared to 4E?
3) Compared to 3E/PF?
4) Compared to other modern RPGs from other publishers?
What we're evaluating by will affect what the commentary is going to be.
Don't tell me we're back to "you shouldn't evaluate the published product because it can always be houseruled". At least this time it's in the context of whether or not a 4e rule is good, rather than if a 5e one is bad, I guess. :rotate:
That's a good point. How are we evaluating it?
1) In a vacuum, as a RPG product?
2) Compared to 4E?
3) Compared to 3E/PF?
4) Compared to other modern RPGs from other publishers?
What we're evaluating by will affect what the commentary is going to be.
I like:
5) As designed, in a vacuum, as an (ideally) coherent set of rules combined with setting, art, characterizations, and so on (aka "fluff"),
though I would also add:
5.5) noting when applicable other RPGs' implementation, be it simply in contrast or to make a evaluating point.
House rules, DM experience, DM "common sense", and so on are to the detriment of any relatable opinion of the product.
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No Great Scott; the reason there needed to be a central healing resource was because otherwise clerics had to become heal bots or the group could not heal outside of buying stacks of HP pots.
Sure you could change the rules but saying "we don't need a rule to deal with healing because we can change the rules that deal with healing" is kind of dumb. As is "well you have an NPC cleric if your party doesn't have one".
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited December 2014
Even 5E realizes that healing surges were a valuable piece of innovation for the game, by incorporating the between combats hit dice. Hit dice though are generally a very poor way of healing and are immensely unreliable, especially if you roll a 1 or so (something else I am considering houseruling in some way). The best thing about healing surges in 4E are that they are entirely reliable and a large pool of extra hit points, because they give you (at minimum) 1/4 of your total HP when used. Hit dice start off being decent, but rapidly drop off in effectiveness and I find my players are practically drained of them after a single fight in many cases.
Currently considering houseruling them to basically always give an average of the die rounded up (EG 4 on a d6) or allow players to regain them after short rests. Healing surges allowed me to easily manage resources of my party as the DM and ensure that I could easily eyeball them to see:
A) How much punishment were they taking overall?
How much more punishment can they take?
Whereas hit die don't tell me either of these things, because instead it can tell me:
A) How shitty are they rolling (EG getting 1s)?
Did they just have a single bad encounter?
So far I've noticed a very strong tendency for the players to want a 5 minute work day and it will be interesting to see how much they actually adventure between long rests. Particularly in adventures without a large underwater monster threatening to eat them after a few hours or so. Again, some of 5Es design decisions have been extremely poor in this regard and it just is compounded by the equally bad encounter and monster design rules (which produce creatures that are plain whacky in terms of damage output and expectancies).
And returning to the question of "Should 5E be evaluated by itself or with regard to other systems", I think my answer to that is to point out a large amount of what I've done to "Fix" 5E and what is making it fun for me (and my players) are all things taken from 13th Age. In particular, many of the concepts for resistances/immunities from 13th Age I am finding are much more satisfying in play than 5Es "Basically make your character useless" system. It's also making the tactical aspect very interesting, especially when I introduce the changed up underwater rules (5E is extremely lacking in this area to say the least in terms of consistency, where they penalize fire spells but don't reward things like lightning or sonic, which would make sense). Likewise character development options like 13th Age's One Unique Thing and the absolutely fantastic escalation die system (how did I live without this?) have improved how 5E plays immensely.
There are also all of the 4Eisms I've put back in, like acknowledgement of being bloodied when a creature is on half health (And abilities that can trigger off that, Sahuagin Bloodlust for example now requires a PC to be bloodied and flanked by the Sahuagin, as opposed to just damaged - which does a lot to make it flavorful but not ridiculous). These houserules do not make 5E a better game: The fact that I felt the need to do this at all means that 5E was (IMO) lacking in several major areas. For example I use my own encounter building rules, I don't even pay attention to Wizards monster building guidelines at all when I make monsters and so on. I'm actually beginning to wonder what DM based rules in 5E I am even actually using?
Really, doesn't that tell you absolutely everything I need to say on the matter?
The game's largest problem in 3.X was the reliance on divine casters to keep the group upright. When someone enterprising built a divine caster who wasn't focused on healing, the wails of anguish could be heard from his group about how he was going to get them all killed.
The obvious solution was opening up healing even more, so more characters could do it. Healing surges were created as a new resource to keep that from getting totally out of hand and ensuring that everyone healed at a rate that was appropriate to their overall hp, instead of arbitrarily assigned based on level.
It's a solid step forward, design-wise, and I can't fathom why they would scrap it in 5e. It wasn't actually one of the things people complained about.
Also according to the player surveys, healing surges were "easy mode" and a lot of players that preferred the more gritty/deadly style games felt like healing surges made that impossible.
The game's largest problem in 3.X was the reliance on divine casters to keep the group upright. When someone enterprising built a divine caster who wasn't focused on healing, the wails of anguish could be heard from his group about how he was going to get them all killed.
The obvious solution was opening up healing even more, so more characters could do it. Healing surges were created as a new resource to keep that from getting totally out of hand and ensuring that everyone healed at a rate that was appropriate to their overall hp, instead of arbitrarily assigned based on level.
It's a solid step forward, design-wise, and I can't fathom why they would scrap it in 5e. It wasn't actually one of the things people complained about.
It also let designers give out access to magic healing for reasonable prices without utterly crippling the daily challenge curve. 4th doesn't have any effective analogue to a Wand of Lesser Vigor or the Keg of Healing Potions that trivialized out of combat healing. While you could always spend surges you had a very finite amount of those and no easy way to get more. For me, this created a more authentic feeling of a party reaching the end of it's resources after a string of grueling fights than I ever experienced in 3rd.
How do combats only last 2-3 rounds. Enemy HP is comparatively low to start but a CR 1 monster has an AC around what? 15 and 40 HP? From levels 1 to 4 players do about 5 damage/ round which means a level 4 group should take about 8 rounds to go through an enounter with 4 cr 1 monsters.
When I think about an encounter, I take each monsters hit points and AC, and do a little math and figure out effectively how many hit points the encounter has (for example a monster with 40 HP that PCs hit 25% of the time has twice as many HP as one PCs hit 50% of the time). Then since I know how much damage my PCs can do in a round on average, I can calculate how long an encounter "should" take. So encounters are definitely as long as you want them to be.
So what you're saying is you've constructed a mathematical model to represent the challenge to a group and use this to create some sort of rating for monsters that you can compare to see how they relate to each other?
Also according to the player surveys, healing surges were "easy mode" and a lot of players that preferred the more gritty/deadly style games felt like healing surges made that impossible.
Now this is a totally valid knock against 4th. It is a heroic adventure game, not a medieval stabbing simulator. In the way that Cakes are not Pies, 4th is not really gritty.
Though note that Tox didn't say "realistic". That assertion would be pretty laughable.
The game's largest problem in 3.X was the reliance on divine casters to keep the group upright. When someone enterprising built a divine caster who wasn't focused on healing, the wails of anguish could be heard from his group about how he was going to get them all killed.
The obvious solution was opening up healing even more, so more characters could do it. Healing surges were created as a new resource to keep that from getting totally out of hand and ensuring that everyone healed at a rate that was appropriate to their overall hp, instead of arbitrarily assigned based on level.
It's a solid step forward, design-wise, and I can't fathom why they would scrap it in 5e. It wasn't actually one of the things people complained about.
It also let designers give out access to magic healing for reasonable prices without utterly crippling the daily challenge curve. 4th doesn't have any effective analogue to a Wand of Lesser Vigor or the Keg of Healing Potions that trivialized out of combat healing. While you could always spend surges you had a very finite amount of those and no easy way to get more. For me, this created a more authentic feeling of a party reaching the end of it's resources after a string of grueling fights than I ever experienced in 3rd.
How do combats only last 2-3 rounds. Enemy HP is comparatively low to start but a CR 1 monster has an AC around what? 15 and 40 HP? From levels 1 to 4 players do about 5 damage/ round which means a level 4 group should take about 8 rounds to go through an enounter with 4 cr 1 monsters.
When I think about an encounter, I take each monsters hit points and AC, and do a little math and figure out effectively how many hit points the encounter has (for example a monster with 40 HP that PCs hit 25% of the time has twice as many HP as one PCs hit 50% of the time). Then since I know how much damage my PCs can do in a round on average, I can calculate how long an encounter "should" take. So encounters are definitely as long as you want them to be.
So what you're saying is you've constructed a mathematical model to represent the challenge to a group and use this to create some sort of rating for monsters that you can compare to see how they relate to each other?
Huh. Interesting concept.
Haha. Yes, but not to determine how hard a fight would be for PCs, just how long it might take.
Also according to the player surveys, healing surges were "easy mode" and a lot of players that preferred the more gritty/deadly style games felt like healing surges made that impossible.
Now this is a totally valid knock against 4th. It is a heroic adventure game, not a medieval stabbing simulator. In the way that Cakes are not Pies, 4th is not really gritty.
Though note that Tox didn't say "realistic". That assertion would be pretty laughable.
I do wonder, however, how much those respondents overlap with people who thought they were "clever" by utilizing wands of CLW, healing pots, and so on. Groups I observed treated that grittiness as an adversary to overcome rather than a desired facet of the game. Tox is absolutely right though.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
5e fixed that trivialization by making it take 50 years to craft that wand in the first place. Good thing the next batch of adventurers will be ready by then!
It's 50 years of labor hours, not actually 50 years.
This means that any reasonable adventurer should aspire to create a slave-state wherein the serfs are just educated enough to be able to assist with magic item creation, then work them tirelessly to pump out said items.
Bonus points if someone figures out a way to do this with necromancy and undead slaves instead.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
Also according to the player surveys, healing surges were "easy mode" and a lot of players that preferred the more gritty/deadly style games felt like healing surges made that impossible.
Now this is a totally valid knock against 4th. It is a heroic adventure game, not a medieval stabbing simulator. In the way that Cakes are not Pies, 4th is not really gritty.
Though note that Tox didn't say "realistic". That assertion would be pretty laughable.
I do wonder, however, how much those respondents overlap with people who thought they were "clever" by utilizing wands of CLW, healing pots, and so on. Groups I observed treated that grittiness as an adversary to overcome rather than a desired facet of the game. Tox is absolutely right though.
Even this isn't really an accurate criticism.
In 3rd/5e, your 'gritty, dangerous' world is undercut by the fact that a smart party is rolling in healing items and can always be at full health, all the time, without ever really running out in a meaningful way unless they're overwhelmed in a single encounter. Even if you're also appending 'low-magic' to your deadly campaign, as long as you still let players play spellcasters they can just create the items they need, or make do with low-end spell slots.
Healing surges give access to a MORE gritty style of play, where no matter how many healing potions you've bought you can only use so many before needing real actual rest, which may be difficult to come by, making it much more plausible for a 'gritty' DM to put the party in a position where every injury matters because they can't all be cleared away with a magic beverage - and that's before you start getting into the monsters that can directly attack your healing surges instead of/in addition to your HP.
4th is very much designed to be a heroic adventure game, but it's design doesn't really limit more high-lethality play if that's what you want to do; healing surges only make 'deadly' play more difficult to achieve if you can't manage to control the 5-minute workday - and while that can sometimes be difficult to do in ways we would consider 'fair' for a more traditional game, I have to assume that anybody who sat down specifically to DM a high-lethality grimdark campaign is probably perfectly comfortable with things like ambushing the party when they try to rest in an unsafe area or inflicting them with curses/diseases that reduce their healing surge total and/or make it more difficult to benefit from rests at all or straight-up telling them 'this place is cursed and you can't rest here'. In contrast, those same tactics don't do nearly as much to limit the 3/5e "good fight everybody now lets all chug some potions/gather around the Wand of Vigor/climb into the Rope Trick hole" counterpart strategies.
The impact healing surges DO have is that it's much more difficult to find yourself playing the grimdark 'whoops you got unlucky and now your character is dead forever because this is Low-Magic Scarytown' game by accident if that's not the game type you're looking for.
How long do summons last? Couldn't you just summon 8 or 16 or 32 or whatever and then work them to the bone (to the bone, ha!) to make your item in like a year and a half?
Edit: And just resummon/rest enough to have a constant supply of summons.
It's 50 years of labor hours, not actually 50 years.
This means that any reasonable adventurer should aspire to create a slave-state wherein the serfs are just educated enough to be able to assist with magic item creation, then work them tirelessly to pump out said items.
Bonus points if someone figures out a way to do this with necromancy and undead slaves instead.
straight-up telling them 'this place is cursed and you can't rest here'.
*raises hand* I did that.
totally did that.
Party was crossing a desert that once been home to the pre-damnation-tiefling empire. Told them crossing the desert would take several weeks, and that they would not be allowed the benefits of an extended rest, due to both the hazards of the environment and the unnatural energy of the land.
This was at level 10, though, so it was pretty hard for them to get around that.
But really that wasn't even close to the biggest problem in 3.x
I'm going to assume you're referring to healing here, because you didn't specify and we sort of have two parallel conversations going on.
I'd argue it is. When the game is built on the understanding that the group is going to have access to cheap, common, and relatively pain-free healing (@BSS I abuse the crap out of Wands of CLW when I play 3.X as a Cleric, because not taking Spontaneous Domain [Something Useful] is the first mistake you can make as a Cleric) and that assumption is something certain groups pride themselves on not relying on, you've essentially highlighted the basic assumption that underpins multiple poor design decisions. "Why do Wizards get to do so much damage?" "Because they have the least hp and thus are often in a lot of danger in combat." Most of the other poor design conclusions embraced by the developers who came after the original team (emphasis is key) are why we have the steaming pile of mess that is 3.X.
4e's shift in attitude, to their mind, "enforced" the easy heals on them, which of course they found outrageous because there's no possible way around that, right? (Like, you know, halving healing surges per day.) This is the sort of knee-jerk criticism you got from groups who were proud of surmounting the flawed basic assumption of 3.X and felt as if their identities were being somehow torn away from them by 4e making the Cleric and Druid just two of five classes that can, by default, help other characters heal up. It removed a lot of the sillyness of level-based healing spells by keying healing directly to the level of the healee.
But really that wasn't even close to the biggest problem in 3.x
I'm going to assume you're referring to healing here, because you didn't specify and we sort of have two parallel conversations going on.
I'd argue it is. When the game is built on the understanding that the group is going to have access to cheap, common, and relatively pain-free healing (@BSS I abuse the crap out of Wands of CLW when I play 3.X as a Cleric, because not taking Spontaneous Domain [Something Useful] is the first mistake you can make as a Cleric) and that assumption is something certain groups pride themselves on not relying on, you've essentially highlighted the basic assumption that underpins multiple poor design decisions. "Why do Wizards get to do so much damage?" "Because they have the least hp and thus are often in a lot of danger in combat." Most of the other poor design conclusions embraced by the developers who came after the original team (emphasis is key) are why we have the steaming pile of mess that is 3.X.
4e's shift in attitude, to their mind, "enforced" the easy heals on them, which of course they found outrageous because there's no possible way around that, right? (Like, you know, halving healing surges per day.) This is the sort of knee-jerk criticism you got from groups who were proud of surmounting the flawed basic assumption of 3.X and felt as if their identities were being somehow torn away from them by 4e making the Cleric and Druid just two of five classes that can, by default, help other characters heal up. It removed a lot of the sillyness of level-based healing spells by keying healing directly to the level of the healee.
I meant in general, because i don't think that the biggest problem in 3.x was healing. It was the range of d20 modifier range which made crafting reasonable encounters for parties of the same level near impossible, because actions which were easy for one character became impossible for another, unless that character had a magic item which trivialized the issue anyway.
The core piece of all DnD has been the ability to craft the encounters. Not necessarily CR rules which help you do this, but just raw underlying ability to do so. 3.x utterly failed at this because, as explained earlier, modifiers are so diverse that you simply could not have character 1 and character 2 be expected to take similar actions and succeed. 4e recognized the problem and attempted to fix it but failed and had to fix it later. 5e is, all things considered, probably slightly better than original 4e on this, but again fails to fix the issue which it should have been obvious
In other news, the rogue was trying to decide what kind of gear to buy, and I half-jokingly suggested a bag of ball bearings. He hadn't noticed them before, but wound up buying five bags. During the fight with the Merrow, he spread them out on the deck of the ship as the Merrow were climbing aboard, which led to several humorous rounds of the fish-men flopping around on deck while he stabbed them. I suspect ball bearings are going to feature prominently in his arsenal from here on out.
Two hilarious RAW issues with ball bearings
1. Ball bearings work on flying creatures. Hovering creatures cannot be made prone, but flying creatures can. Flying creatures still move across areas and so flying creatures still have to make dex checks or be knocked out of the sky by ball bearings.
2. Ball bearings and caltrops don't have a "range" listed in their abilities. Technically this means, as an action, you can place them anywhere
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
I would be a much better DM if I were a better artist.
But here is some concept art for my campaign's megadungeon: the lost city of Mar Avon, where the decadent magocracy made its last stand against the goblinoid hordes who followed in the wake of the great plague. Once a cultural marvel in the old empire, Mar Avon was raised by magic from the deepest part of the great River Soln. Now a shattered remnant, it stands as a monument to the hubris of man.
The streets teem with orcs, goblinoids, and kobolds. Once these humanoid races were united under the banner of the great orc warlord Snar-Agâsh, but after his death the tribes fell into perpetual warfare. The kobolds were nearly extinguished before the desperate prayer of one wyrmpriest managed to tug one of Tiamat's tender heartstrings. An ancient red dragon answered the wyrmpriest's call, and the dragon drove the orcs and goblinoid's to the city's lowest slums. The kobolds reign in the city's heights, and the dragon protects them as long as they make regular contributions to its growing treasure hoard. The dragon now spends its days lazily coiled over is treasure in the vast debate hall that once housed the magocracy's senate.
But there are still places in Mar Avon that the monsters never touched. Many wizards fled the city before the siege, and left powerful magical wards on their estates. If you have the right key, and know the right spell, you can help yourself to the treasures within -- as long you can manage the magical traps, animated constructs, servitor elementals, and bound fiends that still guard the dead sorcerers' homes.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
While "better" art can almost always help with the illustration and visualization of key elements in the story, I hope you don't consider yourself a "poor" artist. Because compared to that my drawings look like the scrawls of a lobotomy patient (that is seriously very cool looking).
Posts
That certainly explains the mini-discussion about Tripping earlier!
There is no damage inherent to a trip attempt. (There are many permutations of trip + damage, however.)
Apply effect (knockdown).
I'm not being trite, but this is the system's core mechanic: Roll 1d20 + modifiers against a difficulty rating. Combat says "hey also do thing." In some systems magic says "hey also do thing." In some systems there is "pause to do unnecessary math" after each step.
It's a simple system, if you keep it stripped down (True 20, for instance). But given their druthers most people -- even game designers who should know better -- will add more and more steps and substeps to the engine.
Diablo 3 - ArtfulDodger#1572
Minecraft - ArtfulDodger42
My players did run into a bit of trouble focus firing the wrong target. They were getting waylaid by highwaymen, consisting of a Bandit Captain and several Bandits. They were only level 3, but it shouldn't have been an especially hard encounter. However, by focus firing the Bandit Captain (who has a ton of hit points) instead of the Bandits (who die in one hit), they always were TPK'd, since they were taking so many attacks a round.
My initial reaction was: "What could possibly go wrong," which I always take as a warning sign that something could go wrong.
Could anyone see this causing problems in the group?
It depends on how much your players like consistency. Does your game play nice with "well the cleric is MIA and there is a Druid here instead of the Fighter"? Also, is your fighter actually good at getting between enemies. As strange as it sounds i think that having a high AC character to body block is a lot more important than it used to be since the AC and HP differential between PC's is so much higher and PC's have fewer defensive abilities in general.
It might be better to just have your most efficient player play the cleric as well. That way the party dynamic doesn't change, you don't have consistency issues.
My gut reaction when someone does this is its them saying "I don't want to play this character anymore, i want to play a druid" but i don't much have an issue with people not finding their characters fun
So like the power cards that DnD 4e suggested you make so you could easily keep track of what powers you'd used by just flipping them over, and could also easy keep track of what you could do?
Hmmmm, seems like we have a theme here
Variant human to take either defensive duelist or alert. Great old one bladepact (the force). You can take the jump invocation, and mage armor, thirsting blade if you want to be good with the blade. fluff eldritch blast and mage hand. GoO gets telepathy, and later telekenisis. it's a lot of fun.
not saying it's the most optimized character, but it was a fun thought experement.
Combats last less rounds (2-3 is the expected I think?)
Characters have less to do - especially non casters, who generally just attack with a weapon for some damage.
Both of these for me are bad things.
Better than what?
Healing surges served 2 purposes:
To serve as a long term daily resource outside of hitpoints (which were a short term encounter resource)
Create a central mechanic that all healing ran from, weather it was clerical, magic items or whatever else.
The goal wasn't necessarily "don't need a cleric" - it was "a cleric isn't essential" , "clerics aren't the only healers" and "if you are the healer, you can do stuff other than heal"
The current (imo) bad short/long rest system is a poorly thought out version of the system they had in 4th, which meant that for most fights you started with the max of your short term encounter long resources, which made constructing interesting encounters much easier as the party had a fixed expected power level.
Well he's a Fighter/Rogue/possibly Paladin and/or Warlock multi-class assassin. So he's not 100% durable, but he does sport 16 AC and tear up melee something fierce with dual wielding. He is usually in the thick of things.
I'll have to ask him if he just wants to play a Druid, since he's seemed to me like he's been enjoying being an Assassin (in training, only level 4).
What the group has done in the past is I have a Bard NPC character that can back up heal, and either someone's friend will jump in on the session, or someone will play two characters, with the Bard just Bow attacking or Healing Word people back alive.
When I think about an encounter, I take each monsters hit points and AC, and do a little math and figure out effectively how many hit points the encounter has (for example a monster with 40 HP that PCs hit 25% of the time has twice as many HP as one PCs hit 50% of the time). Then since I know how much damage my PCs can do in a round on average, I can calculate how long an encounter "should" take. So encounters are definitely as long as you want them to be.
I can see fights being three rounds if you start within 30ft of each other, and have perma-advantage. Or if there's particularly good spell placement (Web keeping three people out of the fight turn after turn). Outside of that, most combats have been at least four rounds, more if you're spread out.
From what people are saying, 4th edition got (a lot) better over time. When I was playtesting and playing it I was using the base PHB only.
That's a good point, in a way. I think that I'm out, out of necessity. Analysing the rules in a vacuum is probably a good idea but not really how I see/play DND. As best I can tell we're making no assumptions whatsoever when it comes to DMing, and that's disingenuous because the vast, vast majority of people who DM play pen-and-paper games have previously played them and have a good grasp of the rules (and their lack).
The hidden assumption above "we need a central mechanic to open up healing" is entirely based on the idea that the game is played straight out of a rulebook, with no house rules, and that furthermore a DM won't see in advance that party composition needs help and once the problem appears will neither 1) tailor their campaign to the group nor 2) add an NPC character for the (well defined) roles that no player wants/enjoys.
We can take back a step and argue whether "anyone can heal" is overall a good thing or not (it might be), but we skipped right over that.
I'm personally interested in 5th Edition from the perspective of how it will help/hinder my current PF game, which is roughly 25% combat. It would be awesome to include more combat encounters, but they are slow and painful, and getting worse as the characters level up. If I actually used the PF rules as written it would be much worse, which is interesting in light of the discussion immediately above: other than classed player-race character opponents (Boss level unless they are incidental NPCs), my "mook" monsters don't even have a hit point total - they are defeated if and when 1) someone out-thinks them/causes rocks to fall, or 2) they have bled the party resources to the level I expected them to.
EDIT: Sorry, I forgot to add my 2¢ about the 5E "Rest" system: I like it, it's simple and a good catch all, although I'm sure that will be corner cases where it's not optimal. My feeling is that this is a stair step along the path toward eliminating the rest/study mechanics entirely. I wouldn't mind that at all.
In other news, the rogue was trying to decide what kind of gear to buy, and I half-jokingly suggested a bag of ball bearings. He hadn't noticed them before, but wound up buying five bags. During the fight with the Merrow, he spread them out on the deck of the ship as the Merrow were climbing aboard, which led to several humorous rounds of the fish-men flopping around on deck while he stabbed them. I suspect ball bearings are going to feature prominently in his arsenal from here on out.
Also got to introduce a bit of custom currency. They're in a whaling port right now, and the locals use a fiat coin called skrim, which are flat discs of whalebone with unique skrimshaw carved into them. They're worth two gold apiece in town, but less elsewhere, and it's fairly easy to trade gold for skrim. Why is the local government trying to pull gold coins out of circulation and into their vaults? I haven't actually decided yet, but I'm sure no good can come of it.
While I'm chiming in, I just thought I'd say that I like how the minion and mook designs are tactical, effective ways to wean the game off of the "focus fire all the big things always" assumption. I think that is a really smart advancement of the game (so naturally it was dropped for 5e). Were I to run, or even be a player in, a 5e game, I would heavily stress their importance in combat design. Unfortunately I don't think it is a thing I would wish upon myself or another DM, to rejigger smart tech back into the game.
Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e
Occasional words about games: my site
That's a good point. How are we evaluating it?
1) In a vacuum, as a RPG product?
2) Compared to 4E?
3) Compared to 3E/PF?
4) Compared to other modern RPGs from other publishers?
What we're evaluating by will affect what the commentary is going to be.
I like:
5) As designed, in a vacuum, as an (ideally) coherent set of rules combined with setting, art, characterizations, and so on (aka "fluff"),
though I would also add:
5.5) noting when applicable other RPGs' implementation, be it simply in contrast or to make a evaluating point.
House rules, DM experience, DM "common sense", and so on are to the detriment of any relatable opinion of the product.
Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e
Occasional words about games: my site
Sure you could change the rules but saying "we don't need a rule to deal with healing because we can change the rules that deal with healing" is kind of dumb. As is "well you have an NPC cleric if your party doesn't have one".
Currently considering houseruling them to basically always give an average of the die rounded up (EG 4 on a d6) or allow players to regain them after short rests. Healing surges allowed me to easily manage resources of my party as the DM and ensure that I could easily eyeball them to see:
A) How much punishment were they taking overall?
Whereas hit die don't tell me either of these things, because instead it can tell me:
A) How shitty are they rolling (EG getting 1s)?
So far I've noticed a very strong tendency for the players to want a 5 minute work day and it will be interesting to see how much they actually adventure between long rests. Particularly in adventures without a large underwater monster threatening to eat them after a few hours or so. Again, some of 5Es design decisions have been extremely poor in this regard and it just is compounded by the equally bad encounter and monster design rules (which produce creatures that are plain whacky in terms of damage output and expectancies).
And returning to the question of "Should 5E be evaluated by itself or with regard to other systems", I think my answer to that is to point out a large amount of what I've done to "Fix" 5E and what is making it fun for me (and my players) are all things taken from 13th Age. In particular, many of the concepts for resistances/immunities from 13th Age I am finding are much more satisfying in play than 5Es "Basically make your character useless" system. It's also making the tactical aspect very interesting, especially when I introduce the changed up underwater rules (5E is extremely lacking in this area to say the least in terms of consistency, where they penalize fire spells but don't reward things like lightning or sonic, which would make sense). Likewise character development options like 13th Age's One Unique Thing and the absolutely fantastic escalation die system (how did I live without this?) have improved how 5E plays immensely.
There are also all of the 4Eisms I've put back in, like acknowledgement of being bloodied when a creature is on half health (And abilities that can trigger off that, Sahuagin Bloodlust for example now requires a PC to be bloodied and flanked by the Sahuagin, as opposed to just damaged - which does a lot to make it flavorful but not ridiculous). These houserules do not make 5E a better game: The fact that I felt the need to do this at all means that 5E was (IMO) lacking in several major areas. For example I use my own encounter building rules, I don't even pay attention to Wizards monster building guidelines at all when I make monsters and so on. I'm actually beginning to wonder what DM based rules in 5E I am even actually using?
Really, doesn't that tell you absolutely everything I need to say on the matter?
The obvious solution was opening up healing even more, so more characters could do it. Healing surges were created as a new resource to keep that from getting totally out of hand and ensuring that everyone healed at a rate that was appropriate to their overall hp, instead of arbitrarily assigned based on level.
It's a solid step forward, design-wise, and I can't fathom why they would scrap it in 5e. It wasn't actually one of the things people complained about.
But really that wasn't even close to the biggest problem in 3.x
It also let designers give out access to magic healing for reasonable prices without utterly crippling the daily challenge curve. 4th doesn't have any effective analogue to a Wand of Lesser Vigor or the Keg of Healing Potions that trivialized out of combat healing. While you could always spend surges you had a very finite amount of those and no easy way to get more. For me, this created a more authentic feeling of a party reaching the end of it's resources after a string of grueling fights than I ever experienced in 3rd.
So what you're saying is you've constructed a mathematical model to represent the challenge to a group and use this to create some sort of rating for monsters that you can compare to see how they relate to each other?
Huh. Interesting concept.
Now this is a totally valid knock against 4th. It is a heroic adventure game, not a medieval stabbing simulator. In the way that Cakes are not Pies, 4th is not really gritty.
Though note that Tox didn't say "realistic". That assertion would be pretty laughable.
Haha. Yes, but not to determine how hard a fight would be for PCs, just how long it might take.
I do wonder, however, how much those respondents overlap with people who thought they were "clever" by utilizing wands of CLW, healing pots, and so on. Groups I observed treated that grittiness as an adversary to overcome rather than a desired facet of the game. Tox is absolutely right though.
Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e
Occasional words about games: my site
Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e
Occasional words about games: my site
This means that any reasonable adventurer should aspire to create a slave-state wherein the serfs are just educated enough to be able to assist with magic item creation, then work them tirelessly to pump out said items.
Bonus points if someone figures out a way to do this with necromancy and undead slaves instead.
Even this isn't really an accurate criticism.
In 3rd/5e, your 'gritty, dangerous' world is undercut by the fact that a smart party is rolling in healing items and can always be at full health, all the time, without ever really running out in a meaningful way unless they're overwhelmed in a single encounter. Even if you're also appending 'low-magic' to your deadly campaign, as long as you still let players play spellcasters they can just create the items they need, or make do with low-end spell slots.
Healing surges give access to a MORE gritty style of play, where no matter how many healing potions you've bought you can only use so many before needing real actual rest, which may be difficult to come by, making it much more plausible for a 'gritty' DM to put the party in a position where every injury matters because they can't all be cleared away with a magic beverage - and that's before you start getting into the monsters that can directly attack your healing surges instead of/in addition to your HP.
4th is very much designed to be a heroic adventure game, but it's design doesn't really limit more high-lethality play if that's what you want to do; healing surges only make 'deadly' play more difficult to achieve if you can't manage to control the 5-minute workday - and while that can sometimes be difficult to do in ways we would consider 'fair' for a more traditional game, I have to assume that anybody who sat down specifically to DM a high-lethality grimdark campaign is probably perfectly comfortable with things like ambushing the party when they try to rest in an unsafe area or inflicting them with curses/diseases that reduce their healing surge total and/or make it more difficult to benefit from rests at all or straight-up telling them 'this place is cursed and you can't rest here'. In contrast, those same tactics don't do nearly as much to limit the 3/5e "good fight everybody now lets all chug some potions/gather around the Wand of Vigor/climb into the Rope Trick hole" counterpart strategies.
The impact healing surges DO have is that it's much more difficult to find yourself playing the grimdark 'whoops you got unlucky and now your character is dead forever because this is Low-Magic Scarytown' game by accident if that's not the game type you're looking for.
Edit: And just resummon/rest enough to have a constant supply of summons.
Szass Tam is that you?
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Szass_Tam
*raises hand* I did that.
totally did that.
Party was crossing a desert that once been home to the pre-damnation-tiefling empire. Told them crossing the desert would take several weeks, and that they would not be allowed the benefits of an extended rest, due to both the hazards of the environment and the unnatural energy of the land.
This was at level 10, though, so it was pretty hard for them to get around that.
I'd argue it is. When the game is built on the understanding that the group is going to have access to cheap, common, and relatively pain-free healing (@BSS I abuse the crap out of Wands of CLW when I play 3.X as a Cleric, because not taking Spontaneous Domain [Something Useful] is the first mistake you can make as a Cleric) and that assumption is something certain groups pride themselves on not relying on, you've essentially highlighted the basic assumption that underpins multiple poor design decisions. "Why do Wizards get to do so much damage?" "Because they have the least hp and thus are often in a lot of danger in combat." Most of the other poor design conclusions embraced by the developers who came after the original team (emphasis is key) are why we have the steaming pile of mess that is 3.X.
4e's shift in attitude, to their mind, "enforced" the easy heals on them, which of course they found outrageous because there's no possible way around that, right? (Like, you know, halving healing surges per day.) This is the sort of knee-jerk criticism you got from groups who were proud of surmounting the flawed basic assumption of 3.X and felt as if their identities were being somehow torn away from them by 4e making the Cleric and Druid just two of five classes that can, by default, help other characters heal up. It removed a lot of the sillyness of level-based healing spells by keying healing directly to the level of the healee.
I meant in general, because i don't think that the biggest problem in 3.x was healing. It was the range of d20 modifier range which made crafting reasonable encounters for parties of the same level near impossible, because actions which were easy for one character became impossible for another, unless that character had a magic item which trivialized the issue anyway.
The core piece of all DnD has been the ability to craft the encounters. Not necessarily CR rules which help you do this, but just raw underlying ability to do so. 3.x utterly failed at this because, as explained earlier, modifiers are so diverse that you simply could not have character 1 and character 2 be expected to take similar actions and succeed. 4e recognized the problem and attempted to fix it but failed and had to fix it later. 5e is, all things considered, probably slightly better than original 4e on this, but again fails to fix the issue which it should have been obvious
Two hilarious RAW issues with ball bearings
1. Ball bearings work on flying creatures. Hovering creatures cannot be made prone, but flying creatures can. Flying creatures still move across areas and so flying creatures still have to make dex checks or be knocked out of the sky by ball bearings.
2. Ball bearings and caltrops don't have a "range" listed in their abilities. Technically this means, as an action, you can place them anywhere
But here is some concept art for my campaign's megadungeon: the lost city of Mar Avon, where the decadent magocracy made its last stand against the goblinoid hordes who followed in the wake of the great plague. Once a cultural marvel in the old empire, Mar Avon was raised by magic from the deepest part of the great River Soln. Now a shattered remnant, it stands as a monument to the hubris of man.
The streets teem with orcs, goblinoids, and kobolds. Once these humanoid races were united under the banner of the great orc warlord Snar-Agâsh, but after his death the tribes fell into perpetual warfare. The kobolds were nearly extinguished before the desperate prayer of one wyrmpriest managed to tug one of Tiamat's tender heartstrings. An ancient red dragon answered the wyrmpriest's call, and the dragon drove the orcs and goblinoid's to the city's lowest slums. The kobolds reign in the city's heights, and the dragon protects them as long as they make regular contributions to its growing treasure hoard. The dragon now spends its days lazily coiled over is treasure in the vast debate hall that once housed the magocracy's senate.
But there are still places in Mar Avon that the monsters never touched. Many wizards fled the city before the siege, and left powerful magical wards on their estates. If you have the right key, and know the right spell, you can help yourself to the treasures within -- as long you can manage the magical traps, animated constructs, servitor elementals, and bound fiends that still guard the dead sorcerers' homes.