I can understand like, some minor setback, but even then when I run Savage Worlds I very much doubt I'll be going with the -1 Advance on new characters rule, penalties on death are really just lame
Also @Solar yessssss Only War is excellent times, Matt lost a couple characters by the end of the campaign I ran with a bunch of buddies due to his balls being too goddamn big for his britches
First dude was a sergeant, got cleft from throat to groin by an ork slugga boy, second dude was an operator/commander who got ripped apart by a warboss when he deliberately pulled the hatch on his tank to let his subordinates get to safety
They also had a psyker who had the misfortune of poking his head out of the hatch of a Chimera to fire a molten beam right about the time a traitor Hellhound doused the thing in burning promethium, so that was fun
The second longest surviving member of their squad, a heavy gunner who had chewed through a bunch of tanks with a multi-melta, got blown up by a looted Leman Russ when he fired on it and didn't quite manage to cook it through
So, who lasted longest?
And, as they ARE guardsmen, over or under 12 hours?
Longest lasting is tied between the sergeant's comrade, the squad's beloved Stubbs, and their stormtrooper, Pancho, both of whom survived until the end and beyond
The group rolled up a new regiment after the big encounter that saw their heavy gunner and operator/commander killed along with most of their platoon
The new regiment was an elite Schola Progenium-educated drop troop regiment that were basically as good as Stormtroopers in all but name, so we ruled that Pancho would get to sign on with them as well
He went on to kill plenty more traitors in the name of the Emperor, and their squad in general did very well carrying out the final battles in that campaign
Best encounter by far was the group of enemy PCs I threw at them which they handled well, but it was pretty touch-and-go
As soon as they realized the enemy were using comrades the same way they were like "FUCK."
They popped the heavy first which was a big part of what saved them a lot of hurt, the weapon specialist gave them a bit of trouble with his bolter until he caught some plasma with his face, and then they casually murdered the medic
The traitor sergeant had gotten clipped early on and didn't die immediately, living just long enough to watch his comrades fall horribly under a hail of lasfire
Rear Admiral Choco on
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Rear Admiral ChocoI wanna be an owl, Jerry!Owl York CityRegistered Userregular
You gotta successfully avoid being killed by a house cat for long enough to be remotely powerful, so sometimes it's just better to roll fighter and actually manage to catch up to the rest of the party
That just feels lame though, like you're paying for being a busta early on by being god later
I'd rather everyone was capable consistently
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
It just seems like the gameplay generally would be silly.
The first person to die would obviously be underpowered and couldn't fight anything, so they firstly have a high chance of dying again and never progressing and secondly they would be encouraged to not fight and leech experience which would be mighty boring.
The alternative solution is to then make the monsters easier, but obviously that's boring for the higher levels.
Is there a good RPG that focuses on loot rather than levels as a way of powering up a character? Would that solve new characters joining veteran characters? Could levels and experience be tied to a weapon or weapon type like some video games to prevent players just sharing high level weapons?
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Scalp-taking, adversarial GMing is such Stone Age bullshit, but it's exactly in the wheelhouse of the angry 50-year-olds that Wizards has aimed 5e at like a fucking laser-guided rocket
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Rear Admiral ChocoI wanna be an owl, Jerry!Owl York CityRegistered Userregular
Is there a good RPG that focuses on loot rather than levels as a way of powering up a character? Would that solve new characters joining veteran characters? Could levels and experience be tied to a weapon or weapon type like some video games to prevent players just sharing high level weapons?
If you restrict loot based on level I can't imagine how that'd help new characters mix with old
Another thing is even if you do a thing where all are roughly equally capable in combat it's still gonna suck for new guys when it comes time to do anything else and all their optimization has been sunk into combat
I've never run a game where I don't just let people roll up a new dude at the same level of experience as the surviving members, but then I've been blessed with players who don't jump off a cliff just so they can take their new concept out for a spin
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Rear Admiral ChocoI wanna be an owl, Jerry!Owl York CityRegistered Userregular
Flavour wise when you bring in new, young, fresh characters in a party full of grizzled veterans, I feel like beginner's luck until they fall into the groove a decent enough explanation for why they're doing so well
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Rear Admiral ChocoI wanna be an owl, Jerry!Owl York CityRegistered Userregular
One thing I have to continually try to check as a GM is not helping my players out
It's a constant struggle when I foresee horrible results to not give some kind of hint
It's probably my biggest flaw when it comes to running games
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FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
Party Level-1, level up after 1-2 sessions is one I've done before.
It lets them get a feel for a character and how it fits with a party, allows them not to have to fully map out a character and see how it develops without hamstringing too hard, and holds a bit more flexibility back to be used once you know how the character actually works. The number of times I've heard a player go 'If I had known X I'd have built this character a bit different' after a couple of sessions is, well, numerious enough that I figured this is an easier way of dealing with it.
Also kinda supportive of being the new guy or junior member from a roleplay and characterisation perspective.
Of course, I've also flirted with the idea of having a player join the party as a higher level 'old hand' grizzled veteran mentor type character, for a point of difference. Or rolling a die to see if you're a level higher, lower, or the same as the party, just to keep things, well, non-homogenous and therefore slightly interesting.
Drats, just read through a copy of the 5E handbook a friend lent me. I'm conflicted. Mechanically things are messy; I'm still wrapping my head around the wording on some things and the odd divide between general, inclusive, broadly applicable mechanics and super crunchy wording on abilities or rules that seem needlessly convoluted. The Linguist feat for example states that another person can decipher your code by a) being taught b)passing an Int check based on Int score+proficiency bonus or c) using magic. First glaring thought: proficiency in what? Language, the skill that doesn't exist? Cleverness? Inscrutability? Invisible ink use? Other standouts: You need a a small blurb that introduces the concept of don-time and doff-time for armor?
But then I look through backrounds and character creation and come up with a really really cool Warlock character concept that I'd love to take for a spin. Not even min/max or power gamer-ish; just a really fun sounding concept that expands on the way they described pacts and the relationship to a patron and all the neat little threads they offered up. Gimme that pact of the tome and great old one and charlatan background and suddenly I have an aging ex-conman slowly losing touch with reality but trying to maintain all his old tricks and disguises and Gentleman Bastard tendencies while the ratty old book he took off his last score starts adding pages with detailed instructions on jobs that may or may not happen in the future. All to the advancement of whoever is writing the book.
On a first read it was easy to piece together a whole bunch of very interesting concepts and character hooks. And then I remember that 13th Age and any number of other systems exist and I can do the same thing with rules I like better. Oops.
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FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
One idea I was thinking about doing with my last campaign before it came to a slightly abreviated conclusion was a kind of campaign reboot, where the old PCs from the campaign just concluded would be leaders of a rebellion army and the players would be making new PCs at low levels, but occasionally one of them would be able to swap out for their old Epic-level PC from the previous campaign and use it as a 'captain' for a short adventure with everyone else's lower level PCs.
It would put a huge burden on the DM in terms of encounter construction, though, because every encounter would need to incorporate this huge gulf of ability where you'd have this one character who would be nigh-untouchable by most opponents of an equivalent challenge for the lower level PCs, but I think it could probably be done in a way that would be good fun game for everyone, particularly if you engineered the encounters just right (it could make for some interesting and memorable boss battles, I think) and had (as my campaign did) a really good in-world background story reason to explain it.
This whole release them a month apart thing is real dumb since the book says HEY IF YOU WANNA KNOW MORE BUY THE MONSTER MANUAL/DUNGEON MASTER'S GUIDE
I would if you would let me dummies
I agree, the DMG should be out. However, they released a bunch of free suppliments, like all the monsters from horde of the dragon queen, and a mini DM guide. it's on the wizard's website.
First glaring thought: proficiency in what? Language, the skill that doesn't exist? Cleverness? Inscrutability? Invisible ink use? Other standouts: You need a a small blurb that introduces the concept of don-time and doff-time for armor?
Proficiency bonus is a way of deliniating character level. The higher the level, the higher your bonus. So, yeah, it's not that they're good at your made up language, but that they're good at deciphering in general, maybe? I could make a plausible enough reason to be allowed to use a prof bonus.
And yes, you need a small blurb about armor specifically because of long rests in dangerous areas vs sleeping in armor. Some DMs may not need it, because they don't care about verisimilitude, but my DM absolutely made us decide whether we were sleeping in armor when we decided to take a long rest after a huge fight (we locked ourselves in a cathedral we thought was safe because we had just cleared everything out. Turns out the rogue band of mercanaries was catching up to us so I started in armor but had disadvantage because I failed my con roll).
The blurb also answers the question of whether or not brandishing your shield is a free action. RAW, it's not.monsters from horde of the dragon queen, and a mini DM guide. it's on the wizard's website.
belligerent on
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MsAnthropyThe Lady of Pain Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the RhythmThe City of FlowersRegistered Userregular
As much as I liked 4e the books had no life to them, just like a plain black font on a flat white background with a beige-y gradient stripe to separate lines where it got important and I didn't find the art especially compelling
All the 5e preview images I've seen look beautiful, they look like a joy to read through visually but mechanically it doesn't appeal at all, especially because it feels like it goes back to casters being kings of everything
I honestly feel like the 3 big mistakes made with 4e were
1. Sterile design and poor/incoherent art. The game books never felt like D&D.
2. Overpromising on the digital toolset without having any of the requisite talent on board to execute.
3. Launching without having clarity/coordination on the videogame front. They needed to have an awesome Baldurs Gate meets Final Fantasy Tactics style, thing out there, but never managed a single effing release during a time that would have been relevant for the ruleset.
I'm gonna play D&D on Monday for the first time since high school! It's with some work friends who are starting new characters in a longstanding campaign. It's 3.5, which I have zero experience with, but I have a player's handbook on the way.
Apparently we're playing Drow. And we're starting at level 14 CLE, whatever that is.
I know this isn't a particularly popular opinion, but I've always kind of liked the idea of casters, especially wizards, starting out lower end and through the mid and end game they get crazy strong. Like firstly, it makes more sense to me in getting into the RPing aspect. Magic is powerful, and yeah it's nice mechanics wise if everyone stays on exactly the same plane the whole time, it's also just kinda boring to me. If casters don't gain some measure of power as the game goes on, it feels flat, like you're just playing an MMO put onto a tabletop. If some guy with a two handed beatstick can just walk in and charge straight at a caster and rip him to bits without much issue even if that caster is the grandmaster of the mage's guild it breaks the illusion that magic is actually there and powerful and feels just like a token mechanic for that class and nothing more. Magics should be the forces that shape the world, that tear down mountains and challenge the strongest creatures the world can muster. If some guy swinging a sword is equally effective at almost everything, then it starts feeling stale.
It's not as if these casting classes have no weaknesses, they're still vulnerable to most attacks. If someone gets the jump on them, they go down a lot quicker and can be pretty effectively shut down by most combat classes if they close the distance are actually trying to put the squeeze on them. You need help, you still need someone to be there right beside you, to keep guys from just running up and beating the tar out of you, or grappling you, etc and often times monsters have plenty of defenses against magic, in which case your best move is still to play support for the muscle guys and watch them go to town.
It's kind like MOBA's to me. Sure it'd be...nice I guess if everyone could be good early, mid, and late game? It would also be bland and annoying. If you're playing a caster, you're playing for the late game. Early on you're going to struggle, you're not going to be the big #1 go to guy on your team. As the game progresses though, you move into the teams star and that guy that was #1 becomes your support. It's a natural progression that makes things feel different and fun to me, you're not just playing the same way the whole time and I like that variety.
Plus most of the crazy power concerns result to me from questionable DMing. Sure you can run out, cast all your daily spells in 5 minutes, and rest. If you're DM is just going to let you do that every time yeah, then that's a pretty bad power imbalance if every encounter you're throwing out 3 or 4 of your highest level spells. In my opinion your DM is also dumb for allowing it. There are very simple ways to limit a lot of these concerns.
I'm gonna play D&D on Monday for the first time since high school! It's with some work friends who are starting new characters in a longstanding campaign. It's 3.5, which I have zero experience with, but I have a player's handbook on the way.
Apparently we're playing Drow. And we're starting at level 14 CLE, whatever that is.
I am in so far over my head and I'm excited.
You mean 14 ECL? Means that you have enough XP to play a 14th level character, but some races (particularly drow and other crazy powerful critters that can be PCs) have a built-in level modifier as a penalty. Like, I think a troll's ECL is itsmonster hit dice (7, I think) plus its ECL penalty (+5, again I think) plus its class levels. So you could have a troll that is a level 2 Barbarian under that formula. I think drow are ECL+2 in 3.5 so your drow would probably be a level 12... something.
Dracomicron on
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
I'm gonna play D&D on Monday for the first time since high school! It's with some work friends who are starting new characters in a longstanding campaign. It's 3.5, which I have zero experience with, but I have a player's handbook on the way.
Apparently we're playing Drow. And we're starting at level 14 CLE, whatever that is.
I like that we never really track experience in our current dnd game. Feels a lot better to level up naturally in the story rather than keeping track of the minutiae that is xp calculation after each encounter.
Not tracking experience and instead just leveling up after appropriate-feeling times is the only houserule I have for 4e.
I know this isn't a particularly popular opinion, but I've always kind of liked the idea of casters, especially wizards, starting out lower end and through the mid and end game they get crazy strong. Like firstly, it makes more sense to me in getting into the RPing aspect. Magic is powerful, and yeah it's nice mechanics wise if everyone stays on exactly the same plane the whole time, it's also just kinda boring to me. If casters don't gain some measure of power as the game goes on, it feels flat, like you're just playing an MMO put onto a tabletop. If some guy with a two handed beatstick can just walk in and charge straight at a caster and rip him to bits without much issue even if that caster is the grandmaster of the mage's guild it breaks the illusion that magic is actually there and powerful and feels just like a token mechanic for that class and nothing more. Magics should be the forces that shape the world, that tear down mountains and challenge the strongest creatures the world can muster. If some guy swinging a sword is equally effective at almost everything, then it starts feeling stale.
It's not as if these casting classes have no weaknesses, they're still vulnerable to most attacks. If someone gets the jump on them, they go down a lot quicker and can be pretty effectively shut down by most combat classes if they close the distance are actually trying to put the squeeze on them. You need help, you still need someone to be there right beside you, to keep guys from just running up and beating the tar out of you, or grappling you, etc and often times monsters have plenty of defenses against magic, in which case your best move is still to play support for the muscle guys and watch them go to town.
It's kind like MOBA's to me. Sure it'd be...nice I guess if everyone could be good early, mid, and late game? It would also be bland and annoying. If you're playing a caster, you're playing for the late game. Early on you're going to struggle, you're not going to be the big #1 go to guy on your team. As the game progresses though, you move into the teams star and that guy that was #1 becomes your support. It's a natural progression that makes things feel different and fun to me, you're not just playing the same way the whole time and I like that variety.
Plus most of the crazy power concerns result to me from questionable DMing. Sure you can run out, cast all your daily spells in 5 minutes, and rest. If you're DM is just going to let you do that every time yeah, then that's a pretty bad power imbalance if every encounter you're throwing out 3 or 4 of your highest level spells. In my opinion your DM is also dumb for allowing it. There are very simple ways to limit a lot of these concerns.
The issue isn't that high level PCs shouldn't be powerful. It's that high level magic users within D&D can make the rest of the party redundant. It's the decker problem except it doesn't really go away until the campaign ends. So the solution is to allow other classes to also achieve high levels of power rather then just sitting their being bored.
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I ZimbraWorst song, played on ugliest guitarRegistered Userregular
I'm gonna play D&D on Monday for the first time since high school! It's with some work friends who are starting new characters in a longstanding campaign. It's 3.5, which I have zero experience with, but I have a player's handbook on the way.
Apparently we're playing Drow. And we're starting at level 14 CLE, whatever that is.
I am in so far over my head and I'm excited.
You mean 14 ECL? Means that you have enough XP to play a 14th level character, but some races (particularly drow and other crazy powerful critters that can be PCs) have a built-in level modifier as a penalty. Like, I think a troll's ECL is itsmonster hit dice (7, I think) plus its ECL penalty (+5, again I think) plus its class levels. So you could have a troll that is a level 2 Barbarian under that formula. I think drow are ECL+2 in 3.5 so your drow would probably be a level 12... something.
Oh my, thank you. Googling CLE was just getting me a bunch of ads for continuing legal education, which was less than helpful. I'm thinking I'll try and roll a kind of tank-y warrior just to keep things simple, and the party already has magic/rogue/ranger covered.
I'm gonna play D&D on Monday for the first time since high school! It's with some work friends who are starting new characters in a longstanding campaign. It's 3.5, which I have zero experience with, but I have a player's handbook on the way.
Apparently we're playing Drow. And we're starting at level 14 CLE, whatever that is.
I am in so far over my head and I'm excited.
You mean 14 ECL? Means that you have enough XP to play a 14th level character, but some races (particularly drow and other crazy powerful critters that can be PCs) have a built-in level modifier as a penalty. Like, I think a troll's ECL is itsmonster hit dice (7, I think) plus its ECL penalty (+5, again I think) plus its class levels. So you could have a troll that is a level 2 Barbarian under that formula. I think drow are ECL+2 in 3.5 so your drow would probably be a level 12... something.
See this is why I like 5e
I understand why some people don't and that's valid
But I don't have to worry about anything remotely resembling this ever when playing/creating/leveling a character
I know this isn't a particularly popular opinion, but I've always kind of liked the idea of casters, especially wizards, starting out lower end and through the mid and end game they get crazy strong. Like firstly, it makes more sense to me in getting into the RPing aspect. Magic is powerful, and yeah it's nice mechanics wise if everyone stays on exactly the same plane the whole time, it's also just kinda boring to me. If casters don't gain some measure of power as the game goes on, it feels flat, like you're just playing an MMO put onto a tabletop. If some guy with a two handed beatstick can just walk in and charge straight at a caster and rip him to bits without much issue even if that caster is the grandmaster of the mage's guild it breaks the illusion that magic is actually there and powerful and feels just like a token mechanic for that class and nothing more. Magics should be the forces that shape the world, that tear down mountains and challenge the strongest creatures the world can muster. If some guy swinging a sword is equally effective at almost everything, then it starts feeling stale.
It's not as if these casting classes have no weaknesses, they're still vulnerable to most attacks. If someone gets the jump on them, they go down a lot quicker and can be pretty effectively shut down by most combat classes if they close the distance are actually trying to put the squeeze on them. You need help, you still need someone to be there right beside you, to keep guys from just running up and beating the tar out of you, or grappling you, etc and often times monsters have plenty of defenses against magic, in which case your best move is still to play support for the muscle guys and watch them go to town.
It's kind like MOBA's to me. Sure it'd be...nice I guess if everyone could be good early, mid, and late game? It would also be bland and annoying. If you're playing a caster, you're playing for the late game. Early on you're going to struggle, you're not going to be the big #1 go to guy on your team. As the game progresses though, you move into the teams star and that guy that was #1 becomes your support. It's a natural progression that makes things feel different and fun to me, you're not just playing the same way the whole time and I like that variety.
Plus most of the crazy power concerns result to me from questionable DMing. Sure you can run out, cast all your daily spells in 5 minutes, and rest. If you're DM is just going to let you do that every time yeah, then that's a pretty bad power imbalance if every encounter you're throwing out 3 or 4 of your highest level spells. In my opinion your DM is also dumb for allowing it. There are very simple ways to limit a lot of these concerns.
The problem with this is the fact that, unlike MOBAs, pen and paper RPGs have a late game that can take months, and take place a year or more after the early game. If a sword dude is outmatched "late game" by the wizard, that translates to potentially tens of sessions where the caster wins automatically and the fighter sits on his hands.
A better way to balance would be to somehow have mechanics that break up individual adventures into an "early, mid, and late" game, giving each character type a chance to excel at different things. The problem is D&D tends to focus on who can soak/deal the most damage for it's concept of which is the best class. In that framework, I definitely think you have to take a 4e route of relative parity, or create completely different but equally important combat roles for different characters.
I'm gonna play D&D on Monday for the first time since high school! It's with some work friends who are starting new characters in a longstanding campaign. It's 3.5, which I have zero experience with, but I have a player's handbook on the way.
Apparently we're playing Drow. And we're starting at level 14 CLE, whatever that is.
I am in so far over my head and I'm excited.
You mean 14 ECL? Means that you have enough XP to play a 14th level character, but some races (particularly drow and other crazy powerful critters that can be PCs) have a built-in level modifier as a penalty. Like, I think a troll's ECL is itsmonster hit dice (7, I think) plus its ECL penalty (+5, again I think) plus its class levels. So you could have a troll that is a level 2 Barbarian under that formula. I think drow are ECL+2 in 3.5 so your drow would probably be a level 12... something.
See this is why I like 5e
I understand why some people don't and that's valid
But I don't have to worry about anything remotely resembling this ever when playing/creating/leveling a character
I'm gonna play D&D on Monday for the first time since high school! It's with some work friends who are starting new characters in a longstanding campaign. It's 3.5, which I have zero experience with, but I have a player's handbook on the way.
Apparently we're playing Drow. And we're starting at level 14 CLE, whatever that is.
I am in so far over my head and I'm excited.
You mean 14 ECL? Means that you have enough XP to play a 14th level character, but some races (particularly drow and other crazy powerful critters that can be PCs) have a built-in level modifier as a penalty. Like, I think a troll's ECL is itsmonster hit dice (7, I think) plus its ECL penalty (+5, again I think) plus its class levels. So you could have a troll that is a level 2 Barbarian under that formula. I think drow are ECL+2 in 3.5 so your drow would probably be a level 12... something.
See this is why I like 5e
I understand why some people don't and that's valid
But I don't have to worry about anything remotely resembling this ever when playing/creating/leveling a character
...When did you have to worry about that in 4e?
I didn't say you did?
It just also isn't a factor in 5e
I get you don't like it, dogg, I do
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I ZimbraWorst song, played on ugliest guitarRegistered Userregular
Oh yeah, I also ordered the Pathfinder main book on a whim since I'd heard good things about it. I am jumping into this thing with both feet.
I'm gonna play D&D on Monday for the first time since high school! It's with some work friends who are starting new characters in a longstanding campaign. It's 3.5, which I have zero experience with, but I have a player's handbook on the way.
Apparently we're playing Drow. And we're starting at level 14 CLE, whatever that is.
I am in so far over my head and I'm excited.
You mean 14 ECL? Means that you have enough XP to play a 14th level character, but some races (particularly drow and other crazy powerful critters that can be PCs) have a built-in level modifier as a penalty. Like, I think a troll's ECL is itsmonster hit dice (7, I think) plus its ECL penalty (+5, again I think) plus its class levels. So you could have a troll that is a level 2 Barbarian under that formula. I think drow are ECL+2 in 3.5 so your drow would probably be a level 12... something.
See this is why I like 5e
I understand why some people don't and that's valid
But I don't have to worry about anything remotely resembling this ever when playing/creating/leveling a character
...When did you have to worry about that in 4e?
I didn't say you did?
It just also isn't a factor in 5e
I get you don't like it, dogg, I do
the DMG and MM aren't out yet, it's entirely possible that there's some sort of ECL-like system for playing as monsters in 5e
given how closely 5e is following in the footsteps of 3e, I'd actually be surprised if such a system weren't presented as optional in the DMG
I'm gonna play D&D on Monday for the first time since high school! It's with some work friends who are starting new characters in a longstanding campaign. It's 3.5, which I have zero experience with, but I have a player's handbook on the way.
Apparently we're playing Drow. And we're starting at level 14 CLE, whatever that is.
I am in so far over my head and I'm excited.
You mean 14 ECL? Means that you have enough XP to play a 14th level character, but some races (particularly drow and other crazy powerful critters that can be PCs) have a built-in level modifier as a penalty. Like, I think a troll's ECL is itsmonster hit dice (7, I think) plus its ECL penalty (+5, again I think) plus its class levels. So you could have a troll that is a level 2 Barbarian under that formula. I think drow are ECL+2 in 3.5 so your drow would probably be a level 12... something.
See this is why I like 5e
I understand why some people don't and that's valid
But I don't have to worry about anything remotely resembling this ever when playing/creating/leveling a character
...When did you have to worry about that in 4e?
I didn't say you did?
It just also isn't a factor in 5e
I get you don't like it, dogg, I do
I'm sorry, it's like how Pony said about "you must like Pathfinder".
When people go "this is why I like 5e" I have come to understand that as also saying that it's something they didn't like about 4e.
I know this isn't a particularly popular opinion, but I've always kind of liked the idea of casters, especially wizards, starting out lower end and through the mid and end game they get crazy strong. Like firstly, it makes more sense to me in getting into the RPing aspect. Magic is powerful, and yeah it's nice mechanics wise if everyone stays on exactly the same plane the whole time, it's also just kinda boring to me. If casters don't gain some measure of power as the game goes on, it feels flat, like you're just playing an MMO put onto a tabletop. If some guy with a two handed beatstick can just walk in and charge straight at a caster and rip him to bits without much issue even if that caster is the grandmaster of the mage's guild it breaks the illusion that magic is actually there and powerful and feels just like a token mechanic for that class and nothing more. Magics should be the forces that shape the world, that tear down mountains and challenge the strongest creatures the world can muster. If some guy swinging a sword is equally effective at almost everything, then it starts feeling stale.
It's not as if these casting classes have no weaknesses, they're still vulnerable to most attacks. If someone gets the jump on them, they go down a lot quicker and can be pretty effectively shut down by most combat classes if they close the distance are actually trying to put the squeeze on them. You need help, you still need someone to be there right beside you, to keep guys from just running up and beating the tar out of you, or grappling you, etc and often times monsters have plenty of defenses against magic, in which case your best move is still to play support for the muscle guys and watch them go to town.
It's kind like MOBA's to me. Sure it'd be...nice I guess if everyone could be good early, mid, and late game? It would also be bland and annoying. If you're playing a caster, you're playing for the late game. Early on you're going to struggle, you're not going to be the big #1 go to guy on your team. As the game progresses though, you move into the teams star and that guy that was #1 becomes your support. It's a natural progression that makes things feel different and fun to me, you're not just playing the same way the whole time and I like that variety.
Plus most of the crazy power concerns result to me from questionable DMing. Sure you can run out, cast all your daily spells in 5 minutes, and rest. If you're DM is just going to let you do that every time yeah, then that's a pretty bad power imbalance if every encounter you're throwing out 3 or 4 of your highest level spells. In my opinion your DM is also dumb for allowing it. There are very simple ways to limit a lot of these concerns.
The problem with this is the fact that, unlike MOBAs, pen and paper RPGs have a late game that can take months, and take place a year or more after the early game. If a sword dude is outmatched "late game" by the wizard, that translates to potentially tens of sessions where the caster wins automatically and the fighter sits on his hands.
A better way to balance would be to somehow have mechanics that break up individual adventures into an "early, mid, and late" game, giving each character type a chance to excel at different things. The problem is D&D tends to focus on who can soak/deal the most damage for it's concept of which is the best class. In that framework, I definitely think you have to take a 4e route of relative parity, or create completely different but equally important combat roles for different characters (which hey, 4e also attempted this!)
I guess, but if the players are like, competing against each other as opposed to working as a team that seems kinda dumb? A lot of the problems with casters to me comes from the idea of blasting all their spells out at once and then being able to just sleep it off again, which has come I think mostly from video games rather than real tabletop interaction. As it gets later on yes casters deal more damage, they also get improved buffs that are often best used on characters like fighters, they can also still die quite easily, and if dungeons/adventures are designed decently you can end up with a solid balance of the casters trying conserve spells and use them sparingly while the non casting classes can bust out all the stops every encounter.
If the characters are simply ignoring one another and trying to be king cool guy of the group, then yeah I get where the fighter would go "well this sucks" near the end of the game. However, if you as a caster aren't using any of your tools to improve the party members around you...you're bad and the adventure should be punishing you for it. If you try to throw a fireball or disintegrate everything and never buff anyone else / hose the badguys so the muscle can lay into them with full attacks/whatever then you shouldn't be getting through adventures. Your DM should be putting challenges up that require everyone's help, not just the wizard saying "I cast this and I win" .
Also out of combat things should be important, if all your characters are building around is 100% try to do more damage and have more hp then yeah that's OK if you're doing a campaign that's all about fighting, but some of the strengths of others classes like rogues or other skilled classes are things that aren't just fighting. Finding/disarming traps, secret doors, sneaking through areas, pick pocketing a key off someone undetected. I think that's a problem in the campaign if someone has skills that just never come up so they feel useless compared to the casters. That's the DM not looking at the strengths of each guy and making adventures where they help. I guess I find a lot of the problems with casting to be DM issues and not real game balance problems. If all your adventures are "the normal goons with no special abilities of note charge at you" then yeah wizard guy is going to look good throwing out fireball after fireball, but that's bad adventure writing not "this game sucks"
Lastly, as far as higher levels go, I don't think campaigns should really sit up there for that long. If the large amount of the focus is on the levels 15+ I don't think it's a great way to go about things. I'm sure others disagree, but to me those are the "finishing up/finale" levels. There's not that much more "figuring out" what's going on, or a ton of side quests, or uncovering ancient secrets, like at these levels you've got your goal. I'm not saying there can't be anything new story wise, but this is the climax, and if the climax lasts for an hour or two in a movie, it's not really a climax, it's just kind of a hodge podge of crazy action and one "big reveal" after another and you just become desensitized to it. The last parts should be impactful, interesting, important, and concise to me. I get that this part is more personal opinion than anything else, but to me the parts where you are reaching into that all powerful everyone is maxed out point is where you need to have a big finish and start something new because continuing to just hang around as the super dudes gets boring after a while, and eventually you get annoyed with the fact that somehow every week or so there is another epic cosmic threat to the world and only you can stop it and hey how did the world ever survive without us saving it every 10 days? (Which would actually be a kind of fun thing to do with an epic level campaign but that's neither here nor there)
Their rules for encounter design are already ridiculously convoluted, so maybe!
In all honesty I could see it in a later book, or Dungeonscape DLC, or however it is they're going to do new content. Some kind of Unearthed Arcana type of thing. But in the first DMG? Probably not.
I hope they at least have some sort of system that addresses it so you can have NPC monsters with character levels and such.
I never liked making Mind Flayer PCs or anything like that, but for some reason I always have a ton of fun building/using custom NPCs/monsters in Pathfinder. It was also the one area that I was always a bit disappointed with in 4e, I usually just end up re-skinning several parts from different monster stat blocks, maybe add a template, and make a few things up.
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Longest lasting is tied between the sergeant's comrade, the squad's beloved Stubbs, and their stormtrooper, Pancho, both of whom survived until the end and beyond
The group rolled up a new regiment after the big encounter that saw their heavy gunner and operator/commander killed along with most of their platoon
The new regiment was an elite Schola Progenium-educated drop troop regiment that were basically as good as Stormtroopers in all but name, so we ruled that Pancho would get to sign on with them as well
He went on to kill plenty more traitors in the name of the Emperor, and their squad in general did very well carrying out the final battles in that campaign
Best encounter by far was the group of enemy PCs I threw at them which they handled well, but it was pretty touch-and-go
As soon as they realized the enemy were using comrades the same way they were like "FUCK."
They popped the heavy first which was a big part of what saved them a lot of hurt, the weapon specialist gave them a bit of trouble with his bolter until he caught some plasma with his face, and then they casually murdered the medic
The traitor sergeant had gotten clipped early on and didn't die immediately, living just long enough to watch his comrades fall horribly under a hail of lasfire
That just feels lame though, like you're paying for being a busta early on by being god later
I'd rather everyone was capable consistently
The first person to die would obviously be underpowered and couldn't fight anything, so they firstly have a high chance of dying again and never progressing and secondly they would be encouraged to not fight and leech experience which would be mighty boring.
The alternative solution is to then make the monsters easier, but obviously that's boring for the higher levels.
Satans..... hints.....
If you restrict loot based on level I can't imagine how that'd help new characters mix with old
Another thing is even if you do a thing where all are roughly equally capable in combat it's still gonna suck for new guys when it comes time to do anything else and all their optimization has been sunk into combat
I've never run a game where I don't just let people roll up a new dude at the same level of experience as the surviving members, but then I've been blessed with players who don't jump off a cliff just so they can take their new concept out for a spin
It's a constant struggle when I foresee horrible results to not give some kind of hint
It's probably my biggest flaw when it comes to running games
It lets them get a feel for a character and how it fits with a party, allows them not to have to fully map out a character and see how it develops without hamstringing too hard, and holds a bit more flexibility back to be used once you know how the character actually works. The number of times I've heard a player go 'If I had known X I'd have built this character a bit different' after a couple of sessions is, well, numerious enough that I figured this is an easier way of dealing with it.
Also kinda supportive of being the new guy or junior member from a roleplay and characterisation perspective.
Of course, I've also flirted with the idea of having a player join the party as a higher level 'old hand' grizzled veteran mentor type character, for a point of difference. Or rolling a die to see if you're a level higher, lower, or the same as the party, just to keep things, well, non-homogenous and therefore slightly interesting.
But then I look through backrounds and character creation and come up with a really really cool Warlock character concept that I'd love to take for a spin. Not even min/max or power gamer-ish; just a really fun sounding concept that expands on the way they described pacts and the relationship to a patron and all the neat little threads they offered up. Gimme that pact of the tome and great old one and charlatan background and suddenly I have an aging ex-conman slowly losing touch with reality but trying to maintain all his old tricks and disguises and Gentleman Bastard tendencies while the ratty old book he took off his last score starts adding pages with detailed instructions on jobs that may or may not happen in the future. All to the advancement of whoever is writing the book.
On a first read it was easy to piece together a whole bunch of very interesting concepts and character hooks. And then I remember that 13th Age and any number of other systems exist and I can do the same thing with rules I like better. Oops.
It would put a huge burden on the DM in terms of encounter construction, though, because every encounter would need to incorporate this huge gulf of ability where you'd have this one character who would be nigh-untouchable by most opponents of an equivalent challenge for the lower level PCs, but I think it could probably be done in a way that would be good fun game for everyone, particularly if you engineered the encounters just right (it could make for some interesting and memorable boss battles, I think) and had (as my campaign did) a really good in-world background story reason to explain it.
apparently some of my friends did it in a horror campaign, but everyone died a lot and you basically got a level for each in-game day you survived
someone got to level 7 and at that point everyone else would sacrifice themselves to keep that character alive
but that wasn't a normal campaign
I agree, the DMG should be out. However, they released a bunch of free suppliments, like all the monsters from horde of the dragon queen, and a mini DM guide. it's on the wizard's website.
Proficiency bonus is a way of deliniating character level. The higher the level, the higher your bonus. So, yeah, it's not that they're good at your made up language, but that they're good at deciphering in general, maybe? I could make a plausible enough reason to be allowed to use a prof bonus.
And yes, you need a small blurb about armor specifically because of long rests in dangerous areas vs sleeping in armor. Some DMs may not need it, because they don't care about verisimilitude, but my DM absolutely made us decide whether we were sleeping in armor when we decided to take a long rest after a huge fight (we locked ourselves in a cathedral we thought was safe because we had just cleared everything out. Turns out the rogue band of mercanaries was catching up to us so I started in armor but had disadvantage because I failed my con roll).
The blurb also answers the question of whether or not brandishing your shield is a free action. RAW, it's not.monsters from horde of the dragon queen, and a mini DM guide. it's on the wizard's website.
I honestly feel like the 3 big mistakes made with 4e were
1. Sterile design and poor/incoherent art. The game books never felt like D&D.
2. Overpromising on the digital toolset without having any of the requisite talent on board to execute.
3. Launching without having clarity/coordination on the videogame front. They needed to have an awesome Baldurs Gate meets Final Fantasy Tactics style, thing out there, but never managed a single effing release during a time that would have been relevant for the ruleset.
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
I didn't bother too much with the digital stuff but man it really is a shame we never got any decent video games out of 4e
They did a Facebook game based on the mechanics that was actually pretty alright, but had basically all the problems of a Facebook game
Satans..... hints.....
Apparently we're playing Drow. And we're starting at level 14 CLE, whatever that is.
I am in so far over my head and I'm excited.
It's not as if these casting classes have no weaknesses, they're still vulnerable to most attacks. If someone gets the jump on them, they go down a lot quicker and can be pretty effectively shut down by most combat classes if they close the distance are actually trying to put the squeeze on them. You need help, you still need someone to be there right beside you, to keep guys from just running up and beating the tar out of you, or grappling you, etc and often times monsters have plenty of defenses against magic, in which case your best move is still to play support for the muscle guys and watch them go to town.
It's kind like MOBA's to me. Sure it'd be...nice I guess if everyone could be good early, mid, and late game? It would also be bland and annoying. If you're playing a caster, you're playing for the late game. Early on you're going to struggle, you're not going to be the big #1 go to guy on your team. As the game progresses though, you move into the teams star and that guy that was #1 becomes your support. It's a natural progression that makes things feel different and fun to me, you're not just playing the same way the whole time and I like that variety.
Plus most of the crazy power concerns result to me from questionable DMing. Sure you can run out, cast all your daily spells in 5 minutes, and rest. If you're DM is just going to let you do that every time yeah, then that's a pretty bad power imbalance if every encounter you're throwing out 3 or 4 of your highest level spells. In my opinion your DM is also dumb for allowing it. There are very simple ways to limit a lot of these concerns.
You mean 14 ECL? Means that you have enough XP to play a 14th level character, but some races (particularly drow and other crazy powerful critters that can be PCs) have a built-in level modifier as a penalty. Like, I think a troll's ECL is itsmonster hit dice (7, I think) plus its ECL penalty (+5, again I think) plus its class levels. So you could have a troll that is a level 2 Barbarian under that formula. I think drow are ECL+2 in 3.5 so your drow would probably be a level 12... something.
Chaotic Lawful Evil. The worst kind.
Not tracking experience and instead just leveling up after appropriate-feeling times is the only houserule I have for 4e.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
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Chaotic and Lawful are opposites
Yes. I was making a joke.
The issue isn't that high level PCs shouldn't be powerful. It's that high level magic users within D&D can make the rest of the party redundant. It's the decker problem except it doesn't really go away until the campaign ends. So the solution is to allow other classes to also achieve high levels of power rather then just sitting their being bored.
Oh my, thank you. Googling CLE was just getting me a bunch of ads for continuing legal education, which was less than helpful. I'm thinking I'll try and roll a kind of tank-y warrior just to keep things simple, and the party already has magic/rogue/ranger covered.
I understand why some people don't and that's valid
But I don't have to worry about anything remotely resembling this ever when playing/creating/leveling a character
The problem with this is the fact that, unlike MOBAs, pen and paper RPGs have a late game that can take months, and take place a year or more after the early game. If a sword dude is outmatched "late game" by the wizard, that translates to potentially tens of sessions where the caster wins automatically and the fighter sits on his hands.
A better way to balance would be to somehow have mechanics that break up individual adventures into an "early, mid, and late" game, giving each character type a chance to excel at different things. The problem is D&D tends to focus on who can soak/deal the most damage for it's concept of which is the best class. In that framework, I definitely think you have to take a 4e route of relative parity, or create completely different but equally important combat roles for different characters.
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...When did you have to worry about that in 4e?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
It just also isn't a factor in 5e
I get you don't like it, dogg, I do
the DMG and MM aren't out yet, it's entirely possible that there's some sort of ECL-like system for playing as monsters in 5e
given how closely 5e is following in the footsteps of 3e, I'd actually be surprised if such a system weren't presented as optional in the DMG
I'm sorry, it's like how Pony said about "you must like Pathfinder".
When people go "this is why I like 5e" I have come to understand that as also saying that it's something they didn't like about 4e.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
We have at least a little idea since Drow level like completely normal characters as opposed to that complicated mess
They could do it for other monster races but that seems unlikely given how they want to make it largely accessible
I guess, but if the players are like, competing against each other as opposed to working as a team that seems kinda dumb? A lot of the problems with casters to me comes from the idea of blasting all their spells out at once and then being able to just sleep it off again, which has come I think mostly from video games rather than real tabletop interaction. As it gets later on yes casters deal more damage, they also get improved buffs that are often best used on characters like fighters, they can also still die quite easily, and if dungeons/adventures are designed decently you can end up with a solid balance of the casters trying conserve spells and use them sparingly while the non casting classes can bust out all the stops every encounter.
If the characters are simply ignoring one another and trying to be king cool guy of the group, then yeah I get where the fighter would go "well this sucks" near the end of the game. However, if you as a caster aren't using any of your tools to improve the party members around you...you're bad and the adventure should be punishing you for it. If you try to throw a fireball or disintegrate everything and never buff anyone else / hose the badguys so the muscle can lay into them with full attacks/whatever then you shouldn't be getting through adventures. Your DM should be putting challenges up that require everyone's help, not just the wizard saying "I cast this and I win" .
Also out of combat things should be important, if all your characters are building around is 100% try to do more damage and have more hp then yeah that's OK if you're doing a campaign that's all about fighting, but some of the strengths of others classes like rogues or other skilled classes are things that aren't just fighting. Finding/disarming traps, secret doors, sneaking through areas, pick pocketing a key off someone undetected. I think that's a problem in the campaign if someone has skills that just never come up so they feel useless compared to the casters. That's the DM not looking at the strengths of each guy and making adventures where they help. I guess I find a lot of the problems with casting to be DM issues and not real game balance problems. If all your adventures are "the normal goons with no special abilities of note charge at you" then yeah wizard guy is going to look good throwing out fireball after fireball, but that's bad adventure writing not "this game sucks"
Lastly, as far as higher levels go, I don't think campaigns should really sit up there for that long. If the large amount of the focus is on the levels 15+ I don't think it's a great way to go about things. I'm sure others disagree, but to me those are the "finishing up/finale" levels. There's not that much more "figuring out" what's going on, or a ton of side quests, or uncovering ancient secrets, like at these levels you've got your goal. I'm not saying there can't be anything new story wise, but this is the climax, and if the climax lasts for an hour or two in a movie, it's not really a climax, it's just kind of a hodge podge of crazy action and one "big reveal" after another and you just become desensitized to it. The last parts should be impactful, interesting, important, and concise to me. I get that this part is more personal opinion than anything else, but to me the parts where you are reaching into that all powerful everyone is maxed out point is where you need to have a big finish and start something new because continuing to just hang around as the super dudes gets boring after a while, and eventually you get annoyed with the fact that somehow every week or so there is another epic cosmic threat to the world and only you can stop it and hey how did the world ever survive without us saving it every 10 days? (Which would actually be a kind of fun thing to do with an epic level campaign but that's neither here nor there)
TL;DR
#notallD&D's
In all honesty I could see it in a later book, or Dungeonscape DLC, or however it is they're going to do new content. Some kind of Unearthed Arcana type of thing. But in the first DMG? Probably not.
I never liked making Mind Flayer PCs or anything like that, but for some reason I always have a ton of fun building/using custom NPCs/monsters in Pathfinder. It was also the one area that I was always a bit disappointed with in 4e, I usually just end up re-skinning several parts from different monster stat blocks, maybe add a template, and make a few things up.