HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
The trident of fish command would be useful in a nautical campaign and only very situationally useful in other kinds of campaigns. It casts dominate beast up to 3 times per day, but can only affect beasts that have an innate swim speed. The giant shark would be a decent prize (huge beast, CR 5, 126 HP, average 22 hp/round damage, advantage on creatures that have already lost HP) but probably hard to find reliably. Oddly the trident also works on giant frogs and all manner of snakes, including a swarm of poisonous snakes.
It becomes nearly obsolete at level 7, when dominate beast without restriction appears on caster spell lists.
Goumindong, the saves problem is significant, but keep in mind that there are three common saves (con, dex, wis) and three uncommon saves (str, int, cha). Each class is proficient with one common and one uncommon save. If you have a secondary stat that is a common save, you'll have a decent score, especially if you decide to raise your stats. If you take resilience on top of that, you're probably going to be very well covered.
Fighters will tend to have excellent saves, I think, since they get about double the stat raise/feat choices, so they'll almost always take resilience and increase secondary stats.
Wizards I think get Int and Wis so if you pick up Resilient Con and go Int/Dex you'll have four more or less okay saves but that's basically the only way because all the rest of your stat bumps will need to go to Int first and then maybe Dex/Con. Int will be your best save though, which is kind of crap from a char-op perspective (which is all I'm really discussing because it's inherently char-op to try to design a character with the most, best saves).
The trident of fish command would be useful in a nautical campaign and only very situationally useful in other kinds of campaigns. It casts dominate beast up to 3 times per day, but can only affect beasts that have an innate swim speed. The giant shark would be a decent prize (huge beast, CR 5, 126 HP, average 22 hp/round damage, advantage on creatures that have already lost HP) but probably hard to find reliably. Oddly the trident also works on giant frogs and all manner of snakes, including a swarm of poisonous snakes.
It becomes nearly obsolete at level 7, when dominate beast without restriction appears on caster spell lists.
Here's the real question: Do sharknadoes have a swim speed?
The trident of fish command would be useful in a nautical campaign and only very situationally useful in other kinds of campaigns. It casts dominate beast up to 3 times per day, but can only affect beasts that have an innate swim speed. The giant shark would be a decent prize (huge beast, CR 5, 126 HP, average 22 hp/round damage, advantage on creatures that have already lost HP) but probably hard to find reliably. Oddly the trident also works on giant frogs and all manner of snakes, including a swarm of poisonous snakes.
It becomes nearly obsolete at level 7, when dominate beast without restriction appears on caster spell lists.
Here's the real question: Do sharknadoes have a swim speed?
The trident of fish command would be useful in a nautical campaign and only very situationally useful in other kinds of campaigns. It casts dominate beast up to 3 times per day, but can only affect beasts that have an innate swim speed. The giant shark would be a decent prize (huge beast, CR 5, 126 HP, average 22 hp/round damage, advantage on creatures that have already lost HP) but probably hard to find reliably. Oddly the trident also works on giant frogs and all manner of snakes, including a swarm of poisonous snakes.
It becomes nearly obsolete at level 7, when dominate beast without restriction appears on caster spell lists.
Here's the real question: Do sharknadoes have a swim speed?
Magic armors and shield apparently cap at +3 and I didn't see a mention about shield and armor not stacking.
Fighter with defensive fighting style and decked with +3 plate and shield has 27 AC. The ancient red dragon (CR 24) has +17 to hit.
How does this compare to previous editions?
It would take about 110 years for someone to craft both of those items according to the rules.
Magic armors and shield apparently cap at +3 and I didn't see a mention about shield and armor not stacking.
Fighter with defensive fighting style and decked with +3 plate and shield has 27 AC. The ancient red dragon (CR 24) has +17 to hit.
How does this compare to previous editions?
It would take about 110 years for someone to craft both of those items according to the rules.
Instagib-by-way-of-dragon and impossible crafting goals are both fun. Trust me.
"Typically, adventurers earn experience only for encounters they participate in. If a player is absent for a session, the player's character misses out on the experience points.
Over time, you might end up with a level gap between the characters of players who never miss a session and characters belonging to players who are more sporadic in their attendance. Nothing is wrong with that. A gap of two or three levels between different characters in the same party isn't going to ruin the game for anyone.
[...] As an alternative, give absent characters the same XP that the other characters earned each session, keeping the group at the same level."
Looking for ability score damage recovery rules...
Can't find anything in the index and if it's not in the sections I looked I wouldn't know where it should be.(i.e. No mention of ability damage in ability or in damage in the index entries)
Besides the intellect devourer did you guys come across anything that damages abilities?
What I got so far is that poison and disease only do HP damage and sometimes add levels of exhaustion.
Madness is curable by lesser restoration for short-term ones and with greater restoration for indefinite madness (dispel evil and such can be used instead also).
Fear is wis-based and Horror is cha-based. Haven't looked at the rules in details yet.
Failing a sanity check (new optional ability score) results in the loss of one point in the ability. Greater Restoration can restore lost sanity points so this is the closest I found to repairing ability score damage.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited December 2014
Ironically, that Trident of Fish Control is absolutely amazing in my campaign.
But I am running the genuine edge corner case of corner cases here.
On the plus side, with bounded accuracy you aren't completely useless in higher level encounters.
On the OMFG that's horrible advice side, AOE's are still a thing and HP definitely does scale with level.
Edit: OOooo....is there a death penalty? Does it make it make you even more likely to die again in the future?
Even with bounded accuracy, the lack of HP and significant character milestones like feats will cripple a lower level character. A level 1 character would have been shredded in two seconds in my campaign for example. Heck even a level 2 wouldn't have lasted long, primarily because of how fragile those characters are.
It is just terrible and awful advice to tell DMs to have characters of different levels in the party. Then again, this is wizards so "terrible and awful advice" is just meeting expectations at this point.
Looking for ability score damage recovery rules...
Can't find anything in the index and if it's not in the sections I looked I wouldn't know where it should be.(i.e. No mention of ability damage in ability or in damage in the index entries)
Besides the intellect devourer did you guys come across anything that damages abilities?
What I got so far is that poison and disease only do HP damage and sometimes add levels of exhaustion.
Madness is curable by lesser restoration for short-term ones and with greater restoration for indefinite madness (dispel evil and such can be used instead also).
Fear is wis-based and Horror is cha-based. Haven't looked at the rules in details yet.
Failing a sanity check (new optional ability score) results in the loss of one point in the ability. Greater Restoration can restore lost sanity points so this is the closest I found to repairing ability score damage.
Poison, Disease, Exhaustion, Madness, Space Indefinite Madness, Fear, Horror, Sanity
Magic armors and shield apparently cap at +3 and I didn't see a mention about shield and armor not stacking.
Fighter with defensive fighting style and decked with +3 plate and shield has 27 AC. The ancient red dragon (CR 24) has +17 to hit.
How does this compare to previous editions?
It would take about 110 years for someone to craft both of those items according to the rules.
I suspect that shields will not stack and/or not have +AC modifiers available. They made that change in 4e and it meant that shields were only +2 def over non-shields in exchange for +1 damage die. No longer did you do 1.5x strength when hitting with a two handed weapon. Frankly that was too strong as it was. Defense is super important and having +2 def is definitely worth +1 damage die.
This is even more true now that damage die matter less (because warriors do not have multiple weapon attacks and so rely on base strength damage more). They even encoded this in the fighters bonus options. +2 damage on your weapon is equal to about +1 defense.
So if they went back to the system where shields got up to +3 defense on top of their +2 and then kept the system where two handed/shield were pretty close together in terms of damage they would totally mess up balance that already favored shield users, because there is simply no way anyone could possibly trade 5 AC for 1 damage/attack
Anyway, system wise: compared to 4e you could get a lot higher primary defense relative to monsters attack. There were lots of feats and abilities which gave bonus defense and so even high level monsters would have trouble hitting a character who stacked defensive abilities (Ask @Aegeri about how hard it was to kill my Dwarf Fighter in his 4e campaign. We literally played like 30 levels and I think i fell down once... while tanking an entire encounter... and getting crit twice... and then brushing it off like it was nothing ). 3e was a lot more variable. In 3e shields and armor defense stacked, so it was entirely reasonable to have a fighter with 50 AC and a wizard with 20 in the same party at the same level. Not that that mattered for various reasons. 3e clearly, was the height of balance*.
One thing it is worth noting that a Barbarian with a shield and mage armor, will hit 22+dex +shield magical bonus if it exists. Which means that if +3 shields exist, a Barb can hit 30 AC and will have 25 AC with zero dex. Fighters are not the highest defense characters anymore
In the improvising damage section: Being hit by a falling bookcase is 1d10 damage.
Fact : Half of apprentice wizards are killed by a falling bookcase.
Actually that sounds reasonable. If a bookcase falls on you you're going to feel it. I would say incapacitating half of scholars a good sized bookcase falls on is reasonable.
*Jesus christ they took the fucking grognards on to consult for 5e, no wonder they shat it up so hard.
Modules in the Dungeon Master's Workshop
There are some other optional rules earlier in the book like flanking/facing but this is the modules section.
Skimming and writing this pretty fast so there might be some errors. ABILITIES
1.Replace profiency bonus by a profiency dice to make it more random.
2.You get two proficiencies based on abilities. You get one based on class (every class has 2+ choices) and one based on background that you pretty much choose. It basically removes skills.
3. No skills. It's basically 13th age backgrounds but you only have one.
4. Honor and sanity scores as well as fear and horror rules. ADVENTURING
5. Healer's kit charge needed to spend Hit Dice after a rest.
6. Second Wind but you can use half your total hit dice during the day and only one per rest.
7. Rest variants from epic to gritty that basically modules the length of short and long rests
8. Firearms, explosives and aliens
9. Plot Points COMBAT
10. Your initiative is 10+Dex, deal with it.
11. PCs have one initiative and monsters have one initiative that is limited to a d20 roll.
12. Roll initiative each round and add modifiers based on your weapon? ie speed factor from 2e
13. Climb onto bigger creature. Athletics vs Acrobatics checks...
14. Disarm. Attack roll vs Athletics/Acrobatic. Some advantage and disadvantage thrown in.
15. Marking. Attack and mark until your next turn. Your opportunity attacks against said target now have advantage and doesn't expend your reaction. One opportunity attack per turn.
16. Overrun. Athletics vs Athletics check with some advantage thrown in depending on size.
17. Shove. Same thing.
18. Tumble. Acrobatics vs acrobatics to overrun gracefully.
19. Hit cover when you roll enough to hit the target but not enough to hit the covered target.
20. Cleaving through creatures. 13th age mooks rules.
21. Injuries. When critted, dropped to 0 and failing a death saving throw. Most are solved by any magical healing but some (3 or lesson d20) need regenerate.
22. Massive damage. DC 15 Con save when you suffer half your hit points in damage or drop or no reactions or stunned for one round.
23. Morale. DC10 Wisdom throw for the leader or creature if X happens to justify them fleeing.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Of those, I think the only one I am going to use in my games is Marking, which is something I want for melee characters to have some options to actually do their job (changing opportunity attacks to movement within threatened squares has helped massively as well - no more fucking dancing!).
Do I need to even begin to explain how dumb the massive damage rule is?
I suspect that shields will not stack and/or not have +AC modifiers available. They made that change in 4e and it meant that shields were only +2 def over non-shields in exchange for +1 damage die. No longer did you do 1.5x strength when hitting with a two handed weapon. Frankly that was too strong as it was. Defense is super important and having +2 def is definitely worth +1 damage die.
Shield magic bonus stacks with armor magic bonus as far as I can tell from reading the DMG.
Armor - You have bonus to AC while wearing this armor. The bonus is determined by rarity.
Shield - While holding this shield, you have bonus to AC determined by the shield's rarity. This bonus is in addition to the shield's normal bonus to AC.
Nothing else is mentionned. There is a mention that you can't wear two pairs of magic boots but nothing about "magic bonus" not stacking.
There's also a +1 AC Ioun stone so 28 AC for a fighter with defense. Haven't looked at the other classes for max AC potential but figured the fighter is a good base to comment on. So 32 AC barbarian is possible if you can have 22 AC naked without dex.
hahahaha, wow, shields are straight-up AC bonuses again and stack with armour?
a +3 shield is a ridiculously strong piece of equipment then. my question is whether the shield's bonus also applies to the shield master bonus for Dex saving throws? i hope so, because that would be hilarious. you could take zero damage from breath weapons on reaction, with absolutely monstrous save bonuses (someone with a shield+3, proficiency, and Dex 18 would be saving at... +11 at level 1, +16 at max proficiency)
Can't wait to roll on the 8 different treasure tables. Then roll 1d4 to 1d8 magic items from the magic items table A to I.
It's table F for +1 weapons and H for +3. It starts on table G for +1 armor and the type is specified in the table.
Table F appears on the challenge 0 to 4 table for 11% of rolls. Then F to H appears from 10 to 25% depending on the challenge of the treasure hoard.
Table F has 15% to roll a weapon +1 and 3% to roll a shield +1.
Table G has 11% for a weapon +2. 1% to roll a +1 leather armor, 1% for +1 chain shirt...
...
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Yea but them might as well suggest that that weapons suck because you might not get one.
The problem is that 5e balance assumptions are generally built on stupid decisions like this, such as "This is fine if the DM just never gives you a magical shield and magical armor" and "The chances of rolling it entirely at random are basically zero" etc.
Magic items are no longer something pcs are expected to have in 5e as well. None of the games maths relies on it beyond some creatures having assumptions that they need magical weapons to harm (of which the ridiculously badly designed intellect devourer at CR2 is an example, it is resistant to non-magical weapons). This game does not assume a player will ever have a +3 shield and +3 armor unless the DM wants the player to have it.
Like +1 weapons and armor are obscenely rare in 5e and the dmg is very fuzzy on how and why pcs should actually get stuff. It is very much "You are the DM, just do, whatever suits".
hahahaha, wow, shields are straight-up AC bonuses again and stack with armour?
a +3 shield is a ridiculously strong piece of equipment then. my question is whether the shield's bonus also applies to the shield master bonus for Dex saving throws? i hope so, because that would be hilarious. you could take zero damage from breath weapons on reaction, with absolutely monstrous save bonuses (someone with a shield+3, proficiency, and Dex 18 would be saving at... +11 at level 1, +16 at max proficiency)
Add your shield AC bonus to Dex saving throws
Shield - While holding this shield, you have bonus to AC determined by the shield's rarity. This bonus is in addition to the shield's normal bonus to AC.
Not sure why it wouldn't work by RAW.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Can't wait to roll on the 8 different treasure tables. Then roll 1d4 to 1d8 magic items from the magic items table A to I.
It's table F for +1 weapons and H for +3. It starts on table G for +1 armor and the type is specified in the table.
Table F appears on the challenge 0 to 4 table for 11% of rolls. Then F to H appears from 10 to 25% depending on the challenge of the treasure hoard.
Table F has 15% to roll a weapon +1 and 3% to roll a shield +1.
Table G has 11% for a weapon +2. 1% to roll a +1 leather armor, 1% for +1 chain shirt...
...
12. Roll initiative each round and add modifiers based on your weapon? ie speed factor from 2e
Wow. That was my "Incredibly Stupid Shit They Might Do" example number one for explaining why "iconic" was not gonna be an improvement. I'm mighty amused that actually made it into the book. Do....do all weapons have speed factors listed? Do spells? I'm just gonna guess the second is no because they clearly need to be quick...
Still not quite the full horror that was 2e's initiative but it's close.
Yea but them might as well suggest that that weapons suck because you might not get one.
The problem is that 5e balance assumptions are generally built on stupid decisions like this, such as "This is fine if the DM just never gives you a magical shield and magical armor" and "The chances of rolling it entirely at random are basically zero" etc.
Magic items are no longer something pcs are expected to have in 5e as well. None of the games maths relies on it beyond some creatures having assumptions that they need magical weapons to harm (of which the ridiculously badly designed intellect devourer at CR2 is an example, it is resistant to non-magical weapons). This game does not assume a player will ever have a +3 shield and +3 armor unless the DM wants the player to have it.
Like +1 weapons and armor are obscenely rare in 5e and the dmg is very fuzzy on how and why pcs should actually get stuff. It is very much "You are the DM, just do, whatever suits".
I am actually OK with "magic items aren't assumed" so long as magic equipment doesn't have hard numbers effects. But they do, which means that magic equipment breaks the game almost implicitly. And what do they do if i just want to commission or make a magic weapon, or armor/shield set?
Its just feels like no one actually bothered to look at the system they created, let alone play it.
+4
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited December 2014
By default, making stuff requires very rare and hard to find magical recipes and similar. This isn't 4E, there is no such assumption of magic item shops and similar that can make items. Your DM is once again completely able to say "Nope, nobody knows how to make that" and you are shit out of luck.
It's an entirely DM fiat based system and there is no expectation or reasoning in 5e that players can or will get magical items they want. Hence why the core magic item system is entirely random.
Posts
Yes.
Although it recharges at dawn, specifically.
Actually a lot of magic items do that.
So I guess all of those items are worthless if you like to take your long rests in a Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion.
The secret to the cat herding is to gain the ability to herd fish first and then the cats just come along as a bonus.
I think I'm gonna house rule fish herding proficiency comes along with intense pet allergies to keep things in check.
It becomes nearly obsolete at level 7, when dominate beast without restriction appears on caster spell lists.
Fighters will tend to have excellent saves, I think, since they get about double the stat raise/feat choices, so they'll almost always take resilience and increase secondary stats.
Here's the real question: Do sharknadoes have a swim speed?
Yes.
Then a fly speed.
Then a fall speed.
It's been in the game for a long, long time.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Fighter with defensive fighting style and decked with +3 plate and shield has 27 AC. The ancient red dragon (CR 24) has +17 to hit.
How does this compare to previous editions?
It would take about 110 years for someone to craft both of those items according to the rules.
Fact : Half of apprentice wizards are killed by a falling bookcase.
Over time, you might end up with a level gap between the characters of players who never miss a session and characters belonging to players who are more sporadic in their attendance. Nothing is wrong with that. A gap of two or three levels between different characters in the same party isn't going to ruin the game for anyone.
[...]
As an alternative, give absent characters the same XP that the other characters earned each session, keeping the group at the same level."
What the hell.
On the OMFG that's horrible advice side, AOE's are still a thing and HP definitely does scale with level.
Edit: OOooo....is there a death penalty? Does it make it make you even more likely to die again in the future?
Can't find anything in the index and if it's not in the sections I looked I wouldn't know where it should be.(i.e. No mention of ability damage in ability or in damage in the index entries)
Besides the intellect devourer did you guys come across anything that damages abilities?
What I got so far is that poison and disease only do HP damage and sometimes add levels of exhaustion.
Madness is curable by lesser restoration for short-term ones and with greater restoration for indefinite madness (dispel evil and such can be used instead also).
Fear is wis-based and Horror is cha-based. Haven't looked at the rules in details yet.
Failing a sanity check (new optional ability score) results in the loss of one point in the ability. Greater Restoration can restore lost sanity points so this is the closest I found to repairing ability score damage.
But I am running the genuine edge corner case of corner cases here.
Even with bounded accuracy, the lack of HP and significant character milestones like feats will cripple a lower level character. A level 1 character would have been shredded in two seconds in my campaign for example. Heck even a level 2 wouldn't have lasted long, primarily because of how fragile those characters are.
It is just terrible and awful advice to tell DMs to have characters of different levels in the party. Then again, this is wizards so "terrible and awful advice" is just meeting expectations at this point.
I may totally have to somehow introduce a sharknado in my new game.
Poison, Disease, Exhaustion, Madness, Space Indefinite Madness, Fear, Horror, Sanity
That's ... a lot of things.
I suspect that shields will not stack and/or not have +AC modifiers available. They made that change in 4e and it meant that shields were only +2 def over non-shields in exchange for +1 damage die. No longer did you do 1.5x strength when hitting with a two handed weapon. Frankly that was too strong as it was. Defense is super important and having +2 def is definitely worth +1 damage die.
This is even more true now that damage die matter less (because warriors do not have multiple weapon attacks and so rely on base strength damage more). They even encoded this in the fighters bonus options. +2 damage on your weapon is equal to about +1 defense.
So if they went back to the system where shields got up to +3 defense on top of their +2 and then kept the system where two handed/shield were pretty close together in terms of damage they would totally mess up balance that already favored shield users, because there is simply no way anyone could possibly trade 5 AC for 1 damage/attack
Anyway, system wise: compared to 4e you could get a lot higher primary defense relative to monsters attack. There were lots of feats and abilities which gave bonus defense and so even high level monsters would have trouble hitting a character who stacked defensive abilities (Ask @Aegeri about how hard it was to kill my Dwarf Fighter in his 4e campaign. We literally played like 30 levels and I think i fell down once... while tanking an entire encounter... and getting crit twice... and then brushing it off like it was nothing ). 3e was a lot more variable. In 3e shields and armor defense stacked, so it was entirely reasonable to have a fighter with 50 AC and a wizard with 20 in the same party at the same level. Not that that mattered for various reasons. 3e clearly, was the height of balance*.
One thing it is worth noting that a Barbarian with a shield and mage armor, will hit 22+dex +shield magical bonus if it exists. Which means that if +3 shields exist, a Barb can hit 30 AC and will have 25 AC with zero dex. Fighters are not the highest defense characters anymore
Actually that sounds reasonable. If a bookcase falls on you you're going to feel it. I would say incapacitating half of scholars a good sized bookcase falls on is reasonable.
*Jesus christ they took the fucking grognards on to consult for 5e, no wonder they shat it up so hard.
There are some other optional rules earlier in the book like flanking/facing but this is the modules section.
Skimming and writing this pretty fast so there might be some errors.
ABILITIES
1.Replace profiency bonus by a profiency dice to make it more random.
2.You get two proficiencies based on abilities. You get one based on class (every class has 2+ choices) and one based on background that you pretty much choose. It basically removes skills.
3. No skills. It's basically 13th age backgrounds but you only have one.
4. Honor and sanity scores as well as fear and horror rules.
ADVENTURING
5. Healer's kit charge needed to spend Hit Dice after a rest.
6. Second Wind but you can use half your total hit dice during the day and only one per rest.
7. Rest variants from epic to gritty that basically modules the length of short and long rests
8. Firearms, explosives and aliens
9. Plot Points
COMBAT
10. Your initiative is 10+Dex, deal with it.
11. PCs have one initiative and monsters have one initiative that is limited to a d20 roll.
12. Roll initiative each round and add modifiers based on your weapon? ie speed factor from 2e
13. Climb onto bigger creature. Athletics vs Acrobatics checks...
14. Disarm. Attack roll vs Athletics/Acrobatic. Some advantage and disadvantage thrown in.
15. Marking. Attack and mark until your next turn. Your opportunity attacks against said target now have advantage and doesn't expend your reaction. One opportunity attack per turn.
16. Overrun. Athletics vs Athletics check with some advantage thrown in depending on size.
17. Shove. Same thing.
18. Tumble. Acrobatics vs acrobatics to overrun gracefully.
19. Hit cover when you roll enough to hit the target but not enough to hit the covered target.
20. Cleaving through creatures. 13th age mooks rules.
21. Injuries. When critted, dropped to 0 and failing a death saving throw. Most are solved by any magical healing but some (3 or lesson d20) need regenerate.
22. Massive damage. DC 15 Con save when you suffer half your hit points in damage or drop or no reactions or stunned for one round.
23. Morale. DC10 Wisdom throw for the leader or creature if X happens to justify them fleeing.
Do I need to even begin to explain how dumb the massive damage rule is?
Armor - You have bonus to AC while wearing this armor. The bonus is determined by rarity.
Shield - While holding this shield, you have bonus to AC determined by the shield's rarity. This bonus is in addition to the shield's normal bonus to AC.
Nothing else is mentionned. There is a mention that you can't wear two pairs of magic boots but nothing about "magic bonus" not stacking.
There's also a +1 AC Ioun stone so 28 AC for a fighter with defense. Haven't looked at the other classes for max AC potential but figured the fighter is a good base to comment on. So 32 AC barbarian is possible if you can have 22 AC naked without dex.
:rotate:
a +3 shield is a ridiculously strong piece of equipment then. my question is whether the shield's bonus also applies to the shield master bonus for Dex saving throws? i hope so, because that would be hilarious. you could take zero damage from breath weapons on reaction, with absolutely monstrous save bonuses (someone with a shield+3, proficiency, and Dex 18 would be saving at... +11 at level 1, +16 at max proficiency)
It's table F for +1 weapons and H for +3. It starts on table G for +1 armor and the type is specified in the table.
Table F appears on the challenge 0 to 4 table for 11% of rolls. Then F to H appears from 10 to 25% depending on the challenge of the treasure hoard.
Table F has 15% to roll a weapon +1 and 3% to roll a shield +1.
Table G has 11% for a weapon +2. 1% to roll a +1 leather armor, 1% for +1 chain shirt...
...
The problem is that 5e balance assumptions are generally built on stupid decisions like this, such as "This is fine if the DM just never gives you a magical shield and magical armor" and "The chances of rolling it entirely at random are basically zero" etc.
Magic items are no longer something pcs are expected to have in 5e as well. None of the games maths relies on it beyond some creatures having assumptions that they need magical weapons to harm (of which the ridiculously badly designed intellect devourer at CR2 is an example, it is resistant to non-magical weapons). This game does not assume a player will ever have a +3 shield and +3 armor unless the DM wants the player to have it.
Like +1 weapons and armor are obscenely rare in 5e and the dmg is very fuzzy on how and why pcs should actually get stuff. It is very much "You are the DM, just do, whatever suits".
Add your shield AC bonus to Dex saving throws
Shield - While holding this shield, you have bonus to AC determined by the shield's rarity. This bonus is in addition to the shield's normal bonus to AC.
Not sure why it wouldn't work by RAW.
Wow. That was my "Incredibly Stupid Shit They Might Do" example number one for explaining why "iconic" was not gonna be an improvement. I'm mighty amused that actually made it into the book. Do....do all weapons have speed factors listed? Do spells? I'm just gonna guess the second is no because they clearly need to be quick...
Still not quite the full horror that was 2e's initiative but it's close.
I am actually OK with "magic items aren't assumed" so long as magic equipment doesn't have hard numbers effects. But they do, which means that magic equipment breaks the game almost implicitly. And what do they do if i just want to commission or make a magic weapon, or armor/shield set?
Its just feels like no one actually bothered to look at the system they created, let alone play it.
It's an entirely DM fiat based system and there is no expectation or reasoning in 5e that players can or will get magical items they want. Hence why the core magic item system is entirely random.