Sphinx: "Welcome heroes. I assume you intend to take the Orb of Limitless Power from beneath my temple. A worthy task of such fabled warriors. First, let me use my only 6th level spell to create a magnificent feast in your honor, since that's something I do apparently."
Party (whispering to themselves): "He's going to use Heroes' Feast! This fight is going to be cake!"
Sphinx: "Cake, you say?" *uses lair action to turn the PCs into infants* "HAHA! Now, how will you enjoy your cake when you can't eat solid food? MWAHAHAHAHA!"
I was going to ask if these were instead of the long lists of spells these guys got in earlier editions, but I gather that's not the case from that Sphinx statblock.
It's a neat idea, for sure. Lair stuff seems like an extension of the terrain power stuff from 4E, but specifically in the context of a single monster. The Legendary Action stuff seems a little clunky, but it will definitely make solo monsters tougher.
Making "the Sphinx sends you to the future" a property of it's lair rather than a standalone plot hook, I'm not sure how I feel about that. It'll show new DMs that things like that are an option, but it could just as easily be a sidebar in the DMG (which it might be) that it's sometimes more fun to treat whacky monsters as challenges or plot-movers rather than bags of XP.
I like it. The combination of fluff describing what kind of lairs sphinxes keep (ancient places touched by the divine) with the powers available to the sphinx within those domains immediately painted a picture of how a high-level sphinx encounter might go in the context of an adventure.
So, for example, after the fifth round of combat, the sphinx suddenly bows and ends all hostilities. "You have proven to me that you are worthy heroes," it says. "Perhaps you will have the strength to undo the great wrong done here. While we battled, we have moved fifty years into the past. The gates of the temple are under siege by the forces of the Lich Lord -- save the holy relics here from destruction, and I will return you to your time."
+1
Options
HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
Sphinx: "Welcome heroes. I assume you intend to take the Orb of Limitless Power from beneath my temple. A worthy task of such fabled warriors. First, let me use my only 6th level spell to create a magnificent feast in your honor, since that's something I do apparently."
Party (whispering to themselves): "He's going to use Heroes' Feast! This fight is going to be cake!"
Sphinx: "Cake, you say?" *uses lair action to turn the PCs into infants* "HAHA! Now, how will you enjoy your cake when you can't eat solid food? MWAHAHAHAHA!"
That power is much less of a threat to nonhumans.
And, yes, we've established that a dick DM will ruin your 5e experience.
Hachface on
0
Options
KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I was going to ask if these were instead of the long lists of spells these guys got in earlier editions, but I gather that's not the case from that Sphinx statblock.
It's a neat idea, for sure. Lair stuff seems like an extension of the terrain power stuff from 4E, but specifically in the context of a single monster. The Legendary Action stuff seems a little clunky, but it will definitely make solo monsters tougher.
Making "the Sphinx sends you to the future" a property of it's lair rather than a standalone plot hook, I'm not sure how I feel about that. It'll show new DMs that things like that are an option, but it could just as easily be a sidebar in the DMG (which it might be) that it's sometimes more fun to treat whacky monsters as challenges or plot-movers rather than bags of XP.
I like it. The combination of fluff describing what kind of lairs sphinxes keep (ancient places touched by the divine) with the powers available to the sphinx within those domains immediately painted a picture of how a high-level sphinx encounter might go in the context of an adventure.
So, for example, after the fifth round of combat, the sphinx suddenly bows and ends all hostilities. "You have proven to me that you are worthy heroes," it says. "Perhaps you will have the strength to undo the great wrong done here. While we battled, we have moved fifty years into the past. The gates of the temple are under siege by the forces of the Lich Lord -- save the holy relics here from destruction, and I will return you to your time."
What that lair power needs is an example such as this. Then we could see the intent of the rule. I mean, I like it to an extent, until I see the havoc an unknowing DM can wreak with it.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I was going to ask if these were instead of the long lists of spells these guys got in earlier editions, but I gather that's not the case from that Sphinx statblock.
It's a neat idea, for sure. Lair stuff seems like an extension of the terrain power stuff from 4E, but specifically in the context of a single monster. The Legendary Action stuff seems a little clunky, but it will definitely make solo monsters tougher.
Making "the Sphinx sends you to the future" a property of it's lair rather than a standalone plot hook, I'm not sure how I feel about that. It'll show new DMs that things like that are an option, but it could just as easily be a sidebar in the DMG (which it might be) that it's sometimes more fun to treat whacky monsters as challenges or plot-movers rather than bags of XP.
I like it. The combination of fluff describing what kind of lairs sphinxes keep (ancient places touched by the divine) with the powers available to the sphinx within those domains immediately painted a picture of how a high-level sphinx encounter might go in the context of an adventure.
So, for example, after the fifth round of combat, the sphinx suddenly bows and ends all hostilities. "You have proven to me that you are worthy heroes," it says. "Perhaps you will have the strength to undo the great wrong done here. While we battled, we have moved fifty years into the past. The gates of the temple are under siege by the forces of the Lich Lord -- save the holy relics here from destruction, and I will return you to your time."
I agree that this is a cool use for those abilities, definitely. And sphinxes should be weird, beyond even what their spellcasting lists allow for, which is something that D&D has struggled mightily with to this point.
If this is a sign that D&D is moving away from the everything-is-a-fight, every-fight-is-to-the-death mentality that has largely defined it since the early days, I wholeheartedly embrace that. The Red Dragon stuff doesn't seem to point to that, though.
Magical story hook powers are great, but I think I might prefer if it wasn't hardcoded into an enemy like this. Make newer DMs aware that powerful creatures might can be used in interesting narrative ways that aren't listed in their statblock. The sphinx as presented here has a lot of story potential, but it's also going to be great for ending campaigns with a bunch of babies climbing out of their chainmail and dying of exposure.
I was going to ask if these were instead of the long lists of spells these guys got in earlier editions, but I gather that's not the case from that Sphinx statblock.
It's a neat idea, for sure. Lair stuff seems like an extension of the terrain power stuff from 4E, but specifically in the context of a single monster. The Legendary Action stuff seems a little clunky, but it will definitely make solo monsters tougher.
Making "the Sphinx sends you to the future" a property of it's lair rather than a standalone plot hook, I'm not sure how I feel about that. It'll show new DMs that things like that are an option, but it could just as easily be a sidebar in the DMG (which it might be) that it's sometimes more fun to treat whacky monsters as challenges or plot-movers rather than bags of XP.
I like it. The combination of fluff describing what kind of lairs sphinxes keep (ancient places touched by the divine) with the powers available to the sphinx within those domains immediately painted a picture of how a high-level sphinx encounter might go in the context of an adventure.
So, for example, after the fifth round of combat, the sphinx suddenly bows and ends all hostilities. "You have proven to me that you are worthy heroes," it says. "Perhaps you will have the strength to undo the great wrong done here. While we battled, we have moved fifty years into the past. The gates of the temple are under siege by the forces of the Lich Lord -- save the holy relics here from destruction, and I will return you to your time."
I agree that this is a cool use for those abilities, definitely. And sphinxes should be weird, beyond even what their spellcasting lists allow for, which is something that D&D has struggled mightily with to this point.
If this is a sign that D&D is moving away from the everything-is-a-fight, every-fight-is-to-the-death mentality that has largely defined it since the early days, I wholeheartedly embrace that. The Red Dragon stuff doesn't seem to point to that, though.
Magical story hook powers are great, but I think I might prefer if it wasn't hardcoded into an enemy like this. Make newer DMs aware that powerful creatures might can be used in interesting narrative ways that aren't listed in their statblock. The sphinx as presented here has a lot of story potential, but it's also going to be great for ending campaigns with a bunch of babies climbing out of their chainmail and dying of exposure.
Re: the bolded, a sphinx and a red dragon are very different kinds of enemies, which you seem to acknowledge. Heroes slay dragons, but they solve sphinxes.
I think that separating out plot device powers from a stat block makes sense. But I also think that putting them in the stat block forces DMs to think of this kind of monster as more than a bag of hit points and a spell list. My favored solution would be putting them in the stat block, along with a side bar that provides narrative guidance, as Kalnaur suggested.
And the aging power really isn't that bad:
Constitution save at DC 15 negates it. That's not a towering DC; it's actually lower than the androsphinx's normal spellcasting DC, which is 18.
At level 17, which is the androsphinx's challenge rating, players will probably have easy access to greater restoration.
The power isn't necessarily an instant baby maker. 1-20 years is a lot of swing.
Many if not most nonhuman races can shrug off 20 years of aging.
Edit: And it can only use the aging power once before taking a long rest.
Edit 2: In fact I'm not convinced that the aging power is even better than the force initiative re-roll power.
It's just such a ridiculous power to me. Even setting aside the swingyness of a 1-20 spread, how do you even adjudicate the result? Age doesn't effect your stats in 5E, so what do you even do with a younger or older character? Do you adjust their stats? Which ones? How much? Does it apply conditions? Which ones and why?
And like you said, what about non-humans? Is there a difference between a 230-year-old dwarf and a 250-year-old dwarf? If there is, what's different? How different is it?
The entire power is just silly and doesn't belong in a stat-block. It's a paragraph that says "Hey DM, use this if you want to screw with that one PC. You also get to make up all the rules for it, so all of the blame is on you! Don't you just love roleplaying?"
It's just such a ridiculous power to me. Even setting aside the swingyness of a 1-20 spread, how do you even adjudicate the result? Age doesn't effect your stats in 5E, so what do you even do with a younger or older character? Do you adjust their stats? Which ones? How much? Does it apply conditions? Which ones and why?
And like you said, what about non-humans? Is there a difference between a 230-year-old dwarf and a 250-year-old dwarf? If there is, what's different? How different is it?
The entire power is just silly and doesn't belong in a stat-block. It's a paragraph that says "Hey DM, use this if you want to screw with that one PC. You also get to make up all the rules for it, so all of the blame is on you! Don't you just love roleplaying?"
I agree that rules for aging would be helpful here.
I remember the 2e PHB actually specifying very specifically the penalties that both young age and advanced age had for each race. Useless rules for 99% of the time, so they were sensibly dropped. But they would be handy to have in this one strange edge case!
iconic.jpg
0
Options
HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
Generally I think that hermetic separation of fluff from crunch made 4e work in many ways, but removed something from the game. Clearly some people prioritize that hard-to-describe something special over perfectly balanced and unambiguous rules. I think that this is a matter of taste that cannot be reconciled or reasoned with.
Generally I think that hermetic separation of fluff from crunch made 4e work in many ways, but removed something from the game. Clearly some people prioritize that hard-to-describe something special over perfectly balanced and unambiguous rules. I think that this is a matter of taste that cannot be reconciled or reasoned with.
People have intense reactions when the reality of a situation is explained to them and they can't debate it. For a lot of people, particularly in the general escapism of gaming, that response is overwhelmingly negative. It does not, however, mean that peoples' inability to deal with hard and fast rules is something we should design a game around. The whole point of games is to get everyone playing on the same playing field with the same rules.
Generally I think that hermetic separation of fluff from crunch made 4e work in many ways, but removed something from the game. Clearly some people prioritize that hard-to-describe something special over perfectly balanced and unambiguous rules. I think that this is a matter of taste that cannot be reconciled or reasoned with.
People have intense reactions when the reality of a situation is explained to them and they can't debate it. For a lot of people, particularly in the general escapism of gaming, that response is overwhelmingly negative. It does not, however, mean that peoples' inability to deal with hard and fast rules is something we should design a game around. The whole point of games is to get everyone playing on the same playing field with the same rules.
Is that really the "whole point" of a game? Where is that written?
I find loose-goose 'natural language' rules tend to accentuate 'mother may I' and 'that guy' situations. Tight rules don't stop these from happening but they do mitigate the potential fallout.
I was going to ask if these were instead of the long lists of spells these guys got in earlier editions, but I gather that's not the case from that Sphinx statblock.
It's a neat idea, for sure. Lair stuff seems like an extension of the terrain power stuff from 4E, but specifically in the context of a single monster. The Legendary Action stuff seems a little clunky, but it will definitely make solo monsters tougher.
Making "the Sphinx sends you to the future" a property of it's lair rather than a standalone plot hook, I'm not sure how I feel about that. It'll show new DMs that things like that are an option, but it could just as easily be a sidebar in the DMG (which it might be) that it's sometimes more fun to treat whacky monsters as challenges or plot-movers rather than bags of XP.
I like it. The combination of fluff describing what kind of lairs sphinxes keep (ancient places touched by the divine) with the powers available to the sphinx within those domains immediately painted a picture of how a high-level sphinx encounter might go in the context of an adventure.
So, for example, after the fifth round of combat, the sphinx suddenly bows and ends all hostilities. "You have proven to me that you are worthy heroes," it says. "Perhaps you will have the strength to undo the great wrong done here. While we battled, we have moved fifty years into the past. The gates of the temple are under siege by the forces of the Lich Lord -- save the holy relics here from destruction, and I will return you to your time."
I agree that this is a cool use for those abilities, definitely. And sphinxes should be weird, beyond even what their spellcasting lists allow for, which is something that D&D has struggled mightily with to this point.
If this is a sign that D&D is moving away from the everything-is-a-fight, every-fight-is-to-the-death mentality that has largely defined it since the early days, I wholeheartedly embrace that. The Red Dragon stuff doesn't seem to point to that, though.
Magical story hook powers are great, but I think I might prefer if it wasn't hardcoded into an enemy like this. Make newer DMs aware that powerful creatures might can be used in interesting narrative ways that aren't listed in their statblock. The sphinx as presented here has a lot of story potential, but it's also going to be great for ending campaigns with a bunch of babies climbing out of their chainmail and dying of exposure.
Re: the bolded, a sphinx and a red dragon are very different kinds of enemies, which you seem to acknowledge. Heroes slay dragons, but they solve sphinxes.
I think that separating out plot device powers from a stat block makes sense. But I also think that putting them in the stat block forces DMs to think of this kind of monster as more than a bag of hit points and a spell list. My favored solution would be putting them in the stat block, along with a side bar that provides narrative guidance, as Kalnaur suggested.
And the aging power really isn't that bad:
Constitution save at DC 15 negates it. That's not a towering DC; it's actually lower than the androsphinx's normal spellcasting DC, which is 18.
At level 17, which is the androsphinx's challenge rating, players will probably have easy access to greater restoration.
The power isn't necessarily an instant baby maker. 1-20 years is a lot of swing.
Many if not most nonhuman races can shrug off 20 years of aging.
Edit: And it can only use the aging power once before taking a long rest.
Edit 2: In fact I'm not convinced that the aging power is even better than the force initiative re-roll power.
For me, this need could probably be better served with a sub-paragraph in the monster description titled something like "[X Monster]s in the World". That would be a great way to drop the neat story stuff that could happen if any given monster was a plot point or ongoing adversary rather than just the thing we're beating down this fight. How do sphinxes interact with their environment, or the heroes that populate it? What are some crazy plot-powers you can give sphinxes without it feeling out of character (can time shift others, can't summon earthquakes)? That kind of thing.
I like lair powers, I'm ok with the concept of legendary powers if not pumped about their implementation. But I don't like things that might define the plot of a story in statblock form, because now if I want a sphinx in my game and the players decide to fight it, I have to come up with a reason they're not timeskipped back to before they were born if that's not something I want to have happen. It's now something sphinxes inherently do instead of something I can push into an epic "Rescue the Heroes of Norgath who are also your grandparents" story if I feel like it.
That's a distinction that makes me unhappy with the implementation. And I know I can ignore it, but that's almost a houserule about sphinxes, which are clearly defined within the game now. Default 5E sphinxes can make you late for your own funeral in 5 rounds of combat. I'm not sure that's ok with me. If it was a suggested plot point, I'm totally cool with having that in the box. I know it's a weird distinction, but that's me.
As for the turning everyone into babies thing, I'm way less impressed by that than the time travel, as you all might have guessed.
Generally I think that hermetic separation of fluff from crunch made 4e work in many ways, but removed something from the game. Clearly some people prioritize that hard-to-describe something special over perfectly balanced and unambiguous rules. I think that this is a matter of taste that cannot be reconciled or reasoned with.
People have intense reactions when the reality of a situation is explained to them and they can't debate it. For a lot of people, particularly in the general escapism of gaming, that response is overwhelmingly negative. It does not, however, mean that peoples' inability to deal with hard and fast rules is something we should design a game around. The whole point of games is to get everyone playing on the same playing field with the same rules.
Is that really the "whole point" of a game? Where is that written?
Generally I think that hermetic separation of fluff from crunch made 4e work in many ways, but removed something from the game. Clearly some people prioritize that hard-to-describe something special over perfectly balanced and unambiguous rules. I think that this is a matter of taste that cannot be reconciled or reasoned with.
People have intense reactions when the reality of a situation is explained to them and they can't debate it. For a lot of people, particularly in the general escapism of gaming, that response is overwhelmingly negative. It does not, however, mean that peoples' inability to deal with hard and fast rules is something we should design a game around. The whole point of games is to get everyone playing on the same playing field with the same rules.
Is that really the "whole point" of a game? Where is that written?
Literally any encyclopedia.
Not Wikipedia, apparently.
0
Options
KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
Generally I think that hermetic separation of fluff from crunch made 4e work in many ways, but removed something from the game. Clearly some people prioritize that hard-to-describe something special over perfectly balanced and unambiguous rules. I think that this is a matter of taste that cannot be reconciled or reasoned with.
People have intense reactions when the reality of a situation is explained to them and they can't debate it. For a lot of people, particularly in the general escapism of gaming, that response is overwhelmingly negative. It does not, however, mean that peoples' inability to deal with hard and fast rules is something we should design a game around. The whole point of games is to get everyone playing on the same playing field with the same rules.
Is that really the "whole point" of a game? Where is that written?
Literally any encyclopedia.
Not Wikipedia, apparently.
"A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool."
That's the first line of the Wikipedia article for Game; the "structured play" part is the "same playing field" thing Ardent mentioned.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I was going to ask if these were instead of the long lists of spells these guys got in earlier editions, but I gather that's not the case from that Sphinx statblock.
It's a neat idea, for sure. Lair stuff seems like an extension of the terrain power stuff from 4E, but specifically in the context of a single monster. The Legendary Action stuff seems a little clunky, but it will definitely make solo monsters tougher.
Making "the Sphinx sends you to the future" a property of it's lair rather than a standalone plot hook, I'm not sure how I feel about that. It'll show new DMs that things like that are an option, but it could just as easily be a sidebar in the DMG (which it might be) that it's sometimes more fun to treat whacky monsters as challenges or plot-movers rather than bags of XP.
I like it. The combination of fluff describing what kind of lairs sphinxes keep (ancient places touched by the divine) with the powers available to the sphinx within those domains immediately painted a picture of how a high-level sphinx encounter might go in the context of an adventure.
So, for example, after the fifth round of combat, the sphinx suddenly bows and ends all hostilities. "You have proven to me that you are worthy heroes," it says. "Perhaps you will have the strength to undo the great wrong done here. While we battled, we have moved fifty years into the past. The gates of the temple are under siege by the forces of the Lich Lord -- save the holy relics here from destruction, and I will return you to your time."
I agree that this is a cool use for those abilities, definitely. And sphinxes should be weird, beyond even what their spellcasting lists allow for, which is something that D&D has struggled mightily with to this point.
If this is a sign that D&D is moving away from the everything-is-a-fight, every-fight-is-to-the-death mentality that has largely defined it since the early days, I wholeheartedly embrace that. The Red Dragon stuff doesn't seem to point to that, though.
Magical story hook powers are great, but I think I might prefer if it wasn't hardcoded into an enemy like this. Make newer DMs aware that powerful creatures might can be used in interesting narrative ways that aren't listed in their statblock. The sphinx as presented here has a lot of story potential, but it's also going to be great for ending campaigns with a bunch of babies climbing out of their chainmail and dying of exposure.
Re: the bolded, a sphinx and a red dragon are very different kinds of enemies, which you seem to acknowledge. Heroes slay dragons, but they solve sphinxes.
I absolutely 100% agree with this statement.
Now, where can you spot the complete flaw that brings your entire argument and idea crashing down like a house of cards doused in gasoline and then lit on fire? It's the fact they are statted using exactly the same rules. I hadn't actually looked at the Sphinx much compared to the Red Dragon, but now I have it's clear we are back to a very worrying sign where mechanics that provide a solid indication of what "Challenge" means have already fallen completely out the window.
The Sphinx in combat is a much more versatile and dangerous opponent than one of the markee creatures of DnD. The irony is that these things are showing learning from 4E, but like many many criticisms I have of 5E demonstrate a lack of application of that learning. Lair powers are good examples of 4E environmental powers, just codified to be clearer but are honestly things you could apply to anything - why they need to be inherently presented as a solo specific thing is beyond me (noting I understand the core point being to give an extra attack that the players cannot disable easily with magic).
4E of course had it's stupid monsters, like Silt Runners and the infamous doom frogs, but even they were surmountable and more often than not tedious monsters in 4E were not permanently lethal. They were just rather tedious - mad wraiths for example. These creatures in 5e show me that harsh lessons from previous editions have been ignored: You can't compare a monster that can basically break a character as an action instantly vs. one that just does a bunch of damage. The challenge of the sphinx is much higher than the dragon easily, simply by what it can do. But their system poorly accounts for this and so the actual challenge varies all over the place by leaps and bounds.
It's an extremely worrying sign for me and indicates that they have, once again, taken entirely the wrong lessons.
The point I am getting at is that if you're not supposed to fight a sphinx, then it needs a higher challenge rating comparative to its actual abilities or it needs to use another system of resolving its encounter that isn't combat. You do not get to say "This thing we have stuck in here that has an entire stat block taking up space in the book isn't meant to be fought", because that is asinine. If it has stats, the assumption is that someone, somewhere has decided that this is something players actually may fight. This is why in 4E as a general rule they didn't waste space in the mm statting "good" aligned creatures often - they focused on what people actually fought (and this was a good thing).
If you gave me a choice of a red dragon or a sphinx to actually fight, say we rolled poorly or just couldn't get the damn things riddles correctly, I would take the dragon every time. The sphinx despite it's lower challenge is a far more intimidating opponent.
And that's a sign of a broken system when I'd face a high level dragon over a lower level monster that isn't a dragon.
Generally I think that hermetic separation of fluff from crunch made 4e work in many ways, but removed something from the game. Clearly some people prioritize that hard-to-describe something special over perfectly balanced and unambiguous rules. I think that this is a matter of taste that cannot be reconciled or reasoned with.
People have intense reactions when the reality of a situation is explained to them and they can't debate it. For a lot of people, particularly in the general escapism of gaming, that response is overwhelmingly negative. It does not, however, mean that peoples' inability to deal with hard and fast rules is something we should design a game around. The whole point of games is to get everyone playing on the same playing field with the same rules.
Is that really the "whole point" of a game? Where is that written?
Literally any encyclopedia.
Not Wikipedia, apparently.
"A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool."
That's the first line of the Wikipedia article for Game; the "structured play" part is the "same playing field" thing Ardent mentioned.
Yeah, so I got so annoyed I couldn't make this response. If you continue reading Wikipedia's game article, it will continue along down that track. Fixed rules, shared (or opposing) goals, etc.
Tabletop ROLE-PLAYING games have traditionally hewed to the shared rules, shared goals style of gaming. There are some (notable) exceptions, but none of them is D&D.
Tabletop games in broad view (like, including Diplomacy, or Risk, or card games) hew to the shared rules style of gaming.
excellent interview with Mike mearls. He talks about rangers, and what people want from 5e, and combat, and how they really focused on letting the DM take the rules and run the game. Specifically mentioning things like hiding.
M: "We wanted to hand people that have never played D&D before a character sheet and a module and have them stay as close to the design intent as possible, with understanding rules naturally arising from reading them."
KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
edited August 2014
So, when the lead of the newest edition of D&D presents points that fall in line with what edition warriors against 4th edition parrot, that's a bad thing, right?
Edit: I mean, this was meant to be the edition to bring all the disparate points of D&D together, right? So emphasizing that 5th does storytelling and roleplay as if the last edition didn't should be seen as a misstep? Freudian slip? I'm kind of at a loss.
Kalnaur on
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I haven't watched the entire interview, but by about halfway through I think I see a recurring theme: "Leave it to the DM."
He mentions 4E frequently, but its always in the context of how complicated it was, how much "jargon" it used, and things of that nature. He talks a lot about how 5E doesn't have a lot of rules, how the DM is supposed to fill in the gaps and pick up where the rules leave off, and how this returns a "human element" to D&D that enables better storytelling and roleplaying. He basically says (within like the first 5 minutes) that if you want rules and systems you should be playing a video game or a card game.
According to Mearls, the only thing D&D brings to the table versus something like Skyrim is the "roleplaying" element, and the best way to engage with that element is by having the DM make the rules.
Ehhh. Did he forget that the DM is a player, too? Like, I get together with friends to play a game. I have enough work on my shoulders preparing as-is. If the point of 5E is to push more of that burden upon the DM, can't say it's a system I'd ever DM in.
I haven't watched the entire interview, but by about halfway through I think I see a recurring theme: "Leave it to the DM."
He mentions 4E frequently, but its always in the context of how complicated it was, how much "jargon" it used, and things of that nature. He talks a lot about how 5E doesn't have a lot of rules, how the DM is supposed to fill in the gaps and pick up where the rules leave off, and how this returns a "human element" to D&D that enables better storytelling and roleplaying. He basically says (within like the first 5 minutes) that if you want rules and systems you should be playing a video game or a card game.
According to Mearls, the only thing D&D brings to the table versus something like Skyrim is the "roleplaying" element, and the best way to engage with that element is by having the DM make the rules.
I think he has a seed of a point here with regards to what D&D can do that Skyrim can't.
I think at no point (except for the half column about inspiration) do they do anything to emphasis that in the system. Unlike 13th Age, MHRP, FATE etc etc which all have made efforts to leverage that advantage and make sure it is part of the play experience for everyone.
I can't help but read this at a turn of the 20th century fellow talking about how important cars are and the only way they'll compete with the railroad is be really car like then he goes and slaps a set of head lights on a horse drawn carriage and says we're good.
@Denada I remember when you were starting that Barrowtown game and we had the question as to whether or not tool and skill proficiency stacked for the same things (i.e. trained in Athletics and Climbing gear). I guess we have the answer now. It's up to you!
"We wanted people to be able to play the game without knowing any of the rules."
A mild paraphrase, but Jebus. If I'm paying you for a game, I'm paying you for rules. I can imagine elves and knights fighting dragons on my own for free, thanks.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds.2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
+3
Options
oxybeEntei is appaled and disappointed in youRegistered Userregular
Wow. I listened to a bit of the interview and I'm really not enthused about how he seems to disparage mechanics and is really relying on the GM to do all the legwork.
This does not make me want to run this game. I want to make rulings and not rules (or whatever the phrase people use), but only when needed, not because the rules are vague or ill-defined, and I want a solid and consistent foundation to build my rulings on. Inconsistent rules is a great way to kill a player's ability to interact with the gameworld.
I'm also kinda laughing at the "having people play without knowing the rules/make adjudications based on what's in front of them". Because I've seen that in most every RPG, where you will be doing actions based on your knowledge of how the rules in front of you work, but more clear and less opaque rules will inform you on this almost immediately.
It's one of the main reasons I absolutely hate the traditional D&D non-caster: virtually all his rules tell him that he can hurt things, but very little else actually informs you on his ability to interact with the world around him, or when it does inform you, you often find out the caster has a spell that does it much better then what you could do.
you can read my collected ravings at oxybesothertumbr.tumblr.com
It's not like it's that way for every single thing. Let's look at two rules that are causing some "confusion"
Hiding and polearm master. Lightfoot halflings can hide behind players, so does it make sense mechanically for a rogue to shoot, hide behind a player and then get advantage on their target each round? Does hiding mean just that you can't see them? Do you lose hiding by peaking around the character? There aren't facing rules in combat yet. So, leave it up to the DM. Either the rogue gets advantage each round or they don't, but honestly, I can see it both ways.
Polearm master says that creatures provoke O.A. when entering reach. Reach says extend to 10 ft when attacking. So, do you get an oa when they enter 10 ft, or 5 ft? Your DM makes the call.
I guess I can see how people don't like that, but I do. It's great though that you have 4e, which is basically feature complete and can still play, and then also have 5e, which kind of pulls back from that allows the DM to adjudicate some "common sense" things.
And it's easy to reduce what mearls is saying as far as the "no rules thing," but my first game I was handed a pregen sheet from the starter set and was able to play without needing the rulebook. The GM had the starter set and was able to answer my questions, of which there weren't many. Most of the rules make sense.
Posts
Party (whispering to themselves): "He's going to use Heroes' Feast! This fight is going to be cake!"
Sphinx: "Cake, you say?" *uses lair action to turn the PCs into infants* "HAHA! Now, how will you enjoy your cake when you can't eat solid food? MWAHAHAHAHA!"
I like it. The combination of fluff describing what kind of lairs sphinxes keep (ancient places touched by the divine) with the powers available to the sphinx within those domains immediately painted a picture of how a high-level sphinx encounter might go in the context of an adventure.
So, for example, after the fifth round of combat, the sphinx suddenly bows and ends all hostilities. "You have proven to me that you are worthy heroes," it says. "Perhaps you will have the strength to undo the great wrong done here. While we battled, we have moved fifty years into the past. The gates of the temple are under siege by the forces of the Lich Lord -- save the holy relics here from destruction, and I will return you to your time."
That power is much less of a threat to nonhumans.
And, yes, we've established that a dick DM will ruin your 5e experience.
What that lair power needs is an example such as this. Then we could see the intent of the rule. I mean, I like it to an extent, until I see the havoc an unknowing DM can wreak with it.
If this is a sign that D&D is moving away from the everything-is-a-fight, every-fight-is-to-the-death mentality that has largely defined it since the early days, I wholeheartedly embrace that. The Red Dragon stuff doesn't seem to point to that, though.
Magical story hook powers are great, but I think I might prefer if it wasn't hardcoded into an enemy like this. Make newer DMs aware that powerful creatures might can be used in interesting narrative ways that aren't listed in their statblock. The sphinx as presented here has a lot of story potential, but it's also going to be great for ending campaigns with a bunch of babies climbing out of their chainmail and dying of exposure.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Re: the bolded, a sphinx and a red dragon are very different kinds of enemies, which you seem to acknowledge. Heroes slay dragons, but they solve sphinxes.
I think that separating out plot device powers from a stat block makes sense. But I also think that putting them in the stat block forces DMs to think of this kind of monster as more than a bag of hit points and a spell list. My favored solution would be putting them in the stat block, along with a side bar that provides narrative guidance, as Kalnaur suggested.
And the aging power really isn't that bad:
Constitution save at DC 15 negates it. That's not a towering DC; it's actually lower than the androsphinx's normal spellcasting DC, which is 18.
At level 17, which is the androsphinx's challenge rating, players will probably have easy access to greater restoration.
The power isn't necessarily an instant baby maker. 1-20 years is a lot of swing.
Many if not most nonhuman races can shrug off 20 years of aging.
Edit: And it can only use the aging power once before taking a long rest.
Edit 2: In fact I'm not convinced that the aging power is even better than the force initiative re-roll power.
And like you said, what about non-humans? Is there a difference between a 230-year-old dwarf and a 250-year-old dwarf? If there is, what's different? How different is it?
The entire power is just silly and doesn't belong in a stat-block. It's a paragraph that says "Hey DM, use this if you want to screw with that one PC. You also get to make up all the rules for it, so all of the blame is on you! Don't you just love roleplaying?"
I agree that rules for aging would be helpful here.
I remember the 2e PHB actually specifying very specifically the penalties that both young age and advanced age had for each race. Useless rules for 99% of the time, so they were sensibly dropped. But they would be handy to have in this one strange edge case!
iconic.jpg
Is that really the "whole point" of a game? Where is that written?
I like lair powers, I'm ok with the concept of legendary powers if not pumped about their implementation. But I don't like things that might define the plot of a story in statblock form, because now if I want a sphinx in my game and the players decide to fight it, I have to come up with a reason they're not timeskipped back to before they were born if that's not something I want to have happen. It's now something sphinxes inherently do instead of something I can push into an epic "Rescue the Heroes of Norgath who are also your grandparents" story if I feel like it.
That's a distinction that makes me unhappy with the implementation. And I know I can ignore it, but that's almost a houserule about sphinxes, which are clearly defined within the game now. Default 5E sphinxes can make you late for your own funeral in 5 rounds of combat. I'm not sure that's ok with me. If it was a suggested plot point, I'm totally cool with having that in the box. I know it's a weird distinction, but that's me.
As for the turning everyone into babies thing, I'm way less impressed by that than the time travel, as you all might have guessed.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Not Wikipedia, apparently.
"A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool."
That's the first line of the Wikipedia article for Game; the "structured play" part is the "same playing field" thing Ardent mentioned.
No, because it will have already eaten you.
Next question!
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Uh, how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?
Three.
Why I fear the ocean.
I absolutely 100% agree with this statement.
Now, where can you spot the complete flaw that brings your entire argument and idea crashing down like a house of cards doused in gasoline and then lit on fire? It's the fact they are statted using exactly the same rules. I hadn't actually looked at the Sphinx much compared to the Red Dragon, but now I have it's clear we are back to a very worrying sign where mechanics that provide a solid indication of what "Challenge" means have already fallen completely out the window.
The Sphinx in combat is a much more versatile and dangerous opponent than one of the markee creatures of DnD. The irony is that these things are showing learning from 4E, but like many many criticisms I have of 5E demonstrate a lack of application of that learning. Lair powers are good examples of 4E environmental powers, just codified to be clearer but are honestly things you could apply to anything - why they need to be inherently presented as a solo specific thing is beyond me (noting I understand the core point being to give an extra attack that the players cannot disable easily with magic).
4E of course had it's stupid monsters, like Silt Runners and the infamous doom frogs, but even they were surmountable and more often than not tedious monsters in 4E were not permanently lethal. They were just rather tedious - mad wraiths for example. These creatures in 5e show me that harsh lessons from previous editions have been ignored: You can't compare a monster that can basically break a character as an action instantly vs. one that just does a bunch of damage. The challenge of the sphinx is much higher than the dragon easily, simply by what it can do. But their system poorly accounts for this and so the actual challenge varies all over the place by leaps and bounds.
It's an extremely worrying sign for me and indicates that they have, once again, taken entirely the wrong lessons.
The point I am getting at is that if you're not supposed to fight a sphinx, then it needs a higher challenge rating comparative to its actual abilities or it needs to use another system of resolving its encounter that isn't combat. You do not get to say "This thing we have stuck in here that has an entire stat block taking up space in the book isn't meant to be fought", because that is asinine. If it has stats, the assumption is that someone, somewhere has decided that this is something players actually may fight. This is why in 4E as a general rule they didn't waste space in the mm statting "good" aligned creatures often - they focused on what people actually fought (and this was a good thing).
If you gave me a choice of a red dragon or a sphinx to actually fight, say we rolled poorly or just couldn't get the damn things riddles correctly, I would take the dragon every time. The sphinx despite it's lower challenge is a far more intimidating opponent.
And that's a sign of a broken system when I'd face a high level dragon over a lower level monster that isn't a dragon.
Tabletop ROLE-PLAYING games have traditionally hewed to the shared rules, shared goals style of gaming. There are some (notable) exceptions, but none of them is D&D.
Tabletop games in broad view (like, including Diplomacy, or Risk, or card games) hew to the shared rules style of gaming.
excellent interview with Mike mearls. He talks about rangers, and what people want from 5e, and combat, and how they really focused on letting the DM take the rules and run the game. Specifically mentioning things like hiding.
UGH
Yup that is definitely the right response.
Definitely.
M: "We wanted to hand people that have never played D&D before a character sheet and a module and have them stay as close to the design intent as possible, with understanding rules naturally arising from reading them."
E: "Did you actually test that?"
M: "No."
I think I'm in love with this interview.
Edit: I mean, this was meant to be the edition to bring all the disparate points of D&D together, right? So emphasizing that 5th does storytelling and roleplay as if the last edition didn't should be seen as a misstep? Freudian slip? I'm kind of at a loss.
He mentions 4E frequently, but its always in the context of how complicated it was, how much "jargon" it used, and things of that nature. He talks a lot about how 5E doesn't have a lot of rules, how the DM is supposed to fill in the gaps and pick up where the rules leave off, and how this returns a "human element" to D&D that enables better storytelling and roleplaying. He basically says (within like the first 5 minutes) that if you want rules and systems you should be playing a video game or a card game.
According to Mearls, the only thing D&D brings to the table versus something like Skyrim is the "roleplaying" element, and the best way to engage with that element is by having the DM make the rules.
I think he has a seed of a point here with regards to what D&D can do that Skyrim can't.
I think at no point (except for the half column about inspiration) do they do anything to emphasis that in the system. Unlike 13th Age, MHRP, FATE etc etc which all have made efforts to leverage that advantage and make sure it is part of the play experience for everyone.
I can't help but read this at a turn of the 20th century fellow talking about how important cars are and the only way they'll compete with the railroad is be really car like then he goes and slaps a set of head lights on a horse drawn carriage and says we're good.
A mild paraphrase, but Jebus. If I'm paying you for a game, I'm paying you for rules. I can imagine elves and knights fighting dragons on my own for free, thanks.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
This does not make me want to run this game. I want to make rulings and not rules (or whatever the phrase people use), but only when needed, not because the rules are vague or ill-defined, and I want a solid and consistent foundation to build my rulings on. Inconsistent rules is a great way to kill a player's ability to interact with the gameworld.
I'm also kinda laughing at the "having people play without knowing the rules/make adjudications based on what's in front of them". Because I've seen that in most every RPG, where you will be doing actions based on your knowledge of how the rules in front of you work, but more clear and less opaque rules will inform you on this almost immediately.
It's one of the main reasons I absolutely hate the traditional D&D non-caster: virtually all his rules tell him that he can hurt things, but very little else actually informs you on his ability to interact with the world around him, or when it does inform you, you often find out the caster has a spell that does it much better then what you could do.
Hiding and polearm master. Lightfoot halflings can hide behind players, so does it make sense mechanically for a rogue to shoot, hide behind a player and then get advantage on their target each round? Does hiding mean just that you can't see them? Do you lose hiding by peaking around the character? There aren't facing rules in combat yet. So, leave it up to the DM. Either the rogue gets advantage each round or they don't, but honestly, I can see it both ways.
Polearm master says that creatures provoke O.A. when entering reach. Reach says extend to 10 ft when attacking. So, do you get an oa when they enter 10 ft, or 5 ft? Your DM makes the call.
I guess I can see how people don't like that, but I do. It's great though that you have 4e, which is basically feature complete and can still play, and then also have 5e, which kind of pulls back from that allows the DM to adjudicate some "common sense" things.
And it's easy to reduce what mearls is saying as far as the "no rules thing," but my first game I was handed a pregen sheet from the starter set and was able to play without needing the rulebook. The GM had the starter set and was able to answer my questions, of which there weren't many. Most of the rules make sense.
Not all of them, though.