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[DnD 5E] You can't triple stamp a double stamp!
Denada
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Have you heard of this hot new game that all the internet youths are going crazy for? Its popularity isn’t surprising, when you consider the features:
- Fantastical characters
- Interesting items
- The opportunity to exercise your imagination to create your own stories and narrative
- Random chance to keep things interesting
- Gridless combat
- Fun to watch on Twitch, depending on who’s playing
- Tons of stuff to spend your actual money on if you want to
- All the hottest memes
- And best of all, it’s free to get started!
Yes, it’s easy to see why Fortnite has exploded in popularity. Quite a bit less popular is Dungeons and Dragons (known to insiders as D&D, or to inside insiders as DnD), which is basically the same game. Consider the features:
- There are fantastical characters
- There are interesting items
- There’s the opportunity to exercise your imagination
- There’s random chance (a lot of it!)
- You can run combat gridless if you feel like it
- It can be fun to watch on Twitch, depending
- There’s tons of stuff to spend your actual money on if you want to
- All the hottest memes
- It’s free to get started!
Version 5.0 of D&Dragons is what we talk about here. Like all great fans of great sports (both e and p), we comment on the underlying systems in place, how people play the game, why they’re bad at it, why the rules are terrible but also the best they’ve ever been except for how much worse they are than they used to be, argue about every possible aspect of the game, and generally just analyze it more than we actually play it.
Dungeons-n-D Five, it’s just like a video game!
Sub-OP addendum with actual information:
What You can Get for Free
What You Can Buy if You Want
Where You Can Play
You Down With OPP?
- The 5E Basic Rules are available in both PDF and web versions. Note that these rules do not include all of the available character options, monsters, and other material.
- There is a 5E SRD. Same caveat applies about it not having everything. There are a lot of different versions of this out there, so just search engine it and use the one you like.
- There's an amazing OneNote notebook that contains all of the freely (and legally) available 5E content that was out there at the time it was last updated.
- There are a lot of character sheets, both official and unofficial. Pick one that makes sense to you. Yours truly just uses the standard one, but tastes vary.
- There's Dragon+, which is a free digital magazine. I've never read it so I don't know if it's any good.
- There are no full-content PDFs legally available.
What You Can Buy if You Want
- The Starter Set is generally considered to be a pretty good option if you want to dip your toe in. The included adventure is well-liked by most, though it has a few gotchas that can sometimes trip up unsuspecting groups.
- The Core Three books (Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual) are your standard initial investment.
- Most of the official adventures are somewhere on the scale of fine to great. Your mileage will vary depending on your group, but they're all at least okay if you don't want to write your own stuff.
- 5E content is available for purchase on a few different platforms. None of these digital purchases overlap, meaning if you buy into Fantasy Grounds, you'd have to pay again for Roll20 or D&D Beyond.
- The DMs Guild is a branded DriveThruRPG sub-site that's full of D&D content, both official and third-party. Some of it is free. Some of it might be good.
- Some companies produce accessories and other merch for D&D. These things can be nice to have, but aren't necessary for playing the game. Personally I like the spell cards, though they are a bit pricey.
- There are no full-content PDFs legally available.
Where You Can Play
- In-person with your friends is what most people want to do. The expected party size is one Dungeon Master with four Players. You can play with more or less players, and adjusting isn't really that hard. Really big groups can be hard to handle, but some DMs like them. If you want to (or have to) play as a duo of one player and one DM, go for it. It will be a different experience from "regular" D&D but it can be really fun.
- You can also play online if in-person sessions aren't going to work for you. Roll20 and Discord are the big players in that space, but really you just need a way to talk to each other and maybe share a screen if you want to use a map. There are lots of different ways to do that.
- Asynchronous online play can happen too, usually via PbP (Play-by-Post) games. We used to have a lot of those here in Critical Failures, but not so much anymore.
You Down With OPP?
- There are lots of Other People Playing, and you can watch or listen to many of them. Penny Arcade has Acquisitions Inc and the C Team. There are a bunch of others that you can find on Twitch or on your podcast app of choice.
D&D/d20 Discussion Thread | Bread Space | One Eldritch Summer | I Want to Save the World but I'm Just a Level 1 Skeleton
Denada on
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Why not? Let them have the map to Phandalin. The art of the map might immerse them into the game more, and there is no harm in letting them see the layout and asking about the town. It would even facilitate exploration.
"What's this building here? Number 4 on the map?"
"Well, let's go find out!"
gimme
gimme gimme
That's why I'm giving them the option.
1. Just go power mad. This is the boring option.
2. Talk to the DM about you wanting to get rid of the curse. I can think of a bunch of ways to turn that into its own engaging sidequest, with moral choices that would be Barovia-appropriate.
3. Get creative with what "power" means. Could mean the power of information, even a specific type, or the power of charisma. You might feel compelled to get as much sweet gear as possible to impress those around you.
Good luck!
Some general CoS spoilers.
Looking back over the logs on roll20 I had over 100 damage negated this session, and I don't really have a ton of support options so I'm feeling less and less helpful in combat. Everyone but me has magical damage either through cantrips, spells, or super awesome magic gear like the Sunsword.
I like my character's story and personality, but I get the feeling I'm not going to find a magical bow or something in Barovia, so going dex was a bad call. I managed to beg a few silvered bolts off a friendly NPC, but that will last all of one fight and then I'm back in the same boat.
Maybe it was just a bad night, but I'm starting to worry that literally everything past this point is going to require magic or silver to damage it effectively.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I haven't read or played the adventure before so maybe there is a bunch of dex gear out there and we're blindly walking past it!
Where do you run games because that sounds like the dopest premise.
Does this mean the whole campaign is on a shared clock as well, and as such how does actually being in front work... is there like group init to determine who's session is first?
I don't think it even tells you anywhere "you should change important magic weapons into types of weapons your players can use", you're running a campaign for your players and not a diablo 3 real money auction house after all
That staff in curse of strahd is another example, it doesn't tell you the item is cursed, so it doesn't tell you how players can remove the effect. By raw since it's not a curse, Dispel Magic would work, but you don't know what the spell level of the effect is - so again the DM has to wing it
I'm a big fan of some of the published modules but this kind of guidance really shouldn't be hard (so far running Tome of Annihilation it does a pretty good job with this though)
How does one justify having a giant fuck-off maul, the same maul that is just perfectly suited to the party's Goliath barbarian, just lying around in the treasure room of a tribe of pixies? What possible use would a hunk of metal that weighs more than their entire village be to them?
Option 1. Pixies worship the giant fuck-off maul as an idol
Option 2. You don't have to have giant fuck-off mauls lying around in the world for your goliath to find. I am a big fan of weird one-time magical effects flowing into the existing items the PCs are carrying around, with the end effect being "ok now your maul is +3 and has the flaming property" or whatever. Maybe the pixies did some sort of ritual enchantment as thanks for the party fighting off some trolls or whatever?
Obviously your gimmick party of 5 rogues finding 5 magical sets of studded leather and 5 magical shortbows in the dragon's horde is a bit ridiculous
Maybe the orc fighter has to wait until they fight an ogre to get a relevant new weapon while the elf ranger got a new bow first as the party travelled through Faewood earlier, but they’re all getting something fun when it makes sense.
your strengthpeople want platemail and greatswords or mauls and your rogues want shortbows and shortswords and your bards want instrument of the bards. That doesn't mean they have to get their christmas list
If your strength warrior gets a magical spear (although if they have the great weapon master feat for all that is merciful let them use it while two-handing the weapon) and chainmail, your rogue finds a hand crossbow and leather armor, and your bard gets a wand of fireballs - you still provided magical gear for your party!
context is important, if you're running Princes of the Apocalypse its less of a big deal but if you're doing curse of strahd and the paladin is smiting the universe with a sun blade and your wizard is screaming unlimited power while spraying down werewolves with cones of cold out of a Staff of Frost, your rogue standing there with a spear he can't really use will just feel bad
It's easily solved by either A: letting someone use a spear with their dex by two handing it after a few fights to practice with it, B: making the spear a different kind of weapon in the first place, or C: saying the spear's magic is tied to the blade not the shaft, so you can just break the top off and use it as a dagger
This is exactly the kind of bullshit hoop that a GM "had" to jump through, to deliver these expected magic items to the players in a timely fashion to avoid tears.
"You're absolutely right, Madam Goliath Barbarian. It doesn't make any sense that these pixies would be in possession of a gigantic magical maul, and so it disappears in a puff of logic and glittering smoke.
"Now, Mr Ranger, do you have any questions about the provenance of the magic long bow that the pixies also have in their possession?
"...I didn't think so.
I mean, they didn't have to - the inherent bonus system (and the boon system, to some extent) let you get away without tailoring loot to your party.
As did the fact that the books didn't try to tell DMs that players couldn't buy gear with the gold they found, which made it pretty straightforward to go "pixies had a thematically appropriate doodad that was worth money, and there's a guy in town selling magic shit who has a cool maul for sale" if you didn't want to have them find an item directly.
4e told DMs to tailor loot to their party, explained that it was necessary because the game mechanics expected certain numbers from the characters, and gave them advice for how to do so, then also gave them rules for several systems that they could use instead if they didn't want to tailor loot.
5e tells the DMs they don't have to tailor loot, gives them no particular systems for doing so if they want to, and insists that everything is up to the DM's largely uninformed, unguided discretion - and then also expects the party to get a certain amount of loot as they level just like 4e did, but obfuscates that fact so that it's difficult to account for if you don't dissect the game's math in order to preserve players' immersion or whatever.
One of these scenarios involves a lot more bullshit hoops than the other.
An enchanted weapon is finely made, beautifully shaped and engraved, and does something neat that you need to make use of, not a +1 to X.
Edit:
I’ve straight up said to the players of the campaign I’ve just started if they want more damage to spend their gold on mercenaries.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
This doesn't even mean you need to give them a magic weapon, letting your party's wizard enchant their stabstick to be considered magical damage by grinding up a diamond and spending a night on it is another option
i plan to allow my group to buy magic items, and find them, and even make them (or have them made) and every one of them will obviously be customized and have a story
if they had said "magic items are all somewhat unique and have a background" it would have made everyone a lot happier
Agreed, but in 4e the inherent bonuses and boons did not come about until later on the product cycle (low magic Dark Sun campaign, iirc). Early on, 4e told DM's to ask players for a wish list, and then the expectation was where for those lists to be filled.
Original, Basic and early 1st ed D&D didn't need such tailored loot because they hadn't yet gone too far down the road of using specialization to try and compensate for the problem of magic users becoming so much more powerful than fighters.
If your character can use any weapon with equal ability then it's fine if you find a magic Fauchard-Fork when you had been using a Guisarme-Voulge.
True, but it was only two years into 4e before inherent bonuses showed up in a published book - we're four years into 5e, with less clear support and guidance for either playstyle.
This is important too, I think. Part of the impetus for 5e's 'players can't buy magic items unless you say they can' silliness is that they want an out for when some item they print inevitably becomes problematic. Their intended out is to say 'well, as DM, you have control over which items exist in your world, so if you think that one's bad, just don't put it in'.
Which is broadly fine, but there's a huge difference between 'items are unavailable except for the specific ones you allow' and 'items are available except for the specific ones you don't allow', and the latter does both a better job of solving that particular problem and a better job of matching both player expectations and the apparent expectations of the system.
My suspicion is that the reason they chose the former is the same as the reason they keep saying 'the system doesn't expect you to get magic gear' when it's patently not true: "gear treadmill" was a complaint people made pretty loudly about 4e, so they wanted to be able to promise that 5e totally solves that problem with its radical new math system where the math doesn't expect you to get magic gear at all! The problem being, you can't actually actually solve that problem without undermining some other pretty fundamental assumptions about what DnD is, because as a designer you know perfectly well that most campaigns - including the ones you are going to publish yourself - are going to involve giving everyone some amount of magic gear, because that's what people do in DnD. And if you know that everyone is going to have magic gear, and you know that magic gear is going to make characters stronger than they'd be without it, and you don't balance around those facts, you're going to continually undershoot the difficulty rating of your stuff. So you incorporate the assumption of magic gear into your difficulty math because you kind of have to for your difficulty estimates to be readable to other people, and now you're immediately back at 'wah gear treadmill'.
So what do you do? The answer for 5e seems to be flatten the math so that the differences don't become as apparent as quickly and the gap between a basic magic item and a top-end one is smaller (hence, 5e items go from +1 to +3 instead of +1 to +5 or more like in previous editions). But that just shrinks the problem instead of solving it, and you need to be able to market your new edition as having solved this problem so...you just say you have, safe in the knowledge that most people aren't going to check your math. That creates a bunch of other problems - your system is less readable to a new DM, you end up giving bad guidance on things in order to stick with your marketing message, you have to obfuscate some of your mechanics (which makes them harder to understand and use), you create differing expectations about what a 'normal' game looks like, eventually some people are going to check your math and realize you were bullshitting, and so on - but those problems take a while to manifest, and what're your customers really gonna do once they start to notice them? Argue about it on the internet?
I always liked the idea that basic, magically enhanced items aren't so terribly uncommon that it's well within the narrative for a group of adventurers to have several. Whether they're actually magic items or just made through magical means or whatever.
Actual, powered items? Yeah I like there to be a story to them.
Give them a name. Give them a history? Maybe the player can write something up.
Either way, make them feel like treasure.
Yeah, okay, I'll be That Guy: pixies canonically glamer things so they're wieldable by pixies, whoever originally crafted them. The pixie queen drops the tiny stone stick in the barbarian's cupped hands and it BWOMPs back to original size in a comically N64-era feat of polygon scaling. Huh. Looks like fomorian make. Good job, pixies!
I love the image of a pixie trying to reward a Goliath Barbarian with a pixie weapon, and the Goliath patiently and politely trying to explain that even the mightiest of pixie weapons would be barely more than a toothpick in their hands.
Finally acquiescing to the insistent pixie, the G puts out a hand and is dragged to their knees as the pixie sized maul returns to it's full size and weight.
After so many hours of 5E, what's your opinion of it vs 4E? Would you rather be running 10 games of one vs the other, or is it all kind of a wash with enough experience?