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[DnD 5E Discussion] This is the way 5E ends. Not with a bang but a gnome mindflayer.
Denada
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Registered User regular
Since the dawn of history, Dungeons and Dragons has been serving up hot treats of adventure to hungry folks like you and me. That all sucked though, because it wasn't Fifth Edition, the currently-availablest edition of what a certain marketing department tells me is the World's Greatest Roleplaying Game.
At almost 8 years into 5E's life, we're a little overdue for seeing this edition's version of Player's Option, Tome of Battle, or Essentials. Come and speculate with us on 5E's Swan Song, and why it will be absolutely awful and none of the great ideas from it will be carried over and refined in the inevitable 6E that is probably only a year or two away.
Oh and here's some useful information I guess:
What You can Get for Free
- 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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Dark Sun is the gift that keeps on giving Gary.
I'm going to be finishing the tomb of annihilation with my players after christmas
Golems made up of adventurer waste seems right up Acererak's alley, waste not want not
Sure why not poop golems
every time I see it I literally can't fathom how people get that much shit done unless the encounters are really small or everyone else plays combat like sonic the hedgehog on meth
if you don't, what do you do at your table instead? how long are your sessions, and how long do your combat encounters typically take?
Example: The party is infiltrating the estate of lord ambrose, having discovered his "Daughter" is actually a kidnapped harpy he frankensteined together. From the moment the players step in the estate and subdue the first guard-that-was-actually-an-evil-fey, the "Adventure day" has begun, I had 1 deadly, 4 medium, and 1 hard encounter in the place along with two incredibly lethal traps and a hallway skill challenge
Nothing stopped them from long resting except the fact that, well, doing so would be really bad. The guy has insane resources, if they don't get to him within an hour or so of breaching the estate, he'll either leave or realize what's up and call down an infinite pile of soldiers
I also don't make people do anything to short rest, they just do as soon as a battle is over, it costs 1/3 of their hit dice
I just ran that dungeon 2 weeks ago and it seemed to work out, I'm still trying to find my flow (we just roleplay out overworld encounters and the like, since everyone has all their resources at their disposal and they don't run into adult dragons with minions randomly)
also, i'm finding myself making a LOT of custom magic items/porting stuff over from earlier editions because a lot of "stock" magic items are really poopy and bland
I don't. It's basically never worked well, and becomes amazingly hard to do once players get the ability to control pacing (rapid movement spells, especially).
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Been running a consistent world/story for about 5 years now. The session will be between 3 and 4 hours. We can get anywhere between 4 to 5 encounters in that time 2 to 3 being combat with at least 1 or 2 skill challenges that often still provoke resource expenditures.
For days going with the full compliment of 6 to 8 encounters we have character record sheets. Mark down all your resource usage and keep it consistent between sessions on that character.
If we don't finish a day, because it's a long hard day the party is going to remember, and there's still more encounters in the day but we can't keep the session going (cause we're getting past 10:30pm by too far)... keep everything marked down and we can keep the day going next session.
Total backup plan, so long as the last session for that character was within the last 2 or 3 years I probably remember all of it so I can probably remind you where your character is at. I've tried to get my players to lean on this less cause me being a freak shouldn't be something they depend on for good player practices.
I honestly don't understand how anyone even plays the game trying not to carry resource usage between sessions. Trying to exhaust a character past 5th level in a single session just isn't gonna happen unless you're essentially just doing a double session that's like 7 or 8 hours long.
Like one of my last side quests I ran for the current main characters was a 2 session affair technically 9 encounters total: combat, trap, combat, trap, combat, light social encounter, combat where killing the enemy is discouraged, social encounter, final bosses fight. In game time frame? Half hour to an hour at best. Actual play time: 7+ hours across 2 sessions. It was literally the party assaulting a mind flayer installation on the feywild along side some gith they'd just met in a breech and clear militaristic way.
Not every day is like that for the adventurers, but on the days it is like that I just let it take as many sessions as necessary.
I've found myself going back to 4E a lot lately for magic items. The magic items in 5E just don't do it for me. With the amount of house-ruling I've done those 4E items fit in with almost no modification.
Regarding encounters, I usually run one per session. Sometimes two if we don't chat for very long and get right to business. An "encounter day" typically only has 1-3, maybe 4 encounters if they forget to rest. But generally I like them to be at full strength because it's a nice known quantity to plan for and gives me more to work with.
In general though i aim for 4 encounters. Medium, hard, (rest) medium, hard or 5 encounters for a capatone fight. medium, medium, hard (rest) medium, deadly
the DM is delighted that I did that and has assured me there will be no repercussions and everything will be fine
My prediction, by end of next session:
that's how i've compensated
i don't think i've made an encounter less than Very Deadly
7 players with overpowered stat arrays and dope custom magic items will do that
(not complaining at all, i enjoy it)
Just to be clear, that 6-8 encounters per day expectation is per adventuring day (ie, 6-8 encounters between long rests), not necessarily per session.
My current game's sessions tend to run pretty long (5-8 hours) because my current group basically all want to be playing DnD at all times so once we start we end up playing until some real-life obligation forces someone to leave the table against their will.
Encounters per adventuring day ends up being nowhere near that 6-8 expectation; it's a nautical campaign with a fair amount of in-town intrigue, which means I pretty regularly end up saying things like 'okay, you get in the ship and sail four days to [other city]' or 'okay, you stake out this building in town and a week passes', so it becomes very hard to chain combat encounters together without a rest (or several) between them outside of explicit dungeon environments. (Obviously they occasionally have 'random' encounters at sea and so forth, but you can't exactly have their ship get attacked by pirates every four hours for several days without a pretty substantial story explanation).
As a result, it's pretty common for a combat encounter to be the only encounter of the day. As a result of that, they're often tuned to be threatening even to a fully-rested party with full spell slots and sometimes consist, essentially, of several combats strung together in waves. As a result of that they take a staggeringly long time - it's not uncommon for a combat to take 3+ hours and one or two of the bigger set-piece ones have pushed 4 or 5. They also frequently stretch to 10+ rounds, a length that is basically unheard-of in 5e and definitely not the system expectation (and is notable mostly because it means we sometimes have to actually track the duration of minute-long combat buffs, which is an annoying piece of bookkeeping I suspect most groups get to ignore).
On the bright side, for all its problems that structure also gives me a lot of room to make memorable, exciting, and arguably over-complicated combat encounters; the last 'big' fight involved the party rallying a pirate fleet to engage a Zhentarim fleet in naval combat as part of an assault on a cliffside Zhentarim fortress, while the party snuck over the walls by land and fought their way through a compound full of mooks in order to engage the cadre of archmages who were essentially providing artillery support to Team Bad Guy in the naval battle below, punctuated by the sudden appearance of a kraken controlled by a third party and the interference of a rival adventuring party who showed up to try and assassinate a particular party member amid the chaos as revenge for killing one of their own number in a previous fight.
I mean we gotta eventually get to those shit golems, and I'd rather it's not a year from now. I don't wanna keep thinking about having shit golems up my sleeves to put up as a throw away session out of nowhere.
We've all got discord on our phones.
We live in dread of hearing that little "Ding" sound, letting us know our DM has requested a perception check.
There are no excuses. There is no escape. There is just the campaign.
"I've got a job interview in the morning dude.
"Roll initiative
"I just got home from the bar, I need sleep.
"Give me an arcana check.
"Dude, it's 3am on my honeymoon
"Roll perception
"Seriously, my wife's going to leave me.
"Roll initiative
"She's taking the kids.
"Initiative. Roll. With disadvantage.
"She's leaving me for my lawyer...
Episode 8 Recap: Dragon Hunt
Once upon a time there was a dinosaur. He was an ankylosaurus. That means he had a big bony hat and a big bony back and a big bony tail and he loved to eat ferns. He grew up in a pen in Port Nyanzaru with lots of dinosaur friends, of all shapes and sizes and colors. His mama loved him very much, until one day she was sold to a trader. She honked a sad goodbye.
But this little dinosaur was not like the other ankylosauruses. He was not a slow, contented pack animal who wanted to eat ferns and lie in the sun and carry a load of spices from the bazaar to the market. No! He was a mean, fighting dinosaur! He wanted to be like his friend the allosaurus and smash things! So he grew very big and strong, and very angry.
One day, a man in a big hat came to the dinosaur pens. He did not want a fast, brightly painted racing dinosaur. He did not want a calm, happy riding dinosaur. No! He wanted the meanest, toughest plant-eater in all of Port Nyanzaru. It was love at first sight! He named his new pet dinosaur Teidi Junior. It was a good name.
Teidi Junior and his new papa went on many adventures together with their friends. Deep, deep into the jungle they went, and every day was full of new excitement. There were always new things to smash! He smashed a goblin who was trying to steal Teidi's boat. He smashed a zombie T-Rex who tried to eat Teidi. He smashed the pterafolk who tried to claw Teidi. He smashed the hag who tried to stab Teidi. Junior was very good at smashing, and it made him very happy. He was so happy that he let Asher jump on his back and shoot arrows and pet him. And one time he let Chaucerous feed him delicious ferns instead of goodberries, because Chaucerous smelled nice.
Before long, it was time for Junior's greatest challenge. He had to rest up at the dinosaur pens for a few days to recover his strength, so Teidi said a fond goodbye and promised him lots of ferns. Soon, Teidi's friend Transon came to bring him back. He wore a funny hat (but not Teidi's hat - Junior made sure to check!) and it made them travel very fast back to Teidi. They were on a flying ship! The ground was very far below them and an ordinary dinosaur would be very scared. But Teidi Junior was no ordinary dinosaur. He knew that Teidi had a plan, and he wasn't scared at all. Until he saw... A DRAGON!
The dragon was flying, just like the ship. Teidi had crossbows, and Transon had spells, and Asher had arrows, and Chaucerous could be very scary, but Teidi Junior had no way to fight a dragon. What could he do? It was time for Teidi's plan. The captain of the ship played a strange and beautiful song, and Teidi Junior floated up into the air. He was flying! He could zoom through the air very fast and smash flying creatures. It was like a dream come true! He would need all his new speed and courage to face the dragon.
Teidi Junior knew what he had to do. He lowered himself to the ground and let Teidi and Hew climb on top, then he rushed straight at the dragon. The battle was on! She breathed fire, she beat her wings, she lashed her tail, but nothing could stop Teidi and his friends. When the ship captain was burnt to a crisp, Teidi Junior stopped flying and started floating gently to the earth. Goodbye, dragon! He looked out at the jungle below. It was such a beautiful green. This was the best day of his life.
In just a few minutes, the airship landed. It was on fire, but only a little bit on fire, and all of his friends were okay. Teidi gathered up an armful of red dragon scales, and Chaucerous played beautiful music. A tiny gnome introduced himself with a bow as Gnome Chomsky. He didn't look like he could smash anything, but Junior knew by now that small humans always had magic powers. (Even Asher could jump really high, and she didn't even have a magic wand.) He settled down to sleep, eagerly awaiting his next adventure.
Good night, Teidi Junior!
This is similar to how I do it. I find that my core group of players routinely outperform the CR "norms" so I tend to bump up every encounter (published modules notwithstanding) and make them all pretty hard.
Maybe two or three encounters to lead up to the set piece to establish that, yes indeed this whole dungeon is full of things that want to kill you. Show, don't tell. And then comes the big deal encounter.
Edit: But to reiterate, not all encounters need to be time consuming combat encounters.
I gave Chief Guh a rolling attack and if anyone failed their dex save by 5 or more, she also managed to scoop them up and swallow them (barely chewing so not too much damage) while rolling over them. She could roll 15 feet as a legendary action, it was a blast (Chief Guh had a goblin living inside her stomach on half of a rowboat, surviving on things that fell in he could eat. He's seen some shit. The party put a blanket on the goblin and took him home)
MToF has a lot of really good monsters in it that show how they've realized some of the shortcomings of vanilla monsters, lots of really fun abilities
Ravnica is similar, thankfully.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Damn I'm old
e: Also the more I think about it, the more I like how 13th age does feats. They're just little bonuses you get that slightly enhance something you already have. It allows similar builds to be ever so slightly focused in different ways.
Also, I think I like the 5th's class system where you have multiple builds for the same class. The problem is that I find it to be a little too generic. Like, it's good for spellcasters, where the sub-builds are different schools or pacts or what-not. But with the martial classes, I don't feel like it works as well, and I'd like to see something closer to what 13th Age ended up doing for the Druid (I'd like to see this for all classes, frankly).
*deep, guttural groan*
According to Tomb of Annihilation, a human that becomes a yuan-ti pureblood also gains a form of indefinite madness. This requires at least Greater Restoration to cure. Greater Restoration is a 5th-level Bard, Cleric, and Druid spell, which are classes that aren't particularly linked to the yuan-ti (warlocks seem most common).
I'm taking this to mean that nearly every yuan-ti has a form of indefinite madness.
Yeah, but they all keep rolling the "I've discovered I really like killing people" flaw.
It's uncanny
Having not read up on their ecology, can they not have naturally made kids that don't get the madness?
They can, but they generally only reproduce with others of their own caste because any offspring from a mixed-caste pairing will be of the lower caste.
The castes, from lowest to highest, are:
- Pureblood
- Malison
- Abomination (usually highest caste in a given collective)
- Anathema (rare, produced by special rituals)
But honestly, because of the disparity in how some classes recharge nearly all of their power on short rest versus some that need long rest versus some that don't need either other than for restoring HP/hit dice, none of it honestly matters. For the way most people play 5e, you just don't need to worry about it.
I tried very hard to play 5e with a very balanced combat mindset. All it really did was drive me to 13th Age for a nice long campaign. When I came back and we played 5e again, we had more fun with it by just treating it like it wants to be treated, like an OSR game with a bit more character customization. No expectation of balance, some days you fight 1 combat, some you fight a bunch.
The Strahd module does an interesting thing in this regard in that the entire map of Barovia is so small that you can't take long rests after every fight unless you wanted to just sit around for 12 hours waiting to be eligible to take another one. It only takes like an hour or three to get from nearly anywhere on the map to anywhere else.
Also sleep, if you haven't already, I recommend looking into "fatbergs" for your sewer campaign
Adiposatenous Cubes. Icky icky icky icky
this really resonates with me
when we have a combat it usually dominates a good chunk of the session, if not all of it, just due to the amount of people at the table and amount of monsters that have to be present to make combat challenging
also not using stock shit helps too. 4e really is a gold mine in terms of shit to use in 5e
need some spice? give a monster an aura! want a solo monster to last? fuck it, add a legendary resistance and some legendary actions! want a cinematic encounter with a fuckton of dudes that fall down like bowling pins? MINIONS BABY
and don't even get me started on how awesome lair actions can be, especially ones that alter terrain *fans sweat*
really though, y'all who get through combats in less than an hour, mad respekk
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981