I haven't purchased Baldurs Gate yet, but I did flip through it at the local big box book store in between trying to get my 7yo to buy a real book instead of another graphic novel (I'm not opposed to graphic novels in the slightest, but with all the Captain Underpants and Dog Mans and Plants vs. Zombies he already has.... let try something else, ya know?), I have come to the conclusion that I don't want to run my Dungeon Dads group through SKT anymore.
Soooo much Dogman. My son is 7 and is currently destroying the Notebook of Doom series, those might work for you.
I haven't purchased Baldurs Gate yet, but I did flip through it at the local big box book store in between trying to get my 7yo to buy a real book instead of another graphic novel (I'm not opposed to graphic novels in the slightest, but with all the Captain Underpants and Dog Mans and Plants vs. Zombies he already has.... let try something else, ya know?), I have come to the conclusion that I don't want to run my Dungeon Dads group through SKT anymore.
Soooo much Dogman. My son is 7 and is currently destroying the Notebook of Doom series, those might work for you.
I had Sansuri's castle fly up to introduce her as a villain, and have a conversation in giant (ignoring the players entirely) with zephyros, warning him to stay away, before breaking his navigation orb and causing the tower to start descending from the clouds
fighter's like
yeah I'm doing this
Party makes it to the ground, one of them says they hope fighter's okay, fighter's corpse falls out of the sky, the cleric walks over and casts revivify. Fighter insists if he had actually made it to the castle he would have showed her what for
I skipped Chapter 1 entirely as my group was coming right out of LMoP. We started in Triboar and currently the party is travelling east towards Everlund to meet up with the Harpers.
So far they have ZERO clue what the main quest of the stupid campaign is (aside from the OCC overview I gave them during session 0/shoulder session between Phandalin and Triboar so the players have buy-in) so the characters just think some Fire Giants are getting uppity looking for stuff with massive divining rods. I'm going to have to have the Harpers drop a lot of exposition on the characters.
Compared to comparatively similar sandbox of Chult in Tomb of Annihilation or the straight forward adventure in Lost Mines, SKT needs a lot of work by the DM to make it run smoothly.
I don't think any of the other sandboxes really compare, SKT has the entire northern sword coast in it. It's a huge endeavor to run because like, your party goes to waterdeep. Oh okay, cool, for one sidequest? The city of splendors? Let me dig out 37 supplements. Don't get me wrong, it's hugely rewarding but good god is it a lot of work for the DM
We did the start as per normal, I skipped the bandits and the orcs were giving a big speech before Zephyros just landed his tower on the warchief and recruited the players. They had his tower as fast travel just for triboar (now Silvercut Crossroads) and then Sansuri iced it.
I also moved it to Exandria because it didn't have enough DM heavy lifting already in it, apparently.
The way I've done it so far is that the quest gives from Triboar do their thing and whatever is on the road to wherever the party is going is what we hit. That way, they'd get quite the grand tour of this whole thing.
Ie: A very brief shopping trip and overnight stay in Yartar, the "random" Troll/Giant encounter in Calling Horns and they just finished up a Triboar originated quest in Noanar's Hold. All of this on the way to Everlund at the behest of another quest giver from Triboar.
Now, however, I'm going to rush things along so we get wrap this puppy up and start a new campaign far to the south.
Harpers do an info dump. Maybe let the PCs lead the way a little bit and then drop Harshnag on them right quick to move the story along.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
So after more than 3 years of running multiple DnD sessions and hundreds of hours of actual DnD, I am finally safe in saying that the most common thing I see is a level 1 fighter multi-class and just about anything else. Fighters and their multiclass are also, after three years, the least killed class in my entire store campaigns history. No other class has as few casualties as the Fighter and only the Barbarian is in the same ballpark in terms of surviving.
Meanwhile, if anyone is curious, I have killed over 50 rangers in 3 years. More ranger blood soaks the ground than all of the remaining character classes combined.
I thought someone would enjoy these pointless facts.
For me it was druids. I slaughtered druids like nothing else.
But fighters never die
I think it's the case that overwhelmingly new or less experienced players seem to be playing rangers. Also the original PHB ranger, whose pages are soaked firmly red at this point, is just a terrible class in general. Put a combination of those two factors together and it ends up with a lot of dead rangers. Druids are fairly safe once they manage to get wildshape going.
My Drow Battlemaster fighter feels, not invincible, but like he can absolutely tank this group of ten thugs while the rest of you go kill that mage over there. These jokers just have sharp things, that thing has magic and I can't Parry or Riposte any of that.
I have completely flipped the objectives from SKT. Everyone wants the ordening restored: the smallfolk civilizations for their stability, the giants so life makes sense again, the giant lords because they want to be on top of it
Right now though, the players have resolved to not restore the Ordening. It will cause a lot of pain in the short term, but slavery to a caste system is appalling and must be opposed. Small comfort to anyone who dies to an ambitious giant and is trying to make a name for themselves, but the party is concerned about doing what's right and doing what they can to stop bad actors.
I wholeheartedly support this. Theyve already knocked over Guh and put Moog in charge of the hill giants, and since they sovereign glued a headband of intellect on Moog and she spent a year reading up on things, she's got a plan to bring her wayward race into something compatible with the civilization they reside within. Starting with a Hill Giant city, which has more than a few people upset at the party (the very concept!), but these are the complications I like
So I see tons of people talk about PHB rangers being crap. What's the variant?
Hunters are ok, beast masters suck ass.
Their base 3rd level capstone doesn't do much (or rather is very DM dependent and even then isn't very interactive).
Melee? I thought being ranged w/sharpshooter would be more worth it, but I haven't done the math
If you want to sharpshoot I can recommend Fighter with the archetype Battlemaster.
Yeah but a ranger sharpshooting is still better than a melee one because building a strength ranger for GWM is so difficult
Zephyr Strike for advantage on sharpshooter shots, especially if you can end up with elven accuracy, is really good
Better archers are going to be Hexblade -> eldritch smite archers, and as you say battlemaster
I don't think Rangers get enough spell slots to make this really a good strategy versus Hunter's Mark. A one time 1d8+10 vs 1d6 is only 4 attacks before parity. Two rounds of combat for most levels of play.
One of the reasons melee rangers have an uphill battle is that the majority of their damage adders are concentration. This means you can't stack them and you're more likely to loose them due to being in melee and subject to more attacks.
The damage from hunter's mark is zero if you miss, if a target has only 15 AC and your ranger has +10 to hit, you only have a 55% chance to hit with sharpshooter. In a 3 round combat with 6 attacks, you're probably going to miss 3 of them, so 3d6 damage from hunters mark on average
With elven accuracy and zephyr strike you have a 91% chance to land that hit, raising your average damage output over 6 attacks (with 20 dex) from 69 to 82.5
Sure, hunters mark makes more sense if you're in a marathon, but in my experience, at least how I end up playing - rests are plentiful enough to spend 2 spell slots a battle easily - and hunters mark is going to be lost when using the powerhouse that is Lightning Arrow anyway (and this is discounting fights where the target has 18 or higher AC, in which case a Zephyr Strike/Sharpshooter/Elven Accuracy combo is truly potent, as you're not realistically going to be using sharpshooter on the target otherwise)
You might be forgetting the opportunity cost of 2 feats though. Elven Accuracy can of course raise dex 1 point so can be taken at level 4, but the other takes till level 8 and then you are forgoing the stat increase (a 5% increase in chance to hit, +1 damage and potentially a higher ac). Or waiting till level 12 and probably approaching the end of the campaign.
The lower the level character we're talking about, as long as you have sharpshooter, the better zephyr strike is - elven accuracy just makes it better but its by no means necessary
I'm not saying its clearly superior in every situation, but if you have sharpshooter it often is (it's also heavily dependent on how many encounters per rest you have, as it represents an up front damage investment for your spellslots)
The damage from hunter's mark is zero if you miss, if a target has only 15 AC and your ranger has +10 to hit, you only have a 55% chance to hit with sharpshooter. In a 3 round combat with 6 attacks, you're probably going to miss 3 of them, so 3d6 damage from hunters mark on average
With elven accuracy and zephyr strike you have a 91% chance to land that hit, raising your average damage output over 6 attacks (with 20 dex) from 69 to 82.5
Sure, hunters mark makes more sense if you're in a marathon, but in my experience, at least how I end up playing - rests are plentiful enough to spend 2 spell slots a battle easily - and hunters mark is going to be lost when using the powerhouse that is Lightning Arrow anyway (and this is discounting fights where the target has 18 or higher AC, in which case a Zephyr Strike/Sharpshooter/Elven Accuracy combo is truly potent, as you're not realistically going to be using sharpshooter on the target otherwise)
AC 15, +10 to hit. 2 attacks/round. Sharpshooter hits at +5 with advantage for 3 attacks and +5 without advantage for 3 attacks. Uses up 3 spells and 3 bonus actions. Expected damage is
2d8+15 * .0975 + 1d8+15 * .7 for 3 attacks(47.97) and
2d8+15 *.05 + 1d8+15 *.5 for 3 attacks (32.85)
== 80.82
AC 15, +5 to hit, +10 dmg, 2 attacks/round. +1d6 dmg/attack
2d8+2d6+15*.05 + 1d8+15+1d6*.5 == 78.3
So for 2 spells you got 4.2 damage.
Elven Advantage reduces damage as you will lose 2 dex over a similarly leveled character(unless you're level 16+).
Melee? I thought being ranged w/sharpshooter would be more worth it, but I haven't done the math
Sharpshooters are good too but fighters are more easily able to exploit it because of Action Surge. And because Hunter's Mark makes sharpshooter potentially negative damage unless you have advantage. And because fighters have easier ways to increase their attack if they roll low as a battlemaster.
The main reason you want to be melee as a ranger is because they can generate a lot of extra attacks and you want a big melee weapon in order to make the most of those. And because big melee weapons don't eat your bonus action so you're more free to throw your mark around.
Plus they're d10 HD with a bunch of good melee defensive abilities and you want to make use of that as well.
I tread lightly here since I don’t want to get a reputation for trying to curate thread titles, but “I fire my longbow at the two blue dragons in the distance” would be a pretty good thread title.
My encounter with Strahd ended up with my level 10 wild sorcerer soloing him and his minions while the rest of my party was transported into other monster filled rooms. There was some crazy lucky rolls all around on my part, the first turn started with a nearly max damage fireball that surged into another fireball, quickened into a level 5 shadow blade green flame crit for over 70 damage. Which was repeated with another crit when Strahd moved back as a reaction. Misses all around on their turn and I got another fireball into a fireball surge. (I had fire resist ring at the time plus good saving throws so I wasn't taking much from all this point blank craziness) and it just kinda continued from there with rngjesus just showering me with love.
The damage from hunter's mark is zero if you miss, if a target has only 15 AC and your ranger has +10 to hit, you only have a 55% chance to hit with sharpshooter. In a 3 round combat with 6 attacks, you're probably going to miss 3 of them, so 3d6 damage from hunters mark on average
With elven accuracy and zephyr strike you have a 91% chance to land that hit, raising your average damage output over 6 attacks (with 20 dex) from 69 to 82.5
Sure, hunters mark makes more sense if you're in a marathon, but in my experience, at least how I end up playing - rests are plentiful enough to spend 2 spell slots a battle easily - and hunters mark is going to be lost when using the powerhouse that is Lightning Arrow anyway (and this is discounting fights where the target has 18 or higher AC, in which case a Zephyr Strike/Sharpshooter/Elven Accuracy combo is truly potent, as you're not realistically going to be using sharpshooter on the target otherwise)
Just something I like to play around with. There's not a lot of optimizing choices in 5e, they mostly revolve around the same feats and spell choices so it can be kind of easy to compare new lines of thought to the old standbys. That said, what override does works great for their experience and table. Sure they use a couple extra spells in a day, but if the rests are coming it's no great loss. And as long as they contribute to the group in some way and are enjoying it that's fine. The game can be run pretty fast and loose depending on the GM and as long as the player isn't trying to tank it (say, not increasing their main stats, or extremely poor spell choices) things will generally work out.
What zephyr strike is really good for is ranger/rogue MC.
5 levels of ranger is -3d6 sneak plus an extra attack. Extra attack is a d8+5 for -10.5 dmg of sneak and +9.5 dmg extra attack. You get uncanny dodge and evasion faster than you would get either as a pure ranger. And you get bonus action hide faster than you would as a pure ranger and...
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Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
edited October 2019
I feel like in 5e they limited certain options for reasons I don't really understand, even though you can fudge and homebrew stuff the lack of official support is a bit odd
for example, why did they change things such that you can't really have a drake (among other choices) as an animal companion anymore?
Or become one as a Druid. The difference between a "beast" and many "non-beast" animals seems entirely arbitrary, statistically speaking, when it comes to things like shapeshifting or animal companions
Edit2: Overall I think my general impression with 5e, looking at character options and build options and just what there is available is that, the official content, even including UA, feels sort of sparse, and feels all the more so for the number of ways they seem to try and limit player options and choices in favor of an interpretation favored by their own view of how you should be playing/their standard setting.
Most of my problems with 5e aren't with the balance or structure of the game itself, but with the amount and presentation of a lot of the content, I guess.
Lord_Asmodeus on
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
In general it feels like 5E plays it overly safe out of fear of breaking something, to the point that it makes a lot of it bland and uninteresting. Like the OG Beastmaster Ranger, where whomever designed it was so paranoid about having the pet be overpowered that they made it completely worthless. Or player monster races with terrible statlines and/or racial penalties. The paranoia about making flight available to low level players. A feats list that can fit on a handful of pages shared by everyone, so even rolling a new character doesn't give you anything new to pick from. Etc.
My biggest complaint is that leveling up, the event that should be one of the most exciting parts, is often a disappointed "...oh, that's all I get?". If it were up to me, odd levels would be incremental improvements and even levels would either be new tools or significant improvements on your existing ones. Every even level should feel like you're getting away with something, like you're breaking the game open with your newfound skills. There's only 10 even levels, how bloody hard is it to think of something exciting for each of them?
In general it feels like 5E plays it overly safe out of fear of breaking something, to the point that it makes a lot of it bland and uninteresting. Like the OG Beastmaster Ranger, where whomever designed it was so paranoid about having the pet be overpowered that they made it completely worthless. Or player monster races with terrible statlines and/or racial penalties. The paranoia about making flight available to low level players. A feats list that can fit on a handful of pages shared by everyone, so even rolling a new character doesn't give you anything new to pick from. Etc.
My biggest complaint is that leveling up, the event that should be one of the most exciting parts, is often a disappointed "...oh, that's all I get?". If it were up to me, odd levels would be incremental improvements and even levels would either be new tools or significant improvements on your existing ones. Every even level should feel like you're getting away with something, like you're breaking the game open with your newfound skills. There's only 10 even levels, how bloody hard is it to think of something exciting for each of them?
But then you have the problem of making the game inaccessible to the masses.
Because now you're having to look at every level to determine how to properly multiclass.
The problem with the beastmaster imo is that your animal can die.
Either you make the animal crap, in which case you ask yourself "well why did I pick this subclass?!" or you make it a murder machine in which case you ask yourself "oh god, Socks died! WHAT DO I DO NOW!?".
Current campaign, episode 1 higher than the last one.
Recap: There are four of us (bard, eldritch knight, monk (me) and sorceress), we are each cursed/blessed (it has its advantages but also disadvantages) and each of us are reacting to it in a different way. Evil Half-Orc Bard is trying to gain power from his condition, Good Human Fighter has accepted the curse and tries to live with both its advantages and disadvantages, Good Dwarven Monk tries to keep the curse/blessing under control with discipline and willpower and Good Aasimar (but thinks or pretends she's Half-Elven) Sorceress is in complete denial.
We have arrived in a town on our way to the largest city on the continent. Town has a Knight Order that does not like our kind of people, but is not actively locking us up or worse. Also Warforged are walking around, but they seem to be seen as automatons that are owned by rich people.
So the DM had planned a dungeon for us. Instead we spent more than half the session on our beer competition:
My monk is a brew-master and had challenged a local brewer to a duel. DM decided the duel would be in 2 days. Real beer takes 4-8 weeks, so my solution: Dire Yeast! (Backstory: Dwarfs dig a hole, bait a gelatinous cube into the hole, give it a yeast infection. Couple of days later: Dire Yeast! The DM rolled with it.) So the hunt for ingredients was on: already had holy water and some magic carrots, bought some weird yellow yeast and green yogurt (marked white milk). It all went in the beer. We rolled a d4+d10 to get the alcohol content, so I created some 38% beer. We named it The Dwarven Hammer. Also sorceress knitted a tiny hat for one of the pet mimics.
We also found out that some aspiring knights were missing. The knights were not allowed to help them as they were on a sort of entrance exam and were not allowed to give any assistance. But the knight admitted that if we just happen to find them and helped them, that that would be ok, so we promised the parents to help them. (Monk and Sorceress really wanted to help them right away, but we could only leave the city at night, so first the competition!).
The beer was very good and we nearly won, but the other beer was the best we ever tasted... something fishy was going on. Eldritch Knight detected magic and discovered that the Warforged Bard that was playing at the bar was casting some spell. Our bard was already have a rivalry with the warforged bard (his performance rolled a 2, the warforged bard rolled a 17 and for a "soulless automaton", it was very good at passive aggressive remarks towards our bard) so he tried to sabotage him.
Long story short: bar fight! Sorceress just had some beer for the first, so was drunk for the fight (I mostly used the assist action to keep her hair out of her face when she was throwing up). Eldritch Knight was drunk (but as he has CON18, it was quickly decided that he's the annoying kind of drunk that will be fully energized at 6 AM next morning and has no hangovers). Bard and the warforged-owner (a wizard) were having a fist fight on the floor with both having low str and no real fighting skills, was more of a slap-fight. Monk was not bothered through out the fight (nobody was foolish enough to try anything after she caught the first bottle thrown at her and threw it back.) and really wanted a fair competition so I just separated the bard and the owner (grabbing both of them by the ears), while the sorceress cast sleep on the rest.
Fight over: duel was considered a tie and we sold the beer. With our usual negotiator (the sorceress, CHA20) being miserable and sick in a corner, the bard negotiated for it, but we only got 70 Gold (OOC: we could have gotten a lot more, but he folded to quickly).
That evening we left to find the missing students. Sorceress had disadvantage on all roles due to being very, very hungover. We found the place where the students were being tested and were welcomed by a warforged cleric, who was assigned to assist students during the trial and we entered the dungeon.
Rivalry score:
Sorceress: Rivalry with a lifeless statue.
Eldritch Knight: Rivalry with an archmage's butler.
Bard: Rivalry with a Warforged bard and/or its owner.
My monk has no rivalry yet, but every conversation with a warforge so far, has started with the line "So how much are they paying you for the job you are doing?" And now meeting a warforged cleric, the first question will probably be "Does this unit have a soul?". The warforge revolution will be nigh. Some other party members are concerned by this. I'm not.
The problem of the ranger and druid et al is less that 5e was afraid of breaking things and more that individual classes and subclasses were designed by different people with no cross input.
The more famous example of this is the elemental monk. Which gets minor spells until very late level while the other monks are all “make 4 con saves or die”. And then of course there was clearly no editing over the whole to address those issues.
The ranger has similar issues. Whomever designed it... just didint make it interesting compared to a rogue or fighter. Especially now that rogues and fighters get spells.
Wild shape limitations are because druids are “natural”. Drakes arent so youre excluded.
The damage from hunter's mark is zero if you miss, if a target has only 15 AC and your ranger has +10 to hit, you only have a 55% chance to hit with sharpshooter. In a 3 round combat with 6 attacks, you're probably going to miss 3 of them, so 3d6 damage from hunters mark on average
With elven accuracy and zephyr strike you have a 91% chance to land that hit, raising your average damage output over 6 attacks (with 20 dex) from 69 to 82.5
Sure, hunters mark makes more sense if you're in a marathon, but in my experience, at least how I end up playing - rests are plentiful enough to spend 2 spell slots a battle easily - and hunters mark is going to be lost when using the powerhouse that is Lightning Arrow anyway (and this is discounting fights where the target has 18 or higher AC, in which case a Zephyr Strike/Sharpshooter/Elven Accuracy combo is truly potent, as you're not realistically going to be using sharpshooter on the target otherwise)
AC 15, +10 to hit. 2 attacks/round. Sharpshooter hits at +5 with advantage for 3 attacks and +5 without advantage for 3 attacks. Uses up 3 spells and 3 bonus actions. Expected damage is
2d8+15 * .0975 + 1d8+15 * .7 for 3 attacks(47.97) and
2d8+15 *.05 + 1d8+15 *.5 for 3 attacks (32.85)
== 80.82
AC 15, +5 to hit, +10 dmg, 2 attacks/round. +1d6 dmg/attack
2d8+2d6+15*.05 + 1d8+15+1d6*.5 == 78.3
So for 2 spells you got 4.2 damage.
Elven Advantage reduces damage as you will lose 2 dex over a similarly leveled character(unless you're level 16+).
Melee? I thought being ranged w/sharpshooter would be more worth it, but I haven't done the math
Sharpshooters are good too but fighters are more easily able to exploit it because of Action Surge. And because Hunter's Mark makes sharpshooter potentially negative damage unless you have advantage. And because fighters have easier ways to increase their attack if they roll low as a battlemaster.
The main reason you want to be melee as a ranger is because they can generate a lot of extra attacks and you want a big melee weapon in order to make the most of those. And because big melee weapons don't eat your bonus action so you're more free to throw your mark around.
Plus they're d10 HD with a bunch of good melee defensive abilities and you want to make use of that as well.
Assuming 3 rounds, I'm getting the following (WITHOUT elven accuracy, this is just regular advantage)
(4.5 (BOW) + 15) = 19.5 * .55 + (.05*4.5) = 10.95
3 SS attacks = 32.85
Total 6 attacks with ZS: 91.65
Hunters mark I'm getting:
(4.5 (Bow) + 3.5 (HM) + 15) 23 * .55 + (.05*8) = 13.05
Total 6 attacks with HM: 78.5
I'm not sure what the 1d8*.7 was coming from in your example. It's pretty obvious the difference in this case isn't huge, but I personally hate wasted turns, higher AC targets exist (rapidly swinging the favorability rating of ZS upward), things like breaking enemy concentration exist, etc.
The numbers are one thing but wasting 3 of your 6 attacks in battle is not the same thing as simming out an infinite number of attacks in a spreadsheet - and again, this comes down to the table. If you're like most tables and get a Long Rest every 2-3 battles, it's .... probably better to ZS every shot, or HoT at 2nd level, or lightning arrow in most cases. If your DM follows the DMG though, nothing can touch HM (and at lower levels, below 9 ish? I always found myself relying on HM as my healing was actually important to the group, at higher levels I had to actively blow spell slots for damage to use them all and HM was just a waste as it doesn't scale up)
I will admit a big part of this is my personal taste, it feels reaaaal bad to waste a turn, spamming Zephyr's Strike makes that less likely
The problem of the ranger and druid et al is less that 5e was afraid of breaking things and more that individual classes and subclasses were designed by different people with no cross input.
The more famous example of this is the elemental monk. Which gets minor spells until very late level while the other monks are all “make 4 con saves or die”. And then of course there was clearly no editing over the whole to address those issues.
The ranger has similar issues. Whomever designed it... just didint make it interesting compared to a rogue or fighter. Especially now that rogues and fighters get spells.
Wild shape limitations are because druids are “natural”. Drakes arent so youre excluded.
Right. Arbitrary and stupid. I also sort of get the feeling a lot of D&D content authors, mechanic or lore wise, have no idea what nature is. And I don't just mean in the real world. Like I get the feeling if you asked them to describe what was "natural" and what wasn't, in their setting, they wouldn't have any good answer they've thought about at all.
Like, similar to the druid wildshade question, why can beastmaster rangers only get "beasts", and why do they have to be 1/4th of a CR, and why does that never change.
Lord_Asmodeus on
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
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Soooo much Dogman. My son is 7 and is currently destroying the Notebook of Doom series, those might work for you.
Comics, Games, Booze
I mean, they're fighters.
The class isn't exactly brimming with alternatives or options.
Yup. My kid is already there too!
I had Sansuri's castle fly up to introduce her as a villain, and have a conversation in giant (ignoring the players entirely) with zephyros, warning him to stay away, before breaking his navigation orb and causing the tower to start descending from the clouds
fighter's like
yeah I'm doing this
Party makes it to the ground, one of them says they hope fighter's okay, fighter's corpse falls out of the sky, the cleric walks over and casts revivify. Fighter insists if he had actually made it to the castle he would have showed her what for
So far they have ZERO clue what the main quest of the stupid campaign is (aside from the OCC overview I gave them during session 0/shoulder session between Phandalin and Triboar so the players have buy-in) so the characters just think some Fire Giants are getting uppity looking for stuff with massive divining rods. I'm going to have to have the Harpers drop a lot of exposition on the characters.
Compared to comparatively similar sandbox of Chult in Tomb of Annihilation or the straight forward adventure in Lost Mines, SKT needs a lot of work by the DM to make it run smoothly.
We did the start as per normal, I skipped the bandits and the orcs were giving a big speech before Zephyros just landed his tower on the warchief and recruited the players. They had his tower as fast travel just for triboar (now Silvercut Crossroads) and then Sansuri iced it.
I also moved it to Exandria because it didn't have enough DM heavy lifting already in it, apparently.
Ie: A very brief shopping trip and overnight stay in Yartar, the "random" Troll/Giant encounter in Calling Horns and they just finished up a Triboar originated quest in Noanar's Hold. All of this on the way to Everlund at the behest of another quest giver from Triboar.
Now, however, I'm going to rush things along so we get wrap this puppy up and start a new campaign far to the south.
Harpers do an info dump. Maybe let the PCs lead the way a little bit and then drop Harshnag on them right quick to move the story along.
I think it's the case that overwhelmingly new or less experienced players seem to be playing rangers. Also the original PHB ranger, whose pages are soaked firmly red at this point, is just a terrible class in general. Put a combination of those two factors together and it ends up with a lot of dead rangers. Druids are fairly safe once they manage to get wildshape going.
Right now though, the players have resolved to not restore the Ordening. It will cause a lot of pain in the short term, but slavery to a caste system is appalling and must be opposed. Small comfort to anyone who dies to an ambitious giant and is trying to make a name for themselves, but the party is concerned about doing what's right and doing what they can to stop bad actors.
I wholeheartedly support this. Theyve already knocked over Guh and put Moog in charge of the hill giants, and since they sovereign glued a headband of intellect on Moog and she spent a year reading up on things, she's got a plan to bring her wayward race into something compatible with the civilization they reside within. Starting with a Hill Giant city, which has more than a few people upset at the party (the very concept!), but these are the complications I like
Hunters are ok, beast masters suck ass.
Their base 3rd level capstone doesn't do much (or rather is very DM dependent and even then isn't very interactive).
The revised ranger is a bit too good.
If you want to sharpshoot I can recommend Fighter with the archetype Battlemaster.
Yeah but a ranger sharpshooting is still better than a melee one because building a strength ranger for GWM is so difficult
Zephyr Strike for advantage on sharpshooter shots, especially if you can end up with elven accuracy, is really good
Better archers are going to be Hexblade -> eldritch smite archers, and as you say battlemaster
I don't think Rangers get enough spell slots to make this really a good strategy versus Hunter's Mark. A one time 1d8+10 vs 1d6 is only 4 attacks before parity. Two rounds of combat for most levels of play.
One of the reasons melee rangers have an uphill battle is that the majority of their damage adders are concentration. This means you can't stack them and you're more likely to loose them due to being in melee and subject to more attacks.
With elven accuracy and zephyr strike you have a 91% chance to land that hit, raising your average damage output over 6 attacks (with 20 dex) from 69 to 82.5
Sure, hunters mark makes more sense if you're in a marathon, but in my experience, at least how I end up playing - rests are plentiful enough to spend 2 spell slots a battle easily - and hunters mark is going to be lost when using the powerhouse that is Lightning Arrow anyway (and this is discounting fights where the target has 18 or higher AC, in which case a Zephyr Strike/Sharpshooter/Elven Accuracy combo is truly potent, as you're not realistically going to be using sharpshooter on the target otherwise)
I'm not saying its clearly superior in every situation, but if you have sharpshooter it often is (it's also heavily dependent on how many encounters per rest you have, as it represents an up front damage investment for your spellslots)
AC 15, +10 to hit. 2 attacks/round. Sharpshooter hits at +5 with advantage for 3 attacks and +5 without advantage for 3 attacks. Uses up 3 spells and 3 bonus actions. Expected damage is
2d8+15 * .0975 + 1d8+15 * .7 for 3 attacks(47.97) and
2d8+15 *.05 + 1d8+15 *.5 for 3 attacks (32.85)
== 80.82
AC 15, +5 to hit, +10 dmg, 2 attacks/round. +1d6 dmg/attack
2d8+2d6+15*.05 + 1d8+15+1d6*.5 == 78.3
So for 2 spells you got 4.2 damage.
Elven Advantage reduces damage as you will lose 2 dex over a similarly leveled character(unless you're level 16+).
Sharpshooters are good too but fighters are more easily able to exploit it because of Action Surge. And because Hunter's Mark makes sharpshooter potentially negative damage unless you have advantage. And because fighters have easier ways to increase their attack if they roll low as a battlemaster.
The main reason you want to be melee as a ranger is because they can generate a lot of extra attacks and you want a big melee weapon in order to make the most of those. And because big melee weapons don't eat your bonus action so you're more free to throw your mark around.
Plus they're d10 HD with a bunch of good melee defensive abilities and you want to make use of that as well.
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You aren't factoring in the SS cost-risk assessment.
Here's the formula.
Even though Hunter's Mark does devalue SS a bit, the AC breakpoints for using/not-using SS are:
20 with HM
22 without
In your example, firing at an AC15 opponent means you're always firing with SS because math.
5 levels of ranger is -3d6 sneak plus an extra attack. Extra attack is a d8+5 for -10.5 dmg of sneak and +9.5 dmg extra attack. You get uncanny dodge and evasion faster than you would get either as a pure ranger. And you get bonus action hide faster than you would as a pure ranger and...
for example, why did they change things such that you can't really have a drake (among other choices) as an animal companion anymore?
Or become one as a Druid. The difference between a "beast" and many "non-beast" animals seems entirely arbitrary, statistically speaking, when it comes to things like shapeshifting or animal companions
Edit2: Overall I think my general impression with 5e, looking at character options and build options and just what there is available is that, the official content, even including UA, feels sort of sparse, and feels all the more so for the number of ways they seem to try and limit player options and choices in favor of an interpretation favored by their own view of how you should be playing/their standard setting.
Most of my problems with 5e aren't with the balance or structure of the game itself, but with the amount and presentation of a lot of the content, I guess.
My biggest complaint is that leveling up, the event that should be one of the most exciting parts, is often a disappointed "...oh, that's all I get?". If it were up to me, odd levels would be incremental improvements and even levels would either be new tools or significant improvements on your existing ones. Every even level should feel like you're getting away with something, like you're breaking the game open with your newfound skills. There's only 10 even levels, how bloody hard is it to think of something exciting for each of them?
But then you have the problem of making the game inaccessible to the masses.
Because now you're having to look at every level to determine how to properly multiclass.
The problem with the beastmaster imo is that your animal can die.
Either you make the animal crap, in which case you ask yourself "well why did I pick this subclass?!" or you make it a murder machine in which case you ask yourself "oh god, Socks died! WHAT DO I DO NOW!?".
Recap: There are four of us (bard, eldritch knight, monk (me) and sorceress), we are each cursed/blessed (it has its advantages but also disadvantages) and each of us are reacting to it in a different way. Evil Half-Orc Bard is trying to gain power from his condition, Good Human Fighter has accepted the curse and tries to live with both its advantages and disadvantages, Good Dwarven Monk tries to keep the curse/blessing under control with discipline and willpower and Good Aasimar (but thinks or pretends she's Half-Elven) Sorceress is in complete denial.
We have arrived in a town on our way to the largest city on the continent. Town has a Knight Order that does not like our kind of people, but is not actively locking us up or worse. Also Warforged are walking around, but they seem to be seen as automatons that are owned by rich people.
So the DM had planned a dungeon for us. Instead we spent more than half the session on our beer competition:
My monk is a brew-master and had challenged a local brewer to a duel. DM decided the duel would be in 2 days. Real beer takes 4-8 weeks, so my solution: Dire Yeast! (Backstory: Dwarfs dig a hole, bait a gelatinous cube into the hole, give it a yeast infection. Couple of days later: Dire Yeast! The DM rolled with it.) So the hunt for ingredients was on: already had holy water and some magic carrots, bought some weird yellow yeast and green yogurt (marked white milk). It all went in the beer. We rolled a d4+d10 to get the alcohol content, so I created some 38% beer. We named it The Dwarven Hammer. Also sorceress knitted a tiny hat for one of the pet mimics.
We also found out that some aspiring knights were missing. The knights were not allowed to help them as they were on a sort of entrance exam and were not allowed to give any assistance. But the knight admitted that if we just happen to find them and helped them, that that would be ok, so we promised the parents to help them. (Monk and Sorceress really wanted to help them right away, but we could only leave the city at night, so first the competition!).
The beer was very good and we nearly won, but the other beer was the best we ever tasted... something fishy was going on. Eldritch Knight detected magic and discovered that the Warforged Bard that was playing at the bar was casting some spell. Our bard was already have a rivalry with the warforged bard (his performance rolled a 2, the warforged bard rolled a 17 and for a "soulless automaton", it was very good at passive aggressive remarks towards our bard) so he tried to sabotage him.
Long story short: bar fight! Sorceress just had some beer for the first, so was drunk for the fight (I mostly used the assist action to keep her hair out of her face when she was throwing up). Eldritch Knight was drunk (but as he has CON18, it was quickly decided that he's the annoying kind of drunk that will be fully energized at 6 AM next morning and has no hangovers). Bard and the warforged-owner (a wizard) were having a fist fight on the floor with both having low str and no real fighting skills, was more of a slap-fight. Monk was not bothered through out the fight (nobody was foolish enough to try anything after she caught the first bottle thrown at her and threw it back.) and really wanted a fair competition so I just separated the bard and the owner (grabbing both of them by the ears), while the sorceress cast sleep on the rest.
Fight over: duel was considered a tie and we sold the beer. With our usual negotiator (the sorceress, CHA20) being miserable and sick in a corner, the bard negotiated for it, but we only got 70 Gold (OOC: we could have gotten a lot more, but he folded to quickly).
That evening we left to find the missing students. Sorceress had disadvantage on all roles due to being very, very hungover. We found the place where the students were being tested and were welcomed by a warforged cleric, who was assigned to assist students during the trial and we entered the dungeon.
Rivalry score:
Sorceress: Rivalry with a lifeless statue.
Eldritch Knight: Rivalry with an archmage's butler.
Bard: Rivalry with a Warforged bard and/or its owner.
My monk has no rivalry yet, but every conversation with a warforge so far, has started with the line "So how much are they paying you for the job you are doing?" And now meeting a warforged cleric, the first question will probably be "Does this unit have a soul?". The warforge revolution will be nigh. Some other party members are concerned by this. I'm not.
The more famous example of this is the elemental monk. Which gets minor spells until very late level while the other monks are all “make 4 con saves or die”. And then of course there was clearly no editing over the whole to address those issues.
The ranger has similar issues. Whomever designed it... just didint make it interesting compared to a rogue or fighter. Especially now that rogues and fighters get spells.
Wild shape limitations are because druids are “natural”. Drakes arent so youre excluded.
Assuming 3 rounds, I'm getting the following (WITHOUT elven accuracy, this is just regular advantage)
(4.5 (Bow) + 4.5 (ZS) + 15) 24 * . 7995 + (.05*9) = 19.6
3 ZS attacks = 58.8
(4.5 (BOW) + 15) = 19.5 * .55 + (.05*4.5) = 10.95
3 SS attacks = 32.85
Total 6 attacks with ZS: 91.65
Hunters mark I'm getting:
(4.5 (Bow) + 3.5 (HM) + 15) 23 * .55 + (.05*8) = 13.05
Total 6 attacks with HM: 78.5
I'm not sure what the 1d8*.7 was coming from in your example. It's pretty obvious the difference in this case isn't huge, but I personally hate wasted turns, higher AC targets exist (rapidly swinging the favorability rating of ZS upward), things like breaking enemy concentration exist, etc.
The numbers are one thing but wasting 3 of your 6 attacks in battle is not the same thing as simming out an infinite number of attacks in a spreadsheet - and again, this comes down to the table. If you're like most tables and get a Long Rest every 2-3 battles, it's .... probably better to ZS every shot, or HoT at 2nd level, or lightning arrow in most cases. If your DM follows the DMG though, nothing can touch HM (and at lower levels, below 9 ish? I always found myself relying on HM as my healing was actually important to the group, at higher levels I had to actively blow spell slots for damage to use them all and HM was just a waste as it doesn't scale up)
I will admit a big part of this is my personal taste, it feels reaaaal bad to waste a turn, spamming Zephyr's Strike makes that less likely
The .7 is because your to-crit is .0975 and your to-hit but not crit is .7 when you have a 55% chance to hit and advantage.
Right. Arbitrary and stupid. I also sort of get the feeling a lot of D&D content authors, mechanic or lore wise, have no idea what nature is. And I don't just mean in the real world. Like I get the feeling if you asked them to describe what was "natural" and what wasn't, in their setting, they wouldn't have any good answer they've thought about at all.
Like, similar to the druid wildshade question, why can beastmaster rangers only get "beasts", and why do they have to be 1/4th of a CR, and why does that never change.