EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
But what if you have seen those things and still prefer 5e?
I guess I like bad things and have bad opinions. Now I'll never get to join the treehouse!
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Honestly I think all of those are vastly superior to 5e, but what they don't have is the recognition and branding. Plus I don't find them as easy to run in an open session drop in/drop out format as 5e is so far.
My dark souls/game of thrones inspired store meta works very very well for that purpose. I am not sure how I would make that format work in Call of Cthulhu for 6 sessions in a day.
EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
My here point is how, as with the OP and elsewhere, 'I don't like it as much, personally' and '5e now has some solid marketing and is becoming popular' becomes a reason to shit on something other people like and to look down on them. The argument eventually ceases to be 'this system works better for me and my players' and instead becomes some kind of stupid, treehouse purity test of who is the realz gamerz.
Which is dumb. More people getting into tabletop is the reason my community now has two separate d&d supporting restaurants and bars for people to get together and play. Its why I can stream games on podcast during my commute or watch engaging campaigns on youtube. It's a goddamn renaissance.
But the one place I don't go is to the actual gaming shops, because pretty much every time anyone in my community does this sort of shit begins, with an old guard of threatened players sneering and driving off new folks to the tabletop community, especially the women in my circle. Which is pretty shitty!
My here point is how, as with the OP and elsewhere, 'I don't like it as much, personally' and '5e now has some solid marketing and is becoming popular' becomes a reason to shit on something other people like and to look down on them. The argument eventually ceases to be 'this system works better for me and my players' and instead becomes some kind of stupid, treehouse purity test of who is the realz gamerz.
Which is dumb. More people getting into tabletop is the reason my community now has two separate d&d supporting restaurants and bars for people to get together and play. Its why I can stream games on podcast during my commute or watch engaging campaigns on youtube. It's a goddamn renaissance.
But the one place I don't go is to the actual gaming shops, because pretty much every time anyone in my community does this sort of shit begins, with an old guard of threatened players sneering and driving off new folks to the tabletop community, especially the women in my circle. Which is pretty shitty!
Actually I just don't like 5E. No tree. No treehouse.
In the OP for this thread, and in all my other OPs for previous threads, and in all my thread title changes, I poke fun at 5E and whatever topic people are currently arguing about.
I would like to take this opportunity to say that I am not personally attacking you, your friends, the other patrons of your local (or any) bar/restaurant/cafe/store/whatever, anyone of any experience level, anyone on any part of the gender spectrum, or anyone at all. If I have crossed that line at some point, it was unintentional and I apologise.
I would also like to say that I (and others) will continue to criticize 5E in the 5E thread. I will continue to make fun of it and I will continue to doubt that it can maintain its current sales momentum for 10 years. I'm not dismissing anyone's enthusiasm or enjoyment with a flurry of fake leet-speak and unnecessary z's. I would appreciate not being dismissed as an angry elitist grognard who must hate that people (and especially those darn women!) are having fun with an edition I don't like.
And one last thing while I'm being real here: I'm glad that 5E is so popular right now. The explosion of podcasts and streaming shows is amazing and I'm really excited that my favorite hobby is becoming a mainstream form of entertainment. I love that it's becoming more inclusive, more inviting, and easier to access.
I just still think 5E is a sloppy system and it's stupid that plate armor costs 5000gp.
My here point is how, as with the OP and elsewhere, 'I don't like it as much, personally' and '5e now has some solid marketing and is becoming popular' becomes a reason to shit on something other people like and to look down on them. The argument eventually ceases to be 'this system works better for me and my players' and instead becomes some kind of stupid, treehouse purity test of who is the realz gamerz.
That's not what has happened in any of these discussions. People criticize 5e over specific laid-out design problems, and why and how they're bad - and one of the most frequent problems is that it's designed in obtuse ways that make it more difficult to run and adjudicate than it should be, because everyone recognizes that making the game more accessible is a good thing.
Personal opinion generally only comes into it when someone responds to a discussion about how CR is terrible for estimating monster power because two enemies of the same CR have wildly different power levels, with a comparison of stat blocks and math, by saying 'well, I like it so I think it's fine' - which isn't even the point at hand.
Likewise, nobody is presenting the argument that it's bad because it's popular. What's happening is that people are describing design problems and saying 'this is bad' and getting 'it's popular, so it must not be bad!' as a rebuttal, to which 'popularity is not an indicator of quality and 5e's popularity is largely marketing and branding based rather than a consequence of its elegant and carefully-considered design' is an entirely reasonable response. But we didn't start off talking about popularity at all.
"This thing is badly put-together and here's why" is not a personal attack or purity test even if you happen to like the thing.
I just still think 5E is a sloppy system and it's stupid that plate armor costs 5000gp.
The secret solution is to just buy a set of magic +1 plate armor, which inexplicably only costs 100-500gp according to magic item cost guidelines (and the new item purchasing/crafting downtime rules from xanathar's), instead.
One Simple Trick Mundane Armorers Hate
Abbalah on
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I guess I should be lucky that 5e exists, because while my group is an amazing set of people to play with, nobody wants to put the effort to learn any different or more complex systems. Case in point our casters still don't know their spells or write them down, and we've been playing these characters for months at this point.
It bums me out because I would love to try different kinds of RP games, like Star Trek, or L5R with this group, but nobody wants to move away from the system they know.
I guess my point is that while I like a good burger and fries, sometimes I want chinese you know, and now I'm going to have to find a second gaming group to get that experience.
Guys, complaining about rules is a staple of dungeoning and dragoning. There were people who were actually angry that they didn't bring THAC0 back into 4th edition. Complaining about the complaining or the complainers simply adds more meta-complaining, which is not a logical solution if you want a reduction in the amount of complaints.
The correct answer is to find your closest current-edition-hating grognard, pat them on the head, and say "maybe the next edition will have an actual encounter creation ruleset, or a HP system that works?" and give them a hug. They're gamers, just like you, who have lost their love of D&D. Be compassionate.
I just still think 5E is a sloppy system and it's stupid that plate armor costs 5000gp.
The secret solution is to just buy a set of magic +1 plate armor, which inexplicably only costs 100-500gp according to magic item cost guidelines (and the new item purchasing/crafting downtime rules from xanathar's), instead.
One Simple Trick Mundane Armorers Hate
I add them together at least, so 1500g for normal Plate, plus 500g for magic +1
But yeah, it's still kinda dumb to buy normal Plate for 1500 when you can get magic Plate for 2000
I think 5e is far from perfect, but I like it more than any other version I've seen
I guess I should be lucky that 5e exists, because while my group is an amazing set of people to play with, nobody wants to put the effort to learn any different or more complex systems. Case in point our casters still don't know their spells or write them down, and we've been playing these characters for months at this point.
It bums me out because I would love to try different kinds of RP games, like Star Trek, or L5R with this group, but nobody wants to move away from the system they know.
I guess my point is that while I like a good burger and fries, sometimes I want chinese you know, and now I'm going to have to find a second gaming group to get that experience.
Pretty much anything from One Seven Design and The Quiet Year, Ribbon Drive, and Perfect Unrevised from Buried Without Ceremony are all fairly rules-light games, though Ribbon Drive needs some prep that might be outside the reach of a crowd that wouldn't like, say, Dropmix.
Like, if you give somebody the 17D Lasers and Feelings sheet (that's all it is, just one sheet) and an hour into the game they're still forgetting how to play, how drunk are they?
And there are tons of other rules-light improv-focused games out there that are actually built to do that. Like Swords Without Master, which is built to just be people sitting around telling fantasy stories and occasionally rolling to see where the action goes and if this was a scene that was supposed to set up the moral of the story or drop some foreshadowing. (You can get a stripped-down preview in the form of City of Fire and Coin.)
But maybe you really love crunch and this simple stuff won't do it for you, or maybe your playgroup just isn't feeling very experimental. In which case, well, sorry to hear it. Have you got a friendly local game store? They might be worth reaching out to.
I mean, I'll say this for D&D5 - it's probably the best D&D yet if what you want is to play D&D or be a fan of D&D. Streaming has given them a boost there, no question, but keeping to the small level of rule books they have so far also has some benefits since everybody who buys in is working from a common vocabulary.
I guess I should be lucky that 5e exists, because while my group is an amazing set of people to play with, nobody wants to put the effort to learn any different or more complex systems. Case in point our casters still don't know their spells or write them down, and we've been playing these characters for months at this point.
It bums me out because I would love to try different kinds of RP games, like Star Trek, or L5R with this group, but nobody wants to move away from the system they know.
I guess my point is that while I like a good burger and fries, sometimes I want chinese you know, and now I'm going to have to find a second gaming group to get that experience.
Pretty much anything from One Seven Design and The Quiet Year, Ribbon Drive, and Perfect Unrevised from Buried Without Ceremony are all fairly rules-light games, though Ribbon Drive needs some prep that might be outside the reach of a crowd that wouldn't like, say, Dropmix.
Like, if you give somebody the 17D Lasers and Feelings sheet (that's all it is, just one sheet) and an hour into the game they're still forgetting how to play, how drunk are they?
And there are tons of other rules-light improv-focused games out there that are actually built to do that. Like Swords Without Master, which is built to just be people sitting around telling fantasy stories and occasionally rolling to see where the action goes and if this was a scene that was supposed to set up the moral of the story or drop some foreshadowing. (You can get a stripped-down preview in the form of City of Fire and Coin.)
But maybe you really love crunch and this simple stuff won't do it for you, or maybe your playgroup just isn't feeling very experimental. In which case, well, sorry to hear it. Have you got a friendly local game store? They might be worth reaching out to.
I mean, I'll say this for D&D5 - it's probably the best D&D yet if what you want is to play D&D or be a fan of D&D. Streaming has given them a boost there, no question, but keeping to the small level of rule books they have so far also has some benefits since everybody who buys in is working from a common vocabulary.
This is my group right here. Honestly I'm just bitching even though I've a wealth of riches when it comes to my group. They are all amazing people and I'm incredibly lucky to have them. Our core group has been gaming for 7 years! It blows my mind. This is probably the core where my complaints come from. We've been gaming for this long and only playing D&D or something based on the OGL. Our new members never played TTRPGs at all before so for the last couple years we've done 13th age and 5th ed, so everything is still super fresh for them.
I might have to go to my local store and try to find a different group to play different systems, It just scares me to have to go through the whole meet new people and see if there is a good fit all over again. I might end up being the asshole of the group and bringing the game down for other people! I'm probably the closest to it in my current group already.
I guess I should be lucky that 5e exists, because while my group is an amazing set of people to play with, nobody wants to put the effort to learn any different or more complex systems. Case in point our casters still don't know their spells or write them down, and we've been playing these characters for months at this point.
It bums me out because I would love to try different kinds of RP games, like Star Trek, or L5R with this group, but nobody wants to move away from the system they know.
I guess my point is that while I like a good burger and fries, sometimes I want chinese you know, and now I'm going to have to find a second gaming group to get that experience.
This is similar to why I'm playing 5e: Every single person in my group would rather be playing something else, but which other systems each person prefers are wildly divergent, so we end up playing 5e because it's everyone's third-best compromise choice.
It's like not being able to agree on whether to go to a steakhouse or an italian place or a thai place, so you just end up at an Applebees every week.
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AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
I tend to just default to whatever is the current edition, since it's the one being supported.
Which is unfortunate, because not only did I like the ease of 4e for some things, it also had the Compendium through D&D Insider. Until that was shut down because we can't have nice things and WoTC is still allergic to the internet.
That's not what has happened in any of these discussions. People criticize 5e over specific laid-out design problems, and why and how they're bad - and one of the most frequent problems is that it's designed in obtuse ways that make it more difficult to run and adjudicate than it should be, because everyone recognizes that making the game more accessible is a good thing.
The D&D thread is hardly unique in this regard: this forum, along with every forum in existence (probably) is quick to complain about our own hobbies and their inconveniences. I’m guilty of it as well. Still, that doesn’t make it less tiresome to continually hear negativety when you’re just trying to connect with others or maybe celebrate your experiences with them.
Speaking of celebrating experiences, my group managed to get an audience to try and mobilize the City to be ready for the ''not Vermintide'' in ''not Waterdeep''. This is the last two sessions, aka, We Got Alot Done.
I may be on strenuous or bad terms with the party though since I was a spy, they knew I was a spy, but they didn't know I used to work for the King (read used to), which, our wizard and cleric are on bad terms with because they wouldn't work for the State. They wanted to be their own entities and not be subject to beck and call and end up having to uproot whatever personal business venture they had if they were ordered to do something for the King. The monk is a monk and he doesn't care because anyone that's tried to rein him in has had limbs broken. The paladin is from another country so he isn't known (he is) and hasn't had to deal with State overwatch (yet).
So, the last in depth retelling of the story, we were looking for missing people, found a very very large ratmen nest and I mentioned we fought a rat ogre. This thing is a massive juggernaut and probably upwards of 1200lbs of muscle and hate. Its what the ratmen breed to make shocktroops and a heavy cavalry equivalent. We knew we had to get 'something' up topside for proof that these things exist and that's why we almost died in the attempt. So we were goading it back through the tunnels and trying to piss it off just enough to keep following us and not just shoo us away from the nest. The wizard was the MVP this round because he had some pretty creative uses of prestidigitation to prod the rat ogre and keep it interested in us. Like shooting a fireworks sparkler at the thing's ass... or using mage hand to poke it in the eye, no damage, but I challenge any of you to not be fucking annoyed by someone doing that to you. The rat ogre critical hit the monk and sent him like fifteen feet up the tunnel among the other general pummelings we took. First time the monk has been like ''Ok, fuck this, I'm out."
So now we managed to get this thing into the streets, pandemonium erupts from the peasants at the monster. I'll give credit to the city guard for jumping in to help, but a couple of them got pasted. I managed to hamstring a leg making the ogre drop to a knee and the paladin (dwarf by the way) managed to parkour up a stool to a vendor table, onto a cart and just overhand Thor smites the rat ogre in the head. Thankfully it was just a killing blow, not a critical hit and letting the DM get a chance to destroy the head in a bloody mist of chunklets. Its just a horribly broken rat head attached to the body. Just to make sure, we slit its throat so far back its now a PEZ dispenser.
People stare at the thing, say we are heroes, I pull out a medallion with a crest on it and show it to the city guard. "I am one of the King's Underhands. I deputize you to my cause. Refusal is Death." Paladin stands beside me, twirling a bloody warhammer. Dwarf assist helps my Persuasion roll succeed. With the help of four guards we manage to get the thing on a cart and lash some draft horses to pull the damn thing. I stand on top of the cart and there is no tarp covering it. I want as many people as possible to see it as we march to the Castle. "Make way! Make way! Ready for war! Those that impede the King's Men are forfeit!" (I am writing checks my body can not cash right now. The others are only following me I think because we are a group of idiots playing a game at the table. No one except other Underhands know I am excommunicated and I shouldn't even have an Underhand Medal.) I'm going full Saltzpyre witch hunter and I'm make such a ruckus right now that being in the open should shield us from anyone trying to stop us. At least until we get inside the castle gates. The paladin and the cleric work with some Guard to push people out of the way and the Wizard used a spell to give me a megaphone of a voice so people could start getting out of the way earlier. The monk is up in the cart with me, lashing a lot of rope around what he can of an arm and the torso if he can manage it.
So now we are at the castle gates, and I have a mob trailing about fifty feet behind us. ''Make way! Make way for the King's Business!" Just holding my Underhand Medallion out for all to see.
"Khross you vile wretch! How dare you disturb the King's Peace!" Its Dietre van Houten. The DM tells me its another one of the Kings Underhands... oh shit... I'm already this deep into it, keep doing it until it turns out right. I jump out of the cart and begin walking to van Houten. The Wizard used Thaumaturgy to keep my voice booming and then spent a pretty high spell slot to use Major Image to create a Huge ''Jumbotron TV'' of what was happening in the castle courtyard so the mob and hopefully the King would see it. As Dietre and I walk closer, the cleric casts Zone of Truth on both of us and spends a higher spell slot to show the area as a Zone of Truth. Dietre's voice catches (interesting), and I give him a haymaker that knocks him to the ground. I begin making a tirade about what's under the city and we need to prepare and clean it out. We are under siege and we don't even know it. During this time, the Monk runs up a guard tower with more rope some pully blocks and a few of our deputies and rig up a pully in a murderhole above the portcullis and throws rope down to the cart. As I'm finishing my truthful speech the Jumbotron is showing a giant ass dead rat ogre being hoisted up in the portcullis. Dietre and I argue.
As the King marches out to meet with us, I ask the wizard to cut out the thaumaturgy so I'm not yelling at the King.
The cleric asks me, "So... when were you going to tell us about working for the King?" We are still in the Zone.
I reply, truthfully, "Now's not really the time to get into that."
So next session I'm thinking we have to deal with Dietre and convincing the King that this is a real thing and not just some one off aberration and I get to come to terms being the most recognized Underhand in the land... I'm amazed that the other players went along with it and actually came up with this stuff ad hoc. I just had the idea, "Get to castle, make noise, get audience with King." The others did a fucking amazing job amplifying to get that plan to happen. It was like a freaking episode of the ''A Team''. Im also giving credit to the DM for easing up and allowing this stuff to happen. We still did quite a few dice rolls but I think because it was so audacious, it might be warranted.
My here point is how, as with the OP and elsewhere, 'I don't like it as much, personally' and '5e now has some solid marketing and is becoming popular' becomes a reason to shit on something other people like and to look down on them. The argument eventually ceases to be 'this system works better for me and my players' and instead becomes some kind of stupid, treehouse purity test of who is the realz gamerz.
That's not what has happened in any of these discussions. People criticize 5e over specific laid-out design problems, and why and how they're bad - and one of the most frequent problems is that it's designed in obtuse ways that make it more difficult to run and adjudicate than it should be, because everyone recognizes that making the game more accessible is a good thing.
Personal opinion generally only comes into it when someone responds to a discussion about how CR is terrible for estimating monster power because two enemies of the same CR have wildly different power levels, with a comparison of stat blocks and math, by saying 'well, I like it so I think it's fine' - which isn't even the point at hand.
Likewise, nobody is presenting the argument that it's bad because it's popular. What's happening is that people are describing design problems and saying 'this is bad' and getting 'it's popular, so it must not be bad!' as a rebuttal, to which 'popularity is not an indicator of quality and 5e's popularity is largely marketing and branding based rather than a consequence of its elegant and carefully-considered design' is an entirely reasonable response. But we didn't start off talking about popularity at all.
"This thing is badly put-together and here's why" is not a personal attack or purity test even if you happen to like the thing.
I just still think 5E is a sloppy system and it's stupid that plate armor costs 5000gp.
The secret solution is to just buy a set of magic +1 plate armor, which inexplicably only costs 100-500gp according to magic item cost guidelines (and the new item purchasing/crafting downtime rules from xanathar's), instead.
One Simple Trick Mundane Armorers Hate
The fuck are you babbling about?
Plate costs 1500 gp
+1 armor is minimum 2000 gp by the magic item creation and purchasing rules in xanathars.
0
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
Speaking of celebrating experiences, my group managed to get an audience to try and mobilize the City to be ready for the ''not Vermintide'' in ''not Waterdeep''. This is the last two sessions, aka, We Got Alot Done.
I may be on strenuous or bad terms with the party though since I was a spy, they knew I was a spy, but they didn't know I used to work for the King (read used to), which, our wizard and cleric are on bad terms with because they wouldn't work for the State. They wanted to be their own entities and not be subject to beck and call and end up having to uproot whatever personal business venture they had if they were ordered to do something for the King. The monk is a monk and he doesn't care because anyone that's tried to rein him in has had limbs broken. The paladin is from another country so he isn't known (he is) and hasn't had to deal with State overwatch (yet).
So, the last in depth retelling of the story, we were looking for missing people, found a very very large ratmen nest and I mentioned we fought a rat ogre. This thing is a massive juggernaut and probably upwards of 1200lbs of muscle and hate. Its what the ratmen breed to make shocktroops and a heavy cavalry equivalent. We knew we had to get 'something' up topside for proof that these things exist and that's why we almost died in the attempt. So we were goading it back through the tunnels and trying to piss it off just enough to keep following us and not just shoo us away from the nest. The wizard was the MVP this round because he had some pretty creative uses of prestidigitation to prod the rat ogre and keep it interested in us. Like shooting a fireworks sparkler at the thing's ass... or using mage hand to poke it in the eye, no damage, but I challenge any of you to not be fucking annoyed by someone doing that to you. The rat ogre critical hit the monk and sent him like fifteen feet up the tunnel among the other general pummelings we took. First time the monk has been like ''Ok, fuck this, I'm out."
So now we managed to get this thing into the streets, pandemonium erupts from the peasants at the monster. I'll give credit to the city guard for jumping in to help, but a couple of them got pasted. I managed to hamstring a leg making the ogre drop to a knee and the paladin (dwarf by the way) managed to parkour up a stool to a vendor table, onto a cart and just overhand Thor smites the rat ogre in the head. Thankfully it was just a killing blow, not a critical hit and letting the DM get a chance to destroy the head in a bloody mist of chunklets. Its just a horribly broken rat head attached to the body. Just to make sure, we slit its throat so far back its now a PEZ dispenser.
People stare at the thing, say we are heroes, I pull out a medallion with a crest on it and show it to the city guard. "I am one of the King's Underhands. I deputize you to my cause. Refusal is Death." Paladin stands beside me, twirling a bloody warhammer. Dwarf assist helps my Persuasion roll succeed. With the help of four guards we manage to get the thing on a cart and lash some draft horses to pull the damn thing. I stand on top of the cart and there is no tarp covering it. I want as many people as possible to see it as we march to the Castle. "Make way! Make way! Ready for war! Those that impede the King's Men are forfeit!" (I am writing checks my body can not cash right now. The others are only following me I think because we are a group of idiots playing a game at the table. No one except other Underhands know I am excommunicated and I shouldn't even have an Underhand Medal.) I'm going full Saltzpyre witch hunter and I'm make such a ruckus right now that being in the open should shield us from anyone trying to stop us. At least until we get inside the castle gates. The paladin and the cleric work with some Guard to push people out of the way and the Wizard used a spell to give me a megaphone of a voice so people could start getting out of the way earlier. The monk is up in the cart with me, lashing a lot of rope around what he can of an arm and the torso if he can manage it.
So now we are at the castle gates, and I have a mob trailing about fifty feet behind us. ''Make way! Make way for the King's Business!" Just holding my Underhand Medallion out for all to see.
"Khross you vile wretch! How dare you disturb the King's Peace!" Its Dietre van Houten. The DM tells me its another one of the Kings Underhands... oh shit... I'm already this deep into it, keep doing it until it turns out right. I jump out of the cart and begin walking to van Houten. The Wizard used Thaumaturgy to keep my voice booming and then spent a pretty high spell slot to use Major Image to create a Huge ''Jumbotron TV'' of what was happening in the castle courtyard so the mob and hopefully the King would see it. As Dietre and I walk closer, the cleric casts Zone of Truth on both of us and spends a higher spell slot to show the area as a Zone of Truth. Dietre's voice catches (interesting), and I give him a haymaker that knocks him to the ground. I begin making a tirade about what's under the city and we need to prepare and clean it out. We are under siege and we don't even know it. During this time, the Monk runs up a guard tower with more rope some pully blocks and a few of our deputies and rig up a pully in a murderhole above the portcullis and throws rope down to the cart. As I'm finishing my truthful speech the Jumbotron is showing a giant ass dead rat ogre being hoisted up in the portcullis. Dietre and I argue.
As the King marches out to meet with us, I ask the wizard to cut out the thaumaturgy so I'm not yelling at the King.
The cleric asks me, "So... when were you going to tell us about working for the King?" We are still in the Zone.
I reply, truthfully, "Now's not really the time to get into that."
So next session I'm thinking we have to deal with Dietre and convincing the King that this is a real thing and not just some one off aberration and I get to come to terms being the most recognized Underhand in the land... I'm amazed that the other players went along with it and actually came up with this stuff ad hoc. I just had the idea, "Get to castle, make noise, get audience with King." The others did a fucking amazing job amplifying to get that plan to happen. It was like a freaking episode of the ''A Team''. Im also giving credit to the DM for easing up and allowing this stuff to happen. We still did quite a few dice rolls but I think because it was so audacious, it might be warranted.
Did you get people killed to make a point by bringing the rat ogre topside?
My here point is how, as with the OP and elsewhere, 'I don't like it as much, personally' and '5e now has some solid marketing and is becoming popular' becomes a reason to shit on something other people like and to look down on them. The argument eventually ceases to be 'this system works better for me and my players' and instead becomes some kind of stupid, treehouse purity test of who is the realz gamerz.
That's not what has happened in any of these discussions. People criticize 5e over specific laid-out design problems, and why and how they're bad - and one of the most frequent problems is that it's designed in obtuse ways that make it more difficult to run and adjudicate than it should be, because everyone recognizes that making the game more accessible is a good thing.
Personal opinion generally only comes into it when someone responds to a discussion about how CR is terrible for estimating monster power because two enemies of the same CR have wildly different power levels, with a comparison of stat blocks and math, by saying 'well, I like it so I think it's fine' - which isn't even the point at hand.
Likewise, nobody is presenting the argument that it's bad because it's popular. What's happening is that people are describing design problems and saying 'this is bad' and getting 'it's popular, so it must not be bad!' as a rebuttal, to which 'popularity is not an indicator of quality and 5e's popularity is largely marketing and branding based rather than a consequence of its elegant and carefully-considered design' is an entirely reasonable response. But we didn't start off talking about popularity at all.
"This thing is badly put-together and here's why" is not a personal attack or purity test even if you happen to like the thing.
I just still think 5E is a sloppy system and it's stupid that plate armor costs 5000gp.
The secret solution is to just buy a set of magic +1 plate armor, which inexplicably only costs 100-500gp according to magic item cost guidelines (and the new item purchasing/crafting downtime rules from xanathar's), instead.
One Simple Trick Mundane Armorers Hate
The fuck are you babbling about?
Plate costs 1500 gp
+1 armor is minimum 2000 gp by the magic item creation and purchasing rules in xanathars.
+1 armor costs 200 to 500 under the DMG purchasing guidelines
My here point is how, as with the OP and elsewhere, 'I don't like it as much, personally' and '5e now has some solid marketing and is becoming popular' becomes a reason to shit on something other people like and to look down on them. The argument eventually ceases to be 'this system works better for me and my players' and instead becomes some kind of stupid, treehouse purity test of who is the realz gamerz.
That's not what has happened in any of these discussions. People criticize 5e over specific laid-out design problems, and why and how they're bad - and one of the most frequent problems is that it's designed in obtuse ways that make it more difficult to run and adjudicate than it should be, because everyone recognizes that making the game more accessible is a good thing.
Personal opinion generally only comes into it when someone responds to a discussion about how CR is terrible for estimating monster power because two enemies of the same CR have wildly different power levels, with a comparison of stat blocks and math, by saying 'well, I like it so I think it's fine' - which isn't even the point at hand.
Likewise, nobody is presenting the argument that it's bad because it's popular. What's happening is that people are describing design problems and saying 'this is bad' and getting 'it's popular, so it must not be bad!' as a rebuttal, to which 'popularity is not an indicator of quality and 5e's popularity is largely marketing and branding based rather than a consequence of its elegant and carefully-considered design' is an entirely reasonable response. But we didn't start off talking about popularity at all.
"This thing is badly put-together and here's why" is not a personal attack or purity test even if you happen to like the thing.
I just still think 5E is a sloppy system and it's stupid that plate armor costs 5000gp.
The secret solution is to just buy a set of magic +1 plate armor, which inexplicably only costs 100-500gp according to magic item cost guidelines (and the new item purchasing/crafting downtime rules from xanathar's), instead.
One Simple Trick Mundane Armorers Hate
The fuck are you babbling about?
Plate costs 1500 gp
+1 armor is minimum 2000 gp by the magic item creation and purchasing rules in xanathars.
+1 armor costs 200 to 500 under the DMG purchasing guidelines
The Fuck are you on about?
501 to 5000 gp
You can't even sell it or craft it for less than 5000 in the DMG
+1 armor is rare.
Even still none of the magic item trade directives in the dmg have a 200-500 range listed.
Im gunna need some page numbers because I'm seeing page 135 for some loose guidelines on buying and selling magic items with heavy advice to not allow it, 129 for the cost of crafting magic items, and 130 the proposed sale price. They all put +1 armor of any kind at 5000gp
Is this argument really worth slinging 4th level words around? If you use ‘em all up, the whole party is going to need a long rest before we can continue on.
Yeah, so did I, since +1 shields and weapons both are.
Guess you gotta duck the plate armor cost by buying splint mail (200g) and a Cloak of Protection (100-500g) or a +1 shield (100-500g). Or both, for a total of 400-1200g and an AC of 21, compared to 20 AC @ 1500g for plate armor+mundane shield.
Either way, it's silly that buying AC-boosting magic items is cheaper than buying nonmagical platemail, and pointing out that actually magic item costs aren't internally consistent either so some AC-boosting magic items are much more expensive than others even though they provide the same bonus (or less, in the case of the cloak - which takes an attunement slot but also gives +1 to all saves) doesn't exactly undermine the point.
Are you guys saying the internal economy of item costs within an edition of Dungeons & Dragons somehow manages to be the most fantastical part of the game?
So I guess it hasn't changed that much after all.
I smell a new thread title with a Whose Line reference coming.
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
I multiply all of those values by 10. So +1 anything is minimum 5000. Only very simple things can be bought cheaply, like potions of healing.
Absolutely never give players access to +1 shields and so on like that. A +1 shield is a huge difference in AC, especially early on and heavily favors sword/board more than it already is.
He makes money on hosting games that this thread described as the simplest or easiest of the pen and paper RPGs. You guys should really keep in mind that dnd might be unrefined and dumb, but for a lot of people it is tough to even apply squad tactics and keep track of anything involving numbers. Also consider the ambiguities and omissions in the DMG that force DMs to make snap judgements or come up with houserules on the regular. DMing is no walk in the park and this Timm Wood guy makes good money from being a DM who can just show up at your house, and run a dnd session of a few hours with little downtime. When you can stick with the hobby for a while or can build on previous experience you will kick ass at this game, but there is still a daunting learning curve.
Maybe once more people build up experience with dnd, FFgames or other simple pnp games they can move on to more sophisticated systems, but I think people will just tweak dnd to hell and back instead.
I multiply all of those values by 10. So +1 anything is minimum 5000. Only very simple things can be bought cheaply, like potions of healing.
Absolutely never give players access to +1 shields and so on like that. A +1 shield is a huge difference in AC, especially early on and heavily favors sword/board more than it already is.
I gave the frontline fighter in my group the Cursed shield of missile resistance. (the party consists of a dual-crossbowing master bard, a fighter and a wizard) mainly because I was really tired of the pew-pew-pew-pew handcrossbows with no downsides. So now my party has to think about targeting and positioning a little bit more. Until they can get that silly curse removed.
Yeah, so did I, since +1 shields and weapons both are.
Guess you gotta duck the plate armor cost by buying splint mail (200g) and a Cloak of Protection (100-500g) or a +1 shield (100-500g). Or both, for a total of 400-1200g and an AC of 21, compared to 20 AC @ 1500g for plate armor+mundane shield.
Either way, it's silly that buying AC-boosting magic items is cheaper than buying nonmagical platemail, and pointing out that actually magic item costs aren't internally consistent either so some AC-boosting magic items are much more expensive than others even though they provide the same bonus (or less, in the case of the cloak - which takes an attunement slot but also gives +1 to all saves) doesn't exactly undermine the point.
Look i can get better than plate AC with studded leather, awesome dex and a non magical shield.
To say nothing of class features and feats
This is simple goal post moving.
First you say the system is silly because magical plate costs less than regular plate. Wich would be a silly oversite... if that were at all true.
But it isn't.
Now you say the system is silly because you can use multiple options including multiple magical items, and an attunement slot, to get better than plate AC.
Which is also bullshit because pretty much every bit of advice in the DMG says not to just let that happen, to not just have magic items r us there for your players to just have whatever they want out of it. Stating that getting such an item should be difficult, and likely include some level of adventure in its own right (guess we're gunna have to do a bunch of adventuring where you don't even have splint yet since no class starts with anything better than chain) or at best some amount of time invested (uncommon is 20 days of downtime for crafting, and you gotta have the right crafting skills).
At best you've identified a magic item that should be rarer than it is (cloak of protection).
But that isn't at all the silliness you tried to sling before about magical plate costing less than regular plate.
Yes, you have successfully defeated my joke. I incorrectly recalled +1 armor as being of the same rarity as +1 weapons and shields and ammunition and implements, and so joked about them costing less than full plate when they're actually one rarity up and technically only 30% of the rare item cost range is less than the cost of mundane plate. I shall diminish, and go into the west.
But maybe
just maybe
your point about how the dex-heavy light-armor classes can get plate-equivalent AC for 50g is an example of exactly why it's silly for certain classes' basic mundane gear to cost so much. Perhaps a system where some classes - typically the ones who rely on their AC most - have their basic AC progression gated by gold instead of levels while others get the progression for free as part of leveling up is itself a problem, and not something you need to rigidly enforce by restricting access to magic gear in order to force the purchase of expensive mundane gear. Maybe the problem isn't that I have concocted an elaborate scheme involving the purchase of multiple magic items to replace the functionality of plate armor, but that it is possible to buy several 'rare and difficult-to-acquire' magic items, at their recommended values, for less than the cost of a class's basic gear in the first place.
And of course, we have once again run into the ever-present defense of 5e design errors: "well, these rules don't count because the rules also say you don't have to use the rules." Sure, you can decide not to let magic items into your campaign if you want. You don't have to use the listed item values, and you can insist that there's no way to buy magic items, and you can ditch the item buying rules from xanathar's, and you could refuse to have the items players want show up in treasure. You could also solve the problem of plate armor being too expensive by just not letting your players roll fighters or paladins, if you were so inclined. The option to cut/ignore/alter parts of the system does not excuse the system itself, and treating it like it does just turns any conversation about 5e's design decisions into Calvinball.
"It's not our fault if this stuff doesn't work right because we said you didn't have to use it" is a weak excuse at the best of times, but it falls especially flat when it's applied to a section of the DMG that spans eighty pages.
No ones ac necessarily grows as they level. Thats just not a thing in this game.
There's options you can take along the way to possibly increase your AC over the norm (generally in trade for not increasing offensive output) but, there is no expected AC progression in this game. No ones expected character progression is gated behind gold because there is no expectation of AC progression. Thats like basic core system shit.
Even still studded leather, +5 dex mod (so likely 8th level at the earliest, and max without magic items), +shield is only 19. Plate and shield is still better than you can get to with just dex and basic equipment.
Also Plate is not basic equipment, as exemplified in it not being available in any starting equipment load outs. It's gear you can get at about 4th or 5th level depending on treasure hoard rolls (right about the point where someone could try to get a light armour user to have a 20 dex).
At the start pretty much every class maxes out around 18 possible AC, and there's some character choices you've made to make that 18 possible. You've made stat distribution and race choices to either drive dex up so you can use leather armor and a shield and still come out around a 17 (you need an 18 dex for this), or you've abandoned dex and are going with chain mail and a shield and you are at an 18. Unless you are a fighter at which point you can add 1 more with your fighting style.
Dex is a strong stat, no denying that, but that's totally different from:
"Lol these guys can't even realize that buying magical plate is cheaper than normal plate"
Goal posts aren't just moving anymore they are just spawning anew.
All that to the side, yeah the magic items are a region they didn't put a ton of direction into. They put them into the DMG because they absolutely had to define the basic magic items, and with the advisement that magical items change games, and that you should be careful about how you are handing them out and to consider how each magic item is going to change your game. Wich is exactly correct advice. You should absolutely reflect on how each magic item will effect your game even things as simple as a +1 shield or a cloak of protection.
Now, with their biggest, crunchiest release since the PHB they delve into further advisement on how to run the magic item system providing better guidelines on how to run purchasing while still maintaining that yes it is up to the DM to decide what magic items they want in the game. And in that system a +1 shield requires a persuasion check of 26 or higher along with 100 gold and a workweek of downtime minimum... then you gotta be lucky enough that they actually have a +1 shield or cloak of protection and then it can cost anywhere from 100 to 600 gold with regular advisement that you can just double that number if that feels better for your game. Crafting either of those involves a small cr 4 to cr 8 encounter to get magical supplies, training in the relevant tool kit (Smith's tools or weavers tools), 2 weeks, and 200 gold.
Like the reason plate is where it is and costs what it costs is because it is one of the only armor upgrades outside of some kind of magic that will allow a fighter to get above 20 AC. 18 from plate, 2 from shield, 1 from defensive fighting style.
Max dex (20, so +5), best light armor (studded leather, +12), a shield (+2), and defensive fighting style (+1) come out to 20 ac, but that's some decisions you've made along the way to that. You dumped other stats so you could focus dex in the point buy (you spent a third of your points on a 15 for dex), you chose a racial option to buff your dex to 16 or 17. You elected to foregoe the offensive fighting styles for the defensive one. You spent not 1 but 2 feat options towards boosting dex to 20. and the sword and board full plate tank still has you beat on AC, and they have 2 more feats to spread around than your dodge tank does.
Plate essentially is a magic item, but one that the players can, to some measure, guaranteedly buy.
It is priced so that a fighter at about 6th level can either be pulling a 21 with plate they just bought (by 6 they should have 1500gp available) or a 20 with a light armor dex build, and anyone outside of fighter is looking at level 8 to pull a 20 AC with a dex build.
This not to even reference the great weapon master/polearm master build the plate fighter has that the dodge tank has petty much ceded. With the dodge tank also forfeiting their ability to take sharpshooter before 8th level (and if they are going sharpshooter why did they take defensive style rather than archer? I guess thanks for killing less stuff).
I personally don't mind full plate costing a million billion dollars in 5e because, for one thing, you can get armor that's only 1 AC worse for 200 gold, and you start with armor that's only 2 ac worse, which is not bad at all.
Secondly, it gives the dungeon master a tool to create a lot of different effects in game by describing someone with plate armor. Seeing a knight in full plate is a big deal in a roleplaying sense, you're looking at someone who's rich, probably a noble, probably very powerful, influence etc.
Mechanically it means that person is going to be very well defended. There's a different feel between games when your "armored foe" archetype always has plate armor on, vs having the gradient of different armor types for different classes of enemy.
There's something inherently awe inspiring about saying someone is wearing the modern equivalent of probably half a million dollars in defensive technology, and if you can get your players to fully comprehend the scale of that value, it's a really useful tool. Like in shadowrun if you describe an enemy character as wielding an assault cannon, except we intrinsically understand that a troll wielding a gun which should be mounted on an armored vehicle is crazypants, but we don't intrinsically understand the same thing about plate armor since we don't live in the actual middle ages.
Trying to get that additional +1 ac is balls, of course. The gold gated progression thing doesn't make much sense and I'd be honestly more comfortable simply conceding the fact that it'd be a better idea to let the players hoard gold for awhile and then simply give the fighter some mundane plate armor in a treasure hoard if you wanted them to advance into full plate ac territory or whatever. But, it's probably a good idea to save that upgrade for when it feels most significant because that should probably be the last AC upgrade that character gets.
I mean, the system does have an AC progression, it's just limited. That's why plate is so expensive in the first place - as you said, dex characters can get 15 AC from studded leather at level 1, while plate characters will start in chain mail at 16 AC. By level 8, the dex character will have added +2 to his AC, bringing him to 17 (this will happen at level 6 for a dex fighter). Similarly, by that time the plate character will actually have his plate, and also increased his AC by 2, to 18. Based on the random treasure tables, a fighter will on average accumulate enough gold to buy platemail at approximately....level 6, exactly the same time that a dex fighter gets his second AC increase from a stat bump. That's not an accident.
Plate is expensive to keep platewearers from getting it before the level where non-plate-wearers are also able to increase their AC. That's the design goal, likely because it makes the math for monster attack bonuses at low levels easier by letting you work from more consistent assumptions about player AC at a given level. It's a dumb way to handle that problem, and puts a platewearer 1500g behind other characters for the same benefits they can get for free by creating a mandatory goldsink that applies applies to some classes, which is why people complain about it. (And why they make casual jokes about the inconsistencies behind its cost!)
If plate were intended to be 'essentially a magic item' in its own right, then +1 plate wouldn't cost the same as +1 studded leather. But it does, because the system expects a platewearer to get plate, because it is basic gear for the classes that use it.
If plate were intended to be 'essentially a magic item' in its own right, then +1 plate wouldn't cost the same as +1 studded leather. But it does, because the system expects a platewearer to get plate, because it is basic gear for the classes that use it.
imo the idea of a magic item having a set gold cost is ludicrous, but I understand why it's there, because it is a rough measure of equivalence between magic items. If instead of defining +1 plate as "plate mail with one extra armor class" we define it as "armor the fighter was already wearing, but with a +1 magical bonus to ac" then it makes sense to have it cost the same as the +1 leather. You're not paying for the armor, you're paying for the magic bonus, etc. However, if your first piece of a given armor type is magical, then all of a sudden the initial cost of that armor should be respected or throw off the advancements and such.
It's very much a classic dnd move to have advancement gated by gold, but I agree it's a weird and not great system in this day and age. Honestly, I feel like gold in dnd these days, at least at my table, is kind of a symbolic reward. I either invent uses for it or it just goes up, but it's still nice to give players something shiny.
Or dm generally does not hand out gold early on, then hands out oodles of it later but shopkeeper tend to not have anything good available. A couple of campaigns back my xbow fighter twiddled his thumbs for a couple of sessions because i ran out of bolts and dm said no stores had them.
The system doesn't at all expect the fighter to pick up plate, or any other ac boosts along the way. AC gain isn't at all expected or necessary as the players level.
They have similar ac gain options gated to similar level ranges, but at no point does the system expect those options to be taken, by anyone.
Gold-based progression is weird, but it'd still be fine (and possibly even interesting!) if it was consistent. It's only a problem because it exclusively applies to characters with heavy armor proficiency, which creates lopsided outcomes.
(Aside from the fact that it also only works as a gating mechanic if players are unwilling to pool their resources and cooperate - if the system expects the paladin to be in chain mail until level 6, then the party who pools their money and buys the tank a suit of plate at level 3 has a pretty easy time bypassing your gate.)
Posts
I guess I like bad things and have bad opinions. Now I'll never get to join the treehouse!
My dark souls/game of thrones inspired store meta works very very well for that purpose. I am not sure how I would make that format work in Call of Cthulhu for 6 sessions in a day.
Which is dumb. More people getting into tabletop is the reason my community now has two separate d&d supporting restaurants and bars for people to get together and play. Its why I can stream games on podcast during my commute or watch engaging campaigns on youtube. It's a goddamn renaissance.
But the one place I don't go is to the actual gaming shops, because pretty much every time anyone in my community does this sort of shit begins, with an old guard of threatened players sneering and driving off new folks to the tabletop community, especially the women in my circle. Which is pretty shitty!
Actually I just don't like 5E. No tree. No treehouse.
In the OP for this thread, and in all my other OPs for previous threads, and in all my thread title changes, I poke fun at 5E and whatever topic people are currently arguing about.
I would like to take this opportunity to say that I am not personally attacking you, your friends, the other patrons of your local (or any) bar/restaurant/cafe/store/whatever, anyone of any experience level, anyone on any part of the gender spectrum, or anyone at all. If I have crossed that line at some point, it was unintentional and I apologise.
I would also like to say that I (and others) will continue to criticize 5E in the 5E thread. I will continue to make fun of it and I will continue to doubt that it can maintain its current sales momentum for 10 years. I'm not dismissing anyone's enthusiasm or enjoyment with a flurry of fake leet-speak and unnecessary z's. I would appreciate not being dismissed as an angry elitist grognard who must hate that people (and especially those darn women!) are having fun with an edition I don't like.
And one last thing while I'm being real here: I'm glad that 5E is so popular right now. The explosion of podcasts and streaming shows is amazing and I'm really excited that my favorite hobby is becoming a mainstream form of entertainment. I love that it's becoming more inclusive, more inviting, and easier to access.
I just still think 5E is a sloppy system and it's stupid that plate armor costs 5000gp.
That's not what has happened in any of these discussions. People criticize 5e over specific laid-out design problems, and why and how they're bad - and one of the most frequent problems is that it's designed in obtuse ways that make it more difficult to run and adjudicate than it should be, because everyone recognizes that making the game more accessible is a good thing.
Personal opinion generally only comes into it when someone responds to a discussion about how CR is terrible for estimating monster power because two enemies of the same CR have wildly different power levels, with a comparison of stat blocks and math, by saying 'well, I like it so I think it's fine' - which isn't even the point at hand.
Likewise, nobody is presenting the argument that it's bad because it's popular. What's happening is that people are describing design problems and saying 'this is bad' and getting 'it's popular, so it must not be bad!' as a rebuttal, to which 'popularity is not an indicator of quality and 5e's popularity is largely marketing and branding based rather than a consequence of its elegant and carefully-considered design' is an entirely reasonable response. But we didn't start off talking about popularity at all.
"This thing is badly put-together and here's why" is not a personal attack or purity test even if you happen to like the thing.
The secret solution is to just buy a set of magic +1 plate armor, which inexplicably only costs 100-500gp according to magic item cost guidelines (and the new item purchasing/crafting downtime rules from xanathar's), instead.
One Simple Trick Mundane Armorers Hate
It bums me out because I would love to try different kinds of RP games, like Star Trek, or L5R with this group, but nobody wants to move away from the system they know.
I guess my point is that while I like a good burger and fries, sometimes I want chinese you know, and now I'm going to have to find a second gaming group to get that experience.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
The correct answer is to find your closest current-edition-hating grognard, pat them on the head, and say "maybe the next edition will have an actual encounter creation ruleset, or a HP system that works?" and give them a hug. They're gamers, just like you, who have lost their love of D&D. Be compassionate.
I add them together at least, so 1500g for normal Plate, plus 500g for magic +1
But yeah, it's still kinda dumb to buy normal Plate for 1500 when you can get magic Plate for 2000
I think 5e is far from perfect, but I like it more than any other version I've seen
Pretty much anything from One Seven Design and The Quiet Year, Ribbon Drive, and Perfect Unrevised from Buried Without Ceremony are all fairly rules-light games, though Ribbon Drive needs some prep that might be outside the reach of a crowd that wouldn't like, say, Dropmix.
Like, if you give somebody the 17D Lasers and Feelings sheet (that's all it is, just one sheet) and an hour into the game they're still forgetting how to play, how drunk are they?
And there are tons of other rules-light improv-focused games out there that are actually built to do that. Like Swords Without Master, which is built to just be people sitting around telling fantasy stories and occasionally rolling to see where the action goes and if this was a scene that was supposed to set up the moral of the story or drop some foreshadowing. (You can get a stripped-down preview in the form of City of Fire and Coin.)
But maybe you really love crunch and this simple stuff won't do it for you, or maybe your playgroup just isn't feeling very experimental. In which case, well, sorry to hear it. Have you got a friendly local game store? They might be worth reaching out to.
I mean, I'll say this for D&D5 - it's probably the best D&D yet if what you want is to play D&D or be a fan of D&D. Streaming has given them a boost there, no question, but keeping to the small level of rule books they have so far also has some benefits since everybody who buys in is working from a common vocabulary.
This is my group right here. Honestly I'm just bitching even though I've a wealth of riches when it comes to my group. They are all amazing people and I'm incredibly lucky to have them. Our core group has been gaming for 7 years! It blows my mind. This is probably the core where my complaints come from. We've been gaming for this long and only playing D&D or something based on the OGL. Our new members never played TTRPGs at all before so for the last couple years we've done 13th age and 5th ed, so everything is still super fresh for them.
I might have to go to my local store and try to find a different group to play different systems, It just scares me to have to go through the whole meet new people and see if there is a good fit all over again. I might end up being the asshole of the group and bringing the game down for other people! I'm probably the closest to it in my current group already.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
This is similar to why I'm playing 5e: Every single person in my group would rather be playing something else, but which other systems each person prefers are wildly divergent, so we end up playing 5e because it's everyone's third-best compromise choice.
It's like not being able to agree on whether to go to a steakhouse or an italian place or a thai place, so you just end up at an Applebees every week.
Which is unfortunate, because not only did I like the ease of 4e for some things, it also had the Compendium through D&D Insider. Until that was shut down because we can't have nice things and WoTC is still allergic to the internet.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
The D&D thread is hardly unique in this regard: this forum, along with every forum in existence (probably) is quick to complain about our own hobbies and their inconveniences. I’m guilty of it as well. Still, that doesn’t make it less tiresome to continually hear negativety when you’re just trying to connect with others or maybe celebrate your experiences with them.
I may be on strenuous or bad terms with the party though since I was a spy, they knew I was a spy, but they didn't know I used to work for the King (read used to), which, our wizard and cleric are on bad terms with because they wouldn't work for the State. They wanted to be their own entities and not be subject to beck and call and end up having to uproot whatever personal business venture they had if they were ordered to do something for the King. The monk is a monk and he doesn't care because anyone that's tried to rein him in has had limbs broken. The paladin is from another country so he isn't known (he is) and hasn't had to deal with State overwatch (yet).
So, the last in depth retelling of the story, we were looking for missing people, found a very very large ratmen nest and I mentioned we fought a rat ogre. This thing is a massive juggernaut and probably upwards of 1200lbs of muscle and hate. Its what the ratmen breed to make shocktroops and a heavy cavalry equivalent. We knew we had to get 'something' up topside for proof that these things exist and that's why we almost died in the attempt. So we were goading it back through the tunnels and trying to piss it off just enough to keep following us and not just shoo us away from the nest. The wizard was the MVP this round because he had some pretty creative uses of prestidigitation to prod the rat ogre and keep it interested in us. Like shooting a fireworks sparkler at the thing's ass... or using mage hand to poke it in the eye, no damage, but I challenge any of you to not be fucking annoyed by someone doing that to you. The rat ogre critical hit the monk and sent him like fifteen feet up the tunnel among the other general pummelings we took. First time the monk has been like ''Ok, fuck this, I'm out."
So now we managed to get this thing into the streets, pandemonium erupts from the peasants at the monster. I'll give credit to the city guard for jumping in to help, but a couple of them got pasted. I managed to hamstring a leg making the ogre drop to a knee and the paladin (dwarf by the way) managed to parkour up a stool to a vendor table, onto a cart and just overhand Thor smites the rat ogre in the head. Thankfully it was just a killing blow, not a critical hit and letting the DM get a chance to destroy the head in a bloody mist of chunklets. Its just a horribly broken rat head attached to the body. Just to make sure, we slit its throat so far back its now a PEZ dispenser.
People stare at the thing, say we are heroes, I pull out a medallion with a crest on it and show it to the city guard. "I am one of the King's Underhands. I deputize you to my cause. Refusal is Death." Paladin stands beside me, twirling a bloody warhammer. Dwarf assist helps my Persuasion roll succeed. With the help of four guards we manage to get the thing on a cart and lash some draft horses to pull the damn thing. I stand on top of the cart and there is no tarp covering it. I want as many people as possible to see it as we march to the Castle. "Make way! Make way! Ready for war! Those that impede the King's Men are forfeit!" (I am writing checks my body can not cash right now. The others are only following me I think because we are a group of idiots playing a game at the table. No one except other Underhands know I am excommunicated and I shouldn't even have an Underhand Medal.) I'm going full Saltzpyre witch hunter and I'm make such a ruckus right now that being in the open should shield us from anyone trying to stop us. At least until we get inside the castle gates. The paladin and the cleric work with some Guard to push people out of the way and the Wizard used a spell to give me a megaphone of a voice so people could start getting out of the way earlier. The monk is up in the cart with me, lashing a lot of rope around what he can of an arm and the torso if he can manage it.
So now we are at the castle gates, and I have a mob trailing about fifty feet behind us. ''Make way! Make way for the King's Business!" Just holding my Underhand Medallion out for all to see.
"Khross you vile wretch! How dare you disturb the King's Peace!" Its Dietre van Houten. The DM tells me its another one of the Kings Underhands... oh shit... I'm already this deep into it, keep doing it until it turns out right. I jump out of the cart and begin walking to van Houten. The Wizard used Thaumaturgy to keep my voice booming and then spent a pretty high spell slot to use Major Image to create a Huge ''Jumbotron TV'' of what was happening in the castle courtyard so the mob and hopefully the King would see it. As Dietre and I walk closer, the cleric casts Zone of Truth on both of us and spends a higher spell slot to show the area as a Zone of Truth. Dietre's voice catches (interesting), and I give him a haymaker that knocks him to the ground. I begin making a tirade about what's under the city and we need to prepare and clean it out. We are under siege and we don't even know it. During this time, the Monk runs up a guard tower with more rope some pully blocks and a few of our deputies and rig up a pully in a murderhole above the portcullis and throws rope down to the cart. As I'm finishing my truthful speech the Jumbotron is showing a giant ass dead rat ogre being hoisted up in the portcullis. Dietre and I argue.
As the King marches out to meet with us, I ask the wizard to cut out the thaumaturgy so I'm not yelling at the King.
The cleric asks me, "So... when were you going to tell us about working for the King?" We are still in the Zone.
I reply, truthfully, "Now's not really the time to get into that."
So next session I'm thinking we have to deal with Dietre and convincing the King that this is a real thing and not just some one off aberration and I get to come to terms being the most recognized Underhand in the land... I'm amazed that the other players went along with it and actually came up with this stuff ad hoc. I just had the idea, "Get to castle, make noise, get audience with King." The others did a fucking amazing job amplifying to get that plan to happen. It was like a freaking episode of the ''A Team''. Im also giving credit to the DM for easing up and allowing this stuff to happen. We still did quite a few dice rolls but I think because it was so audacious, it might be warranted.
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The fuck are you babbling about?
Plate costs 1500 gp
+1 armor is minimum 2000 gp by the magic item creation and purchasing rules in xanathars.
Did you get people killed to make a point by bringing the rat ogre topside?
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
+1 armor costs 200 to 500 under the DMG purchasing guidelines
The Fuck are you on about?
501 to 5000 gp
You can't even sell it or craft it for less than 5000 in the DMG
+1 armor is rare.
Even still none of the magic item trade directives in the dmg have a 200-500 range listed.
Im gunna need some page numbers because I'm seeing page 135 for some loose guidelines on buying and selling magic items with heavy advice to not allow it, 129 for the cost of crafting magic items, and 130 the proposed sale price. They all put +1 armor of any kind at 5000gp
And still plate is at 1500 in the PHB
Guess you gotta duck the plate armor cost by buying splint mail (200g) and a Cloak of Protection (100-500g) or a +1 shield (100-500g). Or both, for a total of 400-1200g and an AC of 21, compared to 20 AC @ 1500g for plate armor+mundane shield.
Either way, it's silly that buying AC-boosting magic items is cheaper than buying nonmagical platemail, and pointing out that actually magic item costs aren't internally consistent either so some AC-boosting magic items are much more expensive than others even though they provide the same bonus (or less, in the case of the cloak - which takes an attunement slot but also gives +1 to all saves) doesn't exactly undermine the point.
wait
wait
Are you guys saying the internal economy of item costs within an edition of Dungeons & Dragons somehow manages to be the most fantastical part of the game?
So I guess it hasn't changed that much after all.
I smell a new thread title with a Whose Line reference coming.
Absolutely never give players access to +1 shields and so on like that. A +1 shield is a huge difference in AC, especially early on and heavily favors sword/board more than it already is.
He makes money on hosting games that this thread described as the simplest or easiest of the pen and paper RPGs. You guys should really keep in mind that dnd might be unrefined and dumb, but for a lot of people it is tough to even apply squad tactics and keep track of anything involving numbers. Also consider the ambiguities and omissions in the DMG that force DMs to make snap judgements or come up with houserules on the regular. DMing is no walk in the park and this Timm Wood guy makes good money from being a DM who can just show up at your house, and run a dnd session of a few hours with little downtime. When you can stick with the hobby for a while or can build on previous experience you will kick ass at this game, but there is still a daunting learning curve.
Maybe once more people build up experience with dnd, FFgames or other simple pnp games they can move on to more sophisticated systems, but I think people will just tweak dnd to hell and back instead.
I gave the frontline fighter in my group the Cursed shield of missile resistance. (the party consists of a dual-crossbowing master bard, a fighter and a wizard) mainly because I was really tired of the pew-pew-pew-pew handcrossbows with no downsides. So now my party has to think about targeting and positioning a little bit more. Until they can get that silly curse removed.
Look i can get better than plate AC with studded leather, awesome dex and a non magical shield.
To say nothing of class features and feats
This is simple goal post moving.
First you say the system is silly because magical plate costs less than regular plate. Wich would be a silly oversite... if that were at all true.
But it isn't.
Now you say the system is silly because you can use multiple options including multiple magical items, and an attunement slot, to get better than plate AC.
Which is also bullshit because pretty much every bit of advice in the DMG says not to just let that happen, to not just have magic items r us there for your players to just have whatever they want out of it. Stating that getting such an item should be difficult, and likely include some level of adventure in its own right (guess we're gunna have to do a bunch of adventuring where you don't even have splint yet since no class starts with anything better than chain) or at best some amount of time invested (uncommon is 20 days of downtime for crafting, and you gotta have the right crafting skills).
At best you've identified a magic item that should be rarer than it is (cloak of protection).
But that isn't at all the silliness you tried to sling before about magical plate costing less than regular plate.
But maybe
just maybe
your point about how the dex-heavy light-armor classes can get plate-equivalent AC for 50g is an example of exactly why it's silly for certain classes' basic mundane gear to cost so much. Perhaps a system where some classes - typically the ones who rely on their AC most - have their basic AC progression gated by gold instead of levels while others get the progression for free as part of leveling up is itself a problem, and not something you need to rigidly enforce by restricting access to magic gear in order to force the purchase of expensive mundane gear. Maybe the problem isn't that I have concocted an elaborate scheme involving the purchase of multiple magic items to replace the functionality of plate armor, but that it is possible to buy several 'rare and difficult-to-acquire' magic items, at their recommended values, for less than the cost of a class's basic gear in the first place.
And of course, we have once again run into the ever-present defense of 5e design errors: "well, these rules don't count because the rules also say you don't have to use the rules." Sure, you can decide not to let magic items into your campaign if you want. You don't have to use the listed item values, and you can insist that there's no way to buy magic items, and you can ditch the item buying rules from xanathar's, and you could refuse to have the items players want show up in treasure. You could also solve the problem of plate armor being too expensive by just not letting your players roll fighters or paladins, if you were so inclined. The option to cut/ignore/alter parts of the system does not excuse the system itself, and treating it like it does just turns any conversation about 5e's design decisions into Calvinball.
"It's not our fault if this stuff doesn't work right because we said you didn't have to use it" is a weak excuse at the best of times, but it falls especially flat when it's applied to a section of the DMG that spans eighty pages.
The system doesn't have AC progression.
No ones ac necessarily grows as they level. Thats just not a thing in this game.
There's options you can take along the way to possibly increase your AC over the norm (generally in trade for not increasing offensive output) but, there is no expected AC progression in this game. No ones expected character progression is gated behind gold because there is no expectation of AC progression. Thats like basic core system shit.
Even still studded leather, +5 dex mod (so likely 8th level at the earliest, and max without magic items), +shield is only 19. Plate and shield is still better than you can get to with just dex and basic equipment.
Also Plate is not basic equipment, as exemplified in it not being available in any starting equipment load outs. It's gear you can get at about 4th or 5th level depending on treasure hoard rolls (right about the point where someone could try to get a light armour user to have a 20 dex).
At the start pretty much every class maxes out around 18 possible AC, and there's some character choices you've made to make that 18 possible. You've made stat distribution and race choices to either drive dex up so you can use leather armor and a shield and still come out around a 17 (you need an 18 dex for this), or you've abandoned dex and are going with chain mail and a shield and you are at an 18. Unless you are a fighter at which point you can add 1 more with your fighting style.
Dex is a strong stat, no denying that, but that's totally different from:
"Lol these guys can't even realize that buying magical plate is cheaper than normal plate"
Goal posts aren't just moving anymore they are just spawning anew.
All that to the side, yeah the magic items are a region they didn't put a ton of direction into. They put them into the DMG because they absolutely had to define the basic magic items, and with the advisement that magical items change games, and that you should be careful about how you are handing them out and to consider how each magic item is going to change your game. Wich is exactly correct advice. You should absolutely reflect on how each magic item will effect your game even things as simple as a +1 shield or a cloak of protection.
Now, with their biggest, crunchiest release since the PHB they delve into further advisement on how to run the magic item system providing better guidelines on how to run purchasing while still maintaining that yes it is up to the DM to decide what magic items they want in the game. And in that system a +1 shield requires a persuasion check of 26 or higher along with 100 gold and a workweek of downtime minimum... then you gotta be lucky enough that they actually have a +1 shield or cloak of protection and then it can cost anywhere from 100 to 600 gold with regular advisement that you can just double that number if that feels better for your game. Crafting either of those involves a small cr 4 to cr 8 encounter to get magical supplies, training in the relevant tool kit (Smith's tools or weavers tools), 2 weeks, and 200 gold.
Max dex (20, so +5), best light armor (studded leather, +12), a shield (+2), and defensive fighting style (+1) come out to 20 ac, but that's some decisions you've made along the way to that. You dumped other stats so you could focus dex in the point buy (you spent a third of your points on a 15 for dex), you chose a racial option to buff your dex to 16 or 17. You elected to foregoe the offensive fighting styles for the defensive one. You spent not 1 but 2 feat options towards boosting dex to 20. and the sword and board full plate tank still has you beat on AC, and they have 2 more feats to spread around than your dodge tank does.
Plate essentially is a magic item, but one that the players can, to some measure, guaranteedly buy.
It is priced so that a fighter at about 6th level can either be pulling a 21 with plate they just bought (by 6 they should have 1500gp available) or a 20 with a light armor dex build, and anyone outside of fighter is looking at level 8 to pull a 20 AC with a dex build.
Secondly, it gives the dungeon master a tool to create a lot of different effects in game by describing someone with plate armor. Seeing a knight in full plate is a big deal in a roleplaying sense, you're looking at someone who's rich, probably a noble, probably very powerful, influence etc.
Mechanically it means that person is going to be very well defended. There's a different feel between games when your "armored foe" archetype always has plate armor on, vs having the gradient of different armor types for different classes of enemy.
There's something inherently awe inspiring about saying someone is wearing the modern equivalent of probably half a million dollars in defensive technology, and if you can get your players to fully comprehend the scale of that value, it's a really useful tool. Like in shadowrun if you describe an enemy character as wielding an assault cannon, except we intrinsically understand that a troll wielding a gun which should be mounted on an armored vehicle is crazypants, but we don't intrinsically understand the same thing about plate armor since we don't live in the actual middle ages.
Trying to get that additional +1 ac is balls, of course. The gold gated progression thing doesn't make much sense and I'd be honestly more comfortable simply conceding the fact that it'd be a better idea to let the players hoard gold for awhile and then simply give the fighter some mundane plate armor in a treasure hoard if you wanted them to advance into full plate ac territory or whatever. But, it's probably a good idea to save that upgrade for when it feels most significant because that should probably be the last AC upgrade that character gets.
Plate is expensive to keep platewearers from getting it before the level where non-plate-wearers are also able to increase their AC. That's the design goal, likely because it makes the math for monster attack bonuses at low levels easier by letting you work from more consistent assumptions about player AC at a given level. It's a dumb way to handle that problem, and puts a platewearer 1500g behind other characters for the same benefits they can get for free by creating a mandatory goldsink that applies applies to some classes, which is why people complain about it. (And why they make casual jokes about the inconsistencies behind its cost!)
If plate were intended to be 'essentially a magic item' in its own right, then +1 plate wouldn't cost the same as +1 studded leather. But it does, because the system expects a platewearer to get plate, because it is basic gear for the classes that use it.
imo the idea of a magic item having a set gold cost is ludicrous, but I understand why it's there, because it is a rough measure of equivalence between magic items. If instead of defining +1 plate as "plate mail with one extra armor class" we define it as "armor the fighter was already wearing, but with a +1 magical bonus to ac" then it makes sense to have it cost the same as the +1 leather. You're not paying for the armor, you're paying for the magic bonus, etc. However, if your first piece of a given armor type is magical, then all of a sudden the initial cost of that armor should be respected or throw off the advancements and such.
It's very much a classic dnd move to have advancement gated by gold, but I agree it's a weird and not great system in this day and age. Honestly, I feel like gold in dnd these days, at least at my table, is kind of a symbolic reward. I either invent uses for it or it just goes up, but it's still nice to give players something shiny.
They have similar ac gain options gated to similar level ranges, but at no point does the system expect those options to be taken, by anyone.
(Aside from the fact that it also only works as a gating mechanic if players are unwilling to pool their resources and cooperate - if the system expects the paladin to be in chain mail until level 6, then the party who pools their money and buys the tank a suit of plate at level 3 has a pretty easy time bypassing your gate.)