Elephants for actual use you cowards, for Fifth Edition Dungeons and Dragons.
Young Elephant 200 gp 40 ft. 800 lb.
Clumsy. The young elephant attacks at disadvantage.
Adult Elephant 250 gp 40 ft. 1,300 lb.
Wilful. Even by a longstanding master, successful Animal Handling checks are required to keep the adult elephant on even the simplest of tasks if it wishes to do something else.
Riding Elephant 300 gp 40 ft. 1,300 lb.
Calm. Trained from birth to traverse thick forest and shift lumber, or as the decorative mount of royal guardsmen, they are calmer than other elephants.
Soft Heart. No elephant can be trained for war; those that have tried have failed, no matter whether they’ve been made to look the part.
Heavy Walker. All elephants move at quarter speed across mountainous terrain.
I just don't find "healing magic is bad because you can just give your players access to as many potions as you want therefore bad game design" to be a very compelling argument.
Because limiting potions is a basic common sense thing that literally every DM I have ever known has done without having to really think about it. I don't think it needs to be defined in the rules.
Now, saying that there isn't enough money sinks in the rules is another thing. I can see that being an issue.
But healing magic has always been important to me and every party I've played with, because unlimited availability potions is a silly thing that never happens.
So back to the elephant thing. I noticed this during character gen for my current game. We were started at 2nd level and given 500gp in addition to our starting gear to cover our previous adventures. The DM knew we'd have little chance to buy anything for a long time so front loaded us a bit. Any way, Elephants are listed at only 200gp. Warhorses are 400gp.
Sadly my elephant dreams were quickly shot down. So I instead bought a carriage that I call the medieval equivalent to a van with a Valkyrie riding a polar bear airbrushed on the side.
The carriage is awesome, but one day my bard will own elephants. Maybe three of them tied together so they can carry a stage on their back....
Fuck not only would I have allowed the elephant I would've made you explain the adventure where you met this unlikely beast of burden (you know given we aren't in a region where elephants are normally found). If I'm giving you 500gp as a backstory building resource and you come at me with some weird shit like "I want an elephant" I'm almost immediately on board cause there's tons of space there to find a narrative reason you've got an exotic animal in your care, and you bet your butt you're gonna get a few combats where that bad boy's gonna stomp a dude. I'm also going to increase your feed costs cause an elephant requires 4 times the food a horse does. It's only 20 coppers a day but its still a sustained money sink, and character concern for the rest of the campaign until you either sell your elephant or get it dead.
My party's home base is a spelljammer now, so they're going to end up in lots of interesting places with lots of interesting shops. Still brainstorming what they're going to be able to find when they make their way to Kaladesh.
To be fair to my DM he was taking us into Curse of Strahd. I can see why he didn't want my top hatted tiefling bard standing atop an elephant and blasting out lute solos like Slash in the November Rain video. That's partially a lie, I don't have a top hat for my character yet. I do think that's going to have to change soon.
To be fair to my DM he was taking us into Curse of Strahd. I can see why he didn't want my top hatted tiefling bard standing atop an elephant and blasting out lute solos like Slash in the November Rain video. That's partially a lie, I don't have a top hat for my character yet. I do think that's going to have to change soon.
That's the other reason I'm not going to stop an elephant from happening. It's not going to be viable to bring it like anywhere in a dungeon. The few scenarios where it actually affects the on the ground gameplay will be both few and far between, as well as game defining. That elephant will be really important to you and your character, and will bring you unique experiences and motivations, but it shouldn't really affect the general gameplay outside of select scenarios and challenges.
Which is like a perfect gold sink in my mind.
I can definitely understand if a character concept is diverging from the wished for tone of a game though, and that tone is particularly important for the curse of strahd campaign.
I just don't find "healing magic is bad because you can just give your players access to as many potions as you want therefore bad game design" to be a very compelling argument.
Because limiting potions is a basic common sense thing that literally every DM I have ever known has done without having to really think about it. I don't think it needs to be defined in the rules.
Now, saying that there isn't enough money sinks in the rules is another thing. I can see that being an issue.
But healing magic has always been important to me and every party I've played with, because unlimited availability potions is a silly thing that never happens.
Okay, but it does happen in 5e, precisely because 5e, played without letting players buy magic items, is bad about providing other money sinks.
Like, even if your home game limits potions or whatever, it is a very common scenario for people to be playing 5e without that limit, variously because they're just on the PHB basic equipment list, or because they're following the DMG advice about not letting players buy items and they need something useful for them to buy, or just because that's how Adventurer's League works (and so basically anyone playing in a store community is operating under those rules, even if you assume every home game limits them - which they don't).
"But my table doesn't do it that way!" just isn't an argument that holds a lot of water here, particularly when you can point to one of the DnD event rooms at GenCon and go "okay, but see the literally hundreds of people in this picture? Every single one of them is playing it that way, and they're not the only ones. You're the outlier, not them."
'healing is bad because potions' also isn't the full argument in the first place, it's just one fairly flagrant (and apparently contentious) example in a list of reasons why healing isn't generally a great use of spell slots (something which is itself not exactly a new state of affairs in DnD).
I'm also going to increase your feed costs cause an elephant requires 4 times the food a horse does. It's only 20 coppers a day but its still a sustained money sink, and character concern for the rest of the campaign until you either sell your elephant or get it dead.
Is that in the rules somewhere? Because that seems...quite low as a scaling cost.
(Having a purchase price for elephants in the basic rules has been my greatest annoyance with this edition in actual play. Completely serious. The smug PHB index is my out-of-play one.)
Me elsewhere:
Steam, various fora: Ivellius
League of Legends: Doctor Ivellius
Twitch, probably another place or two I forget: LPIvellius
Okay. This is the first draft of the “Temunitu” race.
So I saw the official race Tortle and I just didn’t like it. Mainly because it was called Tortle. So I’ve made a variant, main points:
* Tortles only live 50 years, which goes against everything turtles etc. are about since forever. So no to that.
* Due to the way armour, and not wearing any, works with various classes Tortle’s natural armour was a detriment rather than a bonus; so each sub-race of Temunitu offers an differently styled option to be tougher without cancelling stuff offered by barbarian, monk, or any class with good armour options.
* The Tortle’s withdraw into shell manoeuvre wasn’t very cool, and as an action to withdraw, bonus to emerge it lacked the right fictional use. Now you withdraw as a reaction (to damage you can see, usually), and take an action to emerge. You’re quick to hide, but getting back out your shell and upright takes times, locking you in to your choice.
* Tortles worship the gods of other races, which has always been shorthand for “we’re not making up new ones for these chumps”. So Temunitu got some, and a couple of domains.
* Racial feats are cool! So they got some.
Gimmi a sec while I format all the crap I’ve made for this race.
In the beginning, many pantheons fought for shares of the world for their chosen race. Thus, in their wisdom, the gods of the Temunitu said: “There is no ownership of the material.”, and so the world was free for them to wander.
Characterised by calm, and a natural inclination to see all there is to offer in the world, Temunitu endear themselves to other races quickly—save for those that are territorial to the extremes.
The are found predominantly in tropical climes, living peacefully with their surrounding when they are not on one of their great journeys; an innate wanderlust that takes them from time to time.
Base Race
Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 1.
Age. Temunitu grow rapidly from birth to their teenage years, but slow almost to a halt once they reach maturity at 18 years old. Claims of up to 200 years circulate among sailors, but no upper limit for their age is known.
Size. Temunitu height and build vary drastically from island to island, but most weigh around 450kg. Your size is medium.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 30ft.
Languages. You can speak, read and write Temunitu and Common. Temunitu is a bombastic tongue, full of humour, melody and exaggerated metaphor. It’s written component is elaborately inked figures; time consuming for more than short messages.
Turtle Power. As a reaction, you can withdraw into your shell. While withdrawn, you have +4 AC and advantage on saving throws. Your speed is reduced to 0, and you can't take actions, reactions, or bonus actions except an action to emerge from your shell.
Call to the Surf. You can hold your breath for 1 hour, and treat conditions at sea as if it were benign for the purpose of any skill checks.
Sub-race. Now select a sub-race.
Temunitu Sub-Races
Blue Island
A hero-king, leader of a band of brothers, founded the first island nation at the dawn of history, and the folk of the Blue Island aspire to his legacy. They are sent on quests by their elders as part of their coming of age ceremony, and many continue to adventure well into their old age.
Alignment. Adhering to tradition and a warrior’s code, most are of a lawful alignment.
* Increase your Charisma score by 1.
* Warrior Focus. When you are reduced to 0 hit points but not killed outright, you can drop to 1 hit point instead. You can’t use this feature again until you finish a long rest.
* Still Waters. You can attempt to hide even when you are only lightly obscured by foliage, heavy rain, falling snow, mist, and other natural phenomena. For you, this includes shallow water.
* Strong Leader. You are proficient in the Persuasion skill, and a martial weapon of your choice. Should your class grant abilities for a certain type of weapon, your chosen weapon is considered of this type.
Red Island
Gruff and practical, yet with deep emotions they dare only show to their loved ones, Red Islanders stick together. Their rage is swift, as is their retribution, and will gladly face any foe should their people be threatened. Of all their kin, they have covered the most ground, and signs of their passing have even been found at the heart of vast deserts.
Alignment. Due to their contrasting emotions, many are of a chaotic alignment.
* Increase your Strength score by 1.
* Natural Armour. Your shell provides constant protection; it is natural armour. You have a base AC of 13 + your proficiency bonus. If the armour you wear would offer you greater protection, forgo your natural armour benefits and use it instead.
* Vengeful Strike. You have a pool of four d4 revenge dice. You can add any number of revenge dice to an attack against an enemy that has harmed an ally you can see. You lose any unused revenge dice when you take a short or long rest, and regain your maximum revenge dice when you finish a short or long rest. At 5th level, your maximum revenge dice increases to six.
* Imposing Stranger. You are proficient in the Intimidation skill, and the cartographer’s tools.
Orange Island
When outsiders think of the Temunitu, it’s usually these laidback folk. Filled with awe for all things new, they travel far and wide before living out their elder years as cackling tricksters and patient masters. Within the islands they often fill the roles of cook, musician, comedian—anything to bring joy into others lives.
Alignment. Jolly pranksters with a love of revelry, nearly all of them are chaotic good.
* Increase your Dexterity score by 1.
* Beach Rhythm. Your movements are fluid despite your bulky form. If an attack misses you, you gain +1 AC against the attacking creature until it hits you, up to a maximum of +5 AC.
* Pratfall Master. You only take 1d4 bludgeoning damage every 10ft from falling, rather than 1d6. When you land, you can stand from prone with a bonus action.
* Sightseer. You are proficient in the Performance skill, and two vehicles of your choice.
Purple Island
Looking to the future of their people, they seek out and develop new ways of doing things whenever they can. They are the quietest of the islanders, but perhaps the most welcoming, and are by far the most likely to join adventuring parties of other races. The people’s greatest monuments and treasures were forged by their hands.
Alignment. Sensitive and a thoughtful, most are of good alignments.
* Increase your Intelligence score by 1.
* Hard Back. Your curved shell deflects piercing blows. You are resistant to piercing damage, and reduce any damage dealt to you by a surprise attack by 1d8 + half your level rounded down.
* Quick Learner. After a short or long rest, you have advantage on the first skill check you make with a skill you are not proficient in.
* Keen Eyes. You are proficient in the Investigation skill, and the tinker’s tools.
Jade Valley
Long ago, a great cataclysm forced a now forgotten island to sink beneath the waves, and the descents of those Temunitu now lead peaceful lives as farmers, teachers and herbalists on the mainland far from their brethren. They are the least drawn to travel, but every generation a few crop up with the desire to seek out the lost island, and the wonders beyond their home.
Alignment. Content to watch the world go by, they are usually of neutral alignments, and swayed neither by good or evil.
* Increase your Wisdom score by 1.
* Lasting Soul. Your hit point maximum increases by 1, and it increases by 1 every time you gain a level.
* Pond Ripples. You have tremor-sense out to 60ft, which enables you to pinpoint the location of creatures you cannot see; be they behind a wall, in total darkness, or invisible. You can accurately guess their size and whether they are humanoid, but nothing else about their nature.
* Green Thumb. You are proficient in the Nature skill, and the herbalism kit.
Black Sea
Overcome by wanderlust, they are drawn to the roughest seas and farthest reaches. Explorers of other races unknowingly arrive at “untouched isles” a member of the Black Sea charted centuries before. Known to isolate themselves for years, the Temunitu belief that they carry their home on their back is at its surest with them. They do not think of themselves as adventurers, for them it is a way of life.
Alignment. Black Sea Temunitu are wild, uncivilised, yet humble, and so are usually of neutral alignments.
* Increase your Strength score by 1.
* Glancing Stance. You body is difficult to land a solid blow against. You can halve damage dealt to you rounded down once with this trait. You regain use of this trait when you finish a short or long rest.
* Inner Storm. Your bite is vicious, and you are proficient with it. You can deal 1d4 + your Strength modifier piercing damage as a bonus action. At 5th level, you deal 1d6 + your Strength modifier piercing damage.
* Ancient Instincts. You are proficient in the Survival skill, and the navigator’s tools.
Silver Reef
Said to be chosen by the gods to guide others to safety, the majority of Silver Reef folk do just that. Living out their days in small nomadic groups, they circulate the islands carrying with them news and rare goods to barter in return for bed and board, and make occasional pilgrimage to the Jade Valley to secure the bond between land and sea. They are innately magical, and increase their powers with a tattooing art kept secret, inked only upon themselves and the greatest of heroes in times of need.
Alignment. They tend to be of good alignments, but some falter, losing faith or gaining an inflated opinion of themselves.
* Current Glider. You are small sized. Increase your base speed by 5ft. You have a swimming speed of 30ft.
* Mana Tattoos. Your shell and scales are covered in enchanted imagery related to legend and your own experiences. You have advantage on all Strength and Constitution saving throws against magic.
* Starry Jaunt. You can cast the misty step spell once using this trait. You regain the ability to do so when you finish a short or long rest.
* You are proficient in the Insight skill, and the navigator’s tools.
Extra Sub-Races
The divide between the Temunitu peoples is no gulf, in fact many unrelated Temunitu consider themselves “soul siblings”, and those that intermarry do so without generating fuss. Children of these unions are clearly of the island of their birth, or take to the waves as Black Sea or Silver Reef Temunitu. Rarely, one may be born with a mixture of traits, if you wish to play one such Temunitu you must work with your DM to create a fair outcome. Additionally, there are likely more islands and other landlocked nations beyond the known world.
I'm also going to increase your feed costs cause an elephant requires 4 times the food a horse does. It's only 20 coppers a day but its still a sustained money sink, and character concern for the rest of the campaign until you either sell your elephant or get it dead.
Is that in the rules somewhere? Because that seems...quite low as a scaling cost.
(Having a purchase price for elephants in the basic rules has been my greatest annoyance with this edition in actual play. Completely serious. The smug PHB index is my out-of-play one.)
Actually re reading it you may be right i may actually need to increase it by 16 times the cost of mount feed.
A Huge creature eats and drinks 4 times a large creature, and a large creature eats and drinks 4 times a medium creature. It's covered in the DMG under adventure environments in the sub section for foraging for food and water.
Feed costs 5cp and by weight should likely cover the food and water for a medium creature (1 pound food and 1 gallon of water comes to 9.34 pounds).
So possibly 80 copper a day if we consider the 5cp a day cost to be the cost for a medium creature rather than a large creature.
Jellyfish Totem.
* You have resistance to poison, and are immune to the stings and venom of natural sea-life.
* Underwater, you can position yourself each turn so that your enemies move as if under the strain of harsh terrain when they move towards you.
Happy Wanderer.
* You only need to eat and drink half as much as usual to survive.
* You always know which way is north, the direction of the sea, and the time of day.
* Whenever you make a successful Charisma (Persuasion) check against someone to make them amiable towards you, you gain 1d4 hit points.
Coast Guardian
* You have advantage on any skill check attempted to rescue someone from drowning, or while attacked at sea.
* You are considered one size larger when determining your carry capacity as well as the amount of weight you can push, pull, or lift.
* You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Ocean‘s Ally.
* You have a swimming speed of 30ft, or if you already have a swimming speed increase it by 15ft.
* You can communicate simple ideas with beasts that can breathe water. They can understand the meaning of your words, though you have no special ability to understand them in return.
Bamboozler.
* You have proficiency in the Acrobatics skill. If you are already proficient in the skill, you add double your proficiency bonus to checks you make with it.
* You can move through occupied space regardless of the creature’s size, and gain +2 to attack that creature after you have done so.
Dragon Turtle’s Blessing.
* You have advantage on saving throws against effects that would move you in any way, and reduce how much you are moved by 5ft.
* As an action, you can breathe searing steam or spit molten lava at a creature within 10 feet of you. The creature must make a Dexterity saving throw with a DC equal to 8 + your Constitution modifier + your proficiency bonus. A creature takes 2d8 fire damage on a failed save, and half as much damage on a successful one. Once you use this trait you can not use it again until you finish a long rest. The damage increases to 3d8 at 6th level, 4d8 at 11th level, and 5d8 at 16th level.
Eclipse Training.
* You have been trained by the secret School of Eclipse. You can use the Hide action as a bonus action, even if you’re under observation. Regardless of whether you succeed or fail, once you use this ability, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Mahhu Pantheon
Mahhu
In the beginning, Mahhu, the Drifter, sailed the void alone and without form. Saddened by the emptiness, he called out, and the manifold echoes became eggs on a night black shore. The eggs cracked open to reveal different aspects of the Drifter, and all played a hand in creating the world and the planes beyond it. The Drifter is one above all, and many, they are the greatest divinity and the smallest mortal soul.
Solidarity, Life, Trickery
Appachupo & Nauytual
The sun and the moon are the eyes of the Drifter, and also two great turtles blazing a trail across the sky, which is itself an infinite ocean of possibility. Shape shifters, yet absolute, bound to an eternal duty, yet libertine, they represent the complex nature of the higher soul and lower soul.
Light, Journey*, Arcana
Ulludatui & Ravavedra
The green of the palm tree, the grey of volcanic ash, the song of the gull and the crash of storm. Growth, death and rebirth are maintained by the warring twins; who both love and hate each other. Like the struggle of life and death, they are distant from each other—then suddenly intertwined.
Nature, Tempest, Grave
Court of Ancestors
If Mahhu can be all things, all things are Mahhu, and so it is thought that the ancestors of the living possess power and wisdom worthy of worship. The Court act as mentors to those that seek them, but expect oath and tradition to be fulfilled as payment. There is no more meaning held in the distance of an ancestor, and many with consider their fallen family members as ancestors mere days after their death. In a thousand tales, the quest begins with the dream of a great grandmother upon some dark starry coast, with a request or dare to adventure.
Knowledge, Ambition, Order
*I made this one up. Plus, if you’ve got a domain you like, use it. I’ve just got mostly the official ones I know for now.
Edit: Also any of these gods could swing Tempest domain.
I haven't had the chance to look through all the subraces, but I like the rebuild.
Changing the action types on the withdraw is really good, although your version retains an odd quirk of the original design: Being prone while withdrawn means melee attacks against you have advantage, which mathematically offsets the +4 AC and leaves you no harder to hit in melee than you were before. With the new action cost, it also leaves you with a slightly weird rules issue: If you get attacked, and withdraw to bump your AC after the attack roll but before it's resolved, does the attacker have advantage on that attack?
I'd do something like:
As a reaction, you can withdraw into your shell. While withdrawn, you have +4 AC and advantage on saving throws, your speed is 0, and you can't take actions, reactions, or bonus actions except an action to emerge from your shell.
Blanket advantage on saves is strong, but losing your next action is a pretty big cost that you're not always gonna want to pay so I'm not convinced there's a mechanical need to hedge for balance's sake (and I feel like the unrestricted advantage makes more narrative sense anyway - it was always weird to me that ducking into his shell like a cartoon turtle made Tortles worse at weathering Fireballs) and ditching the prone condition and the dex-save-hosing cleans the ability up a little bit complexity-wise.
If you're giving each subrace a defensive trait of some kind, it might be cool for some of them to hook into Turtle Power in some way - a subrace that can emerge from the withdraw as a bonus action instead of an action once per short rest, or one that also has resistance to damage while withdrawn, that kind of thing. Alternately, those abilities together might make a respectable racial feat.
So some people have talked about the spell in passing but I wanted to shine a brighter spotlight on it.
I love Healing Spirit. And for the life of me I don't fully understand the cries for wanting it nerfed. I've seen people argue that "Healing Spirit is straight broken and needs to be house rules and nerfed away" while also saying "Healing spells in combat are a wasted spell slot". I know that Healing Spirit out of combat can pretty much get the party back up to full depending on the spell level used but ... I don't see why that's a bad thing? A character who wants to play a Healer type in this game ONLY has Healing Spirit to rely on as far as "bang for your buck". If used in combat (and it's a good spell so it's ACTUALLY worth using in combat too), it still has a chance of losing concentration. But for some reason, doing 2d6 in healing as a 3rd level spell is somehow busted compared to 3d10 points of lightning damage from Call Lightning?
And my wording is probably far more confrontational than my intent, but really my biggest disagreement with the spell is that Clerics don't also have a decent healing spell to live out the Healer fantasy if that's what they wanted to focus on.
I just don't find "healing magic is bad because you can just give your players access to as many potions as you want therefore bad game design" to be a very compelling argument.
Because limiting potions is a basic common sense thing that literally every DM I have ever known has done without having to really think about it. I don't think it needs to be defined in the rules.
Now, saying that there isn't enough money sinks in the rules is another thing. I can see that being an issue.
But healing magic has always been important to me and every party I've played with, because unlimited availability potions is a silly thing that never happens.
Ok. So, let's say the argument isn't "unlimited" potions. Let's call it; more than 0. Specifically, my party of 4 level 3 adventurers (a cleric, a druid, a bard, and a warlock) are investigating / solving a problem a local logging guild is having with their forest. Namely, that the forest is super pissed that the foreman took an axe enchanted with the soul of an angry Oni. It parallels the corruption of the Druid's home forest, giving ties and motivation for figuring out how to solve this problem. Now, my party make up is similar to "generic" parties in that they have <Ideal Target> for incoming damage, <Secondary Target> for incoming damage, and this party even has some mitigation on both "squishy" targets for <Non-Ideal Target>s for incoming damage. Their incentives are similar to other generic parties, but let's be specific:
They are incentivized to end fights early, have incoming damage hit temporary hit points (druid wildshape / Warlock fiend patron HP), and heal using Song of Rest and hit dice. If they need an emergency in combat heal, they're incentivized to use the potions first, because Spell Slots are also a major source of damage for this party, and doing damage to an enemy stops incoming damage faster, while healing party members merely ablates their risk of death to the next attack. So, obviously, the "smart" play is:
Have damage miss against the cleric (highest ac) > Have damage hit the Druid in wildshape > have damage hit the Warlock fiend patron temporary HP > end fights fast so incoming damage stops > heal outside combat with resources that cannot be used to end fights faster (hit dice / potions) > heal during combat with single use resources (potions / lay on hands / gaining temp HP from the Warlock) > heal during combat with multi use resources (spell slots)
My players are new to TTRPGs. They've played in a limited number of other games. I never discuss optimal strategies, but do my absolute best to explain rules to the fullest extent to which I understand them. I never second guess player choices, and when players learn more about the system, I let them change things using the new information they've come to understand.
They still get that they should never use spell slots on healing abilities, except as an absolute last resort, because that's what the system tells them to do. Now, as the DM, it's my prerogative to challenge my player's "ideal combat scenario" plan, but you can only do that so much before it feels like a screw job. "Oh, I know Mr. Cleric, that you just put yourself directly in this Owlbear's path, but he's going to charge past you towards the squishy bard hiding behind a bush...for reasons...."
D&D 5E presents itself as a game, in addition to being RP, and honestly, the game portion is feeling pretty lacking. Even my players, who have steadfastly refused to play any of the other systems I've run as one shots are starting to come to this conclusion themselves. So not only has WotC lost a paying customer (me, the DM), they're also starting to lose the captive audience, who were driven in by curiosity/Twitch streams.
If your defense of 5E revolves around the idea that the rules and systems are unimportant because the DM can just balance/iterate/adjust/test/design new systems, well....again, why are we using 5E? Why are we spending $50/book on splat and so forth if the things being presented aren't balanced and tested? So, not only does the DM have to be good at running a game, they also have to learn the fundamentals of game design, of player incentives, of what makes a story good / engaging / interesting?
You don't think that somewhat limits the availability of DMs?
Like, being a good DM is hard. It takes time, practice, honest self assessment, more practice, learning, reading...etc. It takes good group social management, improv, acting, a sense of narrative structures. It takes time to develop all those things, for sure. And learning those things from one book might be tough!
But I'd argue that it's more important to talk about those things in something like the Dungeon Master's Guide than it is to present non-solution solutions like "A fort is 50k gold and your players may want to build one eventually!"
If your advice for dealing with rules often comes down to "ignore that rule"...maybe the problem is with the rules, and not with the person asking how to use the rules?
In my experience, as a new-to-TTRPG player/DM, here's how it's broken down:
The first DM, as I mentioned in my previous post, quit after 4 sessions of running Lost Mines of Phandelver, because he was too stressed trying to make things up on the fly when the system just presents information and no context. Then, as a DM, 4 of my players (out of a total of about 10 people I've DM'd for) were inspired to try to run their own games. Technically, everyone I've run a game for has wanted to then run their own game, but most weren't able to get schedules / players worked out. So, I'm only talking about the 4 that actually went on to get their own games going.
All of them have quit or burned out.
Plus, my game *barely* resembles base 5E. Any time I *try* to run a published adventure, I am immediately reminded why I, by and large, don't. I've stopped buying WotC products. I've stopped recommending D&D 5E to people looking to run games. I don't advocate for the D&D brand.
How is that a good outcome? If you started with a motivated, interested person, and the end result is someone who is only using your product begrudgingly?
Diagnosed with AML on 6/1/12. Read about it: www.effleukemia.com
I just don't find "healing magic is bad because you can just give your players access to as many potions as you want therefore bad game design" to be a very compelling argument.
Because limiting potions is a basic common sense thing that literally every DM I have ever known has done without having to really think about it. I don't think it needs to be defined in the rules.
Now, saying that there isn't enough money sinks in the rules is another thing. I can see that being an issue.
But healing magic has always been important to me and every party I've played with, because unlimited availability potions is a silly thing that never happens.
Okay, but it does happen in 5e, precisely because 5e, played without letting players buy magic items, is bad about providing other money sinks.
Like, even if your home game limits potions or whatever, it is a very common scenario for people to be playing 5e without that limit, variously because they're just on the PHB basic equipment list, or because they're following the DMG advice about not letting players buy items and they need something useful for them to buy, or just because that's how Adventurer's League works (and so basically anyone playing in a store community is operating under those rules, even if you assume every home game limits them - which they don't).
"But my table doesn't do it that way!" just isn't an argument that holds a lot of water here, particularly when you can point to one of the DnD event rooms at GenCon and go "okay, but see the literally hundreds of people in this picture? Every single one of them is playing it that way, and they're not the only ones. You're the outlier, not them."
'healing is bad because potions' also isn't the full argument in the first place, it's just one fairly flagrant (and apparently contentious) example in a list of reasons why healing isn't generally a great use of spell slots (something which is itself not exactly a new state of affairs in DnD).
Again though just because it's not optimal doesn't mean it's bad. Yes an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure but that doesn't mean that cure is useless. Besides, while preventing damage is always more efficient, healing damage is almost always more versatile. Damage taken from a trap, a surprise attack, or a normal combat can all be fixed with healing: but each of those scenarios requires a different spell to prevent (or try to prevent, or assist in preventing).
I don't personally think it's "restrictive" for the party not to have an opportunity to take a long rest in a dungeon. I don't even think it's particularly weird for a short rest to have to be taken judiciously. Yes there are tables which struggle with this, but there are also tables which don't, and just like the Friends spell will be variably effective given the DM, so will the cost benefit of healing spells, and quite honestly, a huge swathe of the rest of the game. Stealth, animal handling, persuasion, etc.
The argument that cure wounds as a spell slot is bad because it's not universally useful is just as bad as the argument of "it's good at my table." The truth is, it straight up depends on the table in a way that, say, an attack based rule, spell, buff, etc does not.
It's not 2d6, it's generally used with your party conga lining through it so you get 2d6*party members per round which demolishes other healing spells.
The objections mostly come because HP is traditionally used as a long-term resource that people need to manage and you need to structure things differently with it in play.
I just don't find "healing magic is bad because you can just give your players access to as many potions as you want therefore bad game design" to be a very compelling argument.
Because limiting potions is a basic common sense thing that literally every DM I have ever known has done without having to really think about it. I don't think it needs to be defined in the rules.
Now, saying that there isn't enough money sinks in the rules is another thing. I can see that being an issue.
But healing magic has always been important to me and every party I've played with, because unlimited availability potions is a silly thing that never happens.
Ok. So, let's say the argument isn't "unlimited" potions. Let's call it; more than 0. Specifically, my party of 4 level 3 adventurers (a cleric, a druid, a bard, and a warlock) are investigating / solving a problem a local logging guild is having with their forest. Namely, that the forest is super pissed that the foreman took an axe enchanted with the soul of an angry Oni. It parallels the corruption of the Druid's home forest, giving ties and motivation for figuring out how to solve this problem. Now, my party make up is similar to "generic" parties in that they have <Ideal Target> for incoming damage, <Secondary Target> for incoming damage, and this party even has some mitigation on both "squishy" targets for <Non-Ideal Target>s for incoming damage. Their incentives are similar to other generic parties, but let's be specific:
They are incentivized to end fights early, have incoming damage hit temporary hit points (druid wildshape / Warlock fiend patron HP), and heal using Song of Rest and hit dice. If they need an emergency in combat heal, they're incentivized to use the potions first, because Spell Slots are also a major source of damage for this party, and doing damage to an enemy stops incoming damage faster, while healing party members merely ablates their risk of death to the next attack. So, obviously, the "smart" play is:
Have damage miss against the cleric (highest ac) > Have damage hit the Druid in wildshape > have damage hit the Warlock fiend patron temporary HP > end fights fast so incoming damage stops > heal outside combat with resources that cannot be used to end fights faster (hit dice / potions) > heal during combat with single use resources (potions / lay on hands / gaining temp HP from the Warlock) > heal during combat with multi use resources (spell slots)
My players are new to TTRPGs. They've played in a limited number of other games. I never discuss optimal strategies, but do my absolute best to explain rules to the fullest extent to which I understand them. I never second guess player choices, and when players learn more about the system, I let them change things using the new information they've come to understand.
They still get that they should never use spell slots on healing abilities, except as an absolute last resort, because that's what the system tells them to do. Now, as the DM, it's my prerogative to challenge my player's "ideal combat scenario" plan, but you can only do that so much before it feels like a screw job. "Oh, I know Mr. Cleric, that you just put yourself directly in this Owlbear's path, but he's going to charge past you towards the squishy bard hiding behind a bush...for reasons...."
D&D 5E presents itself as a game, in addition to being RP, and honestly, the game portion is feeling pretty lacking. Even my players, who have steadfastly refused to play any of the other systems I've run as one shots are starting to come to this conclusion themselves. So not only has WotC lost a paying customer (me, the DM), they're also starting to lose the captive audience, who were driven in by curiosity/Twitch streams.
If your defense of 5E revolves around the idea that the rules and systems are unimportant because the DM can just balance/iterate/adjust/test/design new systems, well....again, why are we using 5E? Why are we spending $50/book on splat and so forth if the things being presented aren't balanced and tested? So, not only does the DM have to be good at running a game, they also have to learn the fundamentals of game design, of player incentives, of what makes a story good / engaging / interesting?
You don't think that somewhat limits the availability of DMs?
Like, being a good DM is hard. It takes time, practice, honest self assessment, more practice, learning, reading...etc. It takes good group social management, improv, acting, a sense of narrative structures. It takes time to develop all those things, for sure. And learning those things from one book might be tough!
But I'd argue that it's more important to talk about those things in something like the Dungeon Master's Guide than it is to present non-solution solutions like "A fort is 50k gold and your players may want to build one eventually!"
If your advice for dealing with rules often comes down to "ignore that rule"...maybe the problem is with the rules, and not with the person asking how to use the rules?
In my experience, as a new-to-TTRPG player/DM, here's how it's broken down:
The first DM, as I mentioned in my previous post, quit after 4 sessions of running Lost Mines of Phandelver, because he was too stressed trying to make things up on the fly when the system just presents information and no context. Then, as a DM, 4 of my players (out of a total of about 10 people I've DM'd for) were inspired to try to run their own games. Technically, everyone I've run a game for has wanted to then run their own game, but most weren't able to get schedules / players worked out. So, I'm only talking about the 4 that actually went on to get their own games going.
All of them have quit or burned out.
Plus, my game *barely* resembles base 5E. Any time I *try* to run a published adventure, I am immediately reminded why I, by and large, don't. I've stopped buying WotC products. I've stopped recommending D&D 5E to people looking to run games. I don't advocate for the D&D brand.
How is that a good outcome? If you started with a motivated, interested person, and the end result is someone who is only using your product begrudgingly?
I feel the exact opposite way about 5e and am very much enjoying running tomb of annihilation, and my players enjoying playing it
I've added a shit ton of my own content, because it's my world and it doesn't necessarily always fit what they have presented me, but I really like what's there. I also really enjoyed running LMOP and so did my players so, agree to disagree
Depends on the setting/mood of the game. Curse of Strahd is supposed to be horror, making the PCs afraid most of the time. That would be sabotaged if powerful items rained on them. If you are playing Eberron, my understanding of the setting is that high power items should rain down because the PCs are supposed to be superheroes.
If they ever release a Planescape adventure (or i end up homebrewing one), my expectation is that in the wealthy areas of Sigil there is shops where you can buy high power items but there is always some weird quirk with the item ("it's a wand that shoots death rays but each time you use it you age a year", "it's a sentient magic sword +4 that loves to fight and will try to pick fights with beings you run into whether you want that or not", "it's a robe that makes you fire resistant but it's the itchiest thing you've ever known to the point of giving you psychic dmg if you attemp to use it long", etc...) and the cost for the items may be "lots of gold" or it could be "a favor" for the shady person trying to sell it to you, or straight up your soul.
I'm playing curse of strahd... we started with all +2 gear and just killed the hags at bonegrinder at third level and rolled into valacki and looks like the chaotic neutrals are going to just have us murder our way through Izek and the guards
It's not a super cool look when criticism of a game is met with "your group/your DM/the way you play the game must be trash".
I'm sorry (well, not really), but override367's DM is robbing him/her of a much better experience.
I was gonna ask override if it was at least being run as a kind of badasses storming the evil castle and going ham on some monsters to save the countryside kind of thing, or if they are still trying to sell the horror while there's little if any threat, and if that change to dynamic is playing out in a fun way still if not in the intended flavoring of the module.
nah it's just wrecking the experience I wanted, because two of the players only play crazy high magic campaigns where they start with +2 everything and have +5 everything by level 15 and the DM is easy to bully
It's not 2d6, it's generally used with your party conga lining through it so you get 2d6*party members per round which demolishes other healing spells.
The objections mostly come because HP is traditionally used as a long-term resource that people need to manage and you need to structure things differently with it in play.
They don't really need to conga line through it, depending on the party size. They can just gather together around in, as it radiates out in a 5 foot square and 4 or 5 party members can huddle together in that area, creating even a warm bonding moment as the healing waves slowly recover their energy and wounds. In combat, people can't stop in the same square as each other for mechanical reasons. Out of combat, there's nothing stopping this.
And the resource is still there. A spell slot is used up to keep the party moving, so a resource is still being expended.
It's not 2d6, it's generally used with your party conga lining through it so you get 2d6*party members per round which demolishes other healing spells.
The objections mostly come because HP is traditionally used as a long-term resource that people need to manage and you need to structure things differently with it in play.
It basically translates to your top spell slot almost reliably full healing the party regardless of party comp and character status. If you've got nothing bigger than a d8 hit die in your party... you don't even really need to use top spell slot for that result.
It absolutely demolishes all other healing spells out of combat, but also if you wanna spend your 9th level slot on that I'm totally into it. I've also watched a healing spirit die because of concentration before it got 4d6 of healing spread among various targets in combat.
It's not 2d6, it's generally used with your party conga lining through it so you get 2d6*party members per round which demolishes other healing spells.
The objections mostly come because HP is traditionally used as a long-term resource that people need to manage and you need to structure things differently with it in play.
It basically translates to your top spell slot almost reliably full healing the party regardless of party comp and character status. If you've got nothing bigger than a d8 hit die in your party... you don't even really need to use top spell slot for that result.
It absolutely demolishes all other healing spells out of combat, but also if you wanna spend your 9th level slot on that I'm totally into it. I've also watched a healing spirit die because of concentration before it got 4d6 of healing spread among various targets in combat.
This is where I've always been with it too. I'm not arguing that it's the strongest healing spell in the game as it scales up. I AM saying that it's awesome that it exists as every other healing spell just feels AWFUL. A Warlock with Eldritch Blast, out of combat, could also just start taking pot shots at the group and negate the healing done for free over the same duration without expending a spell slot. Call lightning could also do potentially more damage than the healing could do while also fighting for the concentration slot. So yeah, if the druid/ranger/bard wants to use their higher spell slots for impactful healing both in and out of combat, that's awesome that this exists for them, in my book, and I hope Wizard never touches it. I'd honestly rather they look at picking up some other healing spells or making them all Bonus Actions as mentioned back thread.
Depends on the setting/mood of the game. Curse of Strahd is supposed to be horror, making the PCs afraid most of the time. That would be sabotaged if powerful items rained on them. If you are playing Eberron, my understanding of the setting is that high power items should rain down because the PCs are supposed to be superheroes.
If they ever release a Planescape adventure (or i end up homebrewing one), my expectation is that in the wealthy areas of Sigil there is shops where you can buy high power items but there is always some weird quirk with the item ("it's a wand that shoots death rays but each time you use it you age a year", "it's a sentient magic sword +4 that loves to fight and will try to pick fights with beings you run into whether you want that or not", "it's a robe that makes you fire resistant but it's the itchiest thing you've ever known to the point of giving you psychic dmg if you attemp to use it long", etc...) and the cost for the items may be "lots of gold" or it could be "a favor" for the shady person trying to sell it to you, or straight up your soul.
I'm playing curse of strahd... we started with all +2 gear and just killed the hags at bonegrinder at third level and rolled into valacki and looks like the chaotic neutrals are going to just have us murder our way through Izek and the guards
It's not a super cool look when criticism of a game is met with "your group/your DM/the way you play the game must be trash".
I'm sorry (well, not really), but override367's DM is robbing him/her of a much better experience.
I was gonna ask override if it was at least being run as a kind of badasses storming the evil castle and going ham on some monsters to save the countryside kind of thing, or if they are still trying to sell the horror while there's little if any threat, and if that change to dynamic is playing out in a fun way still if not in the intended flavoring of the module.
nah it's just wrecking the experience I wanted, because two of the players only play crazy high magic campaigns where they start with +2 everything and have +5 everything by level 15 and the DM is easy to bully
it makes me a bit sad
Thats super unfortunate.
+6
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joshgotroDeviled EggThe Land of REAL CHILIRegistered Userregular
@override367 Pull that DM aside and complain. Or take this e-hug.
So some people have talked about the spell in passing but I wanted to shine a brighter spotlight on it.
I love Healing Spirit. And for the life of me I don't fully understand the cries for wanting it nerfed. I've seen people argue that "Healing Spirit is straight broken and needs to be house rules and nerfed away" while also saying "Healing spells in combat are a wasted spell slot". I know that Healing Spirit out of combat can pretty much get the party back up to full depending on the spell level used but ... I don't see why that's a bad thing? A character who wants to play a Healer type in this game ONLY has Healing Spirit to rely on as far as "bang for your buck". If used in combat (and it's a good spell so it's ACTUALLY worth using in combat too), it still has a chance of losing concentration. But for some reason, doing 2d6 in healing as a 3rd level spell is somehow busted compared to 3d10 points of lightning damage from Call Lightning?
And my wording is probably far more confrontational than my intent, but really my biggest disagreement with the spell is that Clerics don't also have a decent healing spell to live out the Healer fantasy if that's what they wanted to focus on.
The thing with Healing Spirit is that while most of the healing spells before it were undertuned, it goes much too far in the other direction.
Healing Spirit is a bonus action to cast, and heals each friendly creature for 1d6 each turn it's able to enter the spirit's space, for 10 turns, and each packet is increased by 1d6 per spell level as it scales.
Compare to the previous 'good' bonus action heal, Healing Word: As a bonus action (and cast as a second-level spell for parity with Spirit), it heals 1 creature for 2d4+5 and scales by 1d4 per spell level.
Healing Word heals 1 guy for 10 HP. Healing Spirit heals the whole party for an average of 35 HP each. Each time you uplevel it, Word gets an extra 2.5 points of healing while Spirit gets another 35 per target. Granted you won't get full value out of Spirit in-combat, since not everyone will be able to get to it every turn, but even at 1/4 of its value it still more than doubles Word's healing on each of its multiple targets, at the same action and slot cost.
Your other point of comparison for out-of-combat healing is Prayer of Healing, which takes 10 minutes to cast and heals the whole party for 2d8+5 - an average of 14.
Spirit takes 1 minute to cycle through and, again, heals the whole party for 10d6 - an average of 35, nearly twice what Prayer does for the same slot in 1/10th the time. And if you scale it, Prayer gives everybody an additional 4.5 points of healing, while Spirit gives everybody an additional 35.
Prior to Healing Spirit, healing spells were undertuned and most of the non-bonus-action ones probably needed to heal ~50% more than they do to be attractive options. Instead of doing that, Healing Spirit came in healing for anywhere from twice as much to twenty times as much, with the best casting time, the best base healing, the most targets affected, and the best scaling of any healing spell of similar level.
And then we got several different slapdash 'fixes' from devs via Twitter, all of which reduced the amount of healing it does, but not by enough to stop it from still being two or three times more healing than all the other options.
"We've got one bonus action spell that heals one guy for 10, and another that heals everybody for 35 each? Well, I see the problem: that second spell should only heal multiple targets for an average of 35 total, divided more or less as you choose. Also, it should still scale fourteen times as well as the first one, since we reduced its baseline healing to be only three times better. There, I fixed it!"
I get that errors slip through and it's impossible to catch everything in playtesting, but jesus. Healing Spirit is not a small error, and the fixes were still fucked up like they didn't even bother to re-check their math. It's the equivalent of ordering a dozen loaves of bread and having the baker accidentally give you nearly three hundred loaves without noticing, and then, when you correct him, having him go "oh, my mistake. Sometimes small issues slip through the cracks, you know how it is. Here's your dozen loaves" before immediately handing you seventy fucking loaves again.
I just don't find "healing magic is bad because you can just give your players access to as many potions as you want therefore bad game design" to be a very compelling argument.
Because limiting potions is a basic common sense thing that literally every DM I have ever known has done without having to really think about it. I don't think it needs to be defined in the rules.
Now, saying that there isn't enough money sinks in the rules is another thing. I can see that being an issue.
But healing magic has always been important to me and every party I've played with, because unlimited availability potions is a silly thing that never happens.
Ok. So, let's say the argument isn't "unlimited" potions. Let's call it; more than 0. Specifically, my party of 4 level 3 adventurers (a cleric, a druid, a bard, and a warlock) are investigating / solving a problem a local logging guild is having with their forest. Namely, that the forest is super pissed that the foreman took an axe enchanted with the soul of an angry Oni. It parallels the corruption of the Druid's home forest, giving ties and motivation for figuring out how to solve this problem. Now, my party make up is similar to "generic" parties in that they have <Ideal Target> for incoming damage, <Secondary Target> for incoming damage, and this party even has some mitigation on both "squishy" targets for <Non-Ideal Target>s for incoming damage. Their incentives are similar to other generic parties, but let's be specific:
They are incentivized to end fights early, have incoming damage hit temporary hit points (druid wildshape / Warlock fiend patron HP), and heal using Song of Rest and hit dice. If they need an emergency in combat heal, they're incentivized to use the potions first, because Spell Slots are also a major source of damage for this party, and doing damage to an enemy stops incoming damage faster, while healing party members merely ablates their risk of death to the next attack. So, obviously, the "smart" play is:
Have damage miss against the cleric (highest ac) > Have damage hit the Druid in wildshape > have damage hit the Warlock fiend patron temporary HP > end fights fast so incoming damage stops > heal outside combat with resources that cannot be used to end fights faster (hit dice / potions) > heal during combat with single use resources (potions / lay on hands / gaining temp HP from the Warlock) > heal during combat with multi use resources (spell slots)
My players are new to TTRPGs. They've played in a limited number of other games. I never discuss optimal strategies, but do my absolute best to explain rules to the fullest extent to which I understand them. I never second guess player choices, and when players learn more about the system, I let them change things using the new information they've come to understand.
They still get that they should never use spell slots on healing abilities, except as an absolute last resort, because that's what the system tells them to do. Now, as the DM, it's my prerogative to challenge my player's "ideal combat scenario" plan, but you can only do that so much before it feels like a screw job. "Oh, I know Mr. Cleric, that you just put yourself directly in this Owlbear's path, but he's going to charge past you towards the squishy bard hiding behind a bush...for reasons...."
D&D 5E presents itself as a game, in addition to being RP, and honestly, the game portion is feeling pretty lacking. Even my players, who have steadfastly refused to play any of the other systems I've run as one shots are starting to come to this conclusion themselves. So not only has WotC lost a paying customer (me, the DM), they're also starting to lose the captive audience, who were driven in by curiosity/Twitch streams.
If your defense of 5E revolves around the idea that the rules and systems are unimportant because the DM can just balance/iterate/adjust/test/design new systems, well....again, why are we using 5E? Why are we spending $50/book on splat and so forth if the things being presented aren't balanced and tested? So, not only does the DM have to be good at running a game, they also have to learn the fundamentals of game design, of player incentives, of what makes a story good / engaging / interesting?
You don't think that somewhat limits the availability of DMs?
Like, being a good DM is hard. It takes time, practice, honest self assessment, more practice, learning, reading...etc. It takes good group social management, improv, acting, a sense of narrative structures. It takes time to develop all those things, for sure. And learning those things from one book might be tough!
But I'd argue that it's more important to talk about those things in something like the Dungeon Master's Guide than it is to present non-solution solutions like "A fort is 50k gold and your players may want to build one eventually!"
If your advice for dealing with rules often comes down to "ignore that rule"...maybe the problem is with the rules, and not with the person asking how to use the rules?
In my experience, as a new-to-TTRPG player/DM, here's how it's broken down:
The first DM, as I mentioned in my previous post, quit after 4 sessions of running Lost Mines of Phandelver, because he was too stressed trying to make things up on the fly when the system just presents information and no context. Then, as a DM, 4 of my players (out of a total of about 10 people I've DM'd for) were inspired to try to run their own games. Technically, everyone I've run a game for has wanted to then run their own game, but most weren't able to get schedules / players worked out. So, I'm only talking about the 4 that actually went on to get their own games going.
All of them have quit or burned out.
Plus, my game *barely* resembles base 5E. Any time I *try* to run a published adventure, I am immediately reminded why I, by and large, don't. I've stopped buying WotC products. I've stopped recommending D&D 5E to people looking to run games. I don't advocate for the D&D brand.
How is that a good outcome? If you started with a motivated, interested person, and the end result is someone who is only using your product begrudgingly?
Finding a DM has always been an issue for all TTRPGs. It's like a core element of the hobby.
It isn't a thing everyone is built to handle.
If making stuff up stresses you out... an imagination game might be something you need to ease into, and being the imagination referee might just be outside your wheelhouse. The entire game is about making stuff up, quite often on the fly.
I just don't find "healing magic is bad because you can just give your players access to as many potions as you want therefore bad game design" to be a very compelling argument.
Because limiting potions is a basic common sense thing that literally every DM I have ever known has done without having to really think about it. I don't think it needs to be defined in the rules.
Now, saying that there isn't enough money sinks in the rules is another thing. I can see that being an issue.
But healing magic has always been important to me and every party I've played with, because unlimited availability potions is a silly thing that never happens.
Ok. So, let's say the argument isn't "unlimited" potions. Let's call it; more than 0. Specifically, my party of 4 level 3 adventurers (a cleric, a druid, a bard, and a warlock) are investigating / solving a problem a local logging guild is having with their forest. Namely, that the forest is super pissed that the foreman took an axe enchanted with the soul of an angry Oni. It parallels the corruption of the Druid's home forest, giving ties and motivation for figuring out how to solve this problem. Now, my party make up is similar to "generic" parties in that they have <Ideal Target> for incoming damage, <Secondary Target> for incoming damage, and this party even has some mitigation on both "squishy" targets for <Non-Ideal Target>s for incoming damage. Their incentives are similar to other generic parties, but let's be specific:
They are incentivized to end fights early, have incoming damage hit temporary hit points (druid wildshape / Warlock fiend patron HP), and heal using Song of Rest and hit dice. If they need an emergency in combat heal, they're incentivized to use the potions first, because Spell Slots are also a major source of damage for this party, and doing damage to an enemy stops incoming damage faster, while healing party members merely ablates their risk of death to the next attack. So, obviously, the "smart" play is:
Have damage miss against the cleric (highest ac) > Have damage hit the Druid in wildshape > have damage hit the Warlock fiend patron temporary HP > end fights fast so incoming damage stops > heal outside combat with resources that cannot be used to end fights faster (hit dice / potions) > heal during combat with single use resources (potions / lay on hands / gaining temp HP from the Warlock) > heal during combat with multi use resources (spell slots)
My players are new to TTRPGs. They've played in a limited number of other games. I never discuss optimal strategies, but do my absolute best to explain rules to the fullest extent to which I understand them. I never second guess player choices, and when players learn more about the system, I let them change things using the new information they've come to understand.
They still get that they should never use spell slots on healing abilities, except as an absolute last resort, because that's what the system tells them to do. Now, as the DM, it's my prerogative to challenge my player's "ideal combat scenario" plan, but you can only do that so much before it feels like a screw job. "Oh, I know Mr. Cleric, that you just put yourself directly in this Owlbear's path, but he's going to charge past you towards the squishy bard hiding behind a bush...for reasons...."
D&D 5E presents itself as a game, in addition to being RP, and honestly, the game portion is feeling pretty lacking. Even my players, who have steadfastly refused to play any of the other systems I've run as one shots are starting to come to this conclusion themselves. So not only has WotC lost a paying customer (me, the DM), they're also starting to lose the captive audience, who were driven in by curiosity/Twitch streams.
If your defense of 5E revolves around the idea that the rules and systems are unimportant because the DM can just balance/iterate/adjust/test/design new systems, well....again, why are we using 5E? Why are we spending $50/book on splat and so forth if the things being presented aren't balanced and tested? So, not only does the DM have to be good at running a game, they also have to learn the fundamentals of game design, of player incentives, of what makes a story good / engaging / interesting?
You don't think that somewhat limits the availability of DMs?
Like, being a good DM is hard. It takes time, practice, honest self assessment, more practice, learning, reading...etc. It takes good group social management, improv, acting, a sense of narrative structures. It takes time to develop all those things, for sure. And learning those things from one book might be tough!
But I'd argue that it's more important to talk about those things in something like the Dungeon Master's Guide than it is to present non-solution solutions like "A fort is 50k gold and your players may want to build one eventually!"
If your advice for dealing with rules often comes down to "ignore that rule"...maybe the problem is with the rules, and not with the person asking how to use the rules?
In my experience, as a new-to-TTRPG player/DM, here's how it's broken down:
The first DM, as I mentioned in my previous post, quit after 4 sessions of running Lost Mines of Phandelver, because he was too stressed trying to make things up on the fly when the system just presents information and no context. Then, as a DM, 4 of my players (out of a total of about 10 people I've DM'd for) were inspired to try to run their own games. Technically, everyone I've run a game for has wanted to then run their own game, but most weren't able to get schedules / players worked out. So, I'm only talking about the 4 that actually went on to get their own games going.
All of them have quit or burned out.
Plus, my game *barely* resembles base 5E. Any time I *try* to run a published adventure, I am immediately reminded why I, by and large, don't. I've stopped buying WotC products. I've stopped recommending D&D 5E to people looking to run games. I don't advocate for the D&D brand.
How is that a good outcome? If you started with a motivated, interested person, and the end result is someone who is only using your product begrudgingly?
Finding a DM has always been an issue for all TTRPGs. It's like a core element of the hobby.
It isn't a thing everyone is built to handle.
If making stuff up stresses you out... an imagination game might be something you need to ease into, and being the imagination referee might just be outside your wheelhouse. The entire game is about making stuff up, quite often on the fly.
Like that's kinda the whole game.
These two posts really highlight the reason that these conversations tend to go in circles.
I think I'm with Sleep. Any published adventure is just going to be bullet points in the world, none will tell you what to do when the players decide to start a tavern and employ the banshee Agatha as a barmaid or how to respond when the paladin asks Ireena Kolyanovich what drew her to the faith of the morning lord as a girl
you simply just have to fill in the details of the world yourself, often on the fly, and as you get better you get better at preparing and keeping track of the details you've laid out it becomes easier
I think I'm with Sleep. Any published adventure is just going to be bullet points in the world, none will tell you what to do when the players decide to start a tavern and employ the banshee Agatha as a barmaid or whatever - you have to come up with the rest
Yeah, except that's not generally the problem that new DMs run into.
I think I'm with Sleep. Any published adventure is just going to be bullet points in the world, none will tell you what to do when the players decide to start a tavern and employ the banshee Agatha as a barmaid or whatever - you have to come up with the rest
Yeah, except that's not generally the problem that new DMs run into.
My biggest problem as a new DM was spending too much time getting hung up on specific rules
When I realized I could just make a ruling and move on and we'd fix it later if it was wrong it was like a magic spell to making my game actually run - the only tool I needed was a notebook to write down what I did
other stuff like RANDOM_COMMONER_NPC names and motivations and what continued to be problems but that's just the nature of tabletop
If finding a DM is a core issue for all TTRPGs, then it should follow that - in order to fix that problem - the most important design element of a well-designed TTRPG is ease of use by the DM, a metric 5e scores particularly poorly on.
the most challenging and time consuming thing a DM has to do is keep track of the innumerable details of their world and be prepared for the most likely things the players will do/face in a game (published or not), even if 5e had no combat or dice rolls that aspect would still be present
like most people find being a DM appealing but in my experience actually being one proves to be too much of a chore for a lot of people, you have to be the kind of person who finds enjoyment in maintaining spreadsheets of fictional people
If finding a DM is a core issue for all TTRPGs, then it should follow that - in order to fix that problem - the most important design element of a well-designed TTRPG is ease of use by the DM, a metric 5e scores particularly poorly on.
I highly disagree with that assessment. It's the easiest system i've dealt with in 10 years.
Posts
Young Elephant 200 gp 40 ft. 800 lb.
Clumsy. The young elephant attacks at disadvantage.
Adult Elephant 250 gp 40 ft. 1,300 lb.
Wilful. Even by a longstanding master, successful Animal Handling checks are required to keep the adult elephant on even the simplest of tasks if it wishes to do something else.
Riding Elephant 300 gp 40 ft. 1,300 lb.
Calm. Trained from birth to traverse thick forest and shift lumber, or as the decorative mount of royal guardsmen, they are calmer than other elephants.
Soft Heart. No elephant can be trained for war; those that have tried have failed, no matter whether they’ve been made to look the part.
Heavy Walker. All elephants move at quarter speed across mountainous terrain.
Because limiting potions is a basic common sense thing that literally every DM I have ever known has done without having to really think about it. I don't think it needs to be defined in the rules.
Now, saying that there isn't enough money sinks in the rules is another thing. I can see that being an issue.
But healing magic has always been important to me and every party I've played with, because unlimited availability potions is a silly thing that never happens.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
I take great mock offense to this!! War Elephants are awesome and a prime example of the rule of cool.
Also Elephants are actually highly trainable and completely capable of kicking ass. Even TV Tropes says so!
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WarElephants
Eventually, the elephant becomes level 1 in you’re class. Yes, even if you’re a rogue.
Fuck not only would I have allowed the elephant I would've made you explain the adventure where you met this unlikely beast of burden (you know given we aren't in a region where elephants are normally found). If I'm giving you 500gp as a backstory building resource and you come at me with some weird shit like "I want an elephant" I'm almost immediately on board cause there's tons of space there to find a narrative reason you've got an exotic animal in your care, and you bet your butt you're gonna get a few combats where that bad boy's gonna stomp a dude. I'm also going to increase your feed costs cause an elephant requires 4 times the food a horse does. It's only 20 coppers a day but its still a sustained money sink, and character concern for the rest of the campaign until you either sell your elephant or get it dead.
Comics, Games, Booze
That's the other reason I'm not going to stop an elephant from happening. It's not going to be viable to bring it like anywhere in a dungeon. The few scenarios where it actually affects the on the ground gameplay will be both few and far between, as well as game defining. That elephant will be really important to you and your character, and will bring you unique experiences and motivations, but it shouldn't really affect the general gameplay outside of select scenarios and challenges.
Which is like a perfect gold sink in my mind.
I can definitely understand if a character concept is diverging from the wished for tone of a game though, and that tone is particularly important for the curse of strahd campaign.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
Flaming black elephant with flight
Okay, but it does happen in 5e, precisely because 5e, played without letting players buy magic items, is bad about providing other money sinks.
Like, even if your home game limits potions or whatever, it is a very common scenario for people to be playing 5e without that limit, variously because they're just on the PHB basic equipment list, or because they're following the DMG advice about not letting players buy items and they need something useful for them to buy, or just because that's how Adventurer's League works (and so basically anyone playing in a store community is operating under those rules, even if you assume every home game limits them - which they don't).
"But my table doesn't do it that way!" just isn't an argument that holds a lot of water here, particularly when you can point to one of the DnD event rooms at GenCon and go "okay, but see the literally hundreds of people in this picture? Every single one of them is playing it that way, and they're not the only ones. You're the outlier, not them."
'healing is bad because potions' also isn't the full argument in the first place, it's just one fairly flagrant (and apparently contentious) example in a list of reasons why healing isn't generally a great use of spell slots (something which is itself not exactly a new state of affairs in DnD).
Is that in the rules somewhere? Because that seems...quite low as a scaling cost.
(Having a purchase price for elephants in the basic rules has been my greatest annoyance with this edition in actual play. Completely serious. The smug PHB index is my out-of-play one.)
Steam, various fora: Ivellius
League of Legends: Doctor Ivellius
Twitch, probably another place or two I forget: LPIvellius
So I saw the official race Tortle and I just didn’t like it. Mainly because it was called Tortle. So I’ve made a variant, main points:
* Tortles only live 50 years, which goes against everything turtles etc. are about since forever. So no to that.
* Due to the way armour, and not wearing any, works with various classes Tortle’s natural armour was a detriment rather than a bonus; so each sub-race of Temunitu offers an differently styled option to be tougher without cancelling stuff offered by barbarian, monk, or any class with good armour options.
* The Tortle’s withdraw into shell manoeuvre wasn’t very cool, and as an action to withdraw, bonus to emerge it lacked the right fictional use. Now you withdraw as a reaction (to damage you can see, usually), and take an action to emerge. You’re quick to hide, but getting back out your shell and upright takes times, locking you in to your choice.
* Tortles worship the gods of other races, which has always been shorthand for “we’re not making up new ones for these chumps”. So Temunitu got some, and a couple of domains.
* Racial feats are cool! So they got some.
Gimmi a sec while I format all the crap I’ve made for this race.
Quick Blurb
Characterised by calm, and a natural inclination to see all there is to offer in the world, Temunitu endear themselves to other races quickly—save for those that are territorial to the extremes.
The are found predominantly in tropical climes, living peacefully with their surrounding when they are not on one of their great journeys; an innate wanderlust that takes them from time to time.
Base Race
Age. Temunitu grow rapidly from birth to their teenage years, but slow almost to a halt once they reach maturity at 18 years old. Claims of up to 200 years circulate among sailors, but no upper limit for their age is known.
Size. Temunitu height and build vary drastically from island to island, but most weigh around 450kg. Your size is medium.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 30ft.
Languages. You can speak, read and write Temunitu and Common. Temunitu is a bombastic tongue, full of humour, melody and exaggerated metaphor. It’s written component is elaborately inked figures; time consuming for more than short messages.
Turtle Power. As a reaction, you can withdraw into your shell. While withdrawn, you have +4 AC and advantage on saving throws. Your speed is reduced to 0, and you can't take actions, reactions, or bonus actions except an action to emerge from your shell.
Call to the Surf. You can hold your breath for 1 hour, and treat conditions at sea as if it were benign for the purpose of any skill checks.
Sub-race. Now select a sub-race.
Temunitu Sub-Races
Blue Island
Alignment. Adhering to tradition and a warrior’s code, most are of a lawful alignment.
* Increase your Charisma score by 1.
* Warrior Focus. When you are reduced to 0 hit points but not killed outright, you can drop to 1 hit point instead. You can’t use this feature again until you finish a long rest.
* Still Waters. You can attempt to hide even when you are only lightly obscured by foliage, heavy rain, falling snow, mist, and other natural phenomena. For you, this includes shallow water.
* Strong Leader. You are proficient in the Persuasion skill, and a martial weapon of your choice. Should your class grant abilities for a certain type of weapon, your chosen weapon is considered of this type.
Red Island
Alignment. Due to their contrasting emotions, many are of a chaotic alignment.
* Increase your Strength score by 1.
* Natural Armour. Your shell provides constant protection; it is natural armour. You have a base AC of 13 + your proficiency bonus. If the armour you wear would offer you greater protection, forgo your natural armour benefits and use it instead.
* Vengeful Strike. You have a pool of four d4 revenge dice. You can add any number of revenge dice to an attack against an enemy that has harmed an ally you can see. You lose any unused revenge dice when you take a short or long rest, and regain your maximum revenge dice when you finish a short or long rest. At 5th level, your maximum revenge dice increases to six.
* Imposing Stranger. You are proficient in the Intimidation skill, and the cartographer’s tools.
Orange Island
Alignment. Jolly pranksters with a love of revelry, nearly all of them are chaotic good.
* Increase your Dexterity score by 1.
* Beach Rhythm. Your movements are fluid despite your bulky form. If an attack misses you, you gain +1 AC against the attacking creature until it hits you, up to a maximum of +5 AC.
* Pratfall Master. You only take 1d4 bludgeoning damage every 10ft from falling, rather than 1d6. When you land, you can stand from prone with a bonus action.
* Sightseer. You are proficient in the Performance skill, and two vehicles of your choice.
Purple Island
Alignment. Sensitive and a thoughtful, most are of good alignments.
* Increase your Intelligence score by 1.
* Hard Back. Your curved shell deflects piercing blows. You are resistant to piercing damage, and reduce any damage dealt to you by a surprise attack by 1d8 + half your level rounded down.
* Quick Learner. After a short or long rest, you have advantage on the first skill check you make with a skill you are not proficient in.
* Keen Eyes. You are proficient in the Investigation skill, and the tinker’s tools.
Jade Valley
Alignment. Content to watch the world go by, they are usually of neutral alignments, and swayed neither by good or evil.
* Increase your Wisdom score by 1.
* Lasting Soul. Your hit point maximum increases by 1, and it increases by 1 every time you gain a level.
* Pond Ripples. You have tremor-sense out to 60ft, which enables you to pinpoint the location of creatures you cannot see; be they behind a wall, in total darkness, or invisible. You can accurately guess their size and whether they are humanoid, but nothing else about their nature.
* Green Thumb. You are proficient in the Nature skill, and the herbalism kit.
Black Sea
Alignment. Black Sea Temunitu are wild, uncivilised, yet humble, and so are usually of neutral alignments.
* Increase your Strength score by 1.
* Glancing Stance. You body is difficult to land a solid blow against. You can halve damage dealt to you rounded down once with this trait. You regain use of this trait when you finish a short or long rest.
* Inner Storm. Your bite is vicious, and you are proficient with it. You can deal 1d4 + your Strength modifier piercing damage as a bonus action. At 5th level, you deal 1d6 + your Strength modifier piercing damage.
* Ancient Instincts. You are proficient in the Survival skill, and the navigator’s tools.
Silver Reef
Alignment. They tend to be of good alignments, but some falter, losing faith or gaining an inflated opinion of themselves.
* Current Glider. You are small sized. Increase your base speed by 5ft. You have a swimming speed of 30ft.
* Mana Tattoos. Your shell and scales are covered in enchanted imagery related to legend and your own experiences. You have advantage on all Strength and Constitution saving throws against magic.
* Starry Jaunt. You can cast the misty step spell once using this trait. You regain the ability to do so when you finish a short or long rest.
* You are proficient in the Insight skill, and the navigator’s tools.
Extra Sub-Races
Actually re reading it you may be right i may actually need to increase it by 16 times the cost of mount feed.
A Huge creature eats and drinks 4 times a large creature, and a large creature eats and drinks 4 times a medium creature. It's covered in the DMG under adventure environments in the sub section for foraging for food and water.
Feed costs 5cp and by weight should likely cover the food and water for a medium creature (1 pound food and 1 gallon of water comes to 9.34 pounds).
So possibly 80 copper a day if we consider the 5cp a day cost to be the cost for a medium creature rather than a large creature.
And then two words, floating through them: vampire elephant.
* You have resistance to poison, and are immune to the stings and venom of natural sea-life.
* Underwater, you can position yourself each turn so that your enemies move as if under the strain of harsh terrain when they move towards you.
Happy Wanderer.
* You only need to eat and drink half as much as usual to survive.
* You always know which way is north, the direction of the sea, and the time of day.
* Whenever you make a successful Charisma (Persuasion) check against someone to make them amiable towards you, you gain 1d4 hit points.
Coast Guardian
* You have advantage on any skill check attempted to rescue someone from drowning, or while attacked at sea.
* You are considered one size larger when determining your carry capacity as well as the amount of weight you can push, pull, or lift.
* You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Ocean‘s Ally.
* You have a swimming speed of 30ft, or if you already have a swimming speed increase it by 15ft.
* You can communicate simple ideas with beasts that can breathe water. They can understand the meaning of your words, though you have no special ability to understand them in return.
Bamboozler.
* You have proficiency in the Acrobatics skill. If you are already proficient in the skill, you add double your proficiency bonus to checks you make with it.
* You can move through occupied space regardless of the creature’s size, and gain +2 to attack that creature after you have done so.
Dragon Turtle’s Blessing.
* You have advantage on saving throws against effects that would move you in any way, and reduce how much you are moved by 5ft.
* As an action, you can breathe searing steam or spit molten lava at a creature within 10 feet of you. The creature must make a Dexterity saving throw with a DC equal to 8 + your Constitution modifier + your proficiency bonus. A creature takes 2d8 fire damage on a failed save, and half as much damage on a successful one. Once you use this trait you can not use it again until you finish a long rest. The damage increases to 3d8 at 6th level, 4d8 at 11th level, and 5d8 at 16th level.
Eclipse Training.
* You have been trained by the secret School of Eclipse. You can use the Hide action as a bonus action, even if you’re under observation. Regardless of whether you succeed or fail, once you use this ability, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Mahhu Pantheon
Mahhu
Solidarity, Life, Trickery
Appachupo & Nauytual
Light, Journey*, Arcana
Ulludatui & Ravavedra
Nature, Tempest, Grave
Court of Ancestors
Knowledge, Ambition, Order
*I made this one up. Plus, if you’ve got a domain you like, use it. I’ve just got mostly the official ones I know for now.
Edit: Also any of these gods could swing Tempest domain.
Changing the action types on the withdraw is really good, although your version retains an odd quirk of the original design: Being prone while withdrawn means melee attacks against you have advantage, which mathematically offsets the +4 AC and leaves you no harder to hit in melee than you were before. With the new action cost, it also leaves you with a slightly weird rules issue: If you get attacked, and withdraw to bump your AC after the attack roll but before it's resolved, does the attacker have advantage on that attack?
I'd do something like:
As a reaction, you can withdraw into your shell. While withdrawn, you have +4 AC and advantage on saving throws, your speed is 0, and you can't take actions, reactions, or bonus actions except an action to emerge from your shell.
Blanket advantage on saves is strong, but losing your next action is a pretty big cost that you're not always gonna want to pay so I'm not convinced there's a mechanical need to hedge for balance's sake (and I feel like the unrestricted advantage makes more narrative sense anyway - it was always weird to me that ducking into his shell like a cartoon turtle made Tortles worse at weathering Fireballs) and ditching the prone condition and the dex-save-hosing cleans the ability up a little bit complexity-wise.
If you're giving each subrace a defensive trait of some kind, it might be cool for some of them to hook into Turtle Power in some way - a subrace that can emerge from the withdraw as a bonus action instead of an action once per short rest, or one that also has resistance to damage while withdrawn, that kind of thing. Alternately, those abilities together might make a respectable racial feat.
I love Healing Spirit. And for the life of me I don't fully understand the cries for wanting it nerfed. I've seen people argue that "Healing Spirit is straight broken and needs to be house rules and nerfed away" while also saying "Healing spells in combat are a wasted spell slot". I know that Healing Spirit out of combat can pretty much get the party back up to full depending on the spell level used but ... I don't see why that's a bad thing? A character who wants to play a Healer type in this game ONLY has Healing Spirit to rely on as far as "bang for your buck". If used in combat (and it's a good spell so it's ACTUALLY worth using in combat too), it still has a chance of losing concentration. But for some reason, doing 2d6 in healing as a 3rd level spell is somehow busted compared to 3d10 points of lightning damage from Call Lightning?
And my wording is probably far more confrontational than my intent, but really my biggest disagreement with the spell is that Clerics don't also have a decent healing spell to live out the Healer fantasy if that's what they wanted to focus on.
Ok. So, let's say the argument isn't "unlimited" potions. Let's call it; more than 0. Specifically, my party of 4 level 3 adventurers (a cleric, a druid, a bard, and a warlock) are investigating / solving a problem a local logging guild is having with their forest. Namely, that the forest is super pissed that the foreman took an axe enchanted with the soul of an angry Oni. It parallels the corruption of the Druid's home forest, giving ties and motivation for figuring out how to solve this problem. Now, my party make up is similar to "generic" parties in that they have <Ideal Target> for incoming damage, <Secondary Target> for incoming damage, and this party even has some mitigation on both "squishy" targets for <Non-Ideal Target>s for incoming damage. Their incentives are similar to other generic parties, but let's be specific:
They are incentivized to end fights early, have incoming damage hit temporary hit points (druid wildshape / Warlock fiend patron HP), and heal using Song of Rest and hit dice. If they need an emergency in combat heal, they're incentivized to use the potions first, because Spell Slots are also a major source of damage for this party, and doing damage to an enemy stops incoming damage faster, while healing party members merely ablates their risk of death to the next attack. So, obviously, the "smart" play is:
Have damage miss against the cleric (highest ac) > Have damage hit the Druid in wildshape > have damage hit the Warlock fiend patron temporary HP > end fights fast so incoming damage stops > heal outside combat with resources that cannot be used to end fights faster (hit dice / potions) > heal during combat with single use resources (potions / lay on hands / gaining temp HP from the Warlock) > heal during combat with multi use resources (spell slots)
My players are new to TTRPGs. They've played in a limited number of other games. I never discuss optimal strategies, but do my absolute best to explain rules to the fullest extent to which I understand them. I never second guess player choices, and when players learn more about the system, I let them change things using the new information they've come to understand.
They still get that they should never use spell slots on healing abilities, except as an absolute last resort, because that's what the system tells them to do. Now, as the DM, it's my prerogative to challenge my player's "ideal combat scenario" plan, but you can only do that so much before it feels like a screw job. "Oh, I know Mr. Cleric, that you just put yourself directly in this Owlbear's path, but he's going to charge past you towards the squishy bard hiding behind a bush...for reasons...."
D&D 5E presents itself as a game, in addition to being RP, and honestly, the game portion is feeling pretty lacking. Even my players, who have steadfastly refused to play any of the other systems I've run as one shots are starting to come to this conclusion themselves. So not only has WotC lost a paying customer (me, the DM), they're also starting to lose the captive audience, who were driven in by curiosity/Twitch streams.
If your defense of 5E revolves around the idea that the rules and systems are unimportant because the DM can just balance/iterate/adjust/test/design new systems, well....again, why are we using 5E? Why are we spending $50/book on splat and so forth if the things being presented aren't balanced and tested? So, not only does the DM have to be good at running a game, they also have to learn the fundamentals of game design, of player incentives, of what makes a story good / engaging / interesting?
You don't think that somewhat limits the availability of DMs?
Like, being a good DM is hard. It takes time, practice, honest self assessment, more practice, learning, reading...etc. It takes good group social management, improv, acting, a sense of narrative structures. It takes time to develop all those things, for sure. And learning those things from one book might be tough!
But I'd argue that it's more important to talk about those things in something like the Dungeon Master's Guide than it is to present non-solution solutions like "A fort is 50k gold and your players may want to build one eventually!"
If your advice for dealing with rules often comes down to "ignore that rule"...maybe the problem is with the rules, and not with the person asking how to use the rules?
In my experience, as a new-to-TTRPG player/DM, here's how it's broken down:
The first DM, as I mentioned in my previous post, quit after 4 sessions of running Lost Mines of Phandelver, because he was too stressed trying to make things up on the fly when the system just presents information and no context. Then, as a DM, 4 of my players (out of a total of about 10 people I've DM'd for) were inspired to try to run their own games. Technically, everyone I've run a game for has wanted to then run their own game, but most weren't able to get schedules / players worked out. So, I'm only talking about the 4 that actually went on to get their own games going.
All of them have quit or burned out.
Plus, my game *barely* resembles base 5E. Any time I *try* to run a published adventure, I am immediately reminded why I, by and large, don't. I've stopped buying WotC products. I've stopped recommending D&D 5E to people looking to run games. I don't advocate for the D&D brand.
How is that a good outcome? If you started with a motivated, interested person, and the end result is someone who is only using your product begrudgingly?
Again though just because it's not optimal doesn't mean it's bad. Yes an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure but that doesn't mean that cure is useless. Besides, while preventing damage is always more efficient, healing damage is almost always more versatile. Damage taken from a trap, a surprise attack, or a normal combat can all be fixed with healing: but each of those scenarios requires a different spell to prevent (or try to prevent, or assist in preventing).
I don't personally think it's "restrictive" for the party not to have an opportunity to take a long rest in a dungeon. I don't even think it's particularly weird for a short rest to have to be taken judiciously. Yes there are tables which struggle with this, but there are also tables which don't, and just like the Friends spell will be variably effective given the DM, so will the cost benefit of healing spells, and quite honestly, a huge swathe of the rest of the game. Stealth, animal handling, persuasion, etc.
The argument that cure wounds as a spell slot is bad because it's not universally useful is just as bad as the argument of "it's good at my table." The truth is, it straight up depends on the table in a way that, say, an attack based rule, spell, buff, etc does not.
The objections mostly come because HP is traditionally used as a long-term resource that people need to manage and you need to structure things differently with it in play.
*SNIP*
I feel the exact opposite way about 5e and am very much enjoying running tomb of annihilation, and my players enjoying playing it
I've added a shit ton of my own content, because it's my world and it doesn't necessarily always fit what they have presented me, but I really like what's there. I also really enjoyed running LMOP and so did my players so, agree to disagree
nah it's just wrecking the experience I wanted, because two of the players only play crazy high magic campaigns where they start with +2 everything and have +5 everything by level 15 and the DM is easy to bully
it makes me a bit sad
They don't really need to conga line through it, depending on the party size. They can just gather together around in, as it radiates out in a 5 foot square and 4 or 5 party members can huddle together in that area, creating even a warm bonding moment as the healing waves slowly recover their energy and wounds. In combat, people can't stop in the same square as each other for mechanical reasons. Out of combat, there's nothing stopping this.
And the resource is still there. A spell slot is used up to keep the party moving, so a resource is still being expended.
It basically translates to your top spell slot almost reliably full healing the party regardless of party comp and character status. If you've got nothing bigger than a d8 hit die in your party... you don't even really need to use top spell slot for that result.
It absolutely demolishes all other healing spells out of combat, but also if you wanna spend your 9th level slot on that I'm totally into it. I've also watched a healing spirit die because of concentration before it got 4d6 of healing spread among various targets in combat.
This is where I've always been with it too. I'm not arguing that it's the strongest healing spell in the game as it scales up. I AM saying that it's awesome that it exists as every other healing spell just feels AWFUL. A Warlock with Eldritch Blast, out of combat, could also just start taking pot shots at the group and negate the healing done for free over the same duration without expending a spell slot. Call lightning could also do potentially more damage than the healing could do while also fighting for the concentration slot. So yeah, if the druid/ranger/bard wants to use their higher spell slots for impactful healing both in and out of combat, that's awesome that this exists for them, in my book, and I hope Wizard never touches it. I'd honestly rather they look at picking up some other healing spells or making them all Bonus Actions as mentioned back thread.
Thats super unfortunate.
The thing with Healing Spirit is that while most of the healing spells before it were undertuned, it goes much too far in the other direction.
Healing Spirit is a bonus action to cast, and heals each friendly creature for 1d6 each turn it's able to enter the spirit's space, for 10 turns, and each packet is increased by 1d6 per spell level as it scales.
Compare to the previous 'good' bonus action heal, Healing Word: As a bonus action (and cast as a second-level spell for parity with Spirit), it heals 1 creature for 2d4+5 and scales by 1d4 per spell level.
Healing Word heals 1 guy for 10 HP. Healing Spirit heals the whole party for an average of 35 HP each. Each time you uplevel it, Word gets an extra 2.5 points of healing while Spirit gets another 35 per target. Granted you won't get full value out of Spirit in-combat, since not everyone will be able to get to it every turn, but even at 1/4 of its value it still more than doubles Word's healing on each of its multiple targets, at the same action and slot cost.
Your other point of comparison for out-of-combat healing is Prayer of Healing, which takes 10 minutes to cast and heals the whole party for 2d8+5 - an average of 14.
Spirit takes 1 minute to cycle through and, again, heals the whole party for 10d6 - an average of 35, nearly twice what Prayer does for the same slot in 1/10th the time. And if you scale it, Prayer gives everybody an additional 4.5 points of healing, while Spirit gives everybody an additional 35.
Prior to Healing Spirit, healing spells were undertuned and most of the non-bonus-action ones probably needed to heal ~50% more than they do to be attractive options. Instead of doing that, Healing Spirit came in healing for anywhere from twice as much to twenty times as much, with the best casting time, the best base healing, the most targets affected, and the best scaling of any healing spell of similar level.
And then we got several different slapdash 'fixes' from devs via Twitter, all of which reduced the amount of healing it does, but not by enough to stop it from still being two or three times more healing than all the other options.
"We've got one bonus action spell that heals one guy for 10, and another that heals everybody for 35 each? Well, I see the problem: that second spell should only heal multiple targets for an average of 35 total, divided more or less as you choose. Also, it should still scale fourteen times as well as the first one, since we reduced its baseline healing to be only three times better. There, I fixed it!"
I get that errors slip through and it's impossible to catch everything in playtesting, but jesus. Healing Spirit is not a small error, and the fixes were still fucked up like they didn't even bother to re-check their math. It's the equivalent of ordering a dozen loaves of bread and having the baker accidentally give you nearly three hundred loaves without noticing, and then, when you correct him, having him go "oh, my mistake. Sometimes small issues slip through the cracks, you know how it is. Here's your dozen loaves" before immediately handing you seventy fucking loaves again.
Finding a DM has always been an issue for all TTRPGs. It's like a core element of the hobby.
It isn't a thing everyone is built to handle.
If making stuff up stresses you out... an imagination game might be something you need to ease into, and being the imagination referee might just be outside your wheelhouse. The entire game is about making stuff up, quite often on the fly.
Like that's kinda the whole game.
These two posts really highlight the reason that these conversations tend to go in circles.
you simply just have to fill in the details of the world yourself, often on the fly, and as you get better you get better at preparing and keeping track of the details you've laid out it becomes easier
Yeah, except that's not generally the problem that new DMs run into.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
My biggest problem as a new DM was spending too much time getting hung up on specific rules
When I realized I could just make a ruling and move on and we'd fix it later if it was wrong it was like a magic spell to making my game actually run - the only tool I needed was a notebook to write down what I did
other stuff like RANDOM_COMMONER_NPC names and motivations and what continued to be problems but that's just the nature of tabletop
like most people find being a DM appealing but in my experience actually being one proves to be too much of a chore for a lot of people, you have to be the kind of person who finds enjoyment in maintaining spreadsheets of fictional people
I highly disagree with that assessment. It's the easiest system i've dealt with in 10 years.