Do you have examples of better systems than CR that do the same things in different systems?
Yes. Two of my favorites are You Can Run and You Won't Die.
You Can Run explicitly separates combat maneuverability from the narrative act of escaping to safety so that, for example, you can run from an adult red dragon without also being able to kite it to death with ranged weapons.
You Won't Die makes player death an explicit risk from the player and decision by the GM, rather than a chance rock in the fog of probabilities. It sees several implementations, including but not limited to: systems for extended conflicts where no one is risking death at all, an explicit ability of players to pull out of a conflict and suffer consequences other than death, and damage as a fixed, known risk for players to consider.
YCR and YWD both see full implementation in most Fate/Burning/Apocalypse/Dark Engine games, and I'd be glad to effortpost about the details if you're curious.
Can you go into some more detail about YCR? I'm having a hard time finding much on it out on the web, and I'm highly interested.
How does that compare to CR though? It's supposed to be a difficulty rating, is it just a number and if you're above it you can escape?
Sorry about the delay on this. They don't call them effort posts because they're easy to make.
Anyway, as people have guessed, I was being slightly facetious-but-also-not about these "systems". They're really more design philosophies.
D&D's philosophy is one of tactical reality. An elder red dragon needs to be sufficiently aware and maneuverable that an on-level party can't trivially hide from it or outrange it and plink it to death with arrows and cantrips. As such if the PCs come up against something significantly more powerful than them, or even if they just get a bit unlucky, they will die helplessly, which is generally not a good time for anybody.
YCR and YWD are more about narrative purpose. It's a different thing to trick or run from a dragon than it is to fight it, and a dragon can be tricked or eluded without necessarily dying as a result, because doing those things isn't intended to kill the dragon.
This doesn't mean these systems have no way of measuring difficulty. What they mean is that you can throw things at the players that you don't intend for the players to kill, and players can still meaningfully engage with the game systems.
So here's an overview of how these philosophies operate in these systems and how difficulty in each is measured.
FATE ENGINE
Difficulty is: relative to the PC skill peak, which can be different in different Fate systems and campaigns. -2 to +2 from the peak is your standard not too easy/not too hard range, but PCs have relatively easy access to temporary boosters and you can pitch something that tops out 3 or 4 above them if you want them to reach.
YCR: Ordinary mooks can use the same generic rating for everything, making fighting, running, and spirited debates all relatively equal unless it's something the mook is notably good or bad at. But mooks aren't overpowering. Actual heavy hitters get built with the same skill trees the PCs are, which means they can't be equally good at fighting, running, and spirited debates. Non-combat resolution mechanisms include successive skill challenges or opposed contests that don't risk anything about a character's structural integrity.
YWD: At any point, up to but not after the defense roll to save your life that you attempt and fail, you can concede a conflict. This will get you bennies depending on how badly you got beaten up, and will let you pull out of the conflict on your own terms but, assuming the other PCs don't pull it out, hand victory to whatever you were fighting. So if you feel like you can live with the consequences? Brave Sir Robin it up.
BURNING ENGINE
Difficulty is: In the simpler games, every die is a coinflip and the odds are all on Pascal's Triangle. In the more complex ones, difficulties can be more detailed but relative difficulties are all put in buckets for you. At any rate, you won't advance your skills without a healthy mix of passes and fails or easy/medium/hard attempts, again depending on engine, and one of the notable mechanics in, say, Torchbearer (the implementation closest to D&D) is deliberately tanking rolls you were going to fail anyway since margin of failure doesn't really matter and you can bank additional actions to take during downtime.
YCR: No matter the implementation, chases and debates are as involved as regular old combat. In Torchbearer, for example, a dragon can have base stats to make it a credible opponent for a low-level party in chases or riddle contests, but its natural size and various other weapons can make it a much huger threat in a physical conflict where the PCs are attempting to drive it off with force of arms. (Assuming that's even possible - certain things because of their size are impossible to engage in physical conflicts at all.)
YWD: Again, implementation details will vary, but in the later games, unless you're engaging in a physical conflict when you're already injured, or engaging in a physical conflict with full intent to kill, you are not risking your own life. Various other terrible things can still happen to you as a result but you'll survive them.
APOCALYPSE ENGINE
Difficulty is: Generally static! These games are less about growth in power and more about the choices made by people who are already capable, so most ordinary things you're doing that carry some risk to them are not too different from one another to be differently difficult. If something is unusual the GM will generally craft something to reflect why.
YCR: There is no specific combat engine, just things happening one after the other. Many games explicitly make provisions for PCs, or at least certain PCs, to flee without lethal violence. Persuasion also plays a pretty big part in most implementations.
YWD: Exactly what damage you take is often up to the GM. Trading harm tends to be out of the GM's hands, but you know how much you're taking and whether it risks your life or not.
DARK ENGINE (FORGED IN THE DARK)
Difficulty is: Static with more known variants. Most things you want to accomplish are measured in clocks with 4-8 segments, and your basic action will fill up 2 of them and be "risky", which is the same as the Apocalypse Engine's "default difficulty". Difficulties can be controlled or desperate, neither of which affects how hard it is to actually succeed but which vary the consequences you suffer on a failure. Effects of actions can range from 0-3 clock segments, and a standard option is to make something harder in order to get more effect out of it.
YCR: By default the game is about crimesmen doing heists, and dead bodies are the one thing the law can't really ignore, so violence is discouraged. The entire goal is to engage with things that might kill you in a straight-up fight in a safer but more roundabout manner.
YWD: The GM is encouraged to say things like "before you can react, the Red Sash grandmaster slits your throat" and "the demon laughs and rips out your soul" when you're really in the soup because everybody has the power to no-sell everything, winding the clock back on the GM's declarations at the cost of stress. Filling up stress means you're out of the heist, and take a scar, and four scars means you're out of the game, but you've had an eventful career up to that point.
Character that I think I want to make:
Sorcerer with Animate Object, Dragon's Breath, Twinned Spell and a multitude of bags filled with ball bearings.
Cast Animate Object on the Ball Bearings, 10 (up to 18 depending on spell slot level) of them turn into a swarm of steel bees dealing 1d4+4 damage with a +8 to hit.
Except for two, which are now tiny steel dragons spewing 15' cones of fire, ice, lightning, poison or acid at 3d6 (up to 10d6 if you use a 9th level slot).
Animate Object takes the action, Dragon Breath is a bonus action that gets twinned using sorcery points.
If I'm reading the charts right, I should be able to do that at level 9 for the 5th level spell slot for Animate, then use a 4th level for Dragon's Breath to get 6d6 from the cones.
Of course, the biggest requirement is a DM who either agrees that something cool should override the Concentration rules (and agrees that a swarm of fire breathing murder marbles qualifies), or maybe one who only skimmed that section of the rules. Maybe I could actually play two gnomes in a trenchcoat. Or get some kind of magic object that could maintain concentration on one of the spells for me...
Overriding concentration is kind of a big ask.
However, dragon's breath works great on an owl familiar. Their flyby attack trait makes them immune to opportunity attacks, so with dragon's breath cast on them they can just straight-up add 3d6 AoE damage every round with minimal risk.
to add a small ha’penny to Glazius’s superb post, there’s a reason “tell them the consequences and ask” is a move in the Apocalypse Engine
a lot of 5E players think creatures in front of them are explicitly there to be fought, and there’s nothing wrong with telling them “if you engage with violence, you will be violenced upon most severely”
some DMs balk at that kind of meta talk but it can prevent a sour experience from combat that has spiraled out of control into a game-ending scenario
to add a small ha’penny to Glazius’s superb post, there’s a reason “tell them the consequences and ask” is a move in the Apocalypse Engine
a lot of 5E players think creatures in front of them are explicitly there to be fought, and there’s nothing wrong with telling them “if you engage with violence, you will be violenced upon most severely”
some DMs balk at that kind of meta talk but it can prevent a sour experience from combat that has spiraled out of control into a game-ending scenario
I generally deliver it as an int and/or wisdom check from the party.
The players might be dumb, but the thief has a 14 int, and he knows this other guy is a well known enforcer for the local crime syndicate not only will fighting him hurt, but defeating him will probably piss off a bunch of folks that can and will kill you in your sleep.
the problem with making it a check is you leave room for failure
1 person failing? Possibly. 6 to 8 people all failing? Somewhat unlikely. Not like totally implausible, but fairly unlikely. It's also usually a max dc 15 unless it takes some really esoteric knowledge to grasp that the thing you're dealing with is not to be fucked with
to add a small ha’penny to Glazius’s superb post, there’s a reason “tell them the consequences and ask” is a move in the Apocalypse Engine
a lot of 5E players think creatures in front of them are explicitly there to be fought, and there’s nothing wrong with telling them “if you engage with violence, you will be violenced upon most severely”
some DMs balk at that kind of meta talk but it can prevent a sour experience from combat that has spiraled out of control into a game-ending scenario
I am perfectly fine saying "your characters know that just because there is a Kraken on the other side of the continent doesn't mean you all need to go jump into the water and fight it. In fact, all of you with a wisdom over 8 realize that is suicidal"
once I've warned them, well
I mean if they want to stay overnight in the haunted hag village while they know they're being pursued by a dangerous and powerful spellcaster
yeah the fighter and the monk are going to die, that's how shit goes down
edit: another example was when my party noticed a bunch of giant spiders in the trees of chult while stealthing to get past dinosaurs and the monk decided to go punch a spider just cuz - got stuck in the web, someone cast shatter, a t rex showed up, only a clutch animal friendship saved them from a TPK - but I wouldn't even feel bad, that was just piles of dumb
Say, what are people's suggestions for good wizard spells that are elemental-themed or could be reasonably themed elementally? In about a level and a half (level 6) my Wu-Jen gets to learn three wizard spells (Wu-Jen gets a kind of bard-style Magical Secrets feature, but only wizard spells level 3 and under), but obviously given that the character is flavored as a sort of one-with-everything hermit guru, her suddenly just learning Animate Dead or whatever would be ridiculous.
So I'm trying to find spells that wouldn't be redundant with her disciplines (the idea is to get all the Wu-Jen masteries except Light/Darkness and Force) and which would be appropriate for a sort of AtlA bender/daoist hermit mix character to be using. And the thing is I don't really play wizards (always been more of a divine casting dude) so I sort of know fuck all about what's good in the wizard list at lowish levels.
the problem with making it a check is you leave room for failure
1 person failing? Possibly. 6 to 8 people all failing? Somewhat unlikely. Not like totally implausible, but fairly unlikely. It's also usually a max dc 15 unless it takes some really esoteric knowledge to grasp that the thing you're dealing with is not to be fucked with
Nah. Arcanis is right. You only roll when there is a purpose for the DM to disagree with the players as to the outcome. DnD isn't a simulation; its a cooperative story generator.
I need to get better about just using passive perception.
The game I was DMing for almost had a completely obvious and unmissable clue be missed due to bad rolls. The party was supposed to spot the carpet with a whole quarter upturned and everyone rolled below 8 after modifiers.
I was sitting there stumped as the players were like "welp, guess theres nothing here, lets set fire to the place and leave" until someone insisted on rechecking everything carefully and got a better roll.
Two problems with this scenario, both of which I realized the second the game was over for the evening
1. Don't make the players roll if failure completely ends the session.
2. Passive perception was designed for this exact purpose and me not using it was silly.
In my defense I was a little sleep deprived and there are a lot of moving parts to DMing!
We play on Roll20, maybe I'll ask all the players to make their perception macros print out their passive too so I can't forget next time.
Say, what are people's suggestions for good wizard spells that are elemental-themed or could be reasonably themed elementally? In about a level and a half (level 6) my Wu-Jen gets to learn three wizard spells (Wu-Jen gets a kind of bard-style Magical Secrets feature, but only wizard spells level 3 and under), but obviously given that the character is flavored as a sort of one-with-everything hermit guru, her suddenly just learning Animate Dead or whatever would be ridiculous.
So I'm trying to find spells that wouldn't be redundant with her disciplines (the idea is to get all the Wu-Jen masteries except Light/Darkness and Force) and which would be appropriate for a sort of AtlA bender/daoist hermit mix character to be using. And the thing is I don't really play wizards (always been more of a divine casting dude) so I sort of know fuck all about what's good in the wizard list at lowish levels.
Almost anything can be themed elementally if you try hard enough! Animate Dead by binding a fire elemental within some bones. Everyone loves a flaming skeleton!
My girlfriend was sneaking peeks at my dice rolls last session, and eventually I told her "you know some of these rolls are just to give me time to think." By the look on her face it was like I just told her that Santa Claus isn't real.
Say, what are people's suggestions for good wizard spells that are elemental-themed or could be reasonably themed elementally? In about a level and a half (level 6) my Wu-Jen gets to learn three wizard spells (Wu-Jen gets a kind of bard-style Magical Secrets feature, but only wizard spells level 3 and under), but obviously given that the character is flavored as a sort of one-with-everything hermit guru, her suddenly just learning Animate Dead or whatever would be ridiculous.
So I'm trying to find spells that wouldn't be redundant with her disciplines (the idea is to get all the Wu-Jen masteries except Light/Darkness and Force) and which would be appropriate for a sort of AtlA bender/daoist hermit mix character to be using. And the thing is I don't really play wizards (always been more of a divine casting dude) so I sort of know fuck all about what's good in the wizard list at lowish levels.
Almost anything can be themed elementally if you try hard enough! Animate Dead by binding a fire elemental within some bones. Everyone loves a flaming skeleton!
Hence "reasonably" themed elementally :P. Yes, you could maybe stretch shit hard enough to make Disguise Self elemental, but I'm looking for stuff that won't make my DM go "...wha?".
1. Don't make the players roll if failure completely ends the session.
2. Passive perception was designed for this exact purpose and me not using it was silly.
As a general rule, don't design scenarios with a single point of failure. Missing that check means the obstacle is impossible which is a single point of failure as the scenario is unbeatable. Putting them up against a troll when they all have fireball is a single point of failure as the fight is a cakewalk. Etc
Alternately. Don't roll if its something you want the players to achieve. And/or always have them succeed that check.
I'm a big fan of "any check gets you the thing I need you to get but higher rolls also get you something neat or useful or a pony"
I've been trying to sorta coopt dungeon world here. If I want them to succeed, then a pass just succeeds, a huge pass succeeds plus something nice, and a fail still succeeds, but at a cost. I'm still shuffling around how it works, sometimes a huge pass just succeeds, and a med pass succeeds with a minor penalty, and a low pass succeeds with a major penalty. I'm trying to find the best balance
Say, what are people's suggestions for good wizard spells that are elemental-themed or could be reasonably themed elementally? In about a level and a half (level 6) my Wu-Jen gets to learn three wizard spells (Wu-Jen gets a kind of bard-style Magical Secrets feature, but only wizard spells level 3 and under), but obviously given that the character is flavored as a sort of one-with-everything hermit guru, her suddenly just learning Animate Dead or whatever would be ridiculous.
So I'm trying to find spells that wouldn't be redundant with her disciplines (the idea is to get all the Wu-Jen masteries except Light/Darkness and Force) and which would be appropriate for a sort of AtlA bender/daoist hermit mix character to be using. And the thing is I don't really play wizards (always been more of a divine casting dude) so I sort of know fuck all about what's good in the wizard list at lowish levels.
Chromatic Orb is a good one for a first level spell to shore up any elemental damage you don't deal yet. Kind of a Swiss army knife in that you get to pick which flavor of elemental damage it does. Shield is an excellent spell for any caster or character who can cast. Use your reaction for +5ac for the round? Very nice. Say it's raw elemental power holding the enemy at bay, or you're air bending to increase your defense, or it's rock armor, or whatever. Absorb elements maybe? I don't know if Wu Jen have that kind of thing, but being able to reduce incoming elemental damage by half is nice. The extra damage next attack isn't terrible either. I mean, it isn't great, but damage is damage.
Maybe, instead of the Chromatic Orb, look more at the utility spells for the Wizard list, rely on your innate class features for your damage. I learned this with my Eldritch Knight the hard way. The offensive magic spells were nice, but almost always outstripped damage wise by my ability to stab stuff really good (and, at high levels where my highest spell slot is 4, they would always outstripped by my ability to stab something 8 times in round). But the utility spells (Shield, Absorb Elements, Mage Hand and the like)? Always handy at letting me do stuff that a vanilla Fighter couldn't.
If you're picking cantrips, look for ones with added affects rather than pure damage. Firebolt's 1d10 is nice, but the slow from ray of frost (1d8) is far more helpful then the extra point of damage if you've got a party who can capitalize it. Shocking Grasp(1d8) has the ability to deny an enemy their reaction if it hits, and also gets advantage against anything wearing metal armor. If you get into melee a lot, it could be a nice tool to add.
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joshgotroDeviled EggThe Land of REAL CHILIRegistered Userregular
edited August 2018
I'm guiding this man in the right direction right?
yeah you can get a big owl or whatever depending on the DM as a halfling with beast ranger, the only other way to get a flying mount as a class feature is paladin 11 find greater steed or bard magical spell secrets 10 find greater steed
The only rideable flying companions for a small ranger are either the vulture or Pteranodon, since I think the limit is CR 1/4, but you can probably reflavour either of those with DM permission
The only rideable flying companions for a small ranger are either the vulture or Pteranodon, since I think the limit is CR 1/4, but you can probably reflavour either of those with DM permission
Pteranodon lancer... you don't provoke attacks of opportunity when you fly by your enemies.
Say, what are people's suggestions for good wizard spells that are elemental-themed or could be reasonably themed elementally? In about a level and a half (level 6) my Wu-Jen gets to learn three wizard spells (Wu-Jen gets a kind of bard-style Magical Secrets feature, but only wizard spells level 3 and under), but obviously given that the character is flavored as a sort of one-with-everything hermit guru, her suddenly just learning Animate Dead or whatever would be ridiculous.
So I'm trying to find spells that wouldn't be redundant with her disciplines (the idea is to get all the Wu-Jen masteries except Light/Darkness and Force) and which would be appropriate for a sort of AtlA bender/daoist hermit mix character to be using. And the thing is I don't really play wizards (always been more of a divine casting dude) so I sort of know fuck all about what's good in the wizard list at lowish levels.
Chromatic Orb is a good one for a first level spell to shore up any elemental damage you don't deal yet. Kind of a Swiss army knife in that you get to pick which flavor of elemental damage it does. Shield is an excellent spell for any caster or character who can cast. Use your reaction for +5ac for the round? Very nice. Say it's raw elemental power holding the enemy at bay, or you're air bending to increase your defense, or it's rock armor, or whatever. Absorb elements maybe? I don't know if Wu Jen have that kind of thing, but being able to reduce incoming elemental damage by half is nice. The extra damage next attack isn't terrible either. I mean, it isn't great, but damage is damage.
Maybe, instead of the Chromatic Orb, look more at the utility spells for the Wizard list, rely on your innate class features for your damage. I learned this with my Eldritch Knight the hard way. The offensive magic spells were nice, but almost always outstripped damage wise by my ability to stab stuff really good (and, at high levels where my highest spell slot is 4, they would always outstripped by my ability to stab something 8 times in round). But the utility spells (Shield, Absorb Elements, Mage Hand and the like)? Always handy at letting me do stuff that a vanilla Fighter couldn't.
If you're picking cantrips, look for ones with added affects rather than pure damage. Firebolt's 1d10 is nice, but the slow from ray of frost (1d8) is far more helpful then the extra point of damage if you've got a party who can capitalize it. Shocking Grasp(1d8) has the ability to deny an enemy their reaction if it hits, and also gets advantage against anything wearing metal armor. If you get into melee a lot, it could be a nice tool to add.
Shield seems a very good idea, actually, especially since one of the concentration spells I get as a Wu-Jen is a self-buff that gives disadvantage on every attack roll made against me, but my AC sucks balls (for RP reasons I couldn't dump Str and Cha to get decent Dex, and all I get is light armor max and no shield, so I'm going around at like AC 13 and it doesn't look like it's going to improve much because honestly even if we run into magic light armor there's party members that get priority there). Good point there. And it's easily fluffable.
Absorb elements seems mostly redundant with my Focuses. Okay, quick explanation of Mystic mechanics: with Mystic, instead of picking individual spells, you pick "packages" which are called disciplines. Each of those comes with three to five spells from levels 1 to 5, often ranging from great to "why?", and a Focus, which is sort of like a passive "stance" you can activate as a bonus action, and which doesn't cost anything to activate, but you can only have one Focus active at a time. Most of the Focuses on Wu-Jen disciplines let you have resistance to their associated element, so I already can have resistance to Fire on a bonus action notice, and will be the same for cold, thunder, and lightning. So I'll have the resistances angle mostly covered - and in fact, the Wu-Jen's level 14 class feature (not that I expect the campaign to reach level 14) takes advantage of this, letting you spend the equivalent of a 1st level slot as a reaction in order to turn a resistance you already have for an incoming attack into total immunity until the next round.
And yeah, I'm mostly looking for utility. Wu-Jen's blasts are rarely as good as a wizard, but I get enough of them to be covered. I get a few line attacks, an ersatz Fireball (does less damage than wizard version, but sends people prone on failed save, which seems like it would make the Paladin in our party happy), and so on. Though, admittedly, most of them are Str and Con saves, which can be... kind of a problem in a campaign where we're mostly going to be fighting monsters.
Of course. It's the obvious pick for an elemental character! Also my only Dex save, even if it's for an 1d8 cantrip. My two cantrips are elemental beam and not-magic-hand. Man I wish I got more cantrips :P.
I want to run a Mystic the next time I get to be a player but I don't like management past the "just a little bit" level.
I mean, it's not a lot more than playing a Druid, but psi points do run out fast and you need to pace yourself or end up hitting people with a club for half the day.
Course, if you go with the Immortal subclass, hitting people with a club is sort of the idea anyway, so...
I'm DMing my core groups session in September and I'll be taking another swing at Tomb of Annihilation. We had a... so-so... session last time that we all hope to recover from.
The one players who was left for dead in Hrakhamar is rolling up a Bard, so that's cool. Another player who wasn't feeling his character is rolling up a new one. No problem, now to come up with a way to have the characters meet...I had really wanted a simple travel montage from Hrakhamer back up to Camp Vengeance where I would link old characters and new... during which a Mosasaur was going to attack the canoes and gloriously eat the ranger, fulfilling two things: 1) Getting rid of a character who no longer had a player, and 2) Letting me eat someone with a terrible marine reptile a la that scene in Jurrasic World. (My 6yo son would be quick to correct me that Mosasaurs did not live in rivers, but I don't care).
Now I'm having a sad yet proud feeling that I won't be able to do that. Instead in talking to my player who wants to swap characters, he's going to RP his loner elf ranger dude as fed up with a party who would leave a downed comrade to die in a dungeon and walk off into the jungle in a huff! One of my players is going to scold the rest of the party, in character, and it was HIS idea! I am unreasonably happy about this.
Instead, I'm thinking I'm going to give the two players with new PC's their own adventuring montage, arriving in Chult...picking up some side-quests that the original party passed on and closing those openings with a recap. Losing a couple of their party members along the way and probably ending up captured by pirates in Jakhara Anchorage where the original party will stumble upon them and free them. Yay!
Speaking of..... how long would it take to sail around Chult? From the south, back to Port Nyanzaru? Not that it matters, I suppose? I feel like I'm struggling to really sell the time sensitive nature of the whole Death Curse thing since none the players have any personal stake in it.
Speaking of..... how long would it take to sail around Chult? From the south, back to Port Nyanzaru? Not that it matters, I suppose? I feel like I'm struggling to really sell the time sensitive nature of the whole Death Curse thing since none the players have any personal stake in it.
The internet was frustratingly unclear about it, but it takes about 2 weeks to make it deep into one of those lost cities in the jungle, yeah? So I'd say about half that for sailing around. Depends where you're sailing from too, I looked at a map of 5e Chult and the south coast of the peninsula is pretty involved.
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joshgotroDeviled EggThe Land of REAL CHILIRegistered Userregular
yeah you can get a big owl or whatever depending on the DM as a halfling with beast ranger, the only other way to get a flying mount as a class feature is paladin 11 find greater steed or bard magical spell secrets 10 find greater steed
This player found a blurb on nightgliders. Then asks me why he wouldn't get an animal companion at first level.
I let a player start with his animal companion at first level but the thing was essentially worthless in combat until he was third level, it was just there because his pet (a blink dog) was part of his backstory, I also let him know that once picked you kind of have to keep it until 3rd - you're locked into beast master
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joshgotroDeviled EggThe Land of REAL CHILIRegistered Userregular
I let a player start with his animal companion at first level but the thing was essentially worthless in combat until he was third level, it was just there because his pet (a blink dog) was part of his backstory, I also let him know that once picked you kind of have to keep it until 3rd - you're locked into beast master
He really wants to Bard with an animal companion. He's going to have plenty of time to ride this damn bird in Lost Mine and ongoing. He's just super excited and can't wait the two sessions to get to 3rd level.
My ranger player loves his blink dog. It's not raw workable because it's a fey, but it does less damage than other pets to compensate for the ability to teleport so it's plenty balanced. I actually raised it's damage to d8
I'm DMing my core groups session in September and I'll be taking another swing at Tomb of Annihilation. We had a... so-so... session last time that we all hope to recover from.
The one players who was left for dead in Hrakhamar is rolling up a Bard, so that's cool. Another player who wasn't feeling his character is rolling up a new one. No problem, now to come up with a way to have the characters meet...I had really wanted a simple travel montage from Hrakhamer back up to Camp Vengeance where I would link old characters and new... during which a Mosasaur was going to attack the canoes and gloriously eat the ranger, fulfilling two things: 1) Getting rid of a character who no longer had a player, and 2) Letting me eat someone with a terrible marine reptile a la that scene in Jurrasic World. (My 6yo son would be quick to correct me that Mosasaurs did not live in rivers, but I don't care).
Now I'm having a sad yet proud feeling that I won't be able to do that. Instead in talking to my player who wants to swap characters, he's going to RP his loner elf ranger dude as fed up with a party who would leave a downed comrade to die in a dungeon and walk off into the jungle in a huff! One of my players is going to scold the rest of the party, in character, and it was HIS idea! I am unreasonably happy about this.
Instead, I'm thinking I'm going to give the two players with new PC's their own adventuring montage, arriving in Chult...picking up some side-quests that the original party passed on and closing those openings with a recap. Losing a couple of their party members along the way and probably ending up captured by pirates in Jakhara Anchorage where the original party will stumble upon them and free them. Yay!
Speaking of..... how long would it take to sail around Chult? From the south, back to Port Nyanzaru? Not that it matters, I suppose? I feel like I'm struggling to really sell the time sensitive nature of the whole Death Curse thing since none the players have any personal stake in it.
A suggestion for having new PCs showing up:
The player's party is not the only group of adventurers in Chult. You can encounter other groups of adventurers that aren't immediately hostile towards the players, and by only describing some of the members of those parties, you can have new PCs introduced as survivors of a group when they encountered some terrible monster or trap, or a member who left after being dissatisfied with decisions being made by other group members, or even maybe they join because they feel that it'd be more lucrative to hang out with these people instead.
Also if you have any NPCs from these groups that your players end up liking or hating, you can have them show up again later to emphasize the danger or tension of a situation. Like, haha, this guy we hated is dead, but we still know he was competent, so if they all died here, what the hell happened? Or, oh shit, that group of monsters has kidnapped that awesome guy, we should try and save him!
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Sorry about the delay on this. They don't call them effort posts because they're easy to make.
Anyway, as people have guessed, I was being slightly facetious-but-also-not about these "systems". They're really more design philosophies.
D&D's philosophy is one of tactical reality. An elder red dragon needs to be sufficiently aware and maneuverable that an on-level party can't trivially hide from it or outrange it and plink it to death with arrows and cantrips. As such if the PCs come up against something significantly more powerful than them, or even if they just get a bit unlucky, they will die helplessly, which is generally not a good time for anybody.
YCR and YWD are more about narrative purpose. It's a different thing to trick or run from a dragon than it is to fight it, and a dragon can be tricked or eluded without necessarily dying as a result, because doing those things isn't intended to kill the dragon.
This doesn't mean these systems have no way of measuring difficulty. What they mean is that you can throw things at the players that you don't intend for the players to kill, and players can still meaningfully engage with the game systems.
So here's an overview of how these philosophies operate in these systems and how difficulty in each is measured.
FATE ENGINE
Difficulty is: relative to the PC skill peak, which can be different in different Fate systems and campaigns. -2 to +2 from the peak is your standard not too easy/not too hard range, but PCs have relatively easy access to temporary boosters and you can pitch something that tops out 3 or 4 above them if you want them to reach.
YCR: Ordinary mooks can use the same generic rating for everything, making fighting, running, and spirited debates all relatively equal unless it's something the mook is notably good or bad at. But mooks aren't overpowering. Actual heavy hitters get built with the same skill trees the PCs are, which means they can't be equally good at fighting, running, and spirited debates. Non-combat resolution mechanisms include successive skill challenges or opposed contests that don't risk anything about a character's structural integrity.
YWD: At any point, up to but not after the defense roll to save your life that you attempt and fail, you can concede a conflict. This will get you bennies depending on how badly you got beaten up, and will let you pull out of the conflict on your own terms but, assuming the other PCs don't pull it out, hand victory to whatever you were fighting. So if you feel like you can live with the consequences? Brave Sir Robin it up.
BURNING ENGINE
Difficulty is: In the simpler games, every die is a coinflip and the odds are all on Pascal's Triangle. In the more complex ones, difficulties can be more detailed but relative difficulties are all put in buckets for you. At any rate, you won't advance your skills without a healthy mix of passes and fails or easy/medium/hard attempts, again depending on engine, and one of the notable mechanics in, say, Torchbearer (the implementation closest to D&D) is deliberately tanking rolls you were going to fail anyway since margin of failure doesn't really matter and you can bank additional actions to take during downtime.
YCR: No matter the implementation, chases and debates are as involved as regular old combat. In Torchbearer, for example, a dragon can have base stats to make it a credible opponent for a low-level party in chases or riddle contests, but its natural size and various other weapons can make it a much huger threat in a physical conflict where the PCs are attempting to drive it off with force of arms. (Assuming that's even possible - certain things because of their size are impossible to engage in physical conflicts at all.)
YWD: Again, implementation details will vary, but in the later games, unless you're engaging in a physical conflict when you're already injured, or engaging in a physical conflict with full intent to kill, you are not risking your own life. Various other terrible things can still happen to you as a result but you'll survive them.
APOCALYPSE ENGINE
Difficulty is: Generally static! These games are less about growth in power and more about the choices made by people who are already capable, so most ordinary things you're doing that carry some risk to them are not too different from one another to be differently difficult. If something is unusual the GM will generally craft something to reflect why.
YCR: There is no specific combat engine, just things happening one after the other. Many games explicitly make provisions for PCs, or at least certain PCs, to flee without lethal violence. Persuasion also plays a pretty big part in most implementations.
YWD: Exactly what damage you take is often up to the GM. Trading harm tends to be out of the GM's hands, but you know how much you're taking and whether it risks your life or not.
DARK ENGINE (FORGED IN THE DARK)
Difficulty is: Static with more known variants. Most things you want to accomplish are measured in clocks with 4-8 segments, and your basic action will fill up 2 of them and be "risky", which is the same as the Apocalypse Engine's "default difficulty". Difficulties can be controlled or desperate, neither of which affects how hard it is to actually succeed but which vary the consequences you suffer on a failure. Effects of actions can range from 0-3 clock segments, and a standard option is to make something harder in order to get more effect out of it.
YCR: By default the game is about crimesmen doing heists, and dead bodies are the one thing the law can't really ignore, so violence is discouraged. The entire goal is to engage with things that might kill you in a straight-up fight in a safer but more roundabout manner.
YWD: The GM is encouraged to say things like "before you can react, the Red Sash grandmaster slits your throat" and "the demon laughs and rips out your soul" when you're really in the soup because everybody has the power to no-sell everything, winding the clock back on the GM's declarations at the cost of stress. Filling up stress means you're out of the heist, and take a scar, and four scars means you're out of the game, but you've had an eventful career up to that point.
Overriding concentration is kind of a big ask.
However, dragon's breath works great on an owl familiar. Their flyby attack trait makes them immune to opportunity attacks, so with dragon's breath cast on them they can just straight-up add 3d6 AoE damage every round with minimal risk.
a lot of 5E players think creatures in front of them are explicitly there to be fought, and there’s nothing wrong with telling them “if you engage with violence, you will be violenced upon most severely”
some DMs balk at that kind of meta talk but it can prevent a sour experience from combat that has spiraled out of control into a game-ending scenario
I generally deliver it as an int and/or wisdom check from the party.
The players might be dumb, but the thief has a 14 int, and he knows this other guy is a well known enforcer for the local crime syndicate not only will fighting him hurt, but defeating him will probably piss off a bunch of folks that can and will kill you in your sleep.
1 person failing? Possibly. 6 to 8 people all failing? Somewhat unlikely. Not like totally implausible, but fairly unlikely. It's also usually a max dc 15 unless it takes some really esoteric knowledge to grasp that the thing you're dealing with is not to be fucked with
I am perfectly fine saying "your characters know that just because there is a Kraken on the other side of the continent doesn't mean you all need to go jump into the water and fight it. In fact, all of you with a wisdom over 8 realize that is suicidal"
once I've warned them, well
I mean if they want to stay overnight in the haunted hag village while they know they're being pursued by a dangerous and powerful spellcaster
yeah the fighter and the monk are going to die, that's how shit goes down
edit: another example was when my party noticed a bunch of giant spiders in the trees of chult while stealthing to get past dinosaurs and the monk decided to go punch a spider just cuz - got stuck in the web, someone cast shatter, a t rex showed up, only a clutch animal friendship saved them from a TPK - but I wouldn't even feel bad, that was just piles of dumb
So I'm trying to find spells that wouldn't be redundant with her disciplines (the idea is to get all the Wu-Jen masteries except Light/Darkness and Force) and which would be appropriate for a sort of AtlA bender/daoist hermit mix character to be using. And the thing is I don't really play wizards (always been more of a divine casting dude) so I sort of know fuck all about what's good in the wizard list at lowish levels.
Nah. Arcanis is right. You only roll when there is a purpose for the DM to disagree with the players as to the outcome. DnD isn't a simulation; its a cooperative story generator.
The game I was DMing for almost had a completely obvious and unmissable clue be missed due to bad rolls. The party was supposed to spot the carpet with a whole quarter upturned and everyone rolled below 8 after modifiers.
I was sitting there stumped as the players were like "welp, guess theres nothing here, lets set fire to the place and leave" until someone insisted on rechecking everything carefully and got a better roll.
Two problems with this scenario, both of which I realized the second the game was over for the evening
1. Don't make the players roll if failure completely ends the session.
2. Passive perception was designed for this exact purpose and me not using it was silly.
In my defense I was a little sleep deprived and there are a lot of moving parts to DMing!
We play on Roll20, maybe I'll ask all the players to make their perception macros print out their passive too so I can't forget next time.
Almost anything can be themed elementally if you try hard enough! Animate Dead by binding a fire elemental within some bones. Everyone loves a flaming skeleton!
I'm a big fan of "any check gets you the thing I need you to get but higher rolls also get you something neat or useful or a pony"
Hence "reasonably" themed elementally :P. Yes, you could maybe stretch shit hard enough to make Disguise Self elemental, but I'm looking for stuff that won't make my DM go "...wha?".
As a general rule, don't design scenarios with a single point of failure. Missing that check means the obstacle is impossible which is a single point of failure as the scenario is unbeatable. Putting them up against a troll when they all have fireball is a single point of failure as the fight is a cakewalk. Etc
I've been trying to sorta coopt dungeon world here. If I want them to succeed, then a pass just succeeds, a huge pass succeeds plus something nice, and a fail still succeeds, but at a cost. I'm still shuffling around how it works, sometimes a huge pass just succeeds, and a med pass succeeds with a minor penalty, and a low pass succeeds with a major penalty. I'm trying to find the best balance
Chromatic Orb is a good one for a first level spell to shore up any elemental damage you don't deal yet. Kind of a Swiss army knife in that you get to pick which flavor of elemental damage it does.
Shield is an excellent spell for any caster or character who can cast. Use your reaction for +5ac for the round? Very nice. Say it's raw elemental power holding the enemy at bay, or you're air bending to increase your defense, or it's rock armor, or whatever.
Absorb elements maybe? I don't know if Wu Jen have that kind of thing, but being able to reduce incoming elemental damage by half is nice. The extra damage next attack isn't terrible either. I mean, it isn't great, but damage is damage.
Maybe, instead of the Chromatic Orb, look more at the utility spells for the Wizard list, rely on your innate class features for your damage. I learned this with my Eldritch Knight the hard way. The offensive magic spells were nice, but almost always outstripped damage wise by my ability to stab stuff really good (and, at high levels where my highest spell slot is 4, they would always outstripped by my ability to stab something 8 times in round). But the utility spells (Shield, Absorb Elements, Mage Hand and the like)? Always handy at letting me do stuff that a vanilla Fighter couldn't.
If you're picking cantrips, look for ones with added affects rather than pure damage. Firebolt's 1d10 is nice, but the slow from ray of frost (1d8) is far more helpful then the extra point of damage if you've got a party who can capitalize it. Shocking Grasp(1d8) has the ability to deny an enemy their reaction if it hits, and also gets advantage against anything wearing metal armor. If you get into melee a lot, it could be a nice tool to add.
edit: I believe you can only pick a medium pet, so you'd have to be a gnome, goblin, or halfling ranger to ride it?
He's halfling.
Pteranodon lancer... you don't provoke attacks of opportunity when you fly by your enemies.
Shield seems a very good idea, actually, especially since one of the concentration spells I get as a Wu-Jen is a self-buff that gives disadvantage on every attack roll made against me, but my AC sucks balls (for RP reasons I couldn't dump Str and Cha to get decent Dex, and all I get is light armor max and no shield, so I'm going around at like AC 13 and it doesn't look like it's going to improve much because honestly even if we run into magic light armor there's party members that get priority there). Good point there. And it's easily fluffable.
Absorb elements seems mostly redundant with my Focuses. Okay, quick explanation of Mystic mechanics: with Mystic, instead of picking individual spells, you pick "packages" which are called disciplines. Each of those comes with three to five spells from levels 1 to 5, often ranging from great to "why?", and a Focus, which is sort of like a passive "stance" you can activate as a bonus action, and which doesn't cost anything to activate, but you can only have one Focus active at a time. Most of the Focuses on Wu-Jen disciplines let you have resistance to their associated element, so I already can have resistance to Fire on a bonus action notice, and will be the same for cold, thunder, and lightning. So I'll have the resistances angle mostly covered - and in fact, the Wu-Jen's level 14 class feature (not that I expect the campaign to reach level 14) takes advantage of this, letting you spend the equivalent of a 1st level slot as a reaction in order to turn a resistance you already have for an incoming attack into total immunity until the next round.
And yeah, I'm mostly looking for utility. Wu-Jen's blasts are rarely as good as a wizard, but I get enough of them to be covered. I get a few line attacks, an ersatz Fireball (does less damage than wizard version, but sends people prone on failed save, which seems like it would make the Paladin in our party happy), and so on. Though, admittedly, most of them are Str and Con saves, which can be... kind of a problem in a campaign where we're mostly going to be fighting monsters.
Of course. It's the obvious pick for an elemental character! Also my only Dex save, even if it's for an 1d8 cantrip. My two cantrips are elemental beam and not-magic-hand. Man I wish I got more cantrips :P.
Or maybe play Monk again but take enough levels in Wizard to get Vampiric Touch?
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I mean, it's not a lot more than playing a Druid, but psi points do run out fast and you need to pace yourself or end up hitting people with a club for half the day.
Course, if you go with the Immortal subclass, hitting people with a club is sort of the idea anyway, so...
The one players who was left for dead in Hrakhamar is rolling up a Bard, so that's cool. Another player who wasn't feeling his character is rolling up a new one. No problem, now to come up with a way to have the characters meet...I had really wanted a simple travel montage from Hrakhamer back up to Camp Vengeance where I would link old characters and new... during which a Mosasaur was going to attack the canoes and gloriously eat the ranger, fulfilling two things: 1) Getting rid of a character who no longer had a player, and 2) Letting me eat someone with a terrible marine reptile a la that scene in Jurrasic World. (My 6yo son would be quick to correct me that Mosasaurs did not live in rivers, but I don't care).
Now I'm having a sad yet proud feeling that I won't be able to do that. Instead in talking to my player who wants to swap characters, he's going to RP his loner elf ranger dude as fed up with a party who would leave a downed comrade to die in a dungeon and walk off into the jungle in a huff! One of my players is going to scold the rest of the party, in character, and it was HIS idea! I am unreasonably happy about this.
Instead, I'm thinking I'm going to give the two players with new PC's their own adventuring montage, arriving in Chult...picking up some side-quests that the original party passed on and closing those openings with a recap. Losing a couple of their party members along the way and probably ending up captured by pirates in Jakhara Anchorage where the original party will stumble upon them and free them. Yay!
Speaking of..... how long would it take to sail around Chult? From the south, back to Port Nyanzaru? Not that it matters, I suppose? I feel like I'm struggling to really sell the time sensitive nature of the whole Death Curse thing since none the players have any personal stake in it.
The internet was frustratingly unclear about it, but it takes about 2 weeks to make it deep into one of those lost cities in the jungle, yeah? So I'd say about half that for sailing around. Depends where you're sailing from too, I looked at a map of 5e Chult and the south coast of the peninsula is pretty involved.
This player found a blurb on nightgliders. Then asks me why he wouldn't get an animal companion at first level.
He really wants to Bard with an animal companion. He's going to have plenty of time to ride this damn bird in Lost Mine and ongoing. He's just super excited and can't wait the two sessions to get to 3rd level.
He's multiclassing Ranger 3/Bard X. Isn't the player sacrificing here?
ohhh okay i see, yeah he definitely is, I misunderstood I thought it was pure bard getting a pet at level 3
yeah that's a big sacrifice give how it's tough to work any wisdom into an optimal bard
Worth it for the sake of having a cute blink doggo IMO
A suggestion for having new PCs showing up:
The player's party is not the only group of adventurers in Chult. You can encounter other groups of adventurers that aren't immediately hostile towards the players, and by only describing some of the members of those parties, you can have new PCs introduced as survivors of a group when they encountered some terrible monster or trap, or a member who left after being dissatisfied with decisions being made by other group members, or even maybe they join because they feel that it'd be more lucrative to hang out with these people instead.
Also if you have any NPCs from these groups that your players end up liking or hating, you can have them show up again later to emphasize the danger or tension of a situation. Like, haha, this guy we hated is dead, but we still know he was competent, so if they all died here, what the hell happened? Or, oh shit, that group of monsters has kidnapped that awesome guy, we should try and save him!
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