The particular artifact he finds unattractive is one of 7 books. I won't get into the history/description of the item (even though I want to) because that's not the problem, but I will list the benefits he has right now:
Gold Book (1st book acquired): Minor Beneficial Properties: You can cast Speak with the Dead at will.
Black Book (2nd book acquired):Minor Beneficial Properties: The user is immune to disease.
Flesh Book (3rd Book acquired): Minor Beneficial Properties: Can cause serious wounds by touch, but only to humanoid creatures no larger than Medium size.
Grey Book (4th book acquired): Minor Beneficial Properties: Can turn Flesh to Stone 3/day.
Gold Book: Major Beneficial Property: Permanently boosts your Wisdom score by 2 points.
Black Book: Major Beneficial Property: Conjure a Shadow Guard 1/day.
Flesh Book: Major Beneficial Property: Can cast Cure Wounds 3/day with no components needed.
Grey Book: Major Beneficial Property: Can Transmute Rock to Mud and Mud to Rock 3/day.
Grey Book: Prime Power: Total immunity from all forms of Mental and Psionic attacks that would do damage to the user.
and detriments that he has:
Gold Book: Minor Detrimental Property: You are blinded if you are more than 10’ away from the book.
Black Book: Minor Detrimental Property: Animals within 20’ are hostile to you.
Flesh Book: Minor Detrimental Property: Holy Water within 10’ of the user is polluted and becomes poisonous. In addition, when entering a Holy place, you will take 1 damage for every minute you are inside.
Grey Book: Minor Detrimental Property: User loses interest in sex.
Gold Book: Major Detrimental Property: Permanently decreases your Strength score by 2 points.
Black Book: Major Detrimental Property: Dilutes all magic potions within 10’ of you.
Flesh Book: Major Detrimental Property: All intelligent humanoid creatures are wary/distrustful of possessor. User has a -2 penalty on all Charisma checks.
Grey Book: Major Detrimental Property: Must sacrifice a familiar within one day, each time a Minor, Major or Prime power is used.
Grey Book: Side Effect: Each time the Prime Power is invoked, the user must roll a 51% or higher, or be turned into a hostile zombie for 10min. However, the percentage drops by a number each time you are attacked? 2nd Attack = 6% (28% chance to turn). 3rd attack = 8% (20% chance to turn). 4th and 5th attack is 10% until the chances you turn are nil. The italicized I put in after his outburst of candy covered shit, but before he decided to quit.
He grumbled when he got the first book (blinded when 10' away from book and permanently decreased his str) and grumbled passive aggressively when he got the 2nd (Potions are diluted and animals hate him) so I retconned in some bennies that cut down on some of the detriments, the more books you gain. I thought (I was being really, really generous)this would shore up his hatred of the "horrible" side effects but he downright quit when he got the 3rd and 4th books.
Once 2 or more books are attuned to one person
• the books merge into one another, occupying the same special dimension. Whenever the user wishes to study one of the books so combined, they need only say the name of the book they wish to read, out loud. It must be the actual title of the tome and not the color.
• Depending on the number of Necromancer books the user is attuned to certain properties of each book will change:
1. The Golden Book: The number of feet you can be away from the book increases by 10’ for each book attuned.
2. The Black Book: The number of Shadow Guards increases by 1 or the number of times you can summon a Shadow Guard in a 24hr period is increased by 1. However, the Shadow Guards hit points is reduced by 1 hit dice per book.
3. The White Book: The cumulative property instead becomes a flat 5% chance. For each book above 4 the percentage goes down by 1%. At 7 books, for example, you will only become ethereal on a 1% roll.
4. The Silver Book: The amount of Hit Points regenerated goes up by 1. 5. The Flesh Book: The 10’ radius to pollute Holy Water drops by one foot for each book owned besides the Flesh Book.
6. The Grey Book: The percentage chance to become a hostile zombie drops by 6% for each book besides the Grey Book.
7. The Rainbow Book: At 2 books, the cumulative property instead becomes a flat 10% chance. At 3 books the chance goes to 5% and every book thereafter reduces the chance by 1% so at 7 books the body rot chance goes down to 1% He does not have the White, Silver or Rainbow books but it gives you some insight to my benevolence. 8-)
Wait so he can decide to just not use those books? My only complaint would be that it's quite a lot of things to keep track of, on top of the regular class mechanics. But that's coming from someone who plays Fighter.
I mean, there's some great RP hooks to dick around with and the benefits in dungeon encounters are great. Not sure why someone would quit over this.
Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
i don't understand the dynamics involved but depending on the group and the campaign i could see myself finding those artifacts cool, or annoying enough to contribute to a decision to quit
seems like you at least are putting in the effort to have open conversation outside the world of the game about how things can be kept fun for everyone
are you frustrated that they're handling their dislike of the artifacts badly, or are you just surprised and bummed that they aren't invested in them?
my initial read of the benefits and drawbacks is that they seem relatively balanced - the net effect could be good or bad based on the situation and the character. Under the wrong circumstances I could totally see being completely uninterested in having non-optional semipermanent detriments attached to my character, even if there were roughly equivalent benefits. If, however, they get the option to pass on the item after knowing what it does, then I can't see any reasonable grounds for complaint under any circumstances.
In my experience players generally don't like drawbacks on their items at all (unless they have some specific means of bypassing or minimizing them e.g. 'disadvantage on ranged attacks' on a melee character or 'you're blind' on a character with blindsight)
If they are going to be expected to be excited about an item with drawbacks like that, the benefits have to be substantially greater than the drawbacks, not just balanced against each other - I might be on board for putting up with animals being permanently hostile to me in exchange for, like, x/day damage resistance or some other reliably useful powerful benefit, but I'd be a lot less excited about putting up with that drawback for something situational like disease immunity.
The benefits need to be bigger than the drawbacks because if the benefits and the drawbacks are of equal magnitude, then the whole thing is a wash and it's a lot like not having an item at all except that I've got a mixed bag of a bunch of effects I have to track, have no agency over, might not value, and which might be screwing with my ability to play my character the way I want to.
I don't think quitting the campaign is the right response but I'm with Denada - I can see not being excited about those items, and I'd probably have unattuned from them and be looking for a way offload them (with the possible exception of wanting to hang onto the +2 WIS/-2 STR if I were playing a WIS-primary class that already had STR as a dump stat). If you're invested in having the player actually use them (or look for the rest), it might be worth a rework.
I'd also personally be more okay with drawbacks if the artifact and the effects were tied corely into the campaign. If we're hunting a lich, and we find his fleshbound book that gives +2 wis/-2 str because it rotted his body to grow his mind, I'd enjoy that. If it turned out later that he was using the book to scry on the party, I'd be angry at the lich, not the DM. Especially if the DM points out that scrying can be a two way street...
Just random curses would annoy me. Curses that enhance the plot are fun.
My group today obtained a wedding dress so next week (CoS spoilers)
they will have a wedding march with the Abbot, the bride, and like half of Krezk and Vallaki townies over to Ravenloft to present the bride to Strahd. The party suspects things won't go great, but it's playing along as their ticket to sneak in and look for the stuff madam Eva and Argynvost told them about.
We are doing it the day after holloween, so I'm adding some fangs to the "prince" getup I'm doing trick or treating with my daughter. And i have a special surprise for the party when they do find the
Argynvost skull. A zombie dragon $70 minifig bursting out of the wall when they attempt to pull the skull down.
The books (and the ring that accompanies them) is at the core of the campaign. Though, the party doesn't know it yet.
Each book was created or owned by a necromancer king and each one is themed. Like the one that turns flesh to stone is also a manual of golems. There is some synergy.
I could make the ring suppress some of the detrimental side effects.
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
Just let them get rid of the books as artifacts if they want to. Maybe they hire a chump to carry them around, maybe they find a way to contain them in a magic box. If they're not digging their magic items let them opt out!
The books (and the ring that accompanies them) is at the core of the campaign. Though, the party doesn't know it yet.
Each book was created or owned by a necromancer king and each one is themed. Like the one that turns flesh to stone is also a manual of golems. There is some synergy.
I could make the ring suppress some of the detrimental side effects.
I find that when you're too clever as a DM, the players end up just getting frustrated or mad. My solution was to do two things. The first is to talk to the players as players. Explain to them that while their characters don't know the artifacts are important to the campaign, you're letting them know that they are. So, if they're frustrated with the artifacts, they can understand that their struggles with the items might lead to direct campaign progression / knowledge.
Second, I always try to do a better job of telegraphing how or why things might be important. I find that even being aware that players miss clues I hand out, I'm *still* not obvious enough. Players have enough stuff going on in their heads that they might miss things you say or objects you describe. Maybe their dog barked while you were saying something. Or they had to go to the bathroom. Or they zoned out during your 2 minute intro. Whatever. So, not only do I try my best to give multiple clues in multiple spots from different angles of pursuit, if I think the players still aren't getting it, I just tell them.
Most players are willing to let things happen to their character if they feel like they have some agency in the matter. Saddling them with a bunch of additional paperwork (which they'll be expected to track somehow, outside of their character sheet no less), and not telling them the greater purpose of it, seems like an easy way to piss people off.
Lastly - always remember that the players don't know your master plan. So, @Abbalah is right. The benefits have to *vastly* outweigh the downsides, otherwise the experience feels terrible. Especially if you're asking them to carry these items for essentially the rest of the campaign.
It's something I probably would have brought up in a session 0 with the group, and made clear that it was a fundamental part of the campaign. As in, "Hey guys, do you have any interest in playing a campaign based around a bunch of cursed objects that have crazy effects, both positive and negative?"
Without that buy in....I could definitely see not wanting to remain in that game.
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From a purely mechanical standpoint, I think that list of advantages and disadvantages is WAY too long. I would give each book one flashy themed power or advantage and one big cost or disadvantage. If you wanted to have a sense of progression within one book, I would intensify the already-existing advantage & disadvantage instead of adding a second one.
The first 5e campaign I played had artifacts of similar power, only instead of known disadvantages, you could use them once a day with no risk, after that... the dm started rolling dice, and bad things started happening
but oh god it let me ignore sorcery point cost for metamagic, so good, until I start attempting to remove my own foot from insanity, which I solved by casting suggestion on myself to act less crazy
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Just read through the updated Artificer guide and yes please, I want to be fantasy ironman.
And specifically the Warsmith about 3/4 of the way down. I haven't read through it too deeply on balance but it doesn't seem too bad on the surface. Lots of abilities but nothing inherently game breaking. They really did think about how to make iron man work in D&D though.
And specifically the Warsmith about 3/4 of the way down. I haven't read through it too deeply on balance but it doesn't seem too bad on the surface. Lots of abilities but nothing inherently game breaking. They really did think about how to make iron man work in D&D though.
Weeeell...the ability to have 24 Strength at level 8 and become permanently large-sized at level 9 place it pretty firmly in 'haha holy shit' territory, balance-wise.
On the other hand, it also means you'd get to fly around in a miniature gundam, obliterating orcs with a 14-foot magical greatsword, each swing of which deals almost as much damage as a single-target Fireball, so I say fuckin' go for it if you can somehow convince your DM to let you.
And specifically the Warsmith about 3/4 of the way down. I haven't read through it too deeply on balance but it doesn't seem too bad on the surface. Lots of abilities but nothing inherently game breaking. They really did think about how to make iron man work in D&D though.
Weeeell...the ability to have 24 Strength at level 8 and become permanently large-sized at level 9 place it pretty firmly in 'haha holy shit' territory, balance-wise.
On the other hand, it also means you'd get to fly around in a miniature gundam, obliterating orcs with a 14-foot magical greatsword, each swing of which deals almost as much damage as a single-target Fireball, so I say fuckin' go for it if you can somehow convince your DM to let you.
Now im having a hard time re-reading it on my phone but I don't see anything that puts out single level fireball damage each swing. There's sunbeam but that's a daily. Also I wouldn't expect to see this in a campaign like CoS. Iny last campaign Out of the Abyss My barbarian had a belt of fire giant strength at level 11 and that wasn't unbalanced, and by 14 I was flying when raging. I hit consistently and did good damage, which depending on how the suits kitted out it would be very similar, or you'd be more like a Warlock otherwise if you went the other way with it.
Not saying that a player and DM wouldn't have to have a good discussion up front about expectations around where the character wants to go progression wise, and how much they are going to stick out in the setting. In Ebberon though this would be a hoot. The big caveat I think is the expectations that the player isn't going to get a lot of magic items, or some of their upgrades are going to require loot or questing.
Wow. They're not shying away from making Fantasy Iron Man, are they? That art leaves no illusions at what they are getting at.
What's the source of this article? It's not official, is it? One piece of art in that article is blatantly from Warmachine/Iron Kingdoms.
I'm pretty sure that more than one piece of art is lifted from Warmachine.
The Iron Man pictures have been around for a while too, some artist did a set of Fantasy Marvel characters and it went viral.
So, I can't imagine it would be official unless the powers that be are really looking for a lawsuit.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Yea, this is homebrew. It didn't seem completely broken and sounded like a ton of fun. The UA artificer is the gunsmith pretty much.
Yea, this is homebrew. It didn't seem completely broken and sounded like a ton of fun. The UA artificer is the gunsmith pretty much.
It doesn't seem overly broken, but there is a LOT to keep track of with these subclasses. It'd be really easy for a player to get bogged down with the details.
And specifically the Warsmith about 3/4 of the way down. I haven't read through it too deeply on balance but it doesn't seem too bad on the surface. Lots of abilities but nothing inherently game breaking. They really did think about how to make iron man work in D&D though.
Weeeell...the ability to have 24 Strength at level 8 and become permanently large-sized at level 9 place it pretty firmly in 'haha holy shit' territory, balance-wise.
On the other hand, it also means you'd get to fly around in a miniature gundam, obliterating orcs with a 14-foot magical greatsword, each swing of which deals almost as much damage as a single-target Fireball, so I say fuckin' go for it if you can somehow convince your DM to let you.
Now im having a hard time re-reading it on my phone but I don't see anything that puts out single level fireball damage each swing. There's sunbeam but that's a daily. Also I wouldn't expect to see this in a campaign like CoS. Iny last campaign Out of the Abyss My barbarian had a belt of fire giant strength at level 11 and that wasn't unbalanced, and by 14 I was flying when raging. I hit consistently and did good damage, which depending on how the suits kitted out it would be very similar, or you'd be more like a Warlock otherwise if you went the other way with it.
Not saying that a player and DM wouldn't have to have a good discussion up front about expectations around where the character wants to go progression wise, and how much they are going to stick out in the setting. In Ebberon though this would be a hoot. The big caveat I think is the expectations that the player isn't going to get a lot of magic items, or some of their upgrades are going to require loot or questing.
One of the primary advantages of being large-sized is that you can use large-sized weapons, which have double the damage dice - so our hypothetical level 9 artificer with a large-sized mobile suit, large-sized greatsword, and 24 strength is gonna be attacking twice per turn at +11 for 4d6+7 damage, baseline. That's statistically equivalent to 6d6 per hit, compared to 8d6 for a fireball. From there you add bonuses from all the easy sources and the damage becomes pretty close. Strictly speaking, with just GWM (which you could take as your human bonus feat without dipping another class etc) you bump the average damage per hit to 4d6+7+10=31 damage, compared to the average fireball per-target damage of 28, with your extra +2 STR mod ablating the attack penalty to boot. It's a lot more damage per round than you generally get without spending some sort of resource. As a quick comparison, the ability to go to 24 strength as a class feature is available in official sources, but it's literally the barbarian level 20 capstone, and nothing at all lets you be permanently large-sized, because that's roughly equivalent to 'all of your attacks are automatically crits' in terms of power level.
Like I said, it's awesome and I'd play it in a heartbeat given the opportunity. But part of the reason it'd be fun is that it is very much unfair, in an especially flashy and over-the-top way. It probably becomes much less so (although still pretty powerful) if you 86 the Piloted Golem option
Things that enhance your size typically increase your damage by +1d4 not by doubling the damage dice. Specifically since this doesn’t specify that it increases your damage or allows you to use weapons outside of the normal weapons for your class it does not allow the use of weapons that have double the damage dice.
Seems to depend on the source, Enlarge/Reduce gives you +1d4, a potion of Giant Size gives 3 times the damage dice, so 1d8 to 3d8, and monsters get one extra dice per size category above Medium, which matches the potion.
Doing dragon heist as a level 9 party, I rescued a certain guy who was kidnapped by the xanathar guild by scrying the guy > locate creaturing the guy successfully > dimension dooring down to him > winning on initiative > dimension dooring him out and the DM is super salty about me skipping content
idk how to make him happy, he refused to just reverse time and undo it, like... what am I supposed to do, not do the thing I have a quest to do
no we finished another module and started into dragon heist
thing is 9th level spellcasters kind of break quests, he upleveled the encounters, but that doesnt matter when you can skip encounters.... my character only has one non cantrip offensive spell, it's not the kind of character who seeks to just killdoze through content
Doing dragon heist as a level 9 party, I rescued a certain guy who was kidnapped by the xanathar guild by scrying the guy > locate creaturing the guy successfully > dimension dooring down to him > winning on initiative > dimension dooring him out and the DM is super salty about me skipping content
idk how to make him happy, he refused to just reverse time and undo it, like... what am I supposed to do, not do the thing I have a quest to do
ugh
The DM could've at any point said there was a dimensional lock nearby. Seems they just didn't think about options. Like dimensional locks/anchors are pretty standard dungeon features for exactly that reason.
Now, they (the DM) can have all those resources that were used guarding the guy, come hunt him back down using the same methods.
So what you're saying is that all the guards and nasties guarding your quest target are still alive and Xanathar is giving them one chance to redeem themselves or he's going to be very cross? That can be the setup for your DM to throw a big ambush at you.
Your DM is running you through a module that has a lower recommended level than your current level, so I guess he will have to either homebrew some encounters or just go with it (a la Aqc Inc live games).
Things that enhance your size typically increase your damage by +1d4 not by doubling the damage dice. Specifically since this doesn’t specify that it increases your damage or allows you to use weapons outside of the normal weapons for your class it does not allow the use of weapons that have double the damage dice.
Additionally fireball is 8d6 not 6d6
That's statistically equivalent to 6d6 per hit, compared to 8d6 for a fireball.
Strictly speaking, with just GWM (which you could take as your human bonus feat without dipping another class etc) you bump the average damage per hit to 4d6+7+10=31 damage, compared to the average fireball per-target damage of 28
Enlarge Person increases your damage by +1d4, but that's a spell-specific effect, not a standard rule for weapon die size. There's no specific rule given for how player size interacts with weapon damage, because players can't generally be large-sized in 5e, but for monsters, you double the weapon die for large-sized weapons and triple it for huge-sized weapons, which is consistent with how things like the potion of giant size interact with player size-changing effects. Enlarge Person is the outlier in an otherwise-consistent model.
The same section of the DMG also says "A creature has disadvantage on attack rolls with a weapon that is sized for a larger attacker. You can rule that a weapon sized for an attack two or more sizes larger is too big for the creature to use at all." which is presumably supposed to govern what happens if a player picks up a troll's large-sized weapon and tries to swing it around for the increased damage from using a larger weapon - something that wouldn't need to be covered if the weapon didn't have increased damage dice associated with it.
And specifically the Warsmith about 3/4 of the way down. I haven't read through it too deeply on balance but it doesn't seem too bad on the surface. Lots of abilities but nothing inherently game breaking. They really did think about how to make iron man work in D&D though.
Okay, now that I've had sometime to mull this over, I think the "ironman" subclass could be good for a "temp power" sort of thing. Something like, a party of low-level characters somehow draw the ire of a mob of monsters and their boss, like an army of kobolds and the dragon they serve, or a bunch of yuan-ti and the giant 5 headed yuan-ti from Mordenkainen's, or something, and they're clearly way to low level to deal with it, then the gnomish artificer they've being doing weird quests for the entire game, none of which had any real resolution, says, "Well, I've been working on something that may help!" and then BLAMMO. Armor suits. Basically replace their stats for the game, but still geared up like their characters. The fighter would get the suit with the electro sword, the mage would get the suit with the disintegrate ray, etc etc.
Sadly, the suits break down after the fight. Prototypes, you know.
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The particular artifact he finds unattractive is one of 7 books. I won't get into the history/description of the item (even though I want to) because that's not the problem, but I will list the benefits he has right now:
Black Book (2nd book acquired):Minor Beneficial Properties: The user is immune to disease.
Flesh Book (3rd Book acquired): Minor Beneficial Properties: Can cause serious wounds by touch, but only to humanoid creatures no larger than Medium size.
Grey Book (4th book acquired): Minor Beneficial Properties: Can turn Flesh to Stone 3/day.
Gold Book: Major Beneficial Property: Permanently boosts your Wisdom score by 2 points.
Black Book: Major Beneficial Property: Conjure a Shadow Guard 1/day.
Flesh Book: Major Beneficial Property: Can cast Cure Wounds 3/day with no components needed.
Grey Book: Major Beneficial Property: Can Transmute Rock to Mud and Mud to Rock 3/day.
Grey Book: Prime Power: Total immunity from all forms of Mental and Psionic attacks that would do damage to the user.
and detriments that he has:
Black Book: Minor Detrimental Property: Animals within 20’ are hostile to you.
Flesh Book: Minor Detrimental Property: Holy Water within 10’ of the user is polluted and becomes poisonous. In addition, when entering a Holy place, you will take 1 damage for every minute you are inside.
Grey Book: Minor Detrimental Property: User loses interest in sex.
Gold Book: Major Detrimental Property: Permanently decreases your Strength score by 2 points.
Black Book: Major Detrimental Property: Dilutes all magic potions within 10’ of you.
Flesh Book: Major Detrimental Property: All intelligent humanoid creatures are wary/distrustful of possessor. User has a -2 penalty on all Charisma checks.
Grey Book: Major Detrimental Property: Must sacrifice a familiar within one day, each time a Minor, Major or Prime power is used.
Grey Book: Side Effect: Each time the Prime Power is invoked, the user must roll a 51% or higher, or be turned into a hostile zombie for 10min. However, the percentage drops by a number each time you are attacked? 2nd Attack = 6% (28% chance to turn). 3rd attack = 8% (20% chance to turn). 4th and 5th attack is 10% until the chances you turn are nil.
The italicized I put in after his outburst of candy covered shit, but before he decided to quit.
He grumbled when he got the first book (blinded when 10' away from book and permanently decreased his str) and grumbled passive aggressively when he got the 2nd (Potions are diluted and animals hate him) so I retconned in some bennies that cut down on some of the detriments, the more books you gain. I thought (I was being really, really generous)this would shore up his hatred of the "horrible" side effects but he downright quit when he got the 3rd and 4th books.
• the books merge into one another, occupying the same special dimension. Whenever the user wishes to study one of the books so combined, they need only say the name of the book they wish to read, out loud. It must be the actual title of the tome and not the color.
• Depending on the number of Necromancer books the user is attuned to certain properties of each book will change:
1. The Golden Book: The number of feet you can be away from the book increases by 10’ for each book attuned.
2. The Black Book: The number of Shadow Guards increases by 1 or the number of times you can summon a Shadow Guard in a 24hr period is increased by 1. However, the Shadow Guards hit points is reduced by 1 hit dice per book.
3. The White Book: The cumulative property instead becomes a flat 5% chance. For each book above 4 the percentage goes down by 1%. At 7 books, for example, you will only become ethereal on a 1% roll.
4. The Silver Book: The amount of Hit Points regenerated goes up by 1.
5. The Flesh Book: The 10’ radius to pollute Holy Water drops by one foot for each book owned besides the Flesh Book.
6. The Grey Book: The percentage chance to become a hostile zombie drops by 6% for each book besides the Grey Book.
7. The Rainbow Book: At 2 books, the cumulative property instead becomes a flat 10% chance. At 3 books the chance goes to 5% and every book thereafter reduces the chance by 1% so at 7 books the body rot chance goes down to 1%
He does not have the White, Silver or Rainbow books but it gives you some insight to my benevolence. 8-)
I mean, there's some great RP hooks to dick around with and the benefits in dungeon encounters are great. Not sure why someone would quit over this.
seems like you at least are putting in the effort to have open conversation outside the world of the game about how things can be kept fun for everyone
are you frustrated that they're handling their dislike of the artifacts badly, or are you just surprised and bummed that they aren't invested in them?
my initial read of the benefits and drawbacks is that they seem relatively balanced - the net effect could be good or bad based on the situation and the character. Under the wrong circumstances I could totally see being completely uninterested in having non-optional semipermanent detriments attached to my character, even if there were roughly equivalent benefits. If, however, they get the option to pass on the item after knowing what it does, then I can't see any reasonable grounds for complaint under any circumstances.
If they are going to be expected to be excited about an item with drawbacks like that, the benefits have to be substantially greater than the drawbacks, not just balanced against each other - I might be on board for putting up with animals being permanently hostile to me in exchange for, like, x/day damage resistance or some other reliably useful powerful benefit, but I'd be a lot less excited about putting up with that drawback for something situational like disease immunity.
The benefits need to be bigger than the drawbacks because if the benefits and the drawbacks are of equal magnitude, then the whole thing is a wash and it's a lot like not having an item at all except that I've got a mixed bag of a bunch of effects I have to track, have no agency over, might not value, and which might be screwing with my ability to play my character the way I want to.
I don't think quitting the campaign is the right response but I'm with Denada - I can see not being excited about those items, and I'd probably have unattuned from them and be looking for a way offload them (with the possible exception of wanting to hang onto the +2 WIS/-2 STR if I were playing a WIS-primary class that already had STR as a dump stat). If you're invested in having the player actually use them (or look for the rest), it might be worth a rework.
Just random curses would annoy me. Curses that enhance the plot are fun.
I'm opening a curses shop in waterdeep that's straight out of Oglaf, curse you to be handsome, curse you to only prepare delicious food, etc
You are cursed with 33% off today only
Don't forget the classic: curse you to turn everything you touch into gold.
But that's not the joke, as it is a legitimate curse that everyone sees coming.from a mile away.
I cursed a guy to turn anyone he touched into himself
of course they got wisdom saving throws and it only lasted 24 hours but still
I probably couldn't swing a midas touch curse, at least not *yet*
We are doing it the day after holloween, so I'm adding some fangs to the "prince" getup I'm doing trick or treating with my daughter. And i have a special surprise for the party when they do find the
It's going to be glorious.
Each book was created or owned by a necromancer king and each one is themed. Like the one that turns flesh to stone is also a manual of golems. There is some synergy.
I could make the ring suppress some of the detrimental side effects.
I find that when you're too clever as a DM, the players end up just getting frustrated or mad. My solution was to do two things. The first is to talk to the players as players. Explain to them that while their characters don't know the artifacts are important to the campaign, you're letting them know that they are. So, if they're frustrated with the artifacts, they can understand that their struggles with the items might lead to direct campaign progression / knowledge.
Second, I always try to do a better job of telegraphing how or why things might be important. I find that even being aware that players miss clues I hand out, I'm *still* not obvious enough. Players have enough stuff going on in their heads that they might miss things you say or objects you describe. Maybe their dog barked while you were saying something. Or they had to go to the bathroom. Or they zoned out during your 2 minute intro. Whatever. So, not only do I try my best to give multiple clues in multiple spots from different angles of pursuit, if I think the players still aren't getting it, I just tell them.
Most players are willing to let things happen to their character if they feel like they have some agency in the matter. Saddling them with a bunch of additional paperwork (which they'll be expected to track somehow, outside of their character sheet no less), and not telling them the greater purpose of it, seems like an easy way to piss people off.
Lastly - always remember that the players don't know your master plan. So, @Abbalah is right. The benefits have to *vastly* outweigh the downsides, otherwise the experience feels terrible. Especially if you're asking them to carry these items for essentially the rest of the campaign.
It's something I probably would have brought up in a session 0 with the group, and made clear that it was a fundamental part of the campaign. As in, "Hey guys, do you have any interest in playing a campaign based around a bunch of cursed objects that have crazy effects, both positive and negative?"
Without that buy in....I could definitely see not wanting to remain in that game.
but oh god it let me ignore sorcery point cost for metamagic, so good, until I start attempting to remove my own foot from insanity, which I solved by casting suggestion on myself to act less crazy
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
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Link?
https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-LAEn6ZdC6lYUKhQ67Qk
And specifically the Warsmith about 3/4 of the way down. I haven't read through it too deeply on balance but it doesn't seem too bad on the surface. Lots of abilities but nothing inherently game breaking. They really did think about how to make iron man work in D&D though.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Weeeell...the ability to have 24 Strength at level 8 and become permanently large-sized at level 9 place it pretty firmly in 'haha holy shit' territory, balance-wise.
On the other hand, it also means you'd get to fly around in a miniature gundam, obliterating orcs with a 14-foot magical greatsword, each swing of which deals almost as much damage as a single-target Fireball, so I say fuckin' go for it if you can somehow convince your DM to let you.
What's the source of this article? It's not official, is it? One piece of art in that article is blatantly from Warmachine/Iron Kingdoms.
Now im having a hard time re-reading it on my phone but I don't see anything that puts out single level fireball damage each swing. There's sunbeam but that's a daily. Also I wouldn't expect to see this in a campaign like CoS. Iny last campaign Out of the Abyss My barbarian had a belt of fire giant strength at level 11 and that wasn't unbalanced, and by 14 I was flying when raging. I hit consistently and did good damage, which depending on how the suits kitted out it would be very similar, or you'd be more like a Warlock otherwise if you went the other way with it.
Not saying that a player and DM wouldn't have to have a good discussion up front about expectations around where the character wants to go progression wise, and how much they are going to stick out in the setting. In Ebberon though this would be a hoot. The big caveat I think is the expectations that the player isn't going to get a lot of magic items, or some of their upgrades are going to require loot or questing.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
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I'm pretty sure that more than one piece of art is lifted from Warmachine.
The Iron Man pictures have been around for a while too, some artist did a set of Fantasy Marvel characters and it went viral.
So, I can't imagine it would be official unless the powers that be are really looking for a lawsuit.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
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It doesn't seem overly broken, but there is a LOT to keep track of with these subclasses. It'd be really easy for a player to get bogged down with the details.
One of the primary advantages of being large-sized is that you can use large-sized weapons, which have double the damage dice - so our hypothetical level 9 artificer with a large-sized mobile suit, large-sized greatsword, and 24 strength is gonna be attacking twice per turn at +11 for 4d6+7 damage, baseline. That's statistically equivalent to 6d6 per hit, compared to 8d6 for a fireball. From there you add bonuses from all the easy sources and the damage becomes pretty close. Strictly speaking, with just GWM (which you could take as your human bonus feat without dipping another class etc) you bump the average damage per hit to 4d6+7+10=31 damage, compared to the average fireball per-target damage of 28, with your extra +2 STR mod ablating the attack penalty to boot. It's a lot more damage per round than you generally get without spending some sort of resource. As a quick comparison, the ability to go to 24 strength as a class feature is available in official sources, but it's literally the barbarian level 20 capstone, and nothing at all lets you be permanently large-sized, because that's roughly equivalent to 'all of your attacks are automatically crits' in terms of power level.
Like I said, it's awesome and I'd play it in a heartbeat given the opportunity. But part of the reason it'd be fun is that it is very much unfair, in an especially flashy and over-the-top way. It probably becomes much less so (although still pretty powerful) if you 86 the Piloted Golem option
Additionally fireball is 8d6 not 6d6
idk how to make him happy, he refused to just reverse time and undo it, like... what am I supposed to do, not do the thing I have a quest to do
ugh
thing is 9th level spellcasters kind of break quests, he upleveled the encounters, but that doesnt matter when you can skip encounters.... my character only has one non cantrip offensive spell, it's not the kind of character who seeks to just killdoze through content
The DM could've at any point said there was a dimensional lock nearby. Seems they just didn't think about options. Like dimensional locks/anchors are pretty standard dungeon features for exactly that reason.
Now, they (the DM) can have all those resources that were used guarding the guy, come hunt him back down using the same methods.
Your DM is running you through a module that has a lower recommended level than your current level, so I guess he will have to either homebrew some encounters or just go with it (a la Aqc Inc live games).
Enlarge Person increases your damage by +1d4, but that's a spell-specific effect, not a standard rule for weapon die size. There's no specific rule given for how player size interacts with weapon damage, because players can't generally be large-sized in 5e, but for monsters, you double the weapon die for large-sized weapons and triple it for huge-sized weapons, which is consistent with how things like the potion of giant size interact with player size-changing effects. Enlarge Person is the outlier in an otherwise-consistent model.
The same section of the DMG also says "A creature has disadvantage on attack rolls with a weapon that is sized for a larger attacker. You can rule that a weapon sized for an attack two or more sizes larger is too big for the creature to use at all." which is presumably supposed to govern what happens if a player picks up a troll's large-sized weapon and tries to swing it around for the increased damage from using a larger weapon - something that wouldn't need to be covered if the weapon didn't have increased damage dice associated with it.
Okay, now that I've had sometime to mull this over, I think the "ironman" subclass could be good for a "temp power" sort of thing. Something like, a party of low-level characters somehow draw the ire of a mob of monsters and their boss, like an army of kobolds and the dragon they serve, or a bunch of yuan-ti and the giant 5 headed yuan-ti from Mordenkainen's, or something, and they're clearly way to low level to deal with it, then the gnomish artificer they've being doing weird quests for the entire game, none of which had any real resolution, says, "Well, I've been working on something that may help!" and then BLAMMO. Armor suits. Basically replace their stats for the game, but still geared up like their characters. The fighter would get the suit with the electro sword, the mage would get the suit with the disintegrate ray, etc etc.
Sadly, the suits break down after the fight. Prototypes, you know.