Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
You are an objectively terrible person.
3.5 games should never start below level 3. heck, my local group no longer starts below level 5
Dungeons and Dragons Megathread
- Thread starter Havocfett
- Start date
3.5 games should never start below level 3. heck, my local group no longer starts below level 5
- Location
- Michigan
LOL, I guess I could try to scale it up to 3.You are an objectively terrible person.
3.5 games should never start below level 3. heck, my local group no longer starts below level 5
AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
My group always insists on starting at level 1, even if I'm the GM and recommend otherwise.
Then again, they really love their 0-level funnels, so I just accept the compromise level 1 represents for me. XD
Then again, they really love their 0-level funnels, so I just accept the compromise level 1 represents for me. XD
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
I was joking.
More seriously, level 3 is about where D&D stops being sudden death mode in 2/3e. at level 1-2, one lucky crit by an enemy has a good chance of downing you.
Basically, my homies and I play D&D for "Heroes: the Adventuring" not "Mortals: the Dysenterying"
I assume other (objectively wrong) people may want to play from level 1 for "Farmboy: the Journeying" or something.
AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
Some people, especially old-school gamers, like playing their D&D as a low-key Survival Horror. Perfectly valid.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
I did that once. attack of the killer cats. (poor poor commoners)
AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
That's kind of a quirk of how cats are statted out in 3E without account for math changes between editions.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
It's hardly unique to 3e. thanks to dex-as-god-stat, WoD has the same issue.
Someone one noted that kf cats actually stood and fought to kill, Cat kills commoner could well be an IRL thing. It's just that real cats tend to run rather than fight.
FaeGlade Plural
Semper Legens
- Location
- Land of Bureaucracy
- Pronouns
- Plural/They
So, here's another fancy build idea for Pathfinder: The Summoning Skald
Together, this effectively turns the Skald from "melee class that buffs other melee classes" into a caster who specializes in summons to harass their enemies.
This idea works with any Skald regardless of archetype, as long as they don't trade away the ability to grant rage powers.
The basic idea is to summon several creatures, then grant them all rage powers that deliver damage and effects regardless of their actual threat.
The Rage Powers:
You can go for a lot of different ones - but those that have independent effects, rather than enhancing attacks or defense, are usually best.
My recommendation: Spirit Totem (Lesser, Greater) effectively lets each summoned monster deal extra damage. This starts out at 1D4+5, but scales with your charisma, later upgrades to 1D6 and more importantly, adds 1D8 for adjacent monsters. Put that on several summoned monsters and all your party members, and it's actually pretty potent damage.
Here's the real trick though: Linnon Death Curses. Tor specifically is extremely powerful - now, if the enemy kills one of your monsters, they have to save or be permanently staggered. This actually makes weak summons more powerful, instead of less.
The Summoning:
The Bard spell list already contains all the summoning-spells you need. You can start out using Summon Minor Monster - 1D3 Hawks are actually pretty decent, and it's 1-3 extra deliveries of Spirit Slams. If you ever upgrade to higher-level summoning spells, remember that you want to use the option to summon more monsters from a lower-level list - SM III for 1D4+1 eagles is still good at high levels, since their main purpose is to deliver Spirit Slams and Death Curses.
As for feats: You can choose to augment your summoning with feats. Going for Superior Summoning can be worth it to get extra monsters. There are a bunch of other options to augment your summons, but ultimately those do work better with someone dedicated to summoning monsters who can actually fight well.
However, there is one potentially worthwhile trick:
Take Summon Evil Monster. This is the easiest way to get your Summoning done in less than a full-round action, so that you can activate your song and summon in the first round before you're level 13. Sadly this does not work with Summon Good or Neutral monster, since those give other benefits and don't even benefit from Sacred Summons like Summon Evil Monster does.
You can still try to go for Sacred Summons - it requires either a single-level cleric dip, or cleric variant multiclass (I recommend the former) - but the first options show up with Summon Monster III, so it's not really good for you.
You'll want Quicken Metmagic Rods. Lesser versions suffice, but are still expensive at 35000 gp. It's actually worth picking up Craft Rod for this - that way you'll get your first one at 9th level, it'll be easier to get, and you might eventually want several ones anyway.
All the rest:
You can go with whatever combat style, skills feats, archetypes, race and so on you want. Basically the only thing that matters here is not losing the ability to grant rage powers and having good charisma.
The basic idea is to summon several creatures, then grant them all rage powers that deliver damage and effects regardless of their actual threat.
The Rage Powers:
You can go for a lot of different ones - but those that have independent effects, rather than enhancing attacks or defense, are usually best.
My recommendation: Spirit Totem (Lesser, Greater) effectively lets each summoned monster deal extra damage. This starts out at 1D4+5, but scales with your charisma, later upgrades to 1D6 and more importantly, adds 1D8 for adjacent monsters. Put that on several summoned monsters and all your party members, and it's actually pretty potent damage.
Here's the real trick though: Linnon Death Curses. Tor specifically is extremely powerful - now, if the enemy kills one of your monsters, they have to save or be permanently staggered. This actually makes weak summons more powerful, instead of less.
The Summoning:
The Bard spell list already contains all the summoning-spells you need. You can start out using Summon Minor Monster - 1D3 Hawks are actually pretty decent, and it's 1-3 extra deliveries of Spirit Slams. If you ever upgrade to higher-level summoning spells, remember that you want to use the option to summon more monsters from a lower-level list - SM III for 1D4+1 eagles is still good at high levels, since their main purpose is to deliver Spirit Slams and Death Curses.
As for feats: You can choose to augment your summoning with feats. Going for Superior Summoning can be worth it to get extra monsters. There are a bunch of other options to augment your summons, but ultimately those do work better with someone dedicated to summoning monsters who can actually fight well.
However, there is one potentially worthwhile trick:
Take Summon Evil Monster. This is the easiest way to get your Summoning done in less than a full-round action, so that you can activate your song and summon in the first round before you're level 13. Sadly this does not work with Summon Good or Neutral monster, since those give other benefits and don't even benefit from Sacred Summons like Summon Evil Monster does.
You can still try to go for Sacred Summons - it requires either a single-level cleric dip, or cleric variant multiclass (I recommend the former) - but the first options show up with Summon Monster III, so it's not really good for you.
You'll want Quicken Metmagic Rods. Lesser versions suffice, but are still expensive at 35000 gp. It's actually worth picking up Craft Rod for this - that way you'll get your first one at 9th level, it'll be easier to get, and you might eventually want several ones anyway.
All the rest:
You can go with whatever combat style, skills feats, archetypes, race and so on you want. Basically the only thing that matters here is not losing the ability to grant rage powers and having good charisma.
There are a lot of "Omnicaster" builds out there - characters built so that they can cast as many different spells as possible, often from several class lists, providing magic that normally takes several different classes. Almost all of them are full-casters, and thus very powerful and potentially gamebreaking.
The Skald however can pull this off while only getting up to 6th-level spells. This obviously makes the Skald weaker, but that can actually be desirable sifor some players and in some parties.
Now obviously, the Skald already gets Spell Kenning. This gives slow but reliable access to any Bard, Cleric or Wizard spell. With Expanded Spell Kenning or Runes of the Crones Coven/Old Faith (the feat is better), you can add Druid and Witch spells.
And that's that, that's in theory all you really require.
You could also add in being a Samsaran, but there isn't much on the Bloodrager/Magus/Summoner spell list you couldn't get anyway. Going for Summoner might be nice since it grants a lot of early access, even the Unchained list grants early-accesss summoning. But it's hardly necessary.
What I would actually recommend is taking Arrowsongs Lament. Effectively, it turns you into a prepared caster for Bard and Wizard spells. It does require spending rounds of performance and spells known, but it's quite useful.
The Skald however can pull this off while only getting up to 6th-level spells. This obviously makes the Skald weaker, but that can actually be desirable sifor some players and in some parties.
Now obviously, the Skald already gets Spell Kenning. This gives slow but reliable access to any Bard, Cleric or Wizard spell. With Expanded Spell Kenning or Runes of the Crones Coven/Old Faith (the feat is better), you can add Druid and Witch spells.
And that's that, that's in theory all you really require.
You could also add in being a Samsaran, but there isn't much on the Bloodrager/Magus/Summoner spell list you couldn't get anyway. Going for Summoner might be nice since it grants a lot of early access, even the Unchained list grants early-accesss summoning. But it's hardly necessary.
What I would actually recommend is taking Arrowsongs Lament. Effectively, it turns you into a prepared caster for Bard and Wizard spells. It does require spending rounds of performance and spells known, but it's quite useful.
Normally I do try to write up a decent backstory for a character, but here I didn't bother.
You could put this in several ways:
An ancient lorekeeper (possibly last survivor of her people) who summons ancestral spirits (in the form of animals) to avenge misdeeds.
Or an ambitious young noble who dabbles in a lot of magic, but prefers to let summoned animals do the fighting for her while augmenting them with her magic.
Or various other options - including non-evil ones, if you throw out Summon Evil Monster.
Class: Skald (Urban Skald) 9
Race: Human
Ability Scores (25 point buy): Strength 14, Dexterity 12, Constitution 14, Intelligence 12, Wisdom 10, Charisma 18 (improved to Charisma 22).
Traits: ???
Feats: Spell Focus (Conjuration), Augment Summoning, Superior Summoning, Summon Evil Monster, Craft Rod, Expanded Spell Kenning
Rage Powers: Lesser Spirit Totem, Spirit Totem, Linnorm Death Cure (Tor)
Skills: 6 per level, spend as you like, has two versatile performances
Magic Items: Lesser Metmagic Rod (Quicken)
Spells: third-level spells, knows 19 spells, has a spellbook with Bard&Wizard spells, can spontaneously cast Bard/Cleric/Druid/Witch/Wizard spell once per day
As for actual combat, it looks pretty simple but would probably be though to keep track of:
Standard action to summon 1D4+2 Fiendish Vultures. Move action to start her Raging Song. Swift action to summon another 1D4+2 Fiendish Vultures.
These already block spaces and can provide flanking (being small) and start delivering delivering Spirit Slams with a +12 to attack and 1D4+6 damage right away to adjacent enemies. On the next turn they can start to move, and attack (though only with a +6 attack and 1D6+5 damage).
That's already an average of 9 attacks for an average of 8.5 damage each, for a pretty nice 76 damage per round, while blocking an average of 9 spaces.
With each vulture get below 0 HP, the attacker will have to make a DC 20 Will save or be permanently staggered.
Throw in some more battlefield control (or if you're extra-crazy, more summons) and the like and it's enough to whittle down even pretty strong enemies.
The only weakness is enemies immune to negative energy, so you better don't fight any undead. Even there though, the summoning can summon stronger monsters (say, some howlers) and the death curse still works against any enemy not immune to curses.
You could put this in several ways:
An ancient lorekeeper (possibly last survivor of her people) who summons ancestral spirits (in the form of animals) to avenge misdeeds.
Or an ambitious young noble who dabbles in a lot of magic, but prefers to let summoned animals do the fighting for her while augmenting them with her magic.
Or various other options - including non-evil ones, if you throw out Summon Evil Monster.
Class: Skald (Urban Skald) 9
Race: Human
Ability Scores (25 point buy): Strength 14, Dexterity 12, Constitution 14, Intelligence 12, Wisdom 10, Charisma 18 (improved to Charisma 22).
Traits: ???
Feats: Spell Focus (Conjuration), Augment Summoning, Superior Summoning, Summon Evil Monster, Craft Rod, Expanded Spell Kenning
Rage Powers: Lesser Spirit Totem, Spirit Totem, Linnorm Death Cure (Tor)
Skills: 6 per level, spend as you like, has two versatile performances
Magic Items: Lesser Metmagic Rod (Quicken)
Spells: third-level spells, knows 19 spells, has a spellbook with Bard&Wizard spells, can spontaneously cast Bard/Cleric/Druid/Witch/Wizard spell once per day
As for actual combat, it looks pretty simple but would probably be though to keep track of:
Standard action to summon 1D4+2 Fiendish Vultures. Move action to start her Raging Song. Swift action to summon another 1D4+2 Fiendish Vultures.
These already block spaces and can provide flanking (being small) and start delivering delivering Spirit Slams with a +12 to attack and 1D4+6 damage right away to adjacent enemies. On the next turn they can start to move, and attack (though only with a +6 attack and 1D6+5 damage).
That's already an average of 9 attacks for an average of 8.5 damage each, for a pretty nice 76 damage per round, while blocking an average of 9 spaces.
With each vulture get below 0 HP, the attacker will have to make a DC 20 Will save or be permanently staggered.
Throw in some more battlefield control (or if you're extra-crazy, more summons) and the like and it's enough to whittle down even pretty strong enemies.
The only weakness is enemies immune to negative energy, so you better don't fight any undead. Even there though, the summoning can summon stronger monsters (say, some howlers) and the death curse still works against any enemy not immune to curses.
D&D 5 question here one of my players is thinking about starting as a undead necromancer, does anyone have any ideas about adding stuff there for low levels that are still flavorfull without imbalancing it? Raising people as undead that he can't controll was one of my ideas for a ritual, with the implication that he can't raise someone in that way twice.
A bit in regards to the campaign it is looking mostly like something from a Moorcock respective Dying Earth panorama ith tech that has turned into magic.
A bit in regards to the campaign it is looking mostly like something from a Moorcock respective Dying Earth panorama ith tech that has turned into magic.
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Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
so have we abandonned the seperate character builds thread then?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Cool. anyone want to see my very silly Kung-fu Panda build?
boring Graveyard shifts result in a lot of dollcrafting
I don't crit players on low-level, for the same reason I won't send rogues to backstab the level 2 wizard desperately trying to help using a crossbow.
But yeah, level 3 is where you don't need to be too careful anymore, and between 4 and 10-12 is probably where you can have most creativity with regards to encounters, it also seems to be the sweet spot balance wise, where casters pick up pace and martial classes set in their roles.
My party is easy though, nobody has less than D8 hit dice. No dedicated spellcasters either, Warpriest (Cleric died), Magus, Rogue, Paladin.
I have been toting the idea of survival party games, basically we pick a career, the party starts out at level 1 and runs a simple adventure gauntlet/dungeon, see who gets out. Several friends were pretty amused by it, not as a regular thing but as the occasional one off dumb thing, and it should not be an impossible setup.
1- wizards/sorcerers have a really hard time early on but if they can luck through have the ability to powerhouse once their collective spell library explodes.
2- Clerics can go really good or really bad, a bit easier early game but their skill-play is terrible.
3- Rogues will be fine early on if you can just backstab the fuck out of everything, good skill game.
4- Bards can potentially do very well
5- Fighter is boring, though not necessarily bad as long as you have a couple of players that take INT and spread their skills carefully.
6- Paladins: nobody dies. Ever.
7- barbarians are, contary to fighters, fucking hilarious. "the hallway is filled with traps? Who has the most remaining HP?"
8- Rangers can probably do it.
Something like that? :')
And one of the players stepped up to DM (yay).... and decided as a setting that'd it'd be xenophobic and low-magic, with magic users distrusted and often slaves to kings and nobles.
Now, my concept was a catfolk magical child vigilante with mixed-raced parents (human step-parent) who were both magic users, and vigilante abilities based on a popular magic-using alter ego.
So oops, definitely not going there.
Could do another concept, but xenophobic and low-magic never really appealed to me as much as more cosmopolitan settings.
- Location
- Michigan
Yeah, not a fan of low magic settings either. My favorite setting is Eberron.
That's my biggest beef with 5e actually, the in built low magicness.
AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
It's better to have a default of low magic and let people add to their preference, than the other way around. One of 3E's weaknesses is that you're required to have specific magic abilities at certain level thresholds, so martial characters became progressively worthless without wearing a christmas tree of Magic items that kept becoming obsolete.
If you want to allow gamers to use your system for multiple genres of fantasy, it's better to build for as little assumed magic as possible instead of having it assumed and baked into the math of the game.
If you want to allow gamers to use your system for multiple genres of fantasy, it's better to build for as little assumed magic as possible instead of having it assumed and baked into the math of the game.
I could handle low-magic on it's own, even if it's not a preference. But cosmopolitan/multiracial is a bonus to me too, and I like the types of urban cities Eberron has over the more medieval kind of thing, and I also wasn't planning on running a character facing both racism *and* magicism at the same time.
So yea, Eberron is one I liked too, I would've totally played my character if it was Eberron ^^
A blogger I know commented that an issue he had with 5ed and 4ed, is they didn't really embrace the 'gonzo-ness' of earlier editions. Something I very much agree with! 5ed needs to go gonzo.
Until it gets it's Eberron, Golarion, Planescape, or Dark Sun, I'm probably not moving over to it. I like lots of weird races and all that.
- Location
- Drachyench on Discord
There's also Al-Qadim, for (relatively) High-Magic Cosmopolitan-ness in D&D. It was the first (official) AD&D setting to say "Fuck it Elves and Orcs can work together and not be at each-other's throats constantly". Unfortunately, a lot of its aspects are a bit dated between no updates for ~20 years and changes to FR / D&D as a whole since AD&D (ex: What was a cosmopolitan city on the Sword Coast in 1995 FR would probably count as a xenophobic city on the Sword Coast in the 2015 FR).
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
I'm not sure 3e was intentionally designed for high magic though. The devs just couldn't into playtesting.
Also, i dispute the notion that you can easily just scale up to high magic. Paradigm shifts are more than jsut scaling up.
- Location
- Drachyench on Discord
I think their intent was less "You can easily scale up to high magic", more "It's easier to scale up than it is to scale down and tell Casters to give up their toys". Which makes sense: Once you give a D&D player a ball, they generally are very loathe to give it back up.
AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
What Drachy said. It's easier to add things to a system then to take out things it was designed around. I find it fundamentally easier to be additive than subtractive when making balanced game design changes, in general.
There was the recommend wealth levels in balance, so magic items were somewhat assumed.
And yea, I don't know if there's a 'best place' to scale from.
Quite.
Sidenote, I also tend to find the other-culture inspired places to be a bit boring in D&D/fantasy worlds. Like, to take Golarion, you'll have "Vikings with dragons versus witches!", or "Europeland, one of which is with devils, another of which is constant-revolution-land, etc.". There's some boring ones in there, but a number spice it up. Meanwhile, most of the foreign lands are 'Arabian land, with Arabian Nights monsters.' Maybe with a focus on trade, or being part of a big empire, or Egypt-land. But it's not Egyptland *with* some distinctly weird element beyond that. It's not Egyptland vs the Qlippoth, or Arabian Nights with Archons.
Heck, I'd like it if they mixed up the boarders a bit and put cultures that never met near each other. What if you had Egyptland next to Incaland and had a pyramidoff? Or Arabian Nights vs North American Southwest Tribes-inspired cultures, and came up with some middle lands that had a mix of both?