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Dungeons and Dragons Megathread

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Oh, as a note, I just remembered:

Serafina said:
It's still a thing, but the total cost of the item increases by 50% that way. So unless a particular ability is absolutely utterly crucial to you, you're just better off sticking with the stat boosts and not grabbing a nifty ability, no matter how minor it's cost.
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Actually, as of MIC, stat boosts and Resistance bonuses to saves and I think natural armor boosts can stack with other items in the same slot at zero extra cost.

Yay for post PHB2 D&D 3.5 being much better quality
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
Actually, as of MIC, stat boosts and Resistance bonuses to saves and I think natural armor boosts can stack with other items in the same slot at zero extra cost.

Yay for post PHB2 D&D 3.5 being much better quality
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Stat boosts, resistance boni to saves, enhancement boni to natural armor, deflection boni to armor, armor boni to armor, energy resistance. Steelforge's version (in addition to having a much more consolidated table by using footnotes more and doing away with the body slot restriction - a Pathfinder use of the MIC would probably have to change that anyway given that MIC's restrictions doesn't allow Belts of Incredible Dexterity) adds competence boni to skills.
 
So, I'm writing up some homebrew races for 5e, around the idea of people who have had been reshaped as part animal. I considered doing it as a universal subrace, but decided against that based on how big a change it could be, and the annoyance factor of dealing with groups that don't have subraces. Plus, doing it this way makes it a bit easier for me to include more diversity in available forms. I know there are already a decent number of anthro races, but I'm not particularly fond of them, and I'd also like something a bit more general - "furred, hunter subrace" and "feathered, survivor subrace" rather than catfolk or crowmen, for more visual diversity.

One question I'd like to ask the thread, though, is how you'd handle flight? I've seen a few ways of doing it - no flight, gliding only, start with gliding and get flight as you level up, take a feat to gain flight, just straight-up fly from first level, etc. I'm thinking that I'd like actual flying to be available early, but for it to be a limited feature rather than a full-powered option. What do you guys think about having flight be available right away, but requiring your action to maintain your fly speed? That way, it has uses for mobility, but you don't run into the "I fly up and rain death on the poor dumb melee guys" issue until higher levels when bonus action attacks are more available.
 
Flight in 5E is perfectly functional and viable to have available as of 1st level. It is not inherently broken unless attached to something like the Eagle-headed birds from Amonkhet, and by the same token Flight is not mandatory in 5E for later levels of gameplay (someone being able to play at even Level 20 with a melee-centric Barbarian or Fighter without it). That said, one of the most common house-rules I've seen for it is that you generally can't wear anything heavier than Light or Medium armor as a flier, which at lower levels means you have a fair deal of mobility and combat freedom... but are very fragile, rarely more than AC 15 or - in rare cases - 16 and all the disadvantages low-level hit dice provide. Likewise almost everyone has at least some form of ranged weapon, even if they aren't particularly good at it, explicitly because it's a setting where fliers exist (those five Goblins with Slings might not be as intimidating as they would be on the ground, but it's still five Goblins with slings and you're still at, like, a 50%+ chance of being hit by at least one of them if they volley).

Honestly the biggest issue with Flight in 5E at lower levels is less combat (there's a dearth of lower level creatures in the DMG who can fly, almost everyone who isn't expecting to fight in urban / enclosed environments has at least one ranged attack with at least +3 to hit, there's no "Lol I'm an AC 20 Flier at Level 3 get fucked bounded accuracy" option unless your DM's foolish enough to house-rule it in the first place), more that you need to adapt your scenarios and environments for a three dimensional playing field. Which is less important if most of your stuff is occurring underground where there's less space to fly, but utterly important if the majority of content's on the surface and you planned to use geographical barriers or Line-of-Sight limitations to some effect.
 
The Narrator said:
o_O High level D20 characters can shrug off a lot of damage. One-hit-kills are pretty rare.
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One hit kills are *trivial* to accomplish if you choose to optimize for damage. Most people don't because most people don't find Rocket tag fun.

Seriously, people back on 339 were regularly posting builds that at level 17-18 output, on average, more damage per round than any non-cheating character built on standard rules can possibly have HP at level 20.
 
Sure, if one uses every trick in the book, one can get redonkulous damage outputs. Hell, even without much min-maxing, I've seen a mid-level dual-wielding rogue evaporate a Nalfeshnee in one round because he was in position to get six sneak attacks off. But that's not the norm. As a general trend, hit points are increasing faster than damage as you level up.

In the first three editions of Shadowrun, a starting character with one bullet from the weakest gun in the game can kill literally anyone if they manage to roll six net successes. That's more along the lines of what I'd consider a "Rocket Tag" game; the D&D equivalent would be a 1st level killing a 20th level with a single crit.
 
The Narrator said:
As a general trend, hit points are increasing faster than damage as you level up.
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This is true in 4th edition.

It's even true for 3.5 if you are only looking at maybe level 1-8ish.

It's laughably not true for mid to high levels in 3.5

+To Hit and Damage outpacing AC and HP and Healing is a well known problem in 3.5, and has been analyzed to death on the various CharOp boards.

(Someone made a list of the 7 key considerations of optimizing, once. #1 was Initiative.)

Killing things before they get to act is actually pretty normal in a mid to high level game where people put effort into optimization.

Your experience seems to be based around games where people did not optimize.

When talking about game mechanics specifically, however, it's common practice to assume people do optimize to some degree.
 
The Imperator said:
Isn't it nite that bad in 3.0? With 3.5/P really trashing It? It had like scaling bonuses iirc, so you didn't need the gear you couldn't have.
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3.PF has an issue similar to Warhammer Fantasy Battles and Warhammer 40,000 in that with every new book the meta changes (and usually towards the direction of more cheese). Something that was game breaking three years ago might become counter-able or even the norm by the modern date if not even particularly weak. This leads to scenarios wherein older books / materials sometimes outright can't be played with modern ones due to breaking on either a mechanical or balance scale, and for more competitive players needing to keep track of roughly every supplement that comes out to ensure you aren't going to be shoved into a corner due to a change in the meta.

That said, well, I liken it to WHFB / 40K for a reason: These are releases of supplements, rules, and so-on sometimes over a span of decades so the complications caused by as much is to be expected. Hell, this is already starting to happen with Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition with many of the Unearthed Arcana and several official materials that you see. Quicklings in Volo's Guide are a more overt encounter example, being a "CR1" encounter with 120' base movement, AC 16 with attack rolls against it at Disadvantage, +8 to its attacks, and up to three throwing dagger attacks per round averaging to 8 damage per hit, all again while at CR1. Or the whatever-its-name Wizard from the Unearthed Arcana that looks straight like something somebody would release as a Wizard kit in late-3.PF to address issues with Resistances and Immunities on encounters needling specific hostile spells for specific encounters. By current 5E "meta" each is quite broken, but given sufficient time it remains to be seen if they'll remain that way or if this is merely a sign of the game going the same way as prior editions and soon the CR values in the original Monstrous Manual won't be worth the ink they're printed with.
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
+To Hit and Damage outpacing AC and HP and Healing is a well known problem in 3.5
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Attack outpacing AC I definitely agree is problem. The fact that AC doesn't scale at all with level and usually only increases by buying gear was one of my biggest gripes with D&D (and remains a gripe with Pathfinder).

HP vs. Damage however... It doesn't feel that way to me. Not with "normal" attacks, anyway. Yeah, sure, my mythic Pathfinder character often did ~300 damage in a round, but that was getting off like four or five sneak attacks with a bane holy weapon of speed. It's very circumstantial, so I don't really consider it "typical." (Or "one hit" for that matter.) Likewise, if you have to burn a shitload of per-day abilities and spells. You're not going to be doing that in every fight, against every mook.

Again, if we're talking about "Rocket Tag" game systems (which was how this conversation started in the other thread), then we're talking about games where getting hit by anything is likely to do you serious harm. That's not how D20 does things. A mid-level D20 character could stand there and let a level-appropriate baddie smack him around and it would probably take a dozen hits for him to go down (and he'd suffer no penalties as long as he had one hit point left). Hell, a mid-level D20 character could take a direct hit from a literal rocket launcher, and it would only be nuisance.

By comparison, there are systems where getting hit, even by a starting character with a typical weapon, has a good chance to hurt you a lot, and hit you with penalties that will put you at a serious disadvantage.
 
Drachyench said:
3.PF has an issue similar to Warhammer Fantasy Battles and Warhammer 40,000 in that with every new book the meta changes (and usually towards the direction of more cheese).
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What.

The most broken things in 3.5, aside from celerity, were basically straight out of core. PF fixed basically none of them. The candle of invocation was reprinted verbatim, and you can get infinite loops out of that at relatively low level.

The 11 core classes are hilariously slanted towards the opposite ends of the tier system, and it was the latter splatbooks that gave us most of the solid T3s (the halfcasters in PF, the alternate magic users and school casters in 3.5) that enabled something approximating balanced play - if the players agree to it.

Your claim here is bass ackwards from a charop perspective.

The game started out hilariously borked, and latter, better designed, classes offered actual middle-ground options.

Yeah the game gets more obscure tricks and edge exploits as you add more content. That's inevitable. But you can already access n+1 recursion right out of the core set, so the idea that it's "getting more broken" is silly nonsense.

The Narrator said:
By comparison, there are systems where getting hit, even by a starting character with a typical weapon, has a good chance to hurt you a lot, and hit you with penalties that will put you at a serious disadvantage.
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Again, i was talking about charop, not "no one optimizes."

HP can keep up with damage if you don't optimize. But you get the same problem you noted with AC: there are relatively few ways of raising HP. Meanwhile, as far as raising damage output... well there are so so many ways.

Also, D&D 3.X *is*one of those games at level 1-2. A CR1 orc barbarian with a greataxe (very thematic) has a decent shot at 1-hit-KO on a level 1 character and even some level 2's.

There's a reason why many 3.5 players refuse to start at below level 3, and paizo's insutance on staring at level 1 in adventure paths gets panned.
 
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Omicron Homebrew: Path of the Behemoth
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    • So I've always been kinda sad about the fact that despite having an Unarmed Defense feature, it is always optimal for a 5e Barbarian to wear armor anyway.

    Also, I like to punchsplode things and think weapons are for pansies.

    Thus, I present to you the Path of the Behemoth, a barbarian subclass focusing on using no shield, no armor, no weapon, and just tanking things with your pecs while flexing enemies to death.

    Comments welcome.
     
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    • Omicron said:
    So I've always been kinda sad about the fact that despite having an Unarmed Defense feature, it is always optimal for a 5e Barbarian to wear armor anyway.

    Also, I like to punchsplode things and think weapons are for pansies.

    Thus, I present to you the Path of the Behemoth, a barbarian subclass focusing on using no shield, no armor, no weapon, and just tanking things with your pecs while flexing enemies to death.

    Comments welcome.
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    Dungeon building advice: if you put the furniture storage room behind the mimic room, no-one will mess with your chairs.
     
    Serious question from the Pathfinder FB Page: Is there a way to be a swashbuckler with a firearm?

    ffs
     
    Either the Musketeer archetype or a gunslinger into Devoted muse will do that. (For added fun, take levels of both gunslinger and swashbuckler before entering devoted muse and it will progress both of them.)
     
    TiaC said:
    Either the Musketeer archetype or a gunslinger into Devoted muse will do that. (For added fun, take levels of both gunslinger and swashbuckler before entering devoted muse and it will progress both of them.)
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    I'm mainly making fun of it, because the Swashbuckler is a Hybrid Class for Gunslinger and Fighter, so if you want a Swashbuckler who uses a gun instead of swords you're literally just asking for a Gunslinger.
     
    Wolf Ritter said:
    I'm mainly making fun of it, because the Swashbuckler is a Hybrid Class for Gunslinger and Fighter, so if you want a Swashbuckler who uses a gun instead of swords you're literally just asking for a Gunslinger.
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    Instead of swords or in addition to? The most famous examples of the swashbuckler character archetype in fiction come from a time when firearms were in use, so it's not unusual that somebody might want to make a character that mixed gun and blade.

    Any class can use a gun if they take Exotic Weapon Proficiency (firearms) as a feat, and can get Grit if they take the Amateur Gunslinger feat. The Musketeer archetype replaces some of the Swashbuckler's 1st level abilities with firearm-related ones, but still has most of the sword-related abilities.
     
    Language.
    Why do Human's have so many when other species usually have only one or two?
    This is obviously from the perspective of D&D, not the real world.
    And I'd prefer to discuss the Watsonian reasoning rather than the Doylist.
     
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