AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
Dave Arneson really liked 3d6 down the line.
-
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Dungeons and Dragons Megathread
- Thread starter Havocfett
- Start date
Dave Arneson really liked 3d6 down the line.
Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
So apparently the new book for 5e (to be released in March) is the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, AKA the Critical Role (Campaign 2) setting - looks like it's going to be in a similar vein to the Eberron and Ravnica books (new subclasses and other options to play with, plus a little introductory adventure). Which I'm... lukewarm on. Critical Role is good, sure, but most of the draw for me is the players and the characters, the wacky shenanigans. There's not really anything about the setting itself that really sets my heart on fire, you know?
I was hoping we'd be getting a new supplement like Xanathar's Guide or Volo's/Mordenkainen's, since it's going on two years since we had anything of the sort. Ideally something with a planar theme, or maybe psionics.
I was hoping we'd be getting a new supplement like Xanathar's Guide or Volo's/Mordenkainen's, since it's going on two years since we had anything of the sort. Ideally something with a planar theme, or maybe psionics.
shepsquared
Erratic Aussie
- Location
- Melbourne, Australia
Personally I'm just as blase about a Critical Role setting book as I am towards another Forgotten Realms book - both are largely kitchen sink settings full of little details that I have no desire to research to be fully informed about when I could keep homebrewing my own stuff.
But on the other hand the little bits of implied information from Critical Role is less likely to annoy me than when we got Mordenkainen's Tome and the elf chapter that gives us what I think is entirely new elf lore on their origins and such with no connection to nay existing setting for certain.
On the bright side Dunamancy means getting a bunch of time/space themed spells, even if I suspect going super in depth into it will feel more and more like sci-fi technobabble than anything else.
Mechanical
Initiate Action: Buzz
- Location
- Somewhere Strange
Well, people might not like being ruled by abominations against life that violently overthrew the previous order. Grudges can be held for a long time, especially as other nations have an inherent motive to try and destabilise the undead kingdom.
It's an evil campaign in the sense that you're working for the Gloaming Queen, who is evil, even if she's not kicking puppies and cackling while doing so.
The players don't have to be evil, and can do what good they can within their authority and power.
Zombies have over half again the strength of skeletons (14 vs 8) for carrying and pulling things, but are slower and are less intelligent, so easier to deal with if things go wrong. Both kinds of common undead have their uses.
I imagine embalming and researching preservation of corpses is a good business in the kingdom. Cover them in robes to protect against scavengers and they should last for quite a while with minimum decay.
Sightedjt
Everlasting Flames
I suppose if you were to do such a thing youd need to go with a take where the undead powering energy isnt actively anti-life.
Though if I was to do a setting in one of those "the great heroes failed to stop the endless empire from forming and the lich queen has ruled for blah blah"
Id maybe make it like, the endless empress is just bored out of her fucking mind. Everything is the same. Everything else passes. Nobles and courts and people try to seek favour power anything, with the sole deciding factor in their success is how amusing she thinks their efforts will be.
Where the empress will just sleep years away without warning, or manage to find some spark of inspiration, latching onto some hobby or piece of magical or techbological theory for a scant amount pf time, until that too gets tiresome.
A capital built around the vast pit full of discarded knowledge and treasure, where you could build an empire of your own out of what this empress has thrown away.
A decadent capital full of favour seeking, brain drain and innovation, where anything goes and you can find damn near anything somewhere within its sprawl, all while the outer territories lie neglected, crumbling and seceding due to the sheer apathy of the empires ruler. An endless empire, collapsing under its own weight.
Though if I was to do a setting in one of those "the great heroes failed to stop the endless empire from forming and the lich queen has ruled for blah blah"
Id maybe make it like, the endless empress is just bored out of her fucking mind. Everything is the same. Everything else passes. Nobles and courts and people try to seek favour power anything, with the sole deciding factor in their success is how amusing she thinks their efforts will be.
Where the empress will just sleep years away without warning, or manage to find some spark of inspiration, latching onto some hobby or piece of magical or techbological theory for a scant amount pf time, until that too gets tiresome.
A capital built around the vast pit full of discarded knowledge and treasure, where you could build an empire of your own out of what this empress has thrown away.
A decadent capital full of favour seeking, brain drain and innovation, where anything goes and you can find damn near anything somewhere within its sprawl, all while the outer territories lie neglected, crumbling and seceding due to the sheer apathy of the empires ruler. An endless empire, collapsing under its own weight.
If you are still interested in idea fodder there is the "D20 to Yuma" setting;
"Drop that wand, Hombre! Reach for the skies!"DriveThruRPG
www.drivethrurpg.com
Welcome to a world of cowboys and Indians, hobgoblins, dragons and danger!
"D20 to Yuma" splices the Wild West with elements of the world's favourite fantasy game. Battle with monsters on the wild prairie, face evil land barons and rustlers, or delve into ancient ruins with six-gun in hand.
Play out your favourite western stories and themes in a world filled with mystery and magic.
The game system lets players get straight into the action. A skill system allows players to create all manner of characters to adventure in a world of six guns and sorcery.
So grab your wand, load up the shotgun and join the posse! Adventure just rode west!
Nobody should be able to stop you from having "Vampire ____" in your setting, it's a template that gets applied over something else, as long as that someting else could have reasonably encountered and been turned by an existing vampire then it fits.
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Dream Logic
An offseason swallow
- Location
- In transit
The more I think of this the less Crossroads looks like the wild west and the more it's...weird. Just plain weird. like I think the coast is pretty much age of sail and piracy but inland you have hollow knight and Dark souls ish things and actual lovecraft stuff in the ruins. Probably more 'colonies in the new world' then wild west. Also, instead of conquering the natives you're dealing with whatever remains (ok, is it super racist if I had a race/species that WAS a grand civilization that essentially got old god'd?) along with potential politics and craziness as the old powers try to exert their influence.
- Location
- Charlotte, NC
Plus, what happens to all of the dock unloaders and similar whose entire livelihood of hard, uncomplaining work has been necromantically priced out of existence, and who are now worth more dead (or as a vampire aristocrat's blood-bag) then alive?
Add in the fact that people will be wondering when the next round of undead social ladder conversion is going to start, and where that trend will end up, and you have a lot of unrest. Which is probably sublimated due to fear, but it does also mean that the first dozen screw-ups the Wandering Undead Control Fuckery creator makes will be cheerfully covered for by an unhappy populace.
- Location
- Earth Prime
I have no idea where that particular twisting of a classic came from, but that does sound like a fun character, played straight or played with "Garfield" being a horror monster.
HoratioVonBecker
Imperfectly Aligned
Very interesting! I haven't gotten to play anything but 5E, although I'd heard a bit about 3.5 (if not enough to know that they're entirely different games and my 5E wizard would not be an effective necromancer).
What's your previous experience? I'm particularly interested in your thoughts on chargen, because that's a part of the rules I haven't really focused on.
Ow. Then again, I've had the impression that 5E's stats are defined more by tradition more than any strong design sensibility. It'd almost make sense to fuse Strength with Constitution, and make Dexterity harder to divorce from armor class...
(Also I assume it's rather too late to matter, but the Giant Soul subclass has a couple of powers that key off of Constitution. Or at least the Unearthed Arcana version does, and that one's still free.)
That's amazing. Great Old One patron?
That's what the Array (or more probably, Arrays) should do, in my opinion. Maybe attach them to Backgrounds?
(Ooh, backgrounds change based on race/homeland, as do their standard arrays. Balance the rolled alternative against that. Do away with flat racial stat mods.)
Yeah, I've heard that levels 1-2 are designed as a tutorial. Which is great in principle, but is rather more desperately needed for the higher-complexity, idiosyncratic-with-practically-any-other-popculture-magic, spellcasting classes. Also, the HP situation does create a much swingier experience than higher level play, although that might be down to the enemy design as much as anything.
(Ooh, what if low-level encounters knock you prone on crit instead of dealing extra damage?)
I've just realized that 5E seems to assume that spellcasting rules are too complex to appeal to more than a small fraction of players, and moreover, it assumes that this is obvious. Which is an obvious oversight in retrospect, because some supernatural ability is integral to ~90% of adventurer concepts.
Probably not, so long as you don't frame it as due to an inherent moral weakness. (An acquired moral weakness would be fine, though - "these people wound up nuking each other into oblivion" doesn't strike me as something you should have to defend.)
Dream Logic
An offseason swallow
- Location
- In transit
Yeah the reasons the natives are gone or not themselves anymore is going to be because the 'old gods' did...something. They did something so bad they pretty much erased themselves from reality proper. Like other points on the compass have one or two gods who occupy it, their spot is inhabited by a theoretically infinite number of fractal gods and personalities.
...honestly that'd be a good hook for the illithids. Why are they brain sucking monstrosities? They aren't fully themselves without it. They need it to feel fully alive and even then they can feel it being drained out of them bit by bit. (This is halfway to pirates of the Caribbean and now I want it). They're not even who they were before, they're what happened when their gods put them through the blender.
Also. This justifies an illithid pirate and that justifies this entire setting.
...honestly that'd be a good hook for the illithids. Why are they brain sucking monstrosities? They aren't fully themselves without it. They need it to feel fully alive and even then they can feel it being drained out of them bit by bit. (This is halfway to pirates of the Caribbean and now I want it). They're not even who they were before, they're what happened when their gods put them through the blender.
Also. This justifies an illithid pirate and that justifies this entire setting.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
I should clarify that this isn't just "some Vikings were turned into vampires", I mean the first vampire was an ancient Viking-expy king who turned the people living in his kingdom into vampires because of a famine using a massive, nasty necromantic ritual, and now the modern people are all vampires who occasionally raid settlements and take the inhabitants to become new citizens.
The connection, in-setting, isn't incidental. Vampires outside of the culture are rare.
Hence there being justification beyond "well, vampires exist".
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The Canoneer is overtuned towards defense, I would reduce HP and increase its damage per round. Especially with its godawful to-hit roll with the handcannon. Otherwise it'll just be...really dull.
I would keep Recharge on the Handcannon, just massively increase the damage to reflect that it's probably a 1/fight nuke. Say, increase Dex to 14, increase Handcannon damage to 3d8+2 (15) at Recharge 5/6, drop hit dice to 5 or 6 d8 (38-45 health). Additionally, Armor Piercing Missiles doesn't jive with 5e game design, Advantage (In which case keeping Dex where it is on both is fine) or just not having the trait would be better.
Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Mechanical
Initiate Action: Buzz
- Location
- Somewhere Strange
Kinda makes me think of the 40K Dark Elder, who after they decadently accidently torture-orgied a evil god of excess into existence, have to torture and murder others to fill their soul up, which is constantly being drained by their connection to said evil of excess.
Dream Logic
An offseason swallow
- Location
- In transit
Definitely an inspiration, going to try and make them more like Barbosa's crew in the first pirates of the Caribbean though. They aren't killed by the soul sucking but they are...less. Food turns to ash in their mouths, they drink yet their thirst isn't quenched, etc..
Great Greedy Guts
Ceterum censeo Vigilam esse delendam.
Also, encounter building. And that (in my opinion) each PC should start with a basic potion of healing, for picking up another player if they get downed and aren't having good luck on their death saves. But, for instance, there's a reason Ogres are CR2, not CR1 (the chance of OHKOing a level 1 PC is pretty high even if their own defences are a bit weaker).
Even though I like them, I definitely ignore Death from Massive Damage rules during Tier 1 play, just to make sure no one accidentally dies in a way that can't be prevented.
HoratioVonBecker
Imperfectly Aligned
Actually, it only increases the average damage by half a point. Which is a pretty important distinction at this level of balance-granularity.
Are you expecting 2d5, or 1d4+1d6, for your revised Greatsword? Both increase its' complexity-of-use.
Here's a bunch of math. If it's hard to read, my apologies.
GWF triggers on a roll of 1 or 2, meaning (2/x, where x = die faces) of the time, per damage die.
The average benefit when triggered is the difference between 1.5 (the average of the triggering numbers), and whatever the weapon's normal average damage is.
We multiply the two to get the average benefit.
Plugging this in, GWF gives (1/2*1) to 1d4, (1/3*2) to 1d6, (1/4*3) to 1d8, (1/5*4) to 1d10, and (1/6*5) to 1d12.
Base game Greatsword (or Maul) gets 4/3ds of a damage point per hit, or a full half point better than the d12 weapons get. Knocking one of those d6s down to a d4 shaves off 1/6th of a point of damage, placing it only a third of a point ahead of the greataxe.
(1d5 would get (2/5*1.5), AKA (1/5*3), 2d5 would have 6/5ths of a point, also renderable as 1.2 points, per hit.)
Meanwhile, Brutal Criticals is a flavorful but ultimately quite underpowered Greataxe buff. Assuming you hit on a 11+, which seems to be the default assumption for 'peer AC' monsters, you get an extra damage die on one out of ten hits. The difference in average damage between 1d12 and 1d6 is 3 points, which (when divided by 10) is a full fifth less damage per hit than the greatsword's default advantage. And it only comes online at, like, level 12 or something.
I believe my fix was to make Raging let you reroll once if you roll a total of half damage or less. That favors Greataxe exactly enough to make them equal, but perhaps I should make it a passive Barbarian ability instead.
I read this and my mind immediately leapt to: "Did the previous inhabitants wipe themselves out, or were those spirits just too dangerous to colonize around before modern technology changed things?"
Aarakockra and Sirens both have at-will flight; permanent self-only spider climb is not a big deal. (Although, admittedly, flight limits are something 5E really doesn't seem to have made up its' mind about.)
Hmm. Aside from abusively reading the Feast Of Blood feature to let me get permanent speed boosts, it just doesn't do as much as I'd want it to. Namely:
*Stat boost is locked to Charisma, and doesn't give any options for Dexterity or Strength build vampires. So we're assuming any sword-vampires will be Hexblades, which I guess is okay. Vampire Monks are highly suboptimal, though, which is a real shame.
*Flight feat is ten minutes/rest. Why on earth.
*Blood-drinking is fine for draining enemies, but really bad for drinking from allies.
*No real suggestions for converting from another race.
That said, it seems like it'd feel nicely powerful without being overwhelming (again, disregarding the poorly worded Feast buff), and I really appreciate that they have a language called Vampire.
Having a language called Vampire is just really funny to me.
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- Location
- Land of the Midday Sun
Ixalan is a Mesoamerican setting, and Vampires are patterned on Conquistadores. Thus, Vampire language is Spanish.
Mechanical
Initiate Action: Buzz
- Location
- Somewhere Strange
Oh, of course you're right. Ah, well, that seems acceptable. It's still slightly more damage than a plain 1d8 for less flexibility (not that I've ever seen versatile actually being used...) It's only to give a slight reason to potentially use them over the otherwise superior longsword/battleaxe/warhammer boredom.
Personally I hope it's entirely composed of just saying vampire in different ways.
- Location
- Earth Prime
Nonsense! "Bleh" is also a highly versatile word in that language.
shepsquared
Erratic Aussie
- Location
- Melbourne, Australia
So I've been playing Descent Into Avernus as a wizard and I have to say this - devils have too many resistances/immunities. This entire adventure is built around going to hell & fighting a bunch of devils (and apparently demons). We haven't even reached hell yet and the power of the devils we've had to fight have overwhelmed the fact that we had to deal with a Cult of the Dead 3 and other conspiracy stuff.
To sum up the issue: a lemure, a cr 0 monster that's dumber than your average dog has immunity to fire & poison damage, resistance to cold damage and immunity to the charmed, frightened & poisoned conditions. A lemure isn't remotely a challenge, but nearly every demons shares these immunities and resistances. Heck, most of them have more immunities. A CR 2 spined devil isn't immune to being charmed or feared, but it adds resistance to nonmagical, non-silvered piercing, bludgeoning and slashing weapons. And the biggest issue of all, Magic Resistance.
Magic Resistance gives you advantage on saving throws against all spells and all magical effects. So they unique turning options available to devotion paladins and arcane clerics aren't too useful vs devils because devils always get to roll twice. Control spells are significantly less useful because devils always get to roll twice. Blasting spells are hard to use because the most iconic ones are fireball and lightning bolt - every devil seems to be immune to fire and a lot of the higher level ones resist lightning damage. I can't wait to go to hell and make a deal to become a warlock, solely so I can pick up eldritch blast and finally have a default option that isn't terrible vs the majority of the foes I'll fight.
(I also hope whatever our dead bard rerolls as is a class he knows how to use, since he played bard more as a humerous fighter than a primary spellcaster with consistent bonus action support options).
To sum up the issue: a lemure, a cr 0 monster that's dumber than your average dog has immunity to fire & poison damage, resistance to cold damage and immunity to the charmed, frightened & poisoned conditions. A lemure isn't remotely a challenge, but nearly every demons shares these immunities and resistances. Heck, most of them have more immunities. A CR 2 spined devil isn't immune to being charmed or feared, but it adds resistance to nonmagical, non-silvered piercing, bludgeoning and slashing weapons. And the biggest issue of all, Magic Resistance.
Magic Resistance gives you advantage on saving throws against all spells and all magical effects. So they unique turning options available to devotion paladins and arcane clerics aren't too useful vs devils because devils always get to roll twice. Control spells are significantly less useful because devils always get to roll twice. Blasting spells are hard to use because the most iconic ones are fireball and lightning bolt - every devil seems to be immune to fire and a lot of the higher level ones resist lightning damage. I can't wait to go to hell and make a deal to become a warlock, solely so I can pick up eldritch blast and finally have a default option that isn't terrible vs the majority of the foes I'll fight.
(I also hope whatever our dead bard rerolls as is a class he knows how to use, since he played bard more as a humerous fighter than a primary spellcaster with consistent bonus action support options).
- Location
- Earth Prime
I think your biggest issue with devils will be making sure you keep track of which are vulnerable to what element. Acid and Lightning are good choices, as is Thunder. The first two are almost always going to have at least one that affects a devil. Thunder is rarely, if ever, resisted by devils.
Dream Logic
An offseason swallow
- Location
- In transit
Ok, so I'm starting to try and put everything to paper and make the setting into a thing
So here's a rough thread for that if anyone wants it
Crossroads: DnD in the age of sail...with cthulu
So here's a rough thread for that if anyone wants it
Crossroads: DnD in the age of sail...with cthulu