Dungeons and Dragons Megathread

[Queshire]

Could you provide the name of the spell or ability, so that we can check it directly and/or see if there's been an official ruling?

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It's from the werebat option for the new werecreature archetype in Howl of the Wild. It comes with a 15 foot fly speed while in hybrid or animal form, but has what I quoted as a way to limit the fly speed at low levels.

 

[The Narrator]

If you take 3 movement actions do you need to land after all three or do you have to land between each action?

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I could see arguments for either one. Moving further distances counting as multiple actions is a gameplay mechanic, in universe someone doesn't walk 25 feet, stop, walk another 25 feet, they just walk 50 feet. But if the fledgling werebat's wings aren't very strong yet so it can only fly in short little hops, I guess that could make sense. I tend to lean toward it being after all three moves, tho. I think the point of making low level characters land after moving when flying is to keep people from just staying in the air so that they're immune to melee opponents when it's not their turn.

 

[Drachyench]

Yeah the two main limits to flight are for "Avoid perpetually clowning on melee encounters" and "keep physical obstacles as obstacles" reasons.

Which plays into the ambiguity mentioned above as sometimes the intent is just "You can't stay in the air for long stretches" and sometimes "no you cannot just scale every building in a single bound".

 

[Patak]

Yeah the two main limits to flight are for "Avoid perpetually clowning on melee encounters" and "keep physical obstacles as obstacles" reasons.

Which plays into the ambiguity mentioned above as sometimes the intent is just "You can't stay in the air for long stretches" and sometimes "no you cannot just scale every building in a single bound".

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It's a funny thing now that you mention it, you reminded me that DnD5e tried to balance Flight as a racial trait in Aarakocra/Winged Aasimar/Avariel/Whatever by denying you the ability to use heavy armour, which I guess is realistic but it just further fucks over melee builds while leaving ranged builds (the main abusers of flight) completely unmolested.

So kinda par for the course with 5e lol.

 

[Arawn_Emrys]

It's a funny thing now that you mention it, you reminded me that DnD5e tried to balance Flight as a racial trait in Aarakocra/Winged Aasimar/Avariel/Whatever by denying you the ability to use heavy armour, which I guess is realistic but it just further fucks over melee builds while leaving ranged builds (the main abusers of flight) completely unmolested.

So kinda par for the course with 5e lol.

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Honestly, crafting heavy armor for a winged humanoid would be an exercise in futility and frustration to begin with. You literally cannot put rigid plate on their backs, due to the need to have full range of motion for the wings. So it would have to come with a rule of "does not apply to strikes from behind"

 

[Patak]

Honestly, crafting heavy armor for a winged humanoid would be an exercise in futility and frustration to begin with. You literally cannot put rigid plate on their backs, due to the need to have full range of motion for the wings. So it would have to come with a rule of "does not apply to strikes from behind"

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From a realism perspective you're right, but I will point out that "Angel in golden plate" is an iconic look.

 

[Drachyench]

I'll note that the heavy armor thing came later and version 1.0 absolutely allowed for heavy armor.

Also 5E is significantly less broken with flight in general due to significantly more enemies having ranged options as well as spell ranges being hit hard. It feels like another case of people looking at one specific aspect of 5E and backporting to prior edition conceptions (like the whole "To hit caps out at +11 without magic!" while ignoring "Yeah and AC almost never goes over 21 outside Legendary bosses").

 

[Arawn_Emrys]

From a realism perspective you're right, but I will point out that "Angel in golden plate" is an iconic look.

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The angels in D&D get away with it because the armor is literally part of their body too. Like, the type of metal it looks like it's made of literally changes as an Archon rises through the ranks without changing it's properties, per "Warriors of Heaven".
But yeah, used to joke that Aribeth's plate in Neverwinter was designed for Avariel.

 

[SinisterPorpoise]

Honestly, crafting heavy armor for a winged humanoid would be an exercise in futility and frustration to begin with. You literally cannot put rigid plate on their backs, due to the need to have full range of motion for the wings. So it would have to come with a rule of "does not apply to strikes from behind"

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On the other hand, didn't magic armor used to mold and shape itself to perfectly fit the one wearing it?

 

[Drachyench]

That's the default rule for convenience's sake but there's rules for at least AD&D2E and 3.5 for randomized fitted species and "all sizes fit none" close enoughs.

 

[Arawn_Emrys]

That's the default rule for convenience's sake but there's rules for at least AD&D2E and 3.5 for randomized fitted species and "all sizes fit none" close enoughs.

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2e the opposite is true. You even find armor where they specify what races and gender can fit in it. Even optional rules that makes elves and humans take penalties using each other's weapons cause Faerunian elves have inhumanly long fingers and thus their weapon hilts are way different. 3rd decided that everything fits everyone.

 

[The Narrator]

Well, in the core books, there's Paragon Paths, Epic Destinies, picking races and classes, picking powers, a shitton of feats, and a smorgasbord of magic items.

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For some reason I didn't see this post sooner or the notification, so I didn't realize that you'd replied. Sorry about that.

Paragon Paths: not available until Level 11. Roughly analogous to prestige classes in terms of customization, as I recall.

Epic Destinies: not available until Level 21.

Races and classes: present in every edition. The bare minimum expectation, not really an argument for 4E characters being particularly customizable.

Magic items: present in every edition. Not available at charcter creation. And frankly, picking magic items doesn't feel like a strong example of individualizing your character.

Feats: were present in the previous edition. I remember not being particularly impressed with the feat selection in the PHB. Feats didn't seem to be a means of modifying your fighting style in this edition like they were in 3E.

Powers: this is probably where most of the customization is, but I remember not being wowed by the options for a Level 1 fighter. There were only a handful of them compared to the scores of talents that each class could choose from in Saga Edition. And they didn't feel especially potent. I already mentioned that the strongest Daily power was something that you could do an unlimited amount in Saga or D20 Modern, and the At-Wills were mostly things that were just feats in 3E. It just didn't seem like there was much there to make a character build unique. (And for a defender class that's supposed to get everyone to attack them, there was a serious lack of options intended to let them survive having everyone attack them.) Maybe there would have been a broader array of options at higher levels or for other classes. But we never got there.

 

[Parzival]

For some reason I didn't see this post sooner or the notification, so I didn't realize that you'd replied. Sorry about that.

Paragon Paths: not available until Level 11. Roughly analogous to prestige classes in terms of customization, as I recall.

Epic Destinies: not available until Level 21.

Races and classes: present in every edition. The bare minimum expectation, not really an argument for 4E characters being particularly customizable.

Magic items: present in every edition. Not available at charcter creation. And frankly, picking magic items doesn't feel like a strong example of individualizing your character.

Feats: were present in the previous edition. I remember not being particularly impressed with the feat selection in the PHB. Feats didn't seem to be a means of modifying your fighting style in this edition like they were in 3E.

Powers: this is probably where most of the customization is, but I remember not being wowed by the options for a Level 1 fighter. There were only a handful of them compared to the scores of talents that each class could choose from in Saga Edition. And they didn't feel especially potent. I already mentioned that the strongest Daily power was something that you could do an unlimited amount in Saga or D20 Modern, and the At-Wills were mostly things that were just feats in 3E. It just didn't seem like there was much there to make a character build unique. (And for a defender class that's supposed to get everyone to attack them, there was a serious lack of options intended to let them survive having everyone attack them.) Maybe there would have been a broader array of options at higher levels or for other classes. But we never got there.

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Well, of course a first level character isn't gonna be as customizable as higher level ones! It's not like the HERO System. 4e's still most customizable than any other edition, other than 3.5. Maybe super late 2e, tho that's a stretch.

 

[Drachyench]

AD&D 2E is technically the most customizable but that's because holy hell did it get a ton of supplementary material released and a lot of it is technically compatible even if not intended to be. Compatibility that works goes to 3.5, which is saying something as 3.5's customization is also often referred to as "jank" or "full of trap options" for a reason, but it at least doesn't have combinations like "We're going to smash together Supplement 1's 1800's setting with Supplement 2's Dragon PC settings with Supplement 3's rules for Jumpchaining Planar Jumping."

(Masque of the Read Death + Council of Wyrms + Planescape or Spelljamer, for the three given examples)

 

[The Narrator]

Well, of course a first level character isn't gonna be as customizable as higher level ones! It's not like the HERO System. 4e's still most customizable than any other edition, other than 3.5. Maybe super late 2e, tho that's a stretch.

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Yeah, but what we were comparing to it when it came out was 3.5E (its immediate predecessor), and Star Wars Saga Edition (the game we had been playing at the time, the last game that WOTC produced before it, and a game that introduced a number of mechanics that would be used in 4E). And comparing 1st level options, 3.5E felt like it was more customizable, while SWSE was massively more customizable, which drove much of our sense of disappointment in 4E.

 

[Arawn_Emrys]

AD&D 2E is technically the most customizable but that's because holy hell did it get a ton of supplementary material released and a lot of it is technically compatible even if not intended to be. Compatibility that works goes to 3.5, which is saying something as 3.5's customization is also often referred to as "jank" or "full of trap options" for a reason, but it at least doesn't have combinations like "We're going to smash together Supplement 1's 1800's setting with Supplement 2's Dragon PC settings with Supplement 3's rules for Jumpchaining Planar Jumping."

(Masque of the Read Death + Council of Wyrms + Planescape or Spelljamer, for the three given examples)

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technically Spelljammer and Planescape are explicitly supposed to work with everything else except each other. And we had a lot of fun once doing almost what you said, with a "Rebellious teenager" Council of Wyrms dragon captaining a Spelljammer called "The Dragon's Hoard" in search of fame and fortune far away from the stuffy elders.

 

[Kitsune]

I am getting from conversations here that 5th Edition D&D stripped skills largely from the game? Not completely but for the most part?

 

[The Narrator]

I am getting from conversations here that 5th Edition D&D stripped skills largely from the game? Not completely but for the most part?

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I would say that skills are... diminished quite a bit. There isn't a chapter devoted to the rules for skills. Instead they're relegated to a few pages in the section on Ability Scores, with a few sentences per skill. The skills don't have many clearly-defined uses and no established metrics for what you can and can't accomplish. By the rules in the core book, the only thing that Acrobatics does is let you balance and some vague mention of using it to "perform acrobatic stunts" with no mention of things it could do previously like tumble to avoid attacks of opportunity or reducing fall damage, and the only thing that Medicine does is stabilize someone who's dying or diagnose an illness. What can you do with a particular skill? Fuck it, who knows? Either almost nothing or anything your DM feels like allowing, I guess.

You also don't get to be trained (or proficient, as is the new nomenclature) in very many of them. Mostly classes will only ever have four of them (two from their Background and two from their class... no extra skills based on INT), ranger and bard get five, the rogue gets a whopping six.

The bonus that you get for being trained in the skill is also a lot smaller (starting at +2 and increasing by 1 every four levels to max out at +6 at 17th level) so the effect of whether or not you're proficient in a skill is outweighed by whether or not it's tied to one of your good stats at all but the highest levels. Despite this, they largely copied their chart of generic skill DCs straight from 3E, not changing it at all to reflect the difference in the size of the modifiers:

T y p i c a l D i f f i c u l t y C l a s s e s
Task Difficulty DC
Very easy 5
Easy 10
Medium 15
Hard 20
Very hard 25
Nearly impossible 30

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So starting out, you don't even have even odds to succeed at a "medium" skill check (whatever that means to your GM, so the skills have no definition of what an average use of them is) unless it's tied to your best stat, and the odds of succeeding at a "hard" skill check are... not good. And even at 20th level, you can't reliably do a medium skill check and a hard skill check is roughly even odds even if you've maxed out the stat.

So it definitely seems like skills were a bit of an afterthought. They devoted almost no page space to the rules for them and they didn't bother to adjust the DC chart to reflect the vastly different scale of the modifiers.

 

[Kitsune]

I have only played D&D 3rd edition a few times but my memory was that skills were more prominent.
I never played 3.5 but instead slid over to Pathfinder but my understanding is that it was similar to 3rd edition?
Can it be said that 3.5 edition could be considered superior in that regard?

 

[The Narrator]

Pathfinder 1E and D&D 3.5E are largely similar. Skills merited an entire chapter of the core rulebook with multiple specific uses and metrics for setting the DC of various tasks for each skill. The main difference in terms of skills is that Pathfinder merged a lot of the overly-granular skills. Off the top of my head: Balance, Jump and Tumble became Athletics, Hide and Move Silently became Stealth, Listen, Search and Spot became Perception.

So yes, skills were given a lot more design space in 3E/PF1E. And PF2E, for that matter.

 

[Drachyench]

I'll reiterate that Skills are another "Somebody use to earlier editions looks at 5E's and extrapolates from earlier editions".

Bonuses are smaller in 5E by an active design decision because they wanted bound scores and to remove Epic applications. This is entirely fine as the main disadvantages you'll suffer using a skill are, well, Disadvantage, and not something like "-25 because it's a cold windy night with rain and a sheer surface". Instead you just… jack the DC to "Very Hard / Near Impossible". Maybe slap Disadvantage on top.

"But then can't you just grab some masterwork climbing gear and put on some cat's gloves and-"

Nope. You are rolling against that DC25 / 30 (on two dice picking the lowest) with your +0 to +12* Bonus Range. Meaning those Level 1 PC's with Athletics and Str 16 (Or Acrobatics and Dex 16) have about a 5% chance of making DC25 (less than 1% at Disadvantage / impossible if DC30, a little over 7% if they have kit / equipment giving advantage; and +5 to +20% if being actively Guidance'd through the process)…

While an expert climbing Bard with the right stats and high level is at a 65% chance to make that climb unassisted (and can hit ~85% with Guidance, over 90% that and Advantage from a source).

People look at 5E stuff in a vacuum - or, worse, in a vacuum then applied to 3.5 rules - and declare so and so for the rules when in practice they often operate rather differently.

This is not to say 5E's skill system is perfect (a lot of its Downtime activities for example are even more irrelevant outside being used to explain how your character makes a living between adventures in a way that keeps them available) or even exceptionally good at what it does, but keep as much in mind when getting summaries as it genuinely does make a world of difference to have dived into its mechanics on a complex / deep level (such as running an adventure book or participating in a West Marches). 5E didn't pick up despite being the objectively worse edition at everything ever with freely available material for objectively better versions being ignored. It does several of the things it wants to do moderately well. Just it wants to do different things, and those different things struck at a convenient time / perfect storm of marketing conditions that WotC has then done everything in their power to try and walk back / burn the good will acquired during.

 

[shepsquared]

I despise that 5e has me go from +5 to +11 in the skill that aligns with my main stat over 20 levels and that the only way to fix it functionally breaks the game. Nevermind the nonsense that Pass Without Trace is, I want to be good at things in such a way that the d20 isn't always the most important part of an action I take.

 

[Drachyench]

I reiterate that it's a different design principle, so as long as you keep that in mind that's perfectly fair.

"I despise 5E because I greatly enjoy the satisfaction of seeing obscene bonus numbers as well as reducing the number of ways that, even with active cheese, somebody at Level 5 can keep up with tests that are challenging to somebody Level 15" = Fine! Understandable! 5E's system of character progression and gameplay loop is probably not for you! The game relies a lot on its bound scoring system and in the places that tends to break down or have exceptions it gets particularly egregious. PC's level more through powers, abilities, or sidesteps unlocked than they do flat number increases [part of the reason a lot of people aren't fond of the base Thief classes], and a lot of modern RPGs [PnP or otherwise] go with numbers-go-up for multiple reasons relating to balance, gameplay loop, player engagement / enjoyment, etcetera. While I may not be the biggest fan of it, FO4's Character Progression System is objectively - in terms of player count - more enjoyed than FO:NV's, and that's fine!

 

[Queshire]

Just sayin' but a Rogue in Pathfinder 2e can get a +11 at stealth at level 3.

 

[Drachyench]

Just sayin' but a Rogue in Pathfinder 2e can get a +11 at stealth at level 3.

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Indeed. Likewise if absolutely cheesing out in PF 1E, I believe the approximate max bonuses you can get at Level 1 are...

+4 from Attribute. Fairly Certain a few CharGen methods allow for a max of 18 in CharGen
+4 from Skill. One from the Skill Point, three for the First Time investment bonus
+2 from Masterwork Item. Stealth might be a tad difficult to get Masterwork'd at Level 1 compared to other skills, but not impossible to come up with
+2 from overlapping Traits
+Whatever from a species' innate bonuses
+4 if Small for a couple Skills [like Stealth]

So you can absolutely, if you really - really - wanted, get something like +17 or +18 to Stealth starting off from CharGen without even applying spell / further kit / conditional bonuses.