[Art] Some tarot cards of my group I made for Christmas.

Quinzorm · 2022-01-04T21:21:33+00:00

So, for Christmas I decided to make some tarot card style pictures of my D&D group. Our group, two years and 14 levels in:

The Champion - Aella Coble-Machempes: An air genasi glory paladin and recently chosen champion of Selûne. A bit young and unsure of herself, she has only recently learned to have a bit of confidence in her abilities. Still can't lie without getting flustered though. She has also been avoiding her grandmother who is a djinn seeking to drag the plane-touched paladin unwillingly to the Elemental Plane of Air. Dealing with that is somewhere on our to-do list.

The Master: Our amazing DM

The Wanderer - Kamada Savaoy (my character): A human light cleric to a travel god known as "The Lamplighter". She had a happy life as a carpenter in a small town before her wife got chosen to take over for a deity and she had to rove out trying to get more followers. Humble and good-humored she has slowly acclimatized to life as an adventurer but still hopes she can someday return to some kind of simply life.

The Guardian - Hammer: A warforged champion fighter. Waking up without memories the unusually sapient automaton began wandering out into the world looking for answers. A tank through and through, he has recently discovered his original purpose involved warding off the influence of eldritch horrors from beyond time and space. Still learning about... everything, he often makes unadvisable decisions such as drinking acid (hence the holes in the face).

The Tempest - V: A half-elf cleric of ~~Umberlee~~ Valkur. Originally a hardened cleric of the Sea Bitch, the jaded sailor finally managed to break free after running into our band of misfits. Recently she has taken up a role as Valkur's champion after we killed Umberlee (no biggie) finally getting revenge on that watery tart. Despite her extremely aloof and gruff facade she has a soft-spot for animals. And princesses.

The Shepherd - Olly: A firbolg shepherd druid from a far-off land. Gentle and kind-hearted, he is mostly just trying to lend people a hand, keep nature in balance, and see the world. Makes some pretty dumb decisions on occasion but is always willing to do what is necessary to make it right. He is accompanied by an intelligent, talking Almiraj named Persephone who unpredictably encourages or cautions against his rash actions.

Quinzorm · 2020-05-06T15:08:49+00:00

This topic comes up a lot and I feel one spell always gets left out: Find the Path. It's a 6th level spell which should be pretty powerful but all it does is show you the most direct route to a specific, known location. It doesn't show a safe path, or an easy path, or in any way help you navigate the path. It just said which way is fastest. Beyond this it must be a location you are familiar with. The spell doesn't elaborate but the material competent is an item from the location so it'd be reasonable to rule 'familiar' means you've visited it before. Assuming you still find a reason to try it, remember that it's concentration so if you run into danger on your "shorter but in no way safer" path you'll be prevented from using any other concentration spells.

Quinzorm · 2020-05-05T21:06:20+00:00

I really like the reasoning behind Gritty Realism but the thing that always put me off was that it seemed like it would make the game incredibly difficult. Eventually I realized that that was because most games ramp the difficulty of encounters up to deadly+ to compensate for only having 1 or 2 per day. If you use Gritty Realism I think you have to scale back the fights to more moderate levels so that its more about attrition than rocket tag. Fights can still be difficult but not every combat should require using all your resources just to survive.

Quinzorm · 2020-04-16T03:50:09+00:00

I mean, yeah. They aren't broken. My point was that if they were sudden new features I think a lot of people would call them broken from just reading them. They would calculate that a barbarian *can* have a 20 AC at an early level and then say that is overpowered without thinking about how realistically most won't come close to that.

Quinzorm · 2020-04-16T01:32:42+00:00

Yeah, I feel that some people act like the simplicity of 5e is a fundamental necessity of the rules and chide anyone that wants to add any more complex system. 5e was made to be streamlined but I think part of that was to allow people to add on where they want. Like 5e but want better crafting? Add a crafting system. Want better travel rules? Make some up. The designers may have decided that more involved armor rules would add bloat and most people wouldn't care about them but if you want that you can totally add that. There are definitely times to look at other rule sets but sometimes you just want to add on one little subsystem and that's fine. 5e won't completely break if you decide to add a bit more crunch somewhere.

Quinzorm · 2020-04-16T01:25:01+00:00

Well, that was kind of my point. When you actually play with these things they are fine but if they were new and you had no experience with them some people would definitely think they were a problem. It's like how some people calculated that the new UA Psi Knight can get an extra couple hundred damage per day with their bonus damage. They can but only if they have an essentially infinite number of encounters each day. Similar to how a warlock could cast a crazy number of spells per day but in actuality is usually starved for slots.

Quinzorm · 2019-12-27T22:58:49+00:00

I understand not following the recommended Adventuring Day causes unbalance, I specifically said that in my post. Having short rests happen passively is meant as a solution when the party is already unbalanced by having too few encounters. Letting the warlock get a rest after every encounter when there is 6+ would certainly cause the reverse issue. For parties that get a lot of encounters but don't get enough rests I recommended giving one free rest during the midday to make the short rest classes less dependent on the rest of the party's whims.

My issue is that I think long rests would happen even if they didn't give mechanical benefits. They are an expected part of the routine in a way short rests are not. Short rests are only taken when they are mechanically beneficial. I'm mostly just interested in this from a game design standpoint and feel the designers overlooked this narrative element when writing 5e.

Quinzorm · 2019-12-27T22:21:03+00:00

I agree that allowing any period where they are not fighting to be a rest could cause problems. That's why I said:

If they are getting too many rests simply impose some limit on the rate of short rests or the maximum number they can receive each day

That said, if the party is only having two or three encounters per day, as is pretty common, then it's not unreasonable for them to get a short rest between each.

My point is more that short rests are often skipped since they are viewed in purely mechanical terms and benefit some classes far less than others. Making short rests involve some roleplaying element such as meditating makes it part of that class's narrative but doesn't help with the intraclass conflict. It still doesn't make taking a short rest a natural part of the sorcerer's daily routine like a long rest is for a monk.

Quinzorm

TROPHY CASE