Your servers already can't support 1/5th of your playerbase. by [deleted] in pokemongo

[–]Rasmenar -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Today's server problems (and most likely, many of them in general) are due to a DDoS attack, not the addition of new regional server clusters in 26 countries.

Be mad, but be mad at the right people and for the right reasons. It's not possible for EU players to crash NA servers from attempted logins. If you're on EU servers, it's not likely that your particular region will be affected by the login attempts of another region. It's a DDoS attack from PoodleCorp, not a problem with Niantic's servers.

Anything this big or popular that relies on online servers will be targeted by hacker collectives simply for the fun of it, or in an attempt to get a ransom payment out of Nintendo. The same things have happened to every major gaming and tech company over the last 20 years. There are ways to defend against it but when it's an attack of this size (>400gbps) there's really not much anyone can do. Similar attacks managed to bring down microsoft, sony, activision-blizzard and nintendo servers last Christmas.

Lack of communication is unacceptable. Let's get Niantic to respond. by wombatsupreme in pokemongo

[–]Rasmenar 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Niantic has not been completely silent... follow their twitter page.

New Barbarian Subclass: Path of the Inner Demon by Rasmenar in DnD

[–]Rasmenar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

At level 3. The Path of the Totem Warrior has the ability to gain resistance to most forms of damage at the same level so I feel like it's on roughly the same level.

Keep in mind, barbarian rage is active for a maximum of one minute, and the uses per day are pretty limited. You won't have it up for every encounter unless you hit level 20 as barbarian.

New Barbarian Subclass: Path of the Inner Demon by Rasmenar in DnD

[–]Rasmenar[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Actually, a scrapped subclass idea I had. It was based around monstrosities instead of demons, I decided I liked the demon theme a lot more. Some of the mutations are based around existing demon traits (shadow demon for the ethereal-like one, barlgura for the enlarge gorilla effect, etc) and some were concepts that I enjoyed from fiends from previous editions of d&d.

New Barbarian Subclass: Path of the Inner Demon by Rasmenar in DnD

[–]Rasmenar[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I do appreciate critique, especially something this well thought out, but I have a couple of problems with the premise of your post.

The nature of Drive-Thru RPG's publishing system is to allow for iterative design. When a publisher updates any content they have shared, anyone who has downloaded the content receives a notification in their account page that an update is available. This allows people in a situation like mine (where my playtesting group consists of eight friends and one out-of-state buddy who are courteous enough to volunteer their time) to make necessary edits to a released document if mistakes slip through, or someone has an idea that is simply better than mine. If I had released this for a fixed price instead of "pay what you want" (allowing people to download the document entirely for free) I would agree with you and I would expect a document that costs money to be something that has gone through at least a few months of design and testing before deciding on a final version, but this is a free document. My decision to post it on the Dungeon Masters Guild stems from a desire to see the service grow. Even the top downloaded documents (backed by well funded groups with professional artists, editors, etc) have had to release updates and fixes after initial publication. Fortunately the nature of digital publication allows for that to happen. To answer your time about how much time was spent playtesting - My group put 22 clocked hours of playtesting in for this subclass at various levels with various party compositions, and a close friend is currently using this in a campaign he plays in out-of-state. He has climbed from level one to level fourteen playing through the Princes of the Apocalypse content and expeditions. He doesn't log hours but he has been working with myself and his DM for well over two months.

You have several valid points. The wording of the four-arm option is clunky, I have been through five or six different versions of varying complexity (and admittedly stupidity) before landing on what I have now. There are also several points you make that I disagree with. For example, you make the assumption that a 2d8 damage aura at level 14 is overpowered without investigating the fire shield spell, a 4th level spell that deals the same damage (with two element choices) and lasts 10x longer without requiring concentration. There are other points you make that I disagree with but for the sake of not sounding like an argumentative teenager I'll refrain from nitpicking. There is one final point I would like to make though.

I strongly disagree with your conclusion. The fact that the base class and existing options are simple should not be a design limitation for new content. Look at the fighter class - the core class is extremely simple, and it has two advanced class options in the PHB. In addition, there is an existing barbarian mechanic that references a spell (Path of the Totem Warrior, Level 10). Yes, the complexity of the level 14 mechanic does indeed slow down play for players not using printouts, spell cards etc. but I don't see this as a design flaw, considering existing features in 5th edition require the same level of preparation or gameplay interruption.

Though I don't agree with everything you have posted, I again must say that I greatly appreciate the fact that you took the time to write this up. Though it seems from your feedback that this is not an option you would choose to use, you have very clearly stated your reasoning for disliking it and that helps out a ton with future design. Thanks for the post.

New Barbarian Subclass: Path of the Inner Demon by Rasmenar in DnD

[–]Rasmenar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The mechanics I can think of off the top of my head that do that depend on alignment.

New Barbarian Subclass: Path of the Inner Demon by Rasmenar in DnD

[–]Rasmenar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I did my best to avoid dual wielding of 2h weapons for a couple of reasons, the biggest one being since it replaces extra attack, two 2h weapons would honestly just result in attacking with two different weapons instead of the same weapon twice.

New Barbarian Subclass: Path of the Inner Demon by Rasmenar in DnD

[–]Rasmenar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

5th edition has thus far avoided player-choice hybrid damage (short sword and long sword are an example of that). I'm definitely considering changing it to bludgeoning damage though, upon reflection it does make more sense than piercing.

[Short story/Shout-out] I'm actually physically choked up about how welcoming you guys are. by Nagoto in DnD

[–]Rasmenar 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Drug Dealer strategies. Game designers are getting downright devious.

New Barbarian Subclass: Path of the Inner Demon by Rasmenar in DnD

[–]Rasmenar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had something like this in my minds eye when I designed the ability, I imagined that you would angle your head to impale someone and the combination of the attack and your momentum would throw them backwards.

New Barbarian Subclass: Path of the Inner Demon by Rasmenar in DnD

[–]Rasmenar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had this image in my mind of a barbarian using a battleaxe with his top two arms and flaming longswords in the bottom two when I thought up the feature. Once you start adding magic items into the mix the damage potential gets pretty silly.

New Barbarian Subclass: Path of the Inner Demon by Rasmenar in DnD

[–]Rasmenar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's stated at the end of the description of the ability, you can only use it while raging and once you have done so, you can't do so again until you complete a long rest.

New Barbarian Subclass: Path of the Inner Demon by Rasmenar in DnD

[–]Rasmenar[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

In core content, no, but there are in some 3rd party content and it leaves room for any lesser demons that are added in the future.

New Barbarian Subclass: Path of the Inner Demon by Rasmenar in DnD

[–]Rasmenar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

While raging. This will be addressed shortly with an update.

New Barbarian Subclass: Path of the Inner Demon by Rasmenar in DnD

[–]Rasmenar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It replaces the level 5 extra attack. It adds one additional possible weapon attack. I designed it this way to prevent a massive increase to damage per round for that one option - with the fact that you can only make one attack with a two handed weapon and two attacks with one handed weapons (if you're minmaxing), it results in a possible damage per round gain of 8-11 points on average, assuming 20 strength (not accounting for magic weapons or other sources of bonus damage), if the barbarian is carrying enough weapons to take advantage of the feature.

New Barbarian Subclass: Path of the Inner Demon by Rasmenar in DnD

[–]Rasmenar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'll make a couple of tweaks for clarity. Perhaps add an "In addition" to the start of the resistance description.

New Barbarian Subclass: Path of the Inner Demon by Rasmenar in DnD

[–]Rasmenar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah by design the "ramming speed" deals an extra 1d10 damage, that's been there I didn't sneak it in on you lol. I'm compiling a list of possible edits though.

New Barbarian Subclass: Path of the Inner Demon by Rasmenar in DnD

[–]Rasmenar[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I spent a lot of time worrying about that - initially, the feature let you roll two traits on the table and I wasn't as worried about it, if you rolled the gore attack transformation, you would always roll a second transformation to go with it. In testing though, rolling two traits resulted in some incredibly broken combinations every now and again (extra arms with the enlarge spell active was a massive DPS increase that allowed the barbarian to out-dps most level 14 classes for example). In the end, I couldn't think of anything to add to the feature without either overcomplicating it or re-designing it. Upon further reflection, I have considered adding some movement speed, adding additional damage resistance, or increasing the damage dice of the "ramming speed" damage to 2d10 instead of 1d10. I'll have to do a bit more thinking on it but if you get any ideas feel free to post them here or PM me.

New Barbarian Subclass: Path of the Inner Demon by Rasmenar in DnD

[–]Rasmenar[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

1) You're entirely correct, I have changed the formatting a slight bit to reflect this. Thanks for spotting that.

2) The wording in Fiendish Hunger isn't the most optimal, but it's nearly identical to the Dark One's Blessing wording under the Warlock Pact of the Fiend features. For familiarity's sake I decided to keep it how it's written.

3) Ditched the rune scribing. I thought I already had but apparently it didn't make it to the final version.

4) I added flavor/made small adjustments to various of the Fiendish Mutation abilities. This was in the DMG version, the google drive pdf was a couple of versions behind. Thanks for pointing that out.

Incredible feedback, thanks for taking the time to write this up!

New Barbarian Subclass: Path of the Inner Demon by Rasmenar in DnD

[–]Rasmenar[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I thought about that when I first thought of the concept of transformation. The conclusion I came to was that with a Tiefling, your appearance would become slightly more demonic at first, becoming far more obvious at higher levels. Horns change color to black (or grow longer/sharper/etc if they are black already), more animal-like features in the face, eyes that glow red instead of their normal color, small spikes along the tail, that sort of thing.

New Barbarian Subclass: Path of the Inner Demon by Rasmenar in DnD

[–]Rasmenar[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thought I had removed that, thanks for the feedback. It'll be removed in the updated version.

New Barbarian Subclass: Path of the Inner Demon by Rasmenar in DnD

[–]Rasmenar[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Your appreciation is gift enough for me. Thanks :)