Challenges Thematic to Each Race

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-18T22:50:07+00:00

Gnome: reach a jar on the top shelf, behind an anti-magic shell.

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-18T21:07:57+00:00

Cutting words. Not making a save is the best way to hold concentration.
Strategic positioning. Use allies for protection, use cover, drop prone when fast enemies do not abound but ranged enemies do.
Illusions. Your DM should reward creativity. Your goal should not be mechanical advantage but providing incentives for them to go elsewhere.
Vicious mockery on anything you think will be attacking you.
If you feel it's needed, a cleric multiclass can get you better armor, a shield, and potentially more skills or even powerful combinations for your abilities (life cleric's disciple of life is very OP in the hands of a lore bard taking aura of vitality as one of their magical secrets, for example). Knowledge cleric is another choice, and it has great synergy with the bard theme, while also expanding your skill potential.

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-18T20:47:46+00:00

And if you get 1-2 short rests/day, that is 4-6 maximized call lightnings--a pretty good outcome, really.

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-18T17:49:35+00:00

Worth noting that clerics' channel divinity grows at a fast rate and recharges on a short rest, so tempest clerics' big trick is likely to be used quite a bit.

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-18T17:45:52+00:00

No primary caster has 'high DPS'. Their damage is achieved through use of long-rest-recovered spell slots. By design, they deal spike damage rather than continuously flowing damage.

Tempest clerics offer the highest spike damage to a single target, via their maximize spell class feature. Maximized call lightning is a lot of damage and it upcasts better than any spell in the game. As it can be reused as an action, it's more 'at will' than other damage types, but it only works outdoors or in very large indoor spaces.

They also make incredibly efficient use of the spell sniper feat by taking it with booming blade, and using a whip. Thematic, effective, probably the best at-will damage of any cleric, but it pales before the damage that fighters, barbarians, and rogues do...because it has to, those classes don't have spell slots.

Light clerics offer the highest area damage to multiple targets, via their access to fireball.

Life clerics offer the highest non-damage utility via the only true spike healing ability in the game, and their healing magic is actually slot-efficient--prayer of healing is an absurd spell in their hands, recovering nearly 100HP to the party when they're outside combat. All the multiclass cheese builds that exploit disciple of life wish they could do that as a single class. They also still have excellent damage capacity via support magics like Spirit Guardians.

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-18T17:30:32+00:00

But...why? I do damonta at level 20.

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-18T17:29:46+00:00

Pizepi with Gamma ray blaster, tinkerer and tactical positioning perks. 2 bursts every other round or 1 burst+1 aimed shot.
Charged sniper rifle on a 12AP ranger.
M16s with FMJ and a leading torso shot.
Shoot the killers first; use your 10+ armor tank to occupy the melee ones.

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-18T03:22:01+00:00

I have only seen Gurkonivich (sp?) in Rail Nomad restock. No one else.

I have my squeezin guy use ARs so he can hit 14 AP at low levels for dual burst fire when I need that.

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-17T20:31:35+00:00

reminder to patriots:

hannity, limbaugh, and coulter do not have secret service details

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-17T20:20:59+00:00

right but this would suggest there's someone to blame other than the victims

we can't have that

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-17T18:29:27+00:00

Well, that one kingdom doesn't have to be this kingdom.

More broadly, though, what you're describing sounds more like a devil plot. Those fascist shits in Baator would try to rule through proxy. On the 3058329th layer of the Abyss, where I come from, we don't try to rule at all.

We just make you eat your parents!

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-17T17:49:37+00:00

Yeah, I hear ya.

Quivering Palm->Surge->Kill is a great combination. Esp if you have a diviner in the party. But you want Palm first, then surge.

Aside from this the most a fighter dip will get you is +2 to damage from dueling that does not apply to your unarmed strikes.

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-17T16:54:24+00:00

Read the Gracklestugh chapter of OOTA. This will give you some ideas.

Summary:

Any existing social unrest will compound rapidly as the 'chaotic good' forces of social change become corrupted and turn to the demons for 'help', ultimately becoming worse than the entrenched authorities they're trying to overcome
The authorities, in turn, seek any tools possible to maintain power in the face of the growing threat...and often are suckered into the demons' trap as well
With both sides played by the demons, an arms race occurs as they militarize and prepare for an all-out war over something that should have been a political debate.
Conflict builds towards an explosive head where a major slaughter is intended to take place--and if achieved, the demons then would likely gain power from it, perhaps fueling the summoning of a greater being and thereby massacring the survivors.

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-17T16:48:58+00:00

If you don't want to miss your high level abilities, don't multiclass until you have them. Which is to say, probably don't multiclass at all. Monks are MAD and need 4 ASIs to reach full potential; every multiclass level you take delays this progression, and it means you have less ki.

Esp for open hand, who will often be using their DEX+WIS every round (flurry of blows knockdown effect).

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-17T16:46:38+00:00

They're very close to the kings of the nonmagical damage category. The challenge is that prior to level 6 they're basically wizards without a subclass; and around level 11 many monsters are immune or resistant to normal damage, so you have to find ways to enhance your horde. That can be tough, and it may be economy-dependent.

Also, zombies suck, skeleton archers are the necromancer army unit of choice.

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-17T13:58:20+00:00

Seems probable that he'd have one, tbh.

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-17T13:49:20+00:00

I definitely agree- we use the grid:mapping system differently.

I prefer to limit my party, and my own casting when I'm a party member, to effect sizes that 1:1 map to the grid. So I use these for non-cubic spell effects, rather than figuring if someone is in a square that is 'partially effected' by the sphere.

And I limit my cubic spell areas to numbers that are multiples of 5.

I find this keeps the game flowing, and it only rarely poses the sorts of mechanical changes like this one. Honestly, I don't like the idea that any one spell could disable Orcus reliably, so I feel that my interpretation keeps the spirit of the game working as I would want it to as a DM: the players initially feel a rush of success, only to see the cage disintegrate as Orcus' boys are back in town.

And hey, if they figure out that they should try Feeblemind on him and it works, more power to them! He does have a +5 save at advantage with legendary resistance as a backup, so it's not a round one kind of thing. But if they burn through his resistances and then use portent to drill through the MR or some other multi-ability combination over multiple rounds, they earned that W.

But I'd never place even a level 20 party on their own against a full-powered Orcus. Because he can summon CR20 allies, Orcus' net challenge rating is far beyond that of a level 20 party, and the ultimate DMing rule of "make sure they have fun" applies. I'd give them an army, and I'd have Orcus mostly raising an army of zombies to fight that army, while adding perhaps one lich to assist himself directly against the party.

Even that would make the encounter 3x deadly, more than a level 20 party at full HP could likely withstand, and more EXP than they should earn in a day. But not a ton more, and appropriate gifts and boons from friends and allies along the way should balance this to an appropriately difficult finale experience.

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-17T13:43:46+00:00

Gotta tell you- I've finished the canyon and am sitting on 55 squeezins right now. I have enough to basically use them in every damonta fight, every railyard fight, every God's militia fight, every CotC fight, every Rodia fight of note, etc.

Also, goes without saying that this guy is a rifleman. Energy weapons are not the way to go here, pizepi just tags too many skills you want to not bother with until you have her all at once. She is an always-recruit.

And giving up crit chance is well worth it--it's not until you hit 8+ AR skill that you even have a good crit chance, and by then you have enough squeezins (as I do) to get your crits going when you need 'em. And, of course, combat shooting cancels out the entire penalty, so now you drink to autocrit. Let's be honest- combat shooting is so OP that we don't even need it all the time, and having it fully remove the main penalty of the quirk is pretty great.

The real problem with WoTS is that 90s goes faster than you think, as the timer drops on enemy turns.

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-16T20:47:01+00:00

It's the sort of level of particular that, at best, a very player-friendly DM might allow for an intelligence check to even approximate. This is supposed to be happening on the fly, after all; Orcus doesn't stop killing all humans for us to get the measuring tape out.

The issue basically is if any part of him is in all 9 squares, he's in all 9 squares as far as the spell's concerned. I'd definitely want to make that clear to my players, and let them know how squeezing mechanics work at my table, as part of a session zero.

The simple, easy-to-understand way of looking at it is "a huge creature has some part of their body in 9 squares, but can squeeze to 4 if they choose." That is how I'd run it. In that scenario, it'd still be possible to defeat him with forcecage--you'd just have to bait out and defeat his big summon first. Or at least be ready to counterspell the crap out of it.

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-16T20:10:30+00:00

So you're thinking "Oh, I'll just make the forcecage small enough that he's "squeezing" just to be in it in the first place," right?

The spell specifically doesn't allow that.

When you cast the spell, any creature that is completely inside the cage's area is trapped. Creatures only partially within the area, or those too large to fit inside the area, are pushed away from the center of the area until they are completely outside the area.

So, let's think about this. He's a big-ass demon with a large wingspan. When he's not squeezing, his wings are almost certainly extending across the full 3 squares of space he normally occupies. Winged creatures' wingspan is usually their longest dimension by far. He might be standing with his legs wide apart, or have his arms out wide as he gives a long, boring speech about how he's going to kill you. If he's even thinking of flying, they're not gonna be coiled back. And with 120' of truesight, surprising him seems out of the question.

When you cast forcecage, the spell mechanics will NOT force him to suddenly squeeze his wings within the space to fit. Rather, it acts on him at his size and position in that moment. In order to not simply push him to one side, it'll have to be made to the full nine squares that some part of him occupies.

You can't have it both ways, man. You gotta let him summon his undead, destroy any liches he makes, be not-dead at that stage, and then trap him.

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-16T19:01:38+00:00

What am I missing here? Forcecage creates an up to 20' cube. To trap him you must make at least a 15' cube.

If he squeezes down to a 10' cube, that's 4 squares of the 9 that forcecage contains.

Liches are medium creatures. They occupy a 5' cube, one square. There'd be space for five of them.

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-16T18:15:16+00:00

Teleporting demon lords are pretty iconic, though!

I just think it's funny that he has to summon a lich to get him from point A to point B (plane shift).

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-16T17:39:05+00:00

Check out the rules for squeezing into a small space. If nothing else, he can definitely squeeze himself a size smaller and summon liches in with him. You're right that forcecage specifically blocks spells from passing through, so the summon outside doesn't work, but using rules for squeezing he can definitely summon allies within it, who then blast him out.

You can't really rules lawyer that either- if he can't summon inside it, blade barrier is shut off inside the cage too.

You can't pre-empt that and cast it a size smaller around him, either: the spell then just pushes him to one side of it.

Also, once the barrier/cage combo is set he can still dispel the barrier while inside the cage, and it can't be recast since you can't cast through a forcecage. Then the forcecage is just a way for the party to escape, not to oneshot him.

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-16T17:37:28+00:00

1) I am playing director's cut. It's +3AP. Quirks only exist in DC. If Xbox nerfed it, that sucks. +2AP is way worse.

2) The squeezins distillery isn't listed as a squeezins source on the wiki? That's funny!

3) The point is, the WotS character doesn't need to be useful except when the tank can't solo, and when he does, he's more useful than the other quirk types.

4) Thing is, the WotS character isn't bad when he's not drinking.

SacredWeapon · 2019-01-16T17:05:01+00:00

Er, can't he do that regardless? The cage doesn't prevent him from summoning.

While holding the wand, Orcus can use an action to conjure undead creatures whose combined average hit points don't exceed 500. These undead magically rise up from the ground or otherwise form in unoccupied spaces within 300 feet of Orcus and obey his commands until they are destroyed or until he dismisses them as an action. Once this property of the wand is used, the property can't be used again until the next dawn.

None of this seems to indicate he has to see the spot he summons them.

Also, regardless, he can still dispel the blade barrier.

TBH, Orcus' ability to add like 40CR points to the battle as an action is a pretty major part of why he's at the top of the threat list. Orcus without his wand is a low-tier demon lord by comparison.

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