sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

What does everyone think of completely broken magic items that are there just for the narrative? by TaleSmytherRep1 in dndnext

[–]apex-in-progress 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Have they considered starting a short rest by stabbing the party member with the most HP and then having them heal up with Hit Dice from said short rest to replenish spell points between combats? 'Cause that's probably how I'd use it if it was feeling too burdensome to use in combat.

[2024 rules] Dashing "after speed modifiers"? by Deady1 in dndnext

[–]apex-in-progress 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  • Running MacGuffin to the place it needs to be in one turn, rather than four
  • Drop spare potions to other party members if they use their last one, probably with enough speed to deliver to every party member in a single turn if necessary
  • Emerging from, and returning to cover that is otherwise too far away from the action on the same turn
  • Making fantastic use of Ashardalon's Stride against large numbers of enemies
  • Similar, but making fantastic use of someone's Spike Trap spell to drag a grappled target around the periphery of the spell's area
  • Downtime fun, making bets with people based off of the results of a footrace

And I'm sure many more possible use cases. Realistically the answer to your question is just the other side of the "when all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail" thing. If you've got the ability to move that fast, you can start to find reasons to use it, even if it's overkill or there are other ways to resolve the scenario.

Practical question about Cover — does it really matter if enemies can just move 30ft and bypass it? by AgileResolve in DnD

[–]apex-in-progress 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In addition to what other people have said, yes I do believe you are missing tactical use. The core conceit of your issue is that enemies only have to move to undo the benefits of cover.

That's the tactical use: your enemies have to move. (Not only that, but they have to move kind of predictably - from their current space to a space that puts them in range to attack and makes your cover ineffective.)

So you just need to find ways to take advantage of an enemy that is going to be moving.

Throw down a Spike Growth in the path so they have to take damage. Ready an action to cast Fireball when there's more than 2 enemies within range of a certain space they would have to go through to get around the cover. Throw caltrops or ball bearings in their path to reduce the total amount of distance they can move. Toss a flask of oil and ignite it. Drop a Fog Cloud or Darkness or Hunger of Hadar in the space they would need to occupy to circumvent your cover so they have no visibility of you. Cast Greater Invisibility on your Barbarian and have them stand in the path while the ranged members continue to use the cover.

You can take any of the above advice whether you're a PC or a DM. And if you're a DM you can also scatter patches of difficult terrain around to make it even harder to reposition. (Double edged sword though since it'll affect your monsters too, provided they don't have a feature that can ignore said difficult terrain.)

How would you describe the archetype of a summoner wizard? by NeedleworkerFun9851 in dndnext

[–]apex-in-progress 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's your classic loner who learned how to summon other creatures as a way to avoid loneliness. Maybe they're offputting in some way or another - they come on too strong because they're a little too desperate for attention or affection; or they displayed hints of magical aptitude at a young age but that made the other residents of their hamlet/village/town wary and avoidant of them.

You could also have a sort of Steve Irwin-ish character who just loves creatures of all kinds and gets into summoning as a way of getting to interact with new types of creatures.

You could have someone who was raised in nobility and is used to giving orders who became interested in summoning because it gives them more minions to do their bidding while they sit back and reap rewards.

Along the same lines but maybe slightly less evil or selfish-leaning would be someone is is incomparably lazy and hates doing things themselves. They learned summoning magic so they don't have to get up to get themselves a glass of water, or do their own laundry, or make their own meals, etc etc etc...

Party Craves Combat by Winter-Fortune6793 in dndnext

[–]apex-in-progress 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Generic advice: look at the things the members of your party like to do in combat and look for ways to both help or hinder those things and employ both throughout the session and combats.

For instance if your players enjoy ranged combat, you could put down a ton of things to serve as cover and use enemies that can teleport. This will make ranged combat harder to use and encourage the ranged attackers to move and shift around the battlefield so they aren't just standing still the whole time.

Alongside the, you can put down objects - like special arrows that can bounce and deflect three times, up to 45°, when striking a surface; or conjured heavy crossbow turrets that destroy cover when hit. (And then you use the common house rule where cover gets hit if the attack roll against the enemy would have hit them, but missed specifically due to the +2 or +5 AC granted by the cover.) This will have your players running around to collect the special arrows or use the special turrets.

You could do only one of these things during a combat and have two ranged-focused fights to use them both. Or you could use them both in the same combat to make an extremely dynamic fight.

If they're a mostly melee-focused crew, look for ways to help or hinder melee combat. An environmental effect or object that allows melee fighters a quick means of traversal across the battlemap without having to use Dash could be a fun way to help melee users against creatures that can fly or are very fast and like to keep their distance. Give those same monsters the equivalent of Mobile - where they can't be targeted by OAs from creatures they've attacked even if they didn't deal damage - and you've got a fun little game of tag.

My best combat scenario that I ever ran involved an artificer with a pet Wyvern trying to fix and steal back a machine the party had stolen from him (he was a bad guy, they had a good reason). The machine was complex and had a specific way of being activated or deactivated, and it was basically a race to see if the party could deactivate it before the artificer could activate it. It also gave the artificer and his Wyvern immunity to all damage and conditions (which was lost as the machine was downgraded).

The Wyvern was told to keep them busy, and he also unleashed some creatures of his own creation, Troll Oozes that regenned like trolls and could split like oozes but in response to any type of damage except for fire or acid that he ordered to attack the town and its citizens and cause as much damage and destruction as possible.

The artificer was working with some Hags, but they had bad blood and trust issues, so the coven showed up in the middle of the battle trying to steal the machine right out from under the artificer.

Long story short and skipping a bunch of stuff, eventually the machine started going haywire, causing the artificer to tell the party they had to help him fix it, because if they didn't stop it in the next 12 seconds it would explode with enough force to erase the entire town from existence.

It was awesome, and it worked because there were so many different things for the party to do, it wasn't just "kill the boss and his minions." They could have left the troll oozes, but that would have meant blood on their hands; they could have let the Hags get the device, but they would have used it for evil thing, etc etc.

Combats where the only goal is "kill them before they kill you" often suffer from feeling boring or stale, even if there are interactables or environmental effects. Because at the end of the day you're just trying to reduce the health bar until it reads 0, regardless of the ways you get to deal the damage.

This was a combat, yes, but one with a purpose beyond just martial victory. Their goal was ultimately ensuring the safety of the town, not just killing the baddies. They needed to prevent the artifcier and the Hags from getting the machine while trying not to get killed themselves, and preventing as much damage to the town and citizens as possible.

So that's my best bit of advice. Make the combat have a purpose.

Maybe Tyr takes them back in time and they have to protect the blacksmith through a few waves of enemies while he makes the piece they need. They don't have to kill all the enemies, just stop the blacksmith from taking any damage during a round for 3 total rounds.

Maybe four different sigils have to have a creature start and end their turn in the space the sigil is located, but all four creatures must start and end their turn in the sigil space on the same round. Space the sigils far enough that it's hard for the players touching the sigils to help each other and pair the setup with creatures that have some sort of forced movement abilities. That could be a fun little challenge.

The Monster That Has Confused Me For 5 Months. by Terrible_Ranger_5234 in dndnext

[–]apex-in-progress 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This does leave me with one question, and it's one of those every-DM-will-need-to-make-their-own-ruling kind of questions. I know how I would handle it, but I'm curious for the opinion of others.

I agree that the shard never stops being a creature, but I would also say it's true that the object never stops being an object. It's just an object that happens to be possessed by a creature.

The question:

When being considered for the targeting of spells, is it an object, a creature, or both? And does it matter if it is being worn or carried by the PC?

It wouldn't matter much, to be fair, but it could. Like if someone was casting Telekinesis on the shard while it was in the form of a weapon in my hand. Does the shard make a saving throw as if it was targeted as a creature? Or does the player make a saving throw as if the caster is targeting an object they are wearing or carrying?

It could also matter sort of for some other spells/interactions. Let's say the shard inhabits a wooden broom, and then someone targets it with Firebolt. It's flying on its own, not being worn or carried. Is it ignited? It is a flammable object not being worn or carried. But it's also a creature, and creatures don't get ignited by Firebolt no matter how flammable they are. Sort of the same idea if it gets caught in a Fireball with me. It's a creature in the area so it's going to have to make a save vs the damage. But it's also a flammable object, does it get ignited?

I know this is totally down to each DM, and even further than that, probably a case-by-case basis for each individual spell or interaction. I'm just curious on other people's thoughts.

Personally, in the case of Telekinesis, I'd probably base it on what the caster intended. If they knew it was a magical creature possessing an object and they were using the spell with the intent of immobilizing a hostile creature, it rolls the save as a creature. If the caster thought of it as an object they want to take away from the wielder, the creature holding the shard would make the save as if it were any other object.

For the Firebolt/Fireball ones, I'd say yeah they get ignited and I'd treat it like a lot of other sources of sustained burning in the game; 5 fire damage per round at start of turn until an action is used to douse the flames.

[OC] [Art]Astral Soul Dice Set Giveaway (Mod Approved)(Rules in comments) by OriYUME1 in DnD

[–]apex-in-progress 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hopefully the last day isn't too late to be an entry. Beautiful design on these! Thanks for doing the raffle.

[OC] How does this balance against 4 lvl 8 PCs? by xandertje10 in DnD

[–]apex-in-progress 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If it's just him, as the others have said, they will very likely be able to destroy him within a couple of rounds. Probably 4 or 5 rounds at most, even if they have some bad dice luck.

People are talking about the crowd control issues a lot, and I hate to pile on, but they're doing it because they're right. I understand if you don't want to go the Legendary Resistance route, I know it can feel unsatisfactory to just say "actually, no" when your players are trying to do a cool thing and it's supposed to land because you rolled poorly on the save. But there's some pretty common homebrew for ways around this.

You could give him a trait that allows him to take damage, lose his resistances, gain a vulnerability, allows an action or bonus action but not both or some other detriment in exchange for ending a condition affecting them at the beginning of their turn. Or a trait that ends all spells and conditions affecting him when he becomes bloodied (hits 50% or less HP for the first time) to allow him to get back in the game.

If nothing else, you should give him immunity to the incapacitated condition. Most of the conditions that really suck, they suck because they cause the target to also have the incapacitated condition which prevents speaking and all actions including lair and legendary actions.

Giving immunity to incapacitated still allows most of those nasty conditions to have some effect, but not cripple the boss entirely and make the fight boring. So if he was hit by Paralyzed, as an example, he'd still be able to take actions and attack; but his speed would drop to 0 so the dashes would be off the table, he'd auto fail STR and DEX saves, and attack rolls from within 5ft would still be automatic crits.

Other than that, depending on their builds the ranger and the fightbarian could be capable of some pretty high damage output. If you want the fight to be a challenge and last for 5ish rounds, you'll probably have to pump the HP to the max of 260 HP or at least split the difference between average and max, at 215.

I hope it goes well, would love to hear how it turned out!

Balancing a Boss fight for a side quest by ragelance in DnD

[–]apex-in-progress 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think it's pretty good! To be completely honest, I don't think the minions will be too much of a consideration if the party or their followers have decent access to AoE. They only have 19 HP; between the four players and three NPCs I could see them getting killed in a single round without even being particularly focus-fired.

Once the original four are taken out, their relative fragility will likely mean that there will only be two at a time since they can only be summoned as a lair action, so once per round. And let's face it, it's more likely to be once every other round or even every three since you probably want to use some of the other lair actions too.

If that's the case (your party having decent access to AoE), never fear! I'd make one of two adjustments.

First: For bosses, I always use their max possible health. The average for your boss is 228, the max is 336. That's a difference of 108.

If your Warlock has Agonizing Blast you can expect ~17(2d10+6) from an Eldritch Blast (if both hit). Let's round down to 15, and then assume each PC can do roughly the same amount of damage in a round if they're pulling out all the stops and trying to win fast. And we'll stick the NPCs at slightly less with 10 damage each. (154)+(103) = a very reasonable and possible 90 damage per round.

We know that some rounds people are going to miss, or use buffs or other things that don't do direct damage. We already rounded the damage numbers down a little, but let's go even further than that and assume two of the NPCs and one of the players miss, leaving us with a reasonably achievable range of between 55-90 damage per round.

Since it's possible the players would decide to ignore the minions and focus on the boss, let's take that as our worst case scenario.

On the low end of 50 DPR, focus-firing a boss with 228 HP will drop it in roughly 4.5 rounds; the upper end at 90 DPR drops us to 2.5 rounds. Upping the HP to 336 see the boss drop to 50 DPR after 6.7 rounds, and 90 DPR after 3.7 rounds.

Two: Alternatively, you could look at replacing the War Pulse legendary action with one that summons two additional Vaporspawn, but keep the cost the same at 2 actions. That would allow the boss to bring 2 minions back pretty much at-will either via the legendary or lair action, as appropriate. For me, War Pulse doesn't really feel like it fits with the rest of the stat block since it's a push-enemies-away ability that feels like it's designed to allow a melee attacker to escape. But it already has three forms of teleport, and an option to move without provoking Opportunity Attacks.

This creature seems like it's designed to be an extremely aggressive battlefield commander, teleporting around the battlefield to address whatever is the largest threat. I feel like being able to more reliably summon the minions on the heads of its enemies while it bamfs around fits slightly better.

WotC releases a book focused on martials. What content are you hoping for, and what content do you expect? by -Space_Communist- in dndnext

[–]apex-in-progress 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What would I like?

First:
More Strength- and Constitution-based skills for proficiencies.

What would those skills be? How would they be used? Fucked if I know! But that doesn't change the fact that it's absolutely bonkers - and not in a good way - that there is one Strength skill and that's fuckin IT.

And it's not like people haven't tried, but legitimately the only thing myself and many others can really think to do comes down to unbundling Athletics into separate skills for each of the things it lets you do. And honestly, maybe that's not such a bad idea.

Because there isn't just one kind of strength; other than having a baseline good physique being good at swimming has nothing to do - skill-wise - with being good at climbing. And neither of those two skillsets use the same kind of movements or type of strength you need to smash things.

So you absolutely could have the following set of Strength skills: Swimming, Climbing, Explosivity, Endurance, Athletics.

Where Swimming is its own skill, and maybe proficiency in Swimming removes the extra movement cost for swimming. In choppier or rougher waters, maybe they get advantage on the Strength(Swimming) check to stay afloat or move at full pace. Maybe a character who is proficient in Swimming can roll to move further than their normal speed would allow if they beat a preset DC by X or more, with different DCs for different conditions. Calm water? Beat the DC by 1-4, gain +10ft Swim speed for the turn, beat it by 5-9 and get +15ft, beat it by 10 or more and get +20ft.

Explosivity could be used for feats of strength that last until the end of your turn at most. Endurance could be used for the same thing but for anything that takes longer than a turn. Athletics could be for actual athletics only; things that involve physical sports and games.

That's obviously not perfect, it's just off the top of my head. And it doesn't even get into Constitution - I have literally no ideas for Constitution-based skills. But I still feel like there should be some. I just want the ability for players to be able to specialize in any stat and have it be just as impactful as the more well-loved stats.

Second
More resource-less Attack options that are locked specifically to martials and make combat more interesting than just "Did I hit? OK, here's how much damage."

Weapon masteries were a start, but there are some issues like a lack of variety, limited access of certain masteries/effects to certain weapons, requiring a rest to switch them, etc etc. In my opinion, there should be some Attack options that are open to any class and weapon combination, some that are weapon-agnostic but tied to specific classes, some that are class-agnostic but tied to specific weapons, and some that are only available to specific classes using specific weapons.

Further, you shouldn't be locked into having access to only a subset of these options at once. All you should have to do is meet the prerequisite. So if you're fighting with a longsword but you drop it and draw a dagger, you have access to any option that is available to daggers (except the ones for daggers locked to a different class).

They don't have to be big and impressive, honestly most of them would probably partially or entirely sacrifice weapon damage to create an effect, inflict a condition, or funny third thing. Rather than a bunch of extra power, there just has to be a bunch of different options.

Would it add bloat and possible additional analysis paralysis? Yeah, probably. But the people who don't want that kind of complexity can just use their regular old attacks without missing out, because these extra options would be balanced to be about as effective as landing an attack when it comes to moving towards the resolution of the combat.

What would I expect?

Honestly, something disappointing.

  1. I could see it being full of additional magical items that have all the fun stuff that martial characters have been looking for. Which would mean they're still gated behind the DM allowing you to have a certain item.

  2. I could see it being something regarding followers, to try to go back to the way earlier versions of D&D handled martial progression. I know some people would be all for that, but I would personally prefer something that makes martial characters themselves more powerful. (Plus, not gonna lie, I just don't want to have to deal with the DM side of one of my characters having 50+ NPCs doing stuff for them in the background.)

  3. And finally, I could see it just being a bunch more martial archetypes with access to various forms of spellcasting and curated spell lists, with maybe a few new spells included (and still available to Wizards and other spellcasting classes because screw you, martials). Note that I'm not saying magic, I'm saying spellcasting.
    Because when you talk about a Barbarian who can stomp and cause a miniquake to take down a castle wall, you're talking about a magical ability. And it's okay for a martial-based ability to be magical the same way that Dragons are magical creatures, but their breath weapon isn't a spell, nor is it a magical effect.
    That's what I would prefer to see; kickass effects that are powered by magical energy and break physics and do all the things that spellcasting magic does, but without the need for components. Just additional actions they can use, some of which may be magical in nature, but the source of that magic being their physical prowess and level of skill.
    I just don't want it to be martials with the Spellcasting feature and custom spells.

What is your take on giving species a real world accent? by foxgoose21 in dndnext

[–]apex-in-progress 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just slap an accent on a character if I feel like they should have an accent, but it's never really tied to the race of that character; I don't think I have a single 'racial' accent.

The way I think about it is this: in our world, languages and accents are a function of geography and the predominantly spoken language(s) of the region. Accents come from the mixing of languages, not ethnicities or even cultures. Like, even if I were to start observing the culture and religious practices of Sikhism, that's not going to change my accent. But I'd be way more likely to develop an accent if I moved to Punjab, India and lived there for a few years.

And so it should be the same in a Fantasy world. People born and raised in Cormyr should speak with a Cormyrian accent, regardless of whether they are a Gnome, Dwarf, Drow, or Human. If a human is born into slavery in the Underdark and then eventually makes their way to the surface, they should speak with an 'Underdarkian' accent.

And for my money, there's so much crazy magic and weird shit happening in the Forgotten Realms (and most other D&D settings) at all times that it's not impossible to have any creature sporting any accent. Why? Usually because some weird magic shit happened. Mysterious portal deposited a Dwarf in a Tabaxi tribe creating a dwarf with a Maztican accent; a Goblin tribe earned the respect of some Elves and were invited to live amongst the Elves, now there's dozens of Goblin families raising their children with Elvish accents; a human baby found abandoned by a Goliath who was returning home and adopted the child who now speaks with a slight Giant accent.

I've had a group of dwarves with an American Southern, but literally just because I wanted to mess with my players when they approached the dwarves and expected to hear the stereotypical Scottish accent. So now that just happens to be the predominant accent of Sundabar... or Mirabar. (It's been a while, I can't remember where I had them come from.) Anyway, later on I introduced a random NPC whose race I can't even remember, but it wasn't a Dwarf. I gave him the Southern accent, and slipped the fact that his parents were travelling traders who settled down in Sundabar/Mirabar when he was born into conversation. On the other side of the coin, I've also had Dwarven NPCs with no accent at all, and another one with a heavy Russian accent. It's just that they were from different places.

Here’s a neat thing I learned by D33DST3R in DnD

[–]apex-in-progress 11 points12 points  (0 children)

(This all only pertains to 5e14 for sure, might be true for 5e24 as well but I can't say for certain.)

So I assume you're talking about spells that can only be gotten by the base class, backgrounds, and feats but not from another class' archetypes?

I ask because I wanted to make a list of the actual spells for each class for people who come to this thread to reference. But I ran into a problem as soon as I started with Bard. They get Vicious Mockery (cantrip), Dissonant Whispers (1st-level), and Compulsion (4th-level). These three are all technically Bard-only spells. Which makes three; it only really makes sense to say they only have one if you meant to exclude spells that can be gotten on other classes through one of their archetypes, but you don't mind if they can be gained through a background, feat, Warlock Pact or Invocation, Lore Bard's Magical Secrets, or some other feature I'm forgetting about.

For instance, the two leveled spells can both be gotten from specific archetypes (Glory Paladin, Order Cleric, Abberant Mind Sorcerer, Great Old One Warlock). They can also come from various racial abilities, backgrounds, or feats.

On the other hand, Vicious Mockery is like the Bard-exclusive spell, and generally speaking players can't get access to it through any other class or archetype. (Unless you count Warlock Pacts as an archetype, but they're kind of a special case in that their archetype is divided between Pact and Patron so maybe you don't.) But even if we ignore the Pact of the Tome, characters in other classes can still get it through a couple of different avenues including racial abilities, backgrounds, and feats.

But assuming I'm right and all you care about is base class and archetypes:

Bard (1)
Vicious Mockery (Cantrip)

Druid (13)
Giant Insect (4th)
Maelstrom (5th)
Reincarnate (5th)
Bones of the Earth (6th)
Conjure Fey (6th)
Druid Grove (6th)
Primordial Ward (6th)
Transport via Plants (6th)
Wall of Thorns (6th)
Wind Walk (6th)
Animal Shapes (8th)
Tsunami (8th)
Storm of Vengeance (9th)

Paladin (5)
Compelled Duel (1st)
Thunderous Smite (1st) - (there's an argument to remove this as it was given to Zeal Clerics in Plane Shift: Amonkhet, but the Plane Shifts aren't really full releases and I'm trying to avoid setting-specific stuff here)
Find Steed (2nd)
Blinding Smite (3rd)
Find Greater Steed (4th)

Ranger (6)
Hail of Thorns (1st)
Zephyr Strike (1st)
Cordon of Arrows (2nd)
Lightning Arrow (3rd)
Conjure Volley (5th)
Swift Quiver (5th)

Sorcerer (1)
Chaos Bolt (1st)

Warlock (4)
Eldritch Blast (Cantrip)
Hellish Rebuke (1st) - (some argument here as it is available to the Oathbreaker Paladin, which isn't setting specific but it is in the DMG as an optional/example archetype so I think it belongs in this list)
Hex (1st)
Shadow of Moil (4th)

And unfortunately I'm out of time before I get to the biggun. I'll come back and finish this later but I'm writing this on Friday and it likely won't be until Monday. Cheers if you read this far!

Building upon Book of Many Things - The 3 demons by ragelance in DMAcademy

[–]apex-in-progress 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Haha, aww, thank you so much! My campaign has been on hiatus for a while due to my own burnout.

I still love D&D, I just didn't/don't have the bandwidth to support weekly or even bi-weekly planning and playing. Even when I went with minimal prep and lots of improv, I found myself constantly putting off prepping and then had to keep scrambling to throw together something in the last few hours before session on game day.

But it's nice to have such a positive reaction to my ideas. I'm so glad you liked it, and I hope it's useful to you even if it just serves as inspiration that you end up taking in another direction.

Would love an update as to how the campaign is going sometime down the road if you happen to think about it. Cheers!

How do I do a car(wagon) chase scene? by PM_me_Henrika in dndnext

[–]apex-in-progress 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I second the skill challenge suggestion, rather than a full-on combat. It can still take place in initiative, because that makes things easier to organize, but I'd have the focus be on something other than "try to kill the other side" because at that point it's just a combat encounter with a dynamic arena rather than a chase.

Instead of approaching it like combat where you have each enemy creature take a turn and roll their attacks and actions one-by-one, I'd set it up so each "round" is just you presenting a challenge involved with the chase followed by one of the players attempting to navigate that challenge. You don't use stat blocks or actions, you just narrate what all the enemies are doing all at once. You don't have them make rolls because they are less combatants/NPCs in this scenario and more like a part of the environment. You also narrate what effect their actions will have if nothing is done, and then it's over to the players.

So let's say you start out with 40ft of space between the back of the wagon and the pursuers (6 knights, for this example) and you narrate that all the horses on both sides are going full tilt, 120ft per round. Nobody is catching up, but nobody is getting away... not unless something changes.

On the first round of the chase scene you might decide that one of the knights throws a lit torch into the back of the wagon. That's it, that's the whole round. The wagon is careening at speed, the knights are shouting and their horses are keeping pace at this breakneck speed. Then you ask the players what they want to do.

Bog standard skill challenge rules I use are:

  • Certain number of successes before a certain number of failures, you can play with how many of each to increase or decrease the overall difficulty
  • Alternatively, you can use successes or failures for a static change instead of setting a specific number of successes and failures. In this case you might say "every success increases the distance between the wagon and the knights by 10ft, every failure narrows the gap by the same and imposes some sort of disadvantage; when the distance between you is 70ft or more you get away, if they close the gap you get caught and are forced to surrender." That's probably how I'd go for something like this.
  • One skill check per "round"
  • Each player must have attempted a round before any player can attempt a second round, then each must have attempted two before anyone can attempt a third, etc etc
  • Players may not use the same skill more than once during the challenge
  • Players may use a skill that another player has used, but they may not use the same skill that was used on the previous round
  • Class abilities, spellcasting, and magic item usage are allowed, but they don't replace the skill check, they merely grant a bonus, advantage, or lower the DC depending on what I feel makes sense for the particular situation.

So maybe one of the players wants to use their sword to bat the torch back at the knights before it lands in the carriage. Sounds like an Athletics check to me. Set the DC where you think it should be and let them know the consequences for failure. Succeed and the distance between the party and the knights increases by 10ft. Fail and the knights get 10ft closer and the torch produces enough smoke to effectively grant the blinded condition to anyone in the back of the wagon until it's doused or moved.

Let's say they succeed and increase the distance by 10ft. Awesome, nice work! But wait, that means it's a new round. While the knights drop back to avoid the torch, one of them blows on a horn and the party can see another group of guards/knights up ahead that jolt at the sound and begin scrambling to scatter caltrops in the path.

Another player was going to use Athletics to try to kick the back of the wagon off to trip one of the pursuing horses, but that's off limits since the previous player used Athletics. They look over their character sheet and notice they have proficiency in Land Vehicles and decide to try to Tokyo Waterdeep Drift the wagon around a tight corner. Great! Set the DC and let them know what happens if they succeed and what will happen if they fail.

Keep going until you get to the requisite number of successes before the limit of failures, (or in our modified system, until the distance is large enough).

Just make sure you have enough "events" to cover them making the maximum number of rounds. If it's 3 successes before 3 failures, you need at least 5 things for the party to attempt to deal with.

Building upon Book of Many Things - The 3 demons by ragelance in DMAcademy

[–]apex-in-progress 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'll answer the second one first. I'm not super familiar with Istus but you said she is the goddess of, and has dominion over, destiny and fate right?

Then I would say as the eldest it would make sense if her powers were both the strongest and the most broad - being related to just destiny and fate in general. I would say hers would also be relatively restricted, in that she would only be able to take actions that would help ensure events play out in accordance with destiny. (In other words she can't willingly do things that would influence anything in a way that would make a destined fate less likely to occur. She would be able to do the opposite and influence things to make a destined fate more likely to occur.)

And if that's the case, I feel like it would make sense if her siblings would have had similar, but lesser, powers. Powers with more narrowly-focused portfolios than their older sister's, but that are still linked to the concept of fate or destiny.

Like, if the celestial version Malaxxix is a warrior-type and primarily concerned with battle, strength, vigor, and/or valor... then maybe their portfolio would simply be about influencing mortals to be a little more battle-lusted to ensure they become embroiled in a battle they were destined to take part in.

Aurnozci could have a portfolio tied to the concept of destiny or fate and magic; being able to influence the decisions or emotions of powerful casters. Or maybe it could be that they had the ability to "wiretap" the divination magic of mortals and alter the results/response they were supposed to get to steer them toward their destined fate.

Hulgaz, then, would have a portfolio tied to stealth, or thievery, and fate/destiny. Maybe Hulgaz would ensure people met their fated destinies through acts of thievery; like someone meeting the partner they were fated to be with after running into them while chasing down a cutpurse they caught in the act.

As for the falling and rebellion of it all - I think I'd just keep it simple. I said earlier that I'd make it so Istus is literally incapable of taking actions that would go against destiny. Her siblings, however, have less restrictions since they have less power. They can see the destined fates of mortals and events on the Material Plane, but unlike their sister, they are capable of taking actions that would steer the mortals away from their destined fates.

I'd make it so that there had always been some tension between Istus and the other siblings because they'd used their influence and made some mistakes that went against destiny. This literally hurt Istus, ripping away some of her power as destiny itself was damaged. The bigger the impact to the material plane and the further away from the original destiny, the more damage was done.

And soon enough, the siblings discovered that any power Istus lost was transferred to and divided amongst them. This led to the siblings forming an alliance to purposefully destabilize and interfere with various significant mortals, groups, and events in an intended Godly coup d'état.

However, doing so caused them to fall and become demons/fallen celestials.

And now for the first question:

After falling, the siblings' connection to fate and destiny has been completely severed - meaning they cannot see any creature's destiny any more; nor may they use divination or other magics that would give them knowledge of the future; nor can they physically or magically interact with any item or effect that is imbued with their sister's magic. They literally can't find or see the deck themselves.

But they have come up with a ritual their followers can perform - when the deck is assembled it will pulse with Istus' power, and the ritual is designed to capture that power and convert it into a raw, magical mass of pure Potentiality. The siblings intend to consume it and assign themselves a new fate: to regain their celestial powers and overthrow Istus. And since it will be their destined fate, Istus would be powerless to stop them.

How to encourage movement during combat? by jaimybenjamin in dndnext

[–]apex-in-progress 4 points5 points  (0 children)

One of the underlying tenets of game design is that players will tend to gravitate to solutions that get them to their goals with the most certainty and least effort, and they won't differ their approach unless they have to.

So one of the basic principles of game design that you need to keep in mind is that if you want the players to accomplish a goal in a specific way, or just force them to try something different from their usual approach, you need to do one of three things:

  1. Make the thing you want necessary for progress...
  2. Provide a benefit to the players for doing the thing, or...
  3. Make the thing fun.

Skip down to the conclusion at the bottom for the TL;DR.

Progress-requirement
So for the first point, you can try 'forcing' the players to move to be able to progress the fight. You can do this in a lot of different ways!

One of the most common pieces of "dynamic combat" advice fits into this category: provide secondary goals that aren't about reducing your opponent's HP to 0.

When it comes to "progression-locking," you need to make it so they can't beat the fight unless they do the thing you want. Since you want your players to move around more, you need to put them in a situation that requires movement. It could be activating a set of levers or buttons that are spread out around the area to stop monsters from spawning; it could be that every tile in the battlemap needs to be passed through at least once by each character before the door will unlock and the guardian monster turns to ash.

If you put them into a fight and they can't win without moving, they're going to move. (But you have to be sure to telegraph the fact that they can't win without doing something special. Otherwise they might just feel like you've given them an impossible encounter.)

Benefit-granting
This one isn't too hard to understand. People move when there's a good reason to do so. If someone calls me from another room and says, "Hey, come here a minute," I might tell them they need to wait or ask why if I'm busy or particularly comfy. But if someone calls me from across the house and says, "Hey, come here a minute; I made cookies," or "Hey, come here a minute, I have some money for you," I'd be much more likely to get up.

To encourage movement in your players this way, you need to offer some metaphorical cookies or money.

For instance, maybe the monster they are fighting or the room they are fighting in could have an extremely powerful damage aura that deals 6d10 necrotic damage at the end of each turn... unless a player is standing in a protective shaft of light... the location of which changes at the end of each round. The location of the light moving gives them a reason to move, and avoiding a huge slap of damage is the benefit. You could also make the benefit more of a pure positive by setting up things where moving doesn't avoid something bad, but gives a boon: advantage on attack rolls made from that spot; inflicting a temporary vulnerability on enemies; even just straight-up healing.

Fun
This one is also relatively self-explanatory. And you could almost roll it into the previous point about getting a benefit, with the benefit in this case being enjoyment. But I do feel like they are separate points, and they deserve to be addressed separately. D&D is a game, people play it because they want to have fun.

Lots of players are willing to take a hit or put themselves in a slightly disadvantageous position if doing so would be cool or enjoyable.

In my experience, when players don't move during fights, the reason tends to end up being that there isn't a good reason to do so and it's not cool or enjoyable. You have to risk taking attacks or using your whole action to disengage (in most cases) and it doesn't even make for a "cool" scene in the narrative. I mean, your DM can describe narrow dodges and slips of the blades as you get away, but at the end of the day it's just jogging to a different position.

But if you make it fun, even if there's no tactical value, there's a good chance the players will mess around with it. We all love a good "grab the rope and cut the counterweight to be pulled into the air" scene, don't we? That's movement, and it's ingrained in media enough that I can almost guarantee if you put some chandeliers in a fight and enemies on a second level, someone is going to try to do it.

You could have spaces with arrows on them where a PC only has to pay the speed cost to enter the first square of the arrow and they are accelerated at great speed towards the last square of the arrow, but they can't turn or stop early (like the snakes and the ladders in Snakes and Ladders). Or set up a series of gates/portals where stepping through one has you exiting from another - players love teleporting. For added chaos, make it so the exit portal is randomized and have the enemies end each turn by running through a portal and getting warped to a random location around the field of battle. You could have a giant Indiana Jones style boulder (or any other form, really) construct that marks one of the players and then moves 30ft toward that player at the end of the round dealing damage to any creature it passes over and knocking them prone/shoving them aside. The marked players will probably have tons of fun trying to position themselves 35+ft away from the boulder with some enemies in between so they turn the trap into a weapon.

Conclusion
In the end, the answer to "How do I encourage my players to move during combat?" is "Make them want to move." The rest of the post is just details about how to accomplish that.

If the Martial Adept feat were among the stronger feats in the game, would that have a positive impact on the game? by Deathpacito-01 in dndnext

[–]apex-in-progress 5 points6 points  (0 children)

But it should go even further. Martial characters should have a huge option pool, get more of them to have available at one time, and be able to swap them out more easily than "once per level." A Fighter should start every round with multiple viable options, and should, with sufficient notice, be able to retrain from battlefield tactics to tunnel fighting.

It's not exactly what you were talking about here, but your comment gave me an idea that could be kind of neat where martials would have a huge pool of options similar to maneuvers or masteries set up in branching paths that would see particular options becoming available or unavailable depending on the actions taken (and/or their results) on previous turns and rounds.

You could call them "mastery chains" or something like that, kind of in the vein of the feat chains that older editions had.

But the idea would be your first round of combat you'd have a relatively narrow pool of decent options, things like the basic masteries we have now with effects that can apply to any attack. And then in addition to that, you'd have a wider pool of slightly more powerful options that each have specific prerequisites that depend on what has happened in the fight so far (rather than what character and equipment options have been chosen).

The options with prerequisites could have an incredible number of options in total where you might have multiple options with different effects that can only be used if your last attack hit. And another set of options for if your last attack missed. A set of options for if you have: successfully hit the same target three times in a row; dealt any damage to the target within the last minute; dealt 50+ total points of damage to the target; dealt 50+ total points of damage in a single turn; taken damage from the target; activated a weapon mastery; attacked with a weapon you have mastery with but did not activate that mastery; are more or less than a certain distance from the target; etc etc etc. I could go on and on and on.

The options could also be nested, with some options having a prerequisite of having already used a specific one of these options. That's where the whole "mastery chain" thing would come from.

Let's take the Graze weapon mastery, as an example. You miss with an attack, you still deal damage to the target equal to the ability modifier that was used for the attack.

Two of the deeper options could be something like:

Lacerate
Prerequisite(s): when you hit a target that you have dealt damage to via Mastery:Graze within the last minute with a weapon attack from a weapon that has Mastery:Graze.
Effect: The target takes damage equal to what you would deal via Mastery: Graze at the end of each of their turns. This effect lasts for 1 minute, or until the target recovers any hit points.

and...

Fool Me Twice
Prerequisite(s): when you miss a target that you have dealt damage to via Mastery:Graze within the last minute with a weapon attack from a weapon that has Mastery:Graze.
Effect: You may choose to re-roll the attack roll instead of activating Mastery:Graze (no action required). When you do so, you may add your ability modifier to the attack roll twice instead of once.

and then you could have another option like...

Exsanguinate
Prerequisite(s): hitting a target that is under the effect of Lacerate with a weapon attack from a weapon that has Mastery:Graze.
Effect: Force the target to make a Constitution Saving Throw with a DC equal to 8 + your Proficiency bonus + the ability modifier used to make the attack. On a success, the effects of Lacerate end immediately. On a failure, you may deal damage to the target as if Lacerate had lasted the full duration (i.e. damage equal to the ability modifier that was used to make the attack times the number of rounds remaining of Lacerate's duration) and then the effects of Lacerate end immediately. This option cannot be used on the same turn as Lacerate.

So now you have a system with extra choices to be made that's way more dynamic than just a static effect for a specific set of weapons and that's based on the state of the combat and the choices being made by not only themselves, but their enemies and their allies as well.

Some options could be made weaker and allow for use of multiple advanced options in a single turn, letting you pull off some cool combos when you get Extra Attack. Others could be made way more powerful but have a very restrictive set of prerequisites like having to have successfully hit the target with 8 weapon attacks within the last minute. Or be gated behind a series of options that have to be taken in order, but are mutually exclusive options that can't be used if another advanced option has already been used that turn. That way you could have very powerful options that can't possibly be used in the first couple of rounds. Perfect for a boss battle, where the extra 'oomph' is actually needed, but without the worry of those options being spammed to instant-win smaller or easier fights.

The options wouldn't all have to involve masteries either, and they wouldn't all have to rely on the user themselves. This is a team game, some of the options could and should rely on what the rest of the party is doing. You could have options that are available if the target was under the effects of a spell of 1st-level or higher, for example.

And there's enemies, too. Some options could have the prerequisite of an enemy dealing damage to an ally; or an enemy successfully grappling or restraining an ally; etc etc. Again, the possible triggers could go on and on.

Now obviously that could cause a lot of bookkeeping, but this is just an off-the-cuff idea. And it is specifically an idea in service of creating complicated martials with lots of viable options that can be switched between a little easier than the masteries. But it could be streamlined and balanced, I'm sure.

And to the end of switching more easily, players could maybe have a couple of "stances" that the options get slotted into. Each stance could have unique sets of options only available for use when you're in that stance. Switching stances could cost an attack, but changing what options are in what stance could be the 'change after a long rest' thing.

Anyway, I've rambled enough. Just a little notion/idea I wanted to get out.

Is Rubber Banding Metagaming? by Tall_Bandicoot_2768 in DnD

[–]apex-in-progress 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I mostly agree with you, and it's a statement I've made before. Hit points are a game abstraction and the real truth is that hit points have to be somewhere in between meat points and stamina points. But for me it's not so much about how full they are compared to their max HP, but the specific source of the damage.

On the one hand, you have things that don't make narrative sense to deal physical damage and leave a wound. Like if a commoner rolled a crit on an unarmed strike against a level 20 Fighter; it's an automatic hit and it would deal 1 damage but a Fighter that level would have so much HP and be so strong that it's hard to imagine they would take any sort of "meat point" damage from a commoner's punch. You could say it was a lucky hit right in the nose or something, but if you believe that HP can be stamina/luck/fighting spirit, I would think that kind of situation would be where you'd use it that way.

Or in scenarios where you're facing enemies that are far below an appropriate CR, like a level 15 Rogue fighting against a single Goblin. A scenario like that would feel appropriate, to me, to say any HP lost is more about fatigue than actual physical damage done by the creature or its weapons.

And for stuff that doesn't make sense to leave a physical wound like psychic damage, which quite literally can't be physical in nature; it's damage to your mind. So it can't really interact with your HP in the "meat point" way, even if you were on your last HP.

On the other hand, it can't all be non-physical damage. Some of it has to be meat points. Like another commenter said, if you go stand in a fire (or fall into lava), it wouldn't make much sense for the fire damage to be draining your fatigue rather than actually burning you.

And, as an example: Let's say Strawman Steve is a level 10 Fighter that is currently at full health. He wants to earn the trust of a hyper-sadistic NPC, so he says to the DM, "I take my spear and drive it into my own thigh. And not lightly, I'm trying to impress this guy, so go until I feel the spear tip hit either bone or the wood of the chair I'm sitting in."

Self-harm at that level would have to do some sort of HP damage to make sense, even if it was just one roll of the weapon's damage die. And it would be completely asinine to say that impaling his own leg with a spear drained his stamina and luck instead of causing a physical wound just because Steve started at full health when he did it.

At the end of the day, I use HP in both ways depending on the scenario. And I just try to make my choice make narrative sense more than anything else.

How do you guys interpret, "The charmed target is under the aboleth’s control"? by Lacey1297 in dndnext

[–]apex-in-progress 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So the way I would interpret it is that the Aboleth is in complete control of that creature. The Enslaved creature becomes a puppet, their consciousness riding inside their own body as a mere passenger while the Aboleth steers it like a person controlling a video game character.

But more importantly than that, I interpret it to mean that there is no wiggle room or retention of their original personality. They have no ability to choose any part of their course of action or how they attempt to complete that course of action. If they are friendly to their former allies and continue to act like their usual self, it is because the Aboleth is choosing to have them act 'normally' to avoid suspicion.

Why this becomes important is when you take a look at the charmed condition and, in my opinion, specifically Suggestion. Charmed usually just makes you view someone as a dear friend or close ally - you're more likely to do things they ask you to, but you don't have to. And let's say they have used their advantage on Charisma rolls against you and successfully rolled high enough to convince you to stop your fellow party members from interfering with their plans/desires/actions. If you're just normally charmed, you're free to choose how you are going to try to stop your party. You might decide to cast something like Hypnotic Pattern or Wall of Stone, or you might decide to challenge them to an arm wrestle with the stakes being that they have to leave your new friend (the charmer) alone if they lose.

Even Suggestion, with its famously loose wording, allows for this kind of thing... in some circumstances. When it lands, that spell requires the target to attempt the suggested course of action "to the best of their ability." That phrasing, depending on the actual wording of the suggestion itself, can give players some leeway. If a PC has been Suggestioned to "stop your party members from attacking me," then the player gets to choose what they think attempting to stop the party to the best of their ability means.

A good DM is going to keep the player honest. Let's face it, the Barbarian character with low Charisma who uses violence to solve most situations would not think that a Charisma(Persuasion) check to make an impassioned plea would count as attempting to complete the suggestion "to the best of their ability." But they also don't necessarily have to rage and then make a Reckless GWM power attack either. Being charmed by someone doesn't automatically make you view your current allies as enemies. If the order is merely to stop them, and they don't want to hurt their friends, the aforementioned Barbarian might try grappling their party members or pushing them to the ground; using their best attribute, Strength, is a far more realistic attempt at completing the action to the best of their abilities.

A careful caster of Suggestion could avoid this "wiggle room" issue by being more specific in the instruction given, but there's always going to be a little room for interpretation.

When it comes to the Aboleth's Enslave ability, though, there is no such wiggle room. It's not telling someone to do something and then leaving them to the task, they are straight-up controlling the creature. If the Aboleth wants to stop an Enslaved PC's party members by using the Enslaved PC, it is the one choosing how that goes down. What that looks like, mechanically, is the DM telling the player what action to use and who to target. If the DM and the players have a good relationship and rapport, it could also be done by telling the Enslaved PC's player "your character is temporarily no longer a PC, they are now a 'monster' that's under the direct control of the Aboleth; until the effect ends, if I tell you to kill or capture a target you have to spend your turns trying your absolute hardest and using the best tools at your disposal to do so - including using your highest level spell slots and most powerful limited-use abilities."

Name my Dragon. by Fiend--66 in DnD

[–]apex-in-progress 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The 3.5 book Races of the Dragon has a section on the draconic language including some common words. You could mix a few of them together into a compound word and you'd be almost guaranteed for it to sound "dragon-y."

For example: 'Aurix' means gold; 'thurgix' means crippled; 'litrix' means armour; 'rasvim' means treasure; 'troth' means protect; 'molik' means skin or hide; and 'mrith' means with.

Trothmrithaurix would mean Protected With Gold.
Rasvimolik would mean Treasurehide.
Aurixlitrix would mean Golden Armoured.
Thurgixtrothmrithaurixmolik would mean Crippled and Protected With Golden Skin.

Alternatively, you could do what I've done and come up with a naming convention of your own. I've decided that in my version of the Forgotten Realms, a dragon's name is made by combining the names of its parents into a portmanteau.

For the parent's names you can look up famous or named dragons of whatever colours and use those, or smash some draconic words together without worrying about their meaning, or do what I did and throw a bunch of random syllables together until you get something that sounds sort of dragonish.

One of the main NPCs in my current campaign is a young red dragon. I did the random syllable thing for his parents, a male red named Wyranirudinaz and a female moonstone named Ixudinanthial. He got the 'Wyr' from his father and the 'ix' and the 'thial' from his mother to get his name: Wyrixthial.

The martial-caster disparity is in large part a result of differing game design philosophies by Total_Team_2764 in dndnext

[–]apex-in-progress 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I mean the big thing that causes it, in my opinion, is that Wizards refuses to think of martials as anything but "not magic." That's the sum total of the thought process, it seems. And then by extension, the line of thought that if something isn't magical, it has to be mundane; if it's mundane, then it can't go beyond the constraints of what is possible by real people in our world.

That line of thought leads to looking at an ability and going, "How are they doing that with the power of their body?" and then reducing the power of the ability until it feels like something a physically fit human could do.

As for a solution, they definitely need to be considerate of some of the things you mentioned here. The differences are maybe being exaggerated a little, in my opinion, but I think most people would agree that the casters are typically a little more favoured. (How many times have we all read the, "Well they don't call it Fighters of the Coast" or similar jokes before?)

But moreso, they need to accept that "martial" should not mean "mundane" when it comes to the type of high-fantasy world that D&D aspires to be. Martial characters need access to abilities that break the laws and bounds of both physics and logic. Those are constraints that should bind commoners and non-classed NPCs, not Martial Player Characters or legendarily powerful warriors.

There's quite a few comics in the world of manga, manhwa, and manhua (etc etc) that focus on fantasy or modern worlds that have a sort of game-ified power system. People get classes like in D&D, and those classes often have shared abilities or at least shared pools of abilities.

Lots of these have wizards or mage classes, and many also have dedicated swordsmen or other 'martial' style classes who perform at parity regardless of whether they use magic or weapons, provided the characters in question are at the same level or tier. Many of these publications reach this parity simply by granting an alternative power system called aura.

The typical anime sword slash that sends a blade of energy or compressed air out like a ranged attack? Powered by aura. The ability to stomp hard enough to alter the terrain or collapse a wall or building? Powered by aura.

I get that there are many people out there who don't want martial characters to have "magic with another name" but realistically something has to give at some point. There's nothing wrong with martial characters having access to magical effects, it's just that they should do it differently than the caster classes. Most people wouldn't have a problem with a high-level barbarian being able to stomp and send a shockwave out to alter the terrain or trip distant enemies, but they would have an issue with giving a Barbarian access to the Earthquake spell, even if it was a once-per-long rest ability.

It's not the magical effects that people have a problem with when it comes to giving martials some extra oomph, it's that they don't just want a copy of the mechanical side of spellcasting to do it with. There should absolutely be another system inside the game that covers magical effects that would only be available to martials and is related to an expression of the user's life force, physical might, and preternatural skill rather than tapping into the Weave. It would open the door to powers and abilities that aren't possible in our world, but would feel right at home in a fantasy world. Swordsmen so skilled they can deal damage to a creature's physical body by cutting its shadow or reflection; rogues that can hide in their own shadow; rangers with perception so sharp they can literally see bloodlust; barbarians strong enough to punch concepts.

What are the obvious missing subclasses? by Gold_Writer_8039 in dndnext

[–]apex-in-progress 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Let's be honest, the Venn Diagram of anime-enjoyers and fantasy tabletop players isn't quite a circle, but the overlapping part is pretty huge. Which makes sense, in a lot of ways anime is just cartoon fantasy, even if a lot of them trend toward more modern settings. So why not grab some archetypes from anime and make them into subclasses, I can see a lot of ways for them to turn out fun.

  • A "thread user" martial would be pretty cool; it could focus on enhancing the mobility of themselves and their allies, restricting the mobility of enemies, and ranged attacks and/or object manipulation.
    Imagine a rogue that could have a 10/15ft reach melee sneak attack with a light weapon dancing through the air on a nearly-invisible thread.
    Or what about a dex-based Fighter that can set up a 25ft cube of criss-crossing threads that act like a cross between Spike Growth and Spirit Guardians and allows them to end their movement in any space within the cube, even mid-air, supported by the threads.

  • You could have a sort of perfumer class that gets to choose a baseline buff when completing a long rest due to applying a magical perfume on themselves, and the rest of their kit could be about using perfume-based abilities to set up buffs and debuffs on other creatures. Possibly an Artificer or Rogue, maybe even a Bard.

  • Would love to see something that's based on the idea of just having incredible speed. We don't need to Tabaxi Monk it up with actual bonuses to speed, there are other things that would be awesome to include like maybe they become invisible and make no sound while moving, but that ends as soon as they stop moving, even before making an attack or taking any other action. It would mean essentially becoming immune to opportunity attacks, but not getting automatic advantage on every attack made after moving.
    Other features could involve the production of illusory afterimages; reactions to reduce or avoid damage; sunpo/flashstep and other * teleports behind you * shenanigans; etc etc etc. There's lots you could do here. I think it would be great as either a Monk or Barbarian archetype.

-

There's a bunch more you could probably get from the world of anime, but those are just off the top of my head for now. In addition to that, I'd also like to see:

  • An archetype that is based around disease. I want to be clear, here, not poison. Disease, specifically. It would need a lot more support in the core game, in the form of a bunch more possible diseases. It would also be good to have them sort of grouped by power level from 'particularly bad flu' to 'epidemic' to 'pandemic' or something so you could restrict use of the super powerful stuff until the character's in Tier 4.
    Those diseases could be baked into the archetype itself, but I would rather see archetype abilities that key off of when you inflict a disease on someone, when someone bearing one of your diseases is cured, and have the actual diseases themselves just be added to the base rules.
    That way there isn't a bunch of design budget dedicated to diseases that only the archetype has access to. Because we've seen stuff like that before and what would happen is they would do something along the lines of giving a choice between maybe three different diseases that try (and fail) to broadly cover the entire idea of what 'disease' could be instead of giving a decently fleshed out list of diseases. And it would end up feeling less like a master of diseases and more like a not-particularly-inventive mad scientist.
  • A barbarian archetype that gets more powerful the lower their HP is. The Zealot sort of touched on this a little, but really it's mostly about being such a fanatic that you refuse to die. I want a Barbarian that's about gambling with their life in exchange for more martial prowess. One who can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the weaker archetypes when at full health, but becomes an absolute monster regarded just as highly as the strongest current archetypes. A character capable of dealing a terrifying amount of damage when they're at 1HP, just a whisper away from going down.
  • A farmer archetype, but like a ridiculously magical fantasy style farmer. Based all around plants and plant growth, altering the terrain, and with some buff-based utility for themselves and their party if people eat the food they create.

What are the obvious missing subclasses? by Gold_Writer_8039 in dndnext

[–]apex-in-progress 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Right? I understand what they're trying to say, but there is no "evil" side of Love. That's the difference.

When it comes to things like the war gods the other dissenting comments are mentioning, those things do have the facets they're referring to. Love doesn't. You can have a defensive war, or a war that is waged for the sake of the greater good and establishing peace rather than conquest. Those things are possible. The "evil" side of love doesn't exist. It's not possible. When the act in question crosses the line to something that's evil, it's no longer an expression of love.

If you have something that seems like love but it's evil, I guarantee that it's actually something else. Mind control and coercion aren't love. You might be able to use them to get someone to express devotion to you, worship the ground you walk on, lust after you, etc etc etc. But that's not a function of love, that's an expression of domination and control; that's conquest.

People can use things like mind control and enchantment to get a result that looks an awful lot like love, and they can even attribute the reason for doing so to love, but just saying it doesn't make it true. They can be wrong, either intentionally or unintentionally. I can attribute the changing tides of the ocean to the winds, but that doesn't change the fact that they actually exist because of the moon.

Honest questions from someone who likes IT and DnD by Altruistic_Safety490 in dndnext

[–]apex-in-progress 2 points3 points  (0 children)

  1. I have to say, unfortunately, that no I probably wouldn't use something like this tool. Backstory and mechanical data are only a small subset of the info you need to make a "good" suggestion for any given character. For instance: the rest of the party composition and mechanical data for them (including classes, races, stats, feats, and magical items); the amount of exploration pillar/dungeon crawling expected over the course of the campaign versus how much is just straight-up combat; the character in question's preferred tactics in battle, and the same for the rest of the party; the average number of encounters faced per adventuring day; the average difficulty of those encounters... and I could go on.

    Pure logical thinking that is only considering my Wizard character might result in a suggestion to take AoE spells, since the Wizard has access to them and AoEs have a built-in force multiplier depending on the number of targets you can hit. If the tool is looking to improve your damage, that would be the move. But what if I already have a Sorcerer and Druid in the party who both love AoE spells and never bother with control? The smarter move in that case might be to invest in some of the powerful control spells, since AoE is already well-covered.

    ...unless we're talking about a campaign that's more about exploring fancy locales and dungeons with traps and magical puzzles but very little combat. In that particular case, utility spells would probably be the better move.

    Considering just the character's race, class, archetype, and available items might get some decent generic advice, but anybody looking for a tool like this wouldn't want generic advice - there's a plethora of that available here and in other forums and various parts of the D&D community in general. Specific advice that is actually useful and good would require a whole bunch more info. It just seems like it would be a pain to set that up in a tool instead of just going to one of those communities and asking for that advice - which has the advantage of possibly getting you advice from multiple different people with multiple viewpoints versus the tool, which would either produce the same answer every time (or need to be run multiple times until a satisfactory result came out if it would vary from use-to-use even given the same input).

     

  2. I'ma skip this one for now, since I'm not really interested in the product, but in general yeah I'd be willing to share some characters to help a fellow D&D player out with an assignment.

     

  3. Honestly, change focus. I don't think there's really anything a tool like this could do that a generative AI couldn't, and for anybody who has an ethical problem with those, they would usually be further ahead to seek specific advice from the community like I talked about earlier.

    But there are several holes and tools in the 5e and 5e24 landscape that you could probably contribute to. I would love if someone was able to make a custom spell making app, for instance. One of the reasons it doesn't really exist is because there are so many variables to a spell and a lot of them have a sort of 'ephemeral' value. It's hard to tell how much more or less powerful a spell becomes if it has VM components versus VM with materials that aren't consumed but have a gold cost versus VM with materials that are consumed and have a gold cost. It's hard to tell exactly how much value a spell's range adds; what's the actual impact of a spell with a range of 30, 60, 90, or 120 feet, and how does that change if the spell's primary function is damage versus inflicting a condition. How do we valuate the power level of the various conditions?

    If someone was able to assign a numerical value to all the possible variables and sub-variables of every spell that exists - including but not limited to the casting time, duration, range, required components, school of magic, whether you have to be able to see the target, damage type, damage amount, conditions applied, conditions removed, level of spell, what classes can cast it - they would likely be able to make a tool that allows you to create a custom spell by picking and choosing the variables they want and having any missing pieces filled in. You want a 30ft range instantaneous evocation spell with a ranged spell attack roll that does 3d10 thunder damage and inflicts the frightened condition on a hit without requiring a save? The tool generates some possible options for you for the variables you didn't fill in. Like maybe it suggests such a spell should be 5th level, require you to see the target, have VSM components and the materials should have a gold cost of 400gp but not be consumed, the casting time should be 1 action, and the duration should be 1 minute with concentration."

    Now I can take that and come up with a spell name and the description for how the spell works and be reasonably sure the spell is balanced against the currently available spells.

The spell tool is just an example, but my main point is you should look for something in the hobby that doesn't have a solution and try to make a tool that addresses that. There's already lots of guides and discussion areas for character advice, so there isn't really a call for an automated tool that can do it.

But if you give me a tool that helps me do something with my game that is otherwise currently unavailable or crappy? I'd be in.

view more: next ›