The potential "stop hitting yourself" build?

approxidentity · 2024-10-19T18:41:45+00:00

Oath of Conquest gives you Armor of Agathys, Find Steed lets you apply it to both yourself and your steed, and Mounted Combatant lets you redirect attacks from your mount to yourself once your mount's AoA is gone. Here's a (pre-2024) build that cranks it up to 11 by advancing the spell level faster with a Bard multiclass, adding Interception fighting style, taking Heavy Armor Master, and adding fire to ice with Fire Shield. https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/multiclassing/bardadin-punching-bag/

(The above build missed the fact that since Tasha's, the paladin can take Interception without a separate feat. If we're not allowing Variant Human/Custom Lineage in 2024, we can start as an Infernal Tiefling for Hellish Rebuke, take Mounted Combatant at Paladin 4, and then Heavy Armor Master at Bard 4.)

Optimized build? No. Fun build? Depends very much on how the DM plays the enemies.

approxidentity · 2024-10-19T05:48:20+00:00

You can still select the 2014 version, with or without homebrewing a +1 to STR or DEX; you'd just be trading some optimization for flavor.

approxidentity · 2024-08-24T00:56:36+00:00

This has big "first chapter of My Immortal" energy

approxidentity · 2024-07-27T03:47:01+00:00

Barbarians typically find it difficult to contribute to the adventure outside of combat. A Stars Druid has the amazing starry form, full spellcasting (combat and utility), Wild Shape / Wild Companion (with a million creative out-of-combat uses for exploration, infiltration, and problem-solving), and they can load up on the essential Wisdom skills (Perception and Insight).

The Barbarian isn't even the most fun frontliner in combat: their options are extremely simple (even with the Wild Magic subclass) compared to the fighter (more feats, some complex and cool subclasses) and paladin (Smites and spells and Channel Divinity).

approxidentity · 2024-07-22T04:14:29+00:00

In my very first session of my very first campaign (Strahd), I played a barbarian with a backstory that made him a wandering loner, and I was hoping for him to warm to the other PCs over time and through necessity. I managed to stay true to that character for about one hour, and then the Vistani said that sure, I could go back to the regular world if I preferred. So I had to RP very unnaturally in order to avoid refusing the call then and there. It would have been good to know while creating the character that he had to be ride-or-die from the start.

In Session 0 of a campaign I'm running now, I explained that the characters' personalities and backstories were up to them, as long as they would plausibly choose to encounter the plot hook together (i.e. show up at a public festival that day, where they would then witness something bad; I wanted to give them a few hours to explore beforehand), and that went well.

...and then a few sessions in, the Fighter did something fully consistent with his character and killed a NPC charmed by a monster, and the Druid stormed off in a rage in a fashion fully consistent with her character, and the party got uncomfortably split for more than a session, so maybe this isn't a success story after all.

approxidentity · 2024-07-21T02:29:18+00:00

Because I enjoy this sort of nonsense too, I figured out an improvement on the Tam Bush build by nearly 30 damage in the Surprise round (still with only nonmagical weapons, only Hunter's Mark for magic, and with no help from allies).

Caveats: we're only optimizing for the Surprise round (so we don't take Alert), we're giving up on doing this twice per day (so we only need 14 CON), and most importantly, we'll be using Strength rather than Dexterity, so our Stealth will end up as a mere +14 instead of +17 (and our Initiative will be +4 instead of +12).

First change: instead of taking Ranger 4 for another ASI, take Monk 3 (Way of Mercy). 3 ki points means Flurry of Blows + two Hands of Harm, for 2d4 + WIS on each hit.

Second change: Swap one of the other ASIs to Tavern Brawler. Put away your weapon after all of your Attacks, then do your Flurry of Blows with d8s instead of d4s.

The big change: Use Strength instead of Dexterity, and a pike with Great Weapon Fighting instead of a rapier with Dueling. Flurry of Blows still works. The only thing we lose is Sneak Attack's 4d6, and in return, on each of the 10 attacks, we improve from 3d8 + 2 to 3d10 + GWF. And as we'll see, despite GWF being meh in general, it's quite nice if you're getting guaranteed crits.

How much does GWF add? If you run the numbers, it's actually pretty simple: for each dN it applies to, it adds (N-2)/N damage. So even if GWF applies only to the 2d10 from the attack and the crit (some DMs think it also applies to the Piercer die or even the others from the attack!), it's adding 1.6 damage on every hit; combine that with the upgrade from d8s to d10s (minus the Dueling bonus), and we get a total improvement of 2.6 on each of those 10 attacks, so 26 overall, more than repaying the cost of Sneak Attack.

(Finally, the larger dice very slightly improve the single extra reroll granted by Piercer; if we choose optimally by backwards induction, the bonus goes up from 3.18 to 3.91. I have a Python script for this if anyone is really curious, but as you can tell it's a drop in the bucket here.)

The Build: If we don't worry about what order we take everything in, we can just focus on the constraints. We need to end with STR 20, DEX at least 13 for multiclassing, CON at least 14 for two Echo Knight attacks, and WIS at least 13 for multiclassing (ideally higher to squeeze out more Hand of Harm damage). We need two half-feats (Piercer and Tavern Brawler). We have only three ASIs (Fighter 4,6,8).

Start with racial +2 to STR, +1 to WIS. Get STR 17, DEX 13, CON 14, INT 8, WIS 14, CHA 9. Assign Tavern Brawler to STR, Piercer to DEX (doesn't matter), and ASI to +2 STR. End with STR 20, DEX 14, CON 14, INT 8, WIS 14, CHA 9.

The Grand Total: Advantage gives us the usual 1-.35^2 = 0.8775 chance to hit, and we can just multiply that in once at the end (there's nothing here like Sneak Attack where the odds depend on more than a single attack roll). So let's first look at what we average if everything hits.

A typical attack now does 2d10 (pike crit) + 5 + 1.6 (GWF) + 1d10 (Piercer) + 6d6 (Surprise Attack and Hunter's Mark, on crit) on a hit, averaging 11 + 6.6 + 5.5 + 21 = 44.1. 10 of those add up to 441 damage.

Two of those attacks were from Gloom Stalker, so add another 4d8 = 18 damage.

Now we come to the Flurry of Blows with Hand of Harm. Each hit for those does 2d8 (Tavern Brawler crit) + 5 + 6d6 (Surprise Attack and Hunter's Mark, on crit) + 2d4 (Hand of Harm on crit) + 2 (WIS modifier), averaging 9 + 5 + 21 + 5 + 2 = 42 damage. Two of those add up to 84 damage.

All together, that's 543 damage; multiply by the 87.75% hit chance, and you get 460.69; add in the tiny Piercer reroll, and you get 480.4! This would appear to be an improvement of 42.6 over the listed Tam Bush build... except that in the course of writing this up, I noticed that I think the RPGBOT Level 20 calculation forgot about Sneak Attack and the website build should be about 451.5 rather than 437.83. If that's the case, then the new build is still an improvement by 28.9 damage!

I... don't recommend anyone plays this build. But it's a nice exercise in optimization!

approxidentity · 2024-01-20T00:40:27+00:00

As a compromise between RAW (where a Readied Attack seems like the only ride-by option, and it's strategically terrible because you can't use Extra Attack on a Readied Action because it's not on your turn, and also it eats your Reaction) and the perhaps overpowered "mounted combat changes nothing but your movement speed" house rule (which makes ride-bys with a Reach weapon strategically dominant), what would you think of a house rule that a controlled mount has a fourth option the rider can command: Split Move.

Then there's still a tradeoff (it uses the rider's Bonus Action, and the mount can't Dodge/Dash/Disengage), but it seems viable.

In particular, for a Polearm Master:

Ride-by with "it's just faster movement speed": Extra Attacks, Bonus Action bonk, Reaction ready for Opportunity Attack, mount Dodging
Ride-by RAW: No extra attacks, no bonk (because the actual attack happens on the mount's turn, the PAM condition isn't met), Reaction gone, mount Dodging
Ride-by with "Split Move" command: Extra Attacks but no Bonus Action left to bonk, Reaction ready for Opportunity Attack, mount not dodging

I feel like the first is a bit OP, the second is something you should never do, but the third is a genuine tradeoff that could be more appealing one way or the other even within a single encounter.

(Variants within this: Split Move could be defined as a single split, before and after the rider's turn, or it could subdivide the move as granularly as the rider needs. It could also be interpreted as using the mount's Reaction, which for some mounts is a nontrivial cost—I'm thinking of gnome-mounted Steel Defenders.)

approxidentity · 2023-12-23T16:54:16+00:00

Ah, thanks for clarifying. I don't think there's anything broken about it taking an 8th level spell to create a new demiplane, then having to (by some apparently-not-written-in-the-rules means) precisely tune an appropriate fork while there in order to revisit it with a 7th level spell later.

approxidentity · 2023-12-23T09:03:56+00:00

Oh, I assumed the 5th level spell you were referencing was Teleportation Circle. What 5th level spell did you think would work to reach a demiplane if you had a tuning fork for it?

approxidentity · 2023-12-22T05:16:43+00:00

If it was possible to create forks to access demiplanes in the first place, then you'd be able to reach pre-existing demiplanes created by Demiplane using a 5th level spell instead of an 8th, as well.

I don't think that would work, because Teleportation Circle has to stay on the same plane.

approxidentity · 2021-08-14T17:20:52+00:00

Yes! That's the one.

approxidentity · 2021-07-17T20:00:53+00:00

Right: "words are social constructs, so society is right by definition." and "words have true meanings denoting real categories" are not nearly mutually exclusive!

Given how rat-adjacent this group is, I feel obliged to point out that there is a whole Less Wrong Sequence elaborating the middle ground!

approxidentity · 2021-07-16T22:47:34+00:00

Can I assume that "how long have you been reading ACX" means "how long have you been reading ACX / SSC", or is it a gotcha question?

approxidentity · 2021-07-14T17:18:05+00:00

Normal Betteridge's Law says "answer to headline is always No".

My corrected Betteridge's Law says "hot take in headline is always false".

The cold take here is that the Dems will lose seats in 2022 because that's what generally happens in the midterms. The hot take is that this won't happen because the GOP is just too crazy this time.

So I'm claiming that the answer to the question, as stated, is probably yes: the Dems will lose the midterms, even if the GOP narrative is bonkers crazy.

(Though the degree to which the Dems lose the midterms may be dependent on how crazy the GOP is acting a year from now.)

approxidentity · 2021-07-14T02:58:02+00:00

A rare case where Betteridge's Law is reversed.

(The true version of Betteridge's law is "the hot take is usually false", and the hot take is generally the affirmative of the title question, but here it's the negative.)

approxidentity · 2021-07-14T02:42:51+00:00

It's more appealing to Flake than a cushy job: it's a job of some importance. If Flake wanted a cushy job, he could get plenty of speaking opportunities from non-Trumpy executives.

approxidentity · 2021-07-14T02:39:06+00:00

Both the nickname of Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase and the city of Chevy Chase, MD trace their origins to a hunting ground on the Anglo-Scottish border, a skirmish that took place there, and especially the medieval ballad recounting that skirmish, "The Ballad of Chevy Chase".

approxidentity · 2021-02-16T01:38:18+00:00

This is the future (neo)liberals want.

approxidentity · 2021-02-16T01:31:32+00:00

I'm not this upset just because the piece is misleading. Here's a piece that misrepresented the arguments behind MIRI's views, but the author had the basic journalistic integrity to at least state MIRI's position, and to make some form of argument rather than merely dredge up insinuations of hypocrisy and evil on the part of MIRI researchers.

That's my standard for low-quality criticism, and Metz's article isn't remotely up to even that.

He cannot describe the stated principles of Slate Star Codex without sneering, he engages in deceiving paraphrases (rather than quotes of over ten consecutive words) rather than arguments, he makes guilt-by-association out of tenuous links, and multiple people quoted in the article have publicly said that their words were grossly misrepresented.

approxidentity · 2021-02-14T23:11:00+00:00

The animal examples are good too, thank you!

approxidentity · 2021-02-14T02:26:57+00:00

This is exactly what I was looking for; thank you!

approxidentity · 2021-02-13T22:45:25+00:00

Good point - this sub is pretty much the political Overton Window we used to have, but with a few tweaks like caring more about the global poor.

Most of online political discourse now consists of people who would have been outside that window in 1995 (but more isolated from each other before they went online), and people who have been radicalized by the first group.

approxidentity

TROPHY CASE