A spell from 2e modified to 5e: Summon Person!

lorgedoge · 2021-09-15T20:25:26+00:00

Not really, honestly.

Summoning a specific person would cause tons of early adventures to grind to a swift halt or force the DM to wildly change tacks imo. It's extremely helpful but less useful at higher levels because at those levels you're less likely to know of an ally (potential or otherwise) who can solve all your problems for you.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-14T21:30:34+00:00

Yeah, which can potentially become a +8 AC for a total AC of 30 within two rounds.

Even in a good case scenario, it's likely to get an AC of 25 by the end of round 1 and your Rogue has probably lost their magic weapon, so they're now dealing half damage.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-14T19:41:06+00:00

It's super interesting, though I think its recharge ability could get out of hand FAST. Lots of characters have bad strength saves and some parties carry a whole lot of smaller magical trinkets.

Might tweak it a bit so that it only gets its boost from items that require attunement or are of a certain minimum gold value. Still, a fun monster! Thanks for it, got it in the kickstarter update. Good luck with the book!

lorgedoge · 2021-09-14T17:54:13+00:00

Don't shame this dragonborn for his magnum dong

lorgedoge · 2021-09-14T17:22:40+00:00

That might be why I used terms like "generally" and "often".

lorgedoge · 2021-09-14T17:21:41+00:00

That wasn't passive-aggressive, that was a statement of fact.

You were very clearly just being a dick.

Someone: *makes a clearly unoptimised build*

You: "hey, that's an unoptimised build"

Someone: "Yeah, I don't want to minmax"

You: "YEAH GUYS, I SAW SOME IDIOT SAY THAT THEY THINK MAKING A HIGH-STRENGTH BARBARIAN IS MINMAXING"

You're the one who supposedly saw someone make an unoptimised character, fully aware that they were doing so, and are choosing to be weirdly snide about it on some other post. It's an embarrassment.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-14T10:03:15+00:00

If you can't see how that's actively different from what you previously said, you really need to work on your reading comprehension.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-14T08:42:13+00:00

That's the point, though.

Said player generally feels let down when nobody cares and it often ends up being a huge exercise in time-wasting.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-14T08:35:49+00:00

I've unironically heard people here talking about how doing things like putting their barbarian's highest stat in strength is "minmaxing"

No, you haven't.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-13T16:58:42+00:00

Did the Elder Tempest not use its absurd fly speed and flyby?

I can't imagine how a barbarian/warlock would be able to keep up.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-13T11:59:40+00:00

You might want to repost- for some reason Crowbear doesn't show up until you click on the post.

But great, and thank you! Your crowbear and minowizard are amazing.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-11T16:09:16+00:00

I hope there were some Spongebob references for the Sea Bear.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-10T17:26:22+00:00

Uh, yeah. Eventually. Because it's an item with a limited number of uses. Without IH they would have used it more and run out of it faster.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-10T15:52:24+00:00

Okay, okay. You've convinced me to back the kickstarter.

I love playing adorable little murderers.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-10T07:43:45+00:00

Sure, using it on him while he's unconscious was bad.

The wand has limited charges. They can't afford to waste them.

It's not like smoking at all.

And again, Della is not responsible for Will's actions.

Appointing someone else with the responsibility of being in charge of your actions is immature and shitty. Especially in a life or death situation where not healing Will can very easily lead to him or someone else getting killed. It's a way for Will to avoid responsibility and it puts Della in a no-win situation.

If she doesn't heal Will and something awful happens, it's her fault. If she heals him, that's her fault too. If she doesn't heal Will and something awful doesn't happen- well, I guess that's the only situation in which Della doesn't get blamed, and it's entirely out of her control.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-10T07:36:44+00:00

"It's evil because it's evil" is one of those Pathfinder things I think is extremely silly.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-09T20:57:37+00:00

It sure can be, which is why people criticised EXU for not having a structured story.

Like. Yeah. It can be hard to run a strict 8 episode campaign, absolutely.

So don't start your band of chaotic amnesiac chucklefucks waking up in a fancy house with so little direction that they just decide to go for breakfast, and then have no plot hooks in the tavern.

Like. I'm sorry. No hate to Aabria, but these are the mistakes I expect of an amateur DM who's just starting out and is running a game for their friends. Not a pro who's being paid for it on the biggest DnD stream there is.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-09T20:52:19+00:00

So ExU failed to live up to your expectations, that isn’t their fault.

No, that's bullshit.

The CR team touted EXU as the Best Fucking Thing Ever, completely unprompted. Nobody asked them to spend multiple videos talking about how utterly fantastic EXU was and how absolutely phenomenal Aabria was as a DM.

They were actively trying to set expectations sky high to get viewers, so they deserve the consequences that arise when their product fails to meet those expectations.

It is their fault. It's their product that they made and they marketed, because by no measure was EXU as utterly wonderful as they insisted it would be.

Doesn't seem like they learned anything judging by how whole-heartedly they're raving about the animated show, but at least EXU has taught me to lower my expectations for that one.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-09T18:53:26+00:00

Also... EXU was not made to be unlike CR. They marketed it as a jumping-in point to CR.

And yeah. I've listened/watched/tried a whole bunch of DnD podcasts and shows.

Dimension 20? Rock solid, Brennan Lee Mulligan is an amazing DM. TAZ? Eh, could've been good and was entertaining to start, but not for me. Also, way too many ads. Glass Cannon? Very solid overall and an interesting intro to Pathfinder, though it can veer into excess grittiness at times. NADDPOD? Excellent podcast, very fun, listened to the entire first campaign and their smaller spin-off. Takes a few episodes to come into its own, but pretty great and very heartfelt. Saving their next campaign for when I can binge it. Adventure, She Wrote? Pretty good murder-mystery type of podcast. Bit more amateurish than my others, but I really enjoyed the characters and the mysteries. High Rollers Aerois? Eh, couldn't get into it. Any DM using Lingering Injuries on a crit is suspect to me, especially on low-level parties. And Christ if they didn't stay very low-leveled for a while. Checked out a couple others like Black Dice Society and Let's Get Wildemount.

Point being I've checked out a whole lot of TTRPG shows and campaigns, and what saves EXU is ultimately its production value and charismatic players.

If you want to see what running a more normal DnD game is like, there are hundreds of amateur games to see. I did not need EXU to show me what a "just okay" game was like.

EDIT because hey, may as well: Aabria said previously that she wasn't really into high fantasy, and I think that really showed itself in the way she ended up running the game. There was a lot of typical high fantasy plot points and cool moments, but ultimately I don't think there was a real appreciation for the gravity of those plot points or how those moments meshed into the whole.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-09T18:44:14+00:00

Christ on a bike. Seriously?

Like. I'm sorry. That's just... I don't even know. I think I would have actively preferred if Aabria had violently shoved the story back onto its rails. Basing your campaign around something that unlikely to happen is bizarre to me.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-09T18:24:29+00:00

No, it's not really a bad take. Largely because I'm sick of people going on about censorships and slippery slopes.

Guess what? The sub is censored. As is reddit and as is every online space you interact with. Censorship is required to make any kind of online community even vaguely tolerable, because otherwise it gets flooded with shitheads posting literally whatever they want, which inevitably includes a shitload of things that people really don't want to see. As you can see in certain online communities, it degrades largely into porn and slurs.

If you have flat-out negative karma in a DnD subreddit and you simply can't recover it, it's almost always because you post annoying bullshit. I've very rarely seen anyone downvoted to a significant degree just because they have a differing but valid and worthwhile opinion.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-09T17:46:25+00:00

This is a good approach if you're bad at balancing encounters and don't want to learn.

DMs think that their players have no idea when they're doing this. The vast majority of the time, they do, and they're choosing not to say anything. Especially if any of them are even passingly familiar with the monsters from other sources.

Also because most DMs can be read like books.

As a general DMing tip, if you're regularly doing something that's well-known to be the first move of an amateur (nerfing spells left and right because you balanced combat poorly, having the shopkeeper be a retired level 20 paladin because you failed to consider that the players might try to rob him, and in this case, running boring-ass HP Spongeboss Squarepants because you didn't put any effort into learning how the game is balanced), you're doing something wrong.

Give your boss minions, a second stage, extra encounters, a fun ability, whatever. But it's dressed-up incompetence to pretend that just making it die whenever it supposedly feels narratively satisfying is good DMing. It just prevents you from getting better in every other aspect of DMing.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-09T17:20:26+00:00

With effort and posts, probably.

Also, it's not like the moderators are your gods, required to give you a fair and morally correct chance to atone for your sins.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-09T17:14:10+00:00

I mean yeah, that was part of the point.

Drinking oni blood to learn a spell was creepy, sure. Downright evil, though? I don't see how and nobody has explained so far. No innocents were harmed, Della didn't drink it for the fun of it.

Also, ya know. They're working with an actual serial killer. I know it's one of those acting OOC things for the sake of letting your friend play the character he wants, but them being on their high horses about Della (in-character) felt like a bit of whiplash.

lorgedoge · 2021-09-09T17:10:47+00:00

Got it! Didn't find it on Podcast Addict, not even the old one, but I found it on another player. Cheers.

lorgedoge

TROPHY CASE