D&D 5E Discussion

[Lhynn]

Wondering about homebrewing

Would you (any of you) allow a feat much like shieldmaster

Shield Master
You use shields not just for protection but also for
offense. You gain the following benefits while you are
wielding a shield:
• If you take the Attack action on your turn, you can use
a bonus action to try to shove a creature within 5 feet
of you with your shield.
• If you aren’t incapacitated, you can add your shield’s AC
bonus to any Dexterity saving throw you make against
a spell or other harmful effect that targets only you.
• If you are subjected to an effect that allows you to
make a Dexterity saving throw to take only half dam -
age, you can use your reaction to take no damage if
you succeed on the saving throw, interposing your
shield between yourself and the source of the effect.

But instead was for people that either use a 1 handed weapon or no weapon at all.

You gain the following benefits while you are you have a free hand:
• If you take the Attack action on your turn, you can use
a bonus action to try to grapple, or shove a creature within 5 feet
of you with your free hand.
• If you aren’t incapacitated, you can add your proficiency bonus
to any Dexterity saving throw you make against
a spell or other harmful effect that targets only you.
• If you are subjected to an effect that allows you to
make a Dexterity saving throw to take only half dam -
age, you can use your reaction to take no damage if
you succeed on the saving throw, as you use your free
hand to help you move out of the way.

But with an added grapple option, for extra flexibility in exchange of the bonus AC and possible magical effects you could be getting if you used an item in your other hand?

 

[AetherVagrant]

So I'm currently DMing an introductory PnP game for teens using Numenera rules. A couple of the kids are interested in playing a game with a bit more mechanical complexity, but they blanched when I brought in my PF books for them to take a look at, and I'm legally prohibited from suggesting or giving them books featuring 'mature' content (so, for example WoD is right out, and I think I could technically even get in trouble for having shown them 3e books due to book of vile darkness being in the same product line. Fucking Kwa public schools. ).
A few of them have become very interested in 5e, but I have no information to give them (mostly because WotC's "IT'S EVERYTHING EVERYONE HAS EVER LOVED ABOUT PNP!" marketing tack has led me to suspect that they have no clue what distinguishes it from prior editions).
How does 5e compare to prior editions in regards to mechanical complexity?
Is the combat enjoyable/bloat-free enough to avoid the use of miniatures?


And clearly Spelljammer is the best DnD setting that's ever been. My core gaming group that's lasted 2 decades still occasionally runs games in/finds their party thrown across dimensional rifts into Spelljammer because we all agree it's the most balls-to-the-wall fun of any DnD setting.

fuck yeah spelljammer. all i wanted as a kid was a group that wanted to run planescape or spelljammer or both at the same time.
I experimented some years ago (with younger, 6-11 yr olds) in adapting DnD 3.5 rules and games with other methods of resolution. A mage character may have to read or write his own spell, i had a dart board to determine projectile hits, when kids are stealthed it means they stfu or a monster eats them, brief foam-sword duels and playing "not-it" to determine initiative. it was janky and complex but a hell of a lot of fun and easy to pitch to the school and parents that it was truly educational.

 

[m_s0]

And then you follow up with 5th edition.

...which is just called 'Dungeons & Dragons.

Just like 3rd and 4th edition. "nth" edition has never actually been part of the official name, that's just something gamers have been appending to make it clear what we're talking about

I was convinced WotC labelled 4e, but it turns out you're right. Same thing for 3e, though they did feel the need to separate that from 3.5, which they did label as such on the covers.

So basically the naming is even more of a clusterfuck than I remembered it being. Go figure.

 

[Magellan]

I don't know how can it be. Omitted 4th E entirely so maybe I'm missing how much WoW-y it was, but 5th strikes me as too much WoW as well.

Well from what I've heard, all the classes pretty much play the same (wizards and fighters both have similar powers, and both play the same, etc.). I'm not speaking from personal experience though.

Also the art style is pretty WoW-ish.

 

[Lhynn]

I don't know how can it be. Omitted 4th E entirely so maybe I'm missing how much WoW-y it was, but 5th strikes me as too much WoW as well.

Well from what I've heard, all the classes pretty much play the same (wizards and fighters both have similar powers, and both play the same, etc.). I'm not speaking from personal experience though.

Also the art style is pretty WoW-ish.

In 5th edition each class has its own thing for the most part, they are really different and compliment eachother rather well, making the whole system viable as both a solo player and a team player without either of those losing ground to the other for the most part. Beautiful system really. As for the art:

this is crap

Spoiler

but this is pretty awesome

Spoiler

So a mixed bag, but getting better

 

[Night Goat]

I experimented some years ago (with younger, 6-11 yr olds)

Avian Mosquito, is that you?

 

[AetherVagrant]

I promise all my experiments were savory.
in the culinary sense.

 

[baturinsky]

Cool thread - http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=8gv0dmp1moo37mc6ftukbjtm56&topic=15153.0

I really love this one

Super-skill-monkey dumps are available depending on party make-up or multi-classing.

A rogue 11 with auto-10, expertise in that skill, a bard inspiration die and guidance cast on him gets 10+8+d6+d4 minimum on that skill check. That's without your stat modifier for the thing you're doing. If it's +5, you auto DC25. Only uses up a bard die.

If multi-classing is allowed: Rogue (whatever) 11, Cleric (knowledge) 2, Bard (lore) 3 with Sage as a background can pretty much do anything or learn anything all by himself. DC20 is an auto for anything he has expertise in, DC25 a likely hood. Although, at level 16, it should be.

You're at 1/2 proficiency for everything (Jack of All Trades), full proficiency for lots of things (skillz), double proficiency for quite a few things (rogue/lore bard/sage/knowledge cleric expertise), auto-10+ everything (reliable talent), +d4 or advantage on anything you can spend a turn on (Guidance or Enhance Ability spells) and can learn to do anything else that you actually need training for (Channel Divinity). Plus you know plenty of languages and can track down info about stuff. You can also inspire other people to not be hopeless at stuff (Guidance or Enhance Ability and Bardic inspiration die). If you wanted more random gubbins, go for arcane trickster as rogue subclass. Super skill monkey+, but with a bit of MAD.


ps. Guidance is a horribly open ended cantrip. Use it for EVERYTHING. That is the whole reason the cleric class exists (it's not for healing or anything now). It's so he can ask god to help you tie your own shoelaces in the morning.

edit 2: Outlander, sailor, or soldier might be a better minmax option for the build below. It adds athletics as a proficiency, and something else good. You lose a language, but you gain something good (tracking down info isn't that great). Probably Outlander or Sailor. Either get what you can't do well and eat for free, or switch in/out perception for something but with boats and free travel. Soldier's intimidation is pretty much covered by persuasion and deception.

Ultimate smartass. For extra annoyance - use Cutting Words and Impostor (from Assassin rogue archetype) on your own party.

 

[Magellan]

I don't know how can it be. Omitted 4th E entirely so maybe I'm missing how much WoW-y it was, but 5th strikes me as too much WoW as well.

Well from what I've heard, all the classes pretty much play the same (wizards and fighters both have similar powers, and both play the same, etc.). I'm not speaking from personal experience though.

Also the art style is pretty WoW-ish.

In 5th edition each class has its own thing for the most part, they are really different and compliment eachother rather well, making the whole system viable as both a solo player and a team player without either of those losing ground to the other for the most part. Beautiful system really. As for the art:

this is crap

Spoiler

but this is pretty awesome

Spoiler

So a mixed bag, but getting better

I was referring to 4th edition.

 

[baturinsky]

5e seems to be very hard to use in CRPG. A lot of it is rolls manipulations. Game will have to stop before AND after each roll and ask player if he wants to use one of his options to alter this roll.

 

[LeStryfe79]

4ed was WoW all over the place, but 5ed is almost nothing like it. 5th is a cross between AD&D and 3ed, with a slight hint of 4ed and a few new ideas like inspiration and advantage. Like Baturinsky said, a few rules would have to altered for a CRPG. Advantage could easily just be a short timed buff triggered by a button press and regained for a great accomplishment or making a decision within alignment. I see nothing wrong with that.

 

[baturinsky]

Advantage could easily just be a short timed buff triggered by a button press and regained for a great accomplishment or making a decision within alignment. I see nothing wrong with that.

Bonus "for a great accomplishement" (can't remember how it's called officially) is just a one of the ways to manipulate dies.

But there are others, though they are mostly class or subclass specific.

Bard has his CHA bonus of Bardic Inspiration dies that he can add or (with Lore kit) substract from most of rolls. Refilled with long rest.
Wizard of Divination school rolls two d20 after the rest and can replace rolls with them at will.
Guidance is a Divine cantrip that lets adding 1d4 to ability check.

 

[LeStryfe79]

The big difference is that you would have to preemptively trigger it before the roll. To compensate it should last a little longer than one action. It's not a perfect translation but I don't think it hurts the spirit of the game.

 

[Lhynn]

The answer is Turn based.

 

[LeStryfe79]

Yes but it still presents issues. You'd have to roll before the resolution and being something that only comes up once an adventure or so, I'm not sure it's worth it.

 

[Lhynn]

Yes but it still presents issues. You'd have to roll before the resolution and being something that only comes up once an adventure or so, I'm not sure it's worth it.

Inspirations can be rolled after the first result, it could be as simple as a prompt, inspirations could be transformed into saving graces, only coming into play when you would die or at least be incapacitated because of a bad roll.

There arent that many optional rerolls really, baturisnky listed almost all of them, luck is the other, and i guess advantage die from familiars or help actions in general, oh and halfling luck.

 

[LeStryfe79]

Can't imagine why you can't see how slow as shit that would be. Also, a prompt under certain circumstances is no where close to the actual rule so you're cheating big time by saying that. You can't just make up your own rules and imply they are closer to the original rules. So, for the sake of argument lets assume nether one of us are recreating the real PnP rules. A prompt under certain circumstances might be better than a +4 buff for a few seconds, or one turn. I can't tell, but neither one is like the PnP rule, don't kid yourself. Both of our ideas are completely obvious too, so we deserve zero credit for stating them. A RTwP system is 75/25 likely to implement what I said, and a Turn based is 60/40 likely to implement what you said. I actually prefer turn based and something similar to your system, but it's also likely a system that has already been tested many times for its validity.

 

[baturinsky]

There are also abilities that are not fudging dice, but still work as interrupts. Such as Arcane Trickster's Spell Thief.

I think these features are supposed to make people more involved and attentive to what's happening between their turns.

 

[baturinsky]

Are proficiences "wasted" if you get same ones from background and class? For example, having Urchin background for a Rogue makes sense, but it effectively gives you less proficiencies than if you'd be Sage Rogue or Fighter Urchin or something.

 

[Night Goat]

No, if you would get a proficiency you already have you can choose a new one instead. I recommend Perception.

 

[baturinsky]

Nice guide collection - http://www.giantitp.com/forums/show...-Tables-and-other-useful-tools-for-5E-D-amp-D

 

[Night Goat]

I've been using the guides from here:

http://community.wizards.com/forum/player-help/threads/4138726

Looks like yours has more, though.

 

[Keldryn]

I was convinced WotC labelled 4e, but it turns out you're right. Same thing for 3e, though they did feel the need to separate that from 3.5, which they did label as such on the covers.

So basically the naming is even more of a clusterfuck than I remembered it being. Go figure.

4e is referred to as "4th edition" on the credits page of each 4e book. I think that 4e was referred to as "fourth edition" on the back covers of the first 3 core rulebooks, and in a few places in the copy of the Player's Handbook. It isn't prominently branded as such.

I'm pretty sure that the 5e books refer to it as "fifth edition" in the same places.

Because FUCK naming conventions that make sense. You started with Original D&D (and its revision), Advanced D&D, AD&D 2nd edition, 3rd edition (dropped the Advanced) and 4th edition.

And then you follow up with 5th edition.

And yes, the edition naming/numbering is a complete clusterfuck. It isn't particularly meaningful or accurate. Before D&D 3e, we already had five editions of Dungeons & Dragons:

1st Edition (1974) - original D&D game
2nd Edition (1977) - Homes Basic
3rd Edition (1981) - Moldvay Basic/Expert
4th Edition (1983) - Mentzer BECMI
5th Edition (1991) - "The New, Easy to Master Dungeons & Dragons Game" ("Black Box") / Rules Cyclopedia

My copy of the Mentzer Basic Set even says "Fourth Edition" on the first page. I suppose that technically this could be referring to it as the 4th edition of the Basic Rules, as I don't think there is any such descriptor in the Companion, Master, or Immortals books.

I don't think that the D&D 3e books were branded as "third edition" on the original books themselves, but WotC definitely promoted them as such at the time. It was the 3rd edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, but it did also seems to draw some inspiration from the B/X and BECMI game, such as bonuses from ability scores starting at above-average (instead of clustering them in the 16-18 range), prestige classes (Companion set), etc.

3.5e was frankly a more significant revision to the rules than the ".5" implied. A major element of the second edition of AD&D was compiling rules, proving much clearer explanations of the rules, and reorganizing the books. In some ways, AD&D 2e was more compatible with AD&D 1e than 3.5e was with 3e. At least one of the original 3e designers (Monte Cook) expressed his opinion that many of the rules changes introduced in 3.5e were on a scale that should have been part of a 4th edition, not a "revision" of 3e that was released only two years later.

They're kind of stuck with it now. I'm assuming that one reason why the playtest was referred to as "D&D Next" was that they were looking for some way to dump this existing edition naming system.

Well from what I've heard, all the classes pretty much play the same (wizards and fighters both have similar powers, and both play the same, etc.). I'm not speaking from personal experience though.

The original 4e classes all share the same basic framework in terms of how many powers they have and how often they can use them, but I wouldn't say that the classes all play pretty much the same. 4e really focused on this concept of "roles" (defender, controller, striker, leader) as well as "power sources" (martial, arcane, divine, primal). There were definitely similarities between how characters in the same roles played; defenders had mechanics to draw attacks to themselves and away from other party members, strikers were focused on dealing high amounts of damage to a single target, leaders had abilities to support and heal other party members, and controllers were focused on altering the battlefield by imposing status conditions and deal area-of-effect damage.

There was a finite set of status conditions, and the game's design deliberately moved away from "fail your saving throw, sit out the rest of the combat/session," so a great many powers imposed a condition until the start/end of your next turn or until you succeed on a saving throw (roll a d20 at the start of each of your turns, on a 10+ you succeed). Powers were generally very explicit in terms of what effects they had in the game world, and stayed away from effects that were open to interpretation or judgement. It's hard for powers to not start to feel very similar in such a limited framework. For example, a wizard may be able to cast a spell that targets an enemy up to 30' away and he makes an attack roll vs the enemy's Reflex defense to inflict 1d8 points of acid damage, or a spell that targets an enemy up to 30' away and he makes an attack roll vs the enemy's Will defense to inflict 1d8 points of psychic damage. The first spell is described as a ball of acid, the second is described as a phantom warrior appearing next to the enemy, attacking him, then disappearing. The second spell could also be described as an illusion of the ground opening up beneath the enemy. That's where I really noticed the samey-ness setting in.

Powers were also designed as "effect first" in order to avoid having some characters being sidelined due to scenario design or a DM's particular sensibilities. Sometimes this worked well, and other times you had to switch from the more intuitive (and in-character) approach of explaining what your character does and then determining the result to first determining the result and then explaining how the character did it. The classic example of this being the fighter's "Come and Get It" encounter ability, which states that enemies within a certain distance from the fighter advance towards him and that he gets to make an attack roll against each of them.

4ed was WoW all over the place, but 5ed is almost nothing like it. 5th is a cross between AD&D and 3ed, with a slight hint of 4ed and a few new ideas like inspiration and advantage.

In many ways, I see 5th edition as an alternative 3rd edition; by that, I mean that it feels more like a progression from AD&D 2e than it does from 3e or 4e. At first glance, 4e looks like a massive departure from 3e, but when you look at late 3.5e material, 4e starts to look more like a logical step along that same line of evolution. 3e was the result of the designers looking at AD&D and trying to translate it into a more consistent, flexible, and streamlined set of rules. The 5e designers went back to TSR-era D&D and went through this process again, this time with the benefit of hindsight. While there are many superficial similarities to 3e, 5e feels much more like its direct ancestor is AD&D 2e, rather then 3e -- at least in my opinion.

EDIT: Just checked my books at home. The 4e books prior to Essentials all have "For use with these 4th Edition D&D products" on the back cover. The PH also states it is for the 4th Edition game on its back cover. The 5e books are similar.

The 3e books (prior to the 3.5 revision) are the exceptions. They simply refer to "the new Dungeons & Dragons game."

 

[Jaesun]

Dungeons & Dragons ‏@Wizards_DnD 43s43 seconds ago
We've posted errata for the #DnD Player's Handbook and it all fits on 1 page. Impressive, no? Check it out here: http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/ph_errata…

 

[Night Goat]

It took them most of a year to write one page?