Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[Corn Flakes]

Don't know about 5e but dnd 3.5 does have a lot of 'gm-may-I?' moments. How available are consumables, spells, downtime? How does the gm interpret various ambiguously worded rules? Can you bring some animals with you like dogs or donkeys? (almost every gm will say yes, when in actuality no, no you can't).

I think a lot of it stems from the original dnd having a much stronger focus on dungeoncrawling. Might have helped ground some of the more ambiguous stuff.

D&D has always been more about having rules for dungeoncrawling and combat over anything else. The rules for anything not directly related to encounters were always sort of fast-and-loose. That's what the GM is for, anyway: getting the players from one fight to the other.

As for salty casters not getting to stack all the spells anymore, cry me a fucking river. You already get to trivialize entire encounters with a single spell and bypass the action economy altogether. Let the martials have a +3 weapon, it's not going to outdamage your Fireball or even your 120ft fully spammable Fire Bolt cantrip in the long run.

 

[Ghostse]

Eh, if I go back to D&D I'd stick to an older edition. Not just for troon gatekeeping, but because I like my casters without video gamey "the designer of this system is an assmad Fighter player who hates that casters could have more than one spell going at a time" rules. "You can't wear these boots you just found, your necklace and ring have taken up your attunement slots! Oh but swords don't count toward attunement for arbitrary videogame reasons because I only hate mages, not fighters."

I like having Charisma dictate magic item usage, partly because it makes Wizards put points into a dump stat, and party because it makes Warlocks (and possibly sorcerers) more than just "Wizards, but emo-edgy and their pump stat doesn't give free skill points".
Granted outside of wands and charged staves, I prefer giving magic items that don't confer direct mechanical advantages.

5e has some good ideas (advantage, hit-dice based recovery, counter spell) but its really got the wrong sort of complexity in the combat system with subclasses, return to vancian casting (but everyone has a cross-bow damage at-will cantrip) and just always felt off too me. Like they wanted a fast-and-loose system, and then afterwards bolted on sanity checks and "Oh but not if X. And also not if Y. Unless its with Z.". Someone doing a write up I read described it as 'soulless' and that feels about the right descriptor.

I think a lot of it stems from the original dnd having a much stronger focus on dungeoncrawling. Might have helped ground some of the more ambiguous stuff.

This goes to what I said earlier about Rolling Stats vs Point-Buy. I don't care if you rolled six 18s in BX/1 - characters die pretty readily, so maxed stats aren't going to save you and you're probably going to be rolling again soon. In the meantime, the party will benefit from you carrying them. In 3.x and beyond, fuck dealing with your power-gaming ass if I don't kill you before lvl 3 if you juice your stats. Just do a point buy so everyone's more or less equal.

Combat is also must faster and more abstracted in early versions. Most BX fights are settled in about 30 minutes or less, 4e combat is the whole session. This means that as the GM, if players are trying to fuck around with the action economy, they can find out what's on the wandering monster table. With 4/5e short/long rests, doing that in later versions punishes the GM as much as the players and is a waste of time, since the players can just short or long rest and recover everything and just try again.

D&D has always been more about having rules for dungeoncrawling and combat over anything else. The rules for anything not directly related to encounters were always sort of fast-and-loose. That's what the GM is for, anyway: getting the players from one fight to the other.

As for salty casters not getting to stack all the spells anymore, cry me a fucking river. You already get to trivialize entire encounters with a single spell and bypass the action economy altogether. Let the martials have a +3 weapon, it's not going to outdamage your Fireball or even your 120ft fully spammable Fire Bolt cantrip in the long run.

Fully agree. I really hate whiny "I'm simply over-powered instead of game-breaking over powered. I need to depend on other players occasionally and can't just solo every encounter. Life is pain" from casters, because while I agree that 5e is over sperg-restrictive on comboing bonuses, they had to be because of people who need to be game-breaking good. (technically 4e as well, but given every ritual cost gold and took minimum of 10 minutes to cast, there was no expectation of stacking ritual buffs)

Magic you cast shouldn't be reliable. I like the idea of DCC's magic system where the exact effect of a spell are always random. Just in practice it slows things down and makes the spell section of the book, already a fell tome of autism, even longer and more autistic, and spellbooks suck since you've got to have your D30 tables for every spell ready.

One of the great things about this Rifts game is Rifts practically comes with a Munchkin Society Platinum Membership.

Dude has 700+ MDC for his main body. He takes half from lasers.

Rules for combat. Rules for spells. Rules for psionics.

THOUSANDS of pages for munchkin gear, OCC's, RCC's.

"I'll grab the Balrog by the neck and shoot him in the face with the Boom Gun!"

Games like Rifts are not my jam but I get the appeal. Everyone, including the GM, is supposed to be a munchkin and see just how much you munchkin. Sort of like B/X, when you can just drop whatever interdimensional horrors you want on the players at will, giving them railguns and tacnukes doesn't seem that unbalanced.

 

[Corn Flakes]

5e has some good ideas (advantage, hit-dice based recovery, counter spell) but its really got the wrong sort of complexity in the combat system with subclasses, return to vancian casting (but everyone has a cross-bow damage at-will cantrip) and just always felt off too me. Like they wanted a fast-and-loose system, and then afterwards bolted on sanity checks and "Oh but not if X. And also not if Y. Unless its with Z.". Someone doing a write up I read described it as 'soulless' and that feels about the right descriptor.

Damaging cantrips are so fucking retarded. A spellcaster might as well not have any weapon proficiencies, because even the most basic damage-dealing cantrips will outperform any weapon they carry unless they've got a gimmicky build/subclass like Blade Pact Warlock. I'd be fine if a spellcaster had one use of any given Cantrip per combat, recharging at the end of combat. But having them be a spammable, ammo-free, non-disarmable Heavy Crossbow with magical, elemental damage and no range penalties, and scaling alongside Fighters' extra attacks? On top of all their spell slots? Yeah, no.

Back in 3.5e my Sorcerer's light crossbow saw plenty of use. In 5e? I played a High Elf Wizard for a whole year and his shortbow was only used once. In a William Tell-style challenge. Never in anger. After all, why roll against my +1 Dex bonus when my spells hit with my +5 Intelligence?

This goes to what I said earlier about Rolling Stats vs Point-Buy. I don't care if you rolled six 18s in BX/1 - characters die pretty readily, so maxed stats aren't going to save you and you're probably going to be rolling again soon.

I was looking at the backgrounds and I realized the tables for personalities, ideals, etc, etc are actually one of the last throwbacks to old-school D&D, where you just had to create a character quickly and if it survived its first session then you might start thinking about giving it more than just a name.

Magic you cast shouldn't be reliable. I like the idea of DCC's magic system where the exact effect of a spell are always random. Just in practice it slows things down and makes the spell section of the book, already a fell tome of autism, even longer and more autistic, and spellbooks suck since you've got to have your D30 tables for every spell ready.

Technically, spells are "unreliable" because most of them either require an attack roll or a save vs. damage/effect. But in practice it doesn't work like that because even when you fail you usually still get a partial effect out of it. Even if you don't get the damage you wanted, you'll force things to move or react to you so a spell slot is rarely truly wasted.

Games like Rifts are not my jam but I get the appeal. Everyone, including the GM, is supposed to be a munchkin and see just how much you munchkin. Sort of like B/X, when you can just drop whatever interdimensional horrors you want on the players at will, giving them railguns and tacnukes doesn't seem that unbalanced.

See, I'm fine with that. I'd love for the balance to be "don't nerf wizards, buff fighters", but it never happened like that. In 3.5e even an ill-equipped Cleric with just a couple turns to cast the right spells would wipe the floor with a Fighter loaded for bear with everything they wanted out of the DMG. If I could have my fighter cleave whole crowds of monsters asunder or mulch an ogre with one particularly good round of rolling (exploding damage dice, maybe?), I wouldn't mind the Wizard being able to fry them up at range with massively overpowered fireballs.

 

[Ghostse]

Damaging cantrips are so fucking retarded. A spellcaster might as well not have any weapon proficiencies, because even the most basic damage-dealing cantrips will outperform any weapon they carry unless they've got a gimmicky build/subclass like Blade Pact Warlock.
[...]
Back in 3.5e my Sorcerer's light crossbow saw plenty of use. In 5e? I played a High Elf Wizard for a whole year and his shortbow was only used once. In a William Tell-style challenge. Never in anger. After all, why roll against my +1 Dex bonus when my spells hit with my +5 Intelligence?

I agree. One of the things I like about B/X is the "Every soldier character is a rifleman fighter" mentality because even a high level casters don't have enough spells to make it through a dungeon. (Which off-point, but that was one of the things I never liked about 3.5 which was not enough low-level spell slots unless you min-max with feats and stats).

Granted 4e is guilty on the "no need to swap weaons" front, but implements were about equal to weapons.

Technically, spells are "unreliable" because most of them either require an attack roll or a save vs. damage/effect. But in practice it doesn't work like that because even when you fail you usually still get a partial effect out of it. Even if you don't get the damage you wanted, you'll force things to move or react to you so a spell slot is rarely truly wasted.

I mean that's not more unreliable than a sword. More reliable, nothing happens when I miss. I like DCC having random effects even when you succeed.

 

[DDBCAE CBAADCBE]

So… I just met a party of players who know an evil vampire and regularly do errands and quests for him. They hang out with him and like him a lot despite the fact that he is known to have murdered many people and even sent a hoard of undead to attack the main hub city recently. The players are trying to actively stifle the authority’s efforts to find him and insist that they are the good guys…

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

Damaging cantrips are so fucking retarded. A spellcaster might as well not have any weapon proficiencies, because even the most basic damage-dealing cantrips will outperform any weapon they carry unless they've got a gimmicky build/subclass like Blade Pact Warlock. I'd be fine if a spellcaster had one use of any given Cantrip per combat, recharging at the end of combat. But having them be a spammable, ammo-free, non-disarmable Heavy Crossbow with magical, elemental damage and no range penalties, and scaling alongside Fighters' extra attacks? On top of all their spell slots? Yeah, no.

Back in 3.5e my Sorcerer's light crossbow saw plenty of use. In 5e? I played a High Elf Wizard for a whole year and his shortbow was only used once. In a William Tell-style challenge. Never in anger. After all, why roll against my +1 Dex bonus when my spells hit with my +5 Intelligence?

This is one of my few beefs with 5E. The attack cantrips are way, way too effective compared to normal missile weapons. That wasn't the case in 3E/PF, where sure you had shit like acid splash or ray of frost, but they did a hell of a lot less damage.

That being said, spellcasters still got whacked pretty soundly with the nerf bat for 5E. A lot of hilarious bullshit spells got toned back or set to Concentration, which means stacked buffs are no longer as easy to pull off.

 

[Ghostse]

So… I just met a party of players who know an evil vampire and regularly do errands and quests for him. They hang out with him and like him a lot despite the fact that he is known to have murdered many people and even sent a hoard of undead to attack the main hub city recently. The players are trying to actively stifle the authority’s efforts to find him and insist that they are the good guys…

He a good undead noble. He turning his unlife around, going out and spreading the word of Vecna. He was an aspiring bard and he is being falsely accused by the lifeist constabulary. He wouldn't get into no trouble if he was just had something to do, we need to get more gold for dem programs.

This is one of my few beefs with 5E. The attack cantrips are way, way too effective compared to normal missile weapons. That wasn't the case in 3E/PF, where sure you had shit like acid splash or ray of frost, but they did a hell of a lot less damage.

I think it would have been fine to have cantrips debuff or do a small ammount of typed Elemental damage (as in afore mentioned spells) to take advantage of elemental vulnerabilities, but putting them on par or superior to archers is bullshit.

A lot of hilarious bullshit spells got toned back or set to Concentration, which means stacked buffs are no longer as easy to pull off.

Again, this is a feature not a bug as far as I'm concerned

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

I think it would have been fine to have cantrips debuff or do a small ammount of typed Elemental damage (as in afore mentioned spells) to take advantage of elemental vulnerabilities, but putting them on par or superior to archers is bullshit.

A bow-focused martial is going to have sharpshooter, which puts them far ahead in range damage compared to cantrip slinging caster with the exception of a warlock (which is balanced around eldritch blast anyway). Let's just compare a high level ranger vs wizard vs warlock on this. Rounding up fractions on medians.

11 Ranger with 20 Dex, Hunter's Mark spell (1d6 extra weapon damage) Archery Fighting Style (+2 to hit with range), +1 long bow, Sharpshooter feat (-5 to hit for +10 damage): +7 to hit, 1d8+1d6+16 piercing, two attacks. Minimum 36 piercing, median 50, max 60.
11 Wizard with 20 Int, +1 spell spell casting focus: +10 to hit, 3d10 fire damage with Fire Bolt cantrip. Minimum 3, median 18, maximum 30.
11 Warlock with 20 Cha, Hex (+1d6 necrotic), +1 spell casting focus: +10 to hit, 1d10+1d6+5 Eldritch Blast (3 separate attack rolls). Min 21, median 45, maximum 63.

I used ranger for this example because a level 11 fighter would shit all over the others in this contest with their 3rd attack. Cantrips are fine for this edition and only get broken if the DM is foolish enough to let a hexblade warlock get his grubby little paws on a set of illusionist's bracers and turns himself into an arcane shotgun firing 8 beams in a turn that do 1d10+2d8+11 damage each at end game levels and critting on a 19-20.

 

[Fictional Character]

The problem with nerfing casters is that it does not magically make martials fun to play.

 

[Corn Flakes]

A bow-focused martial is going to have sharpshooter, which puts them far ahead in range damage compared to cantrip slinging caster with the exception of a warlock (which is balanced around eldritch blast anyway). Let's just compare a high level ranger vs wizard vs warlock on this. Rounding up fractions on medians.

11 Ranger with 20 Dex, Hunter's Mark spell (1d6 extra weapon damage) Archery Fighting Style (+2 to hit with range), +1 long bow, Sharpshooter feat (-5 to hit for +10 damage): +7 to hit, 1d8+1d6+16 piercing, two attacks. Minimum 36 piercing, median 50, max 60.
11 Wizard with 20 Int, +1 spell spell casting focus: +10 to hit, 3d10 fire damage with Fire Bolt cantrip. Minimum 3, median 18, maximum 30.
11 Warlock with 20 Cha, Hex (+1d6 necrotic), +1 spell casting focus: +10 to hit, 1d10+1d6+5 Eldritch Blast (3 separate attack rolls). Min 21, median 45, maximum 63.

I used ranger for this example because a level 11 fighter would shit all over the others in this contest with their 3rd attack. Cantrips are fine for this edition and only get broken if the DM is foolish enough to let a hexblade warlock get his grubby little paws on a set of illusionist's bracers and turns himself into an arcane shotgun firing 8 beams in a turn that do 1d10+2d8+11 damage each at end game levels and critting on a 19-20.

Congratulations, you proved that a dedicated ranged build beats a completely vanilla Wizard at damage per turn with cantrips only at level 11.

It doesn't account for the fact the Wizard didn't need any kind of specialization to get those 3d10 at level 11, or the 16 spell slots the Wizard gets per long rest, or all the damage/utility effects of at least four other cantrips they get to use at-will. And the Wizard can still deal all that magical damage while disarmed, and never runs out of ammo.

The problem with nerfing casters is that it does not magically make martials fun to play.

Absolutely. Martials need to be able to do more than just roll for attack, miss, and then stand there sucking their thumb for the rest of the turn. 3.5e at least gave you a few more options in terms of maneuvers, and Attacks of Opportunity were easier to trigger.

Battlemaster was a step in the right direction, but with Power Attack and Cleave (now costing a Bonus Action) being limited to Great Weapon Master, and with the "interesting" melee options being heavily limited by resources (superiority dice, ki, etc), and with how 5e combat drags on, it's still very easy to just spend multiple turns doing the "swing, miss, wait" dance. I help with demo games a lot, and a ton of newbies we've introduced to the game talked about how frustrating it was to be limited to just saying "I attack", getting a string of bad luck on the d20, and spending three combat encounters being used as a punching bag with zero kills to their name.

Anyway, I'm actually quite happy with casters in 5e as far as their actual level 1 to 9 spells go. They're pretty balanced. My problems with cantrips are that 1 - they're as powerful as ranged weapons up to level 5, and still competitive past that; and 2 - they're completely free and require nothing but their voice and their fingertips. A fighter can be disarmed, a rogue can be caught by surprise without her daggers, a ranger can run out of arrows, but as long as they're above 0HP a spellcaster can keep chucking cantrips around without any kind of limit or requirement. And it's all magical damage, which is rarely if ever resisted and automatically grows with level (while non-cantrip spells require you to upcast), and many of them don't need attack rolls so they don't even care about being Restrained.

I get they were trying to give spellcasters something to do when they're not casting something that costs a spell slot, but they've gone too far with it. I'd much rather spellcasters got more weapon proficiencies (as I said, my 3.5e Sorcerer could still contribute with his crossbow), or simply focused more on wands as a source of damage for them. A Wand of Fire Bolt with 10-20 charges (regaining them after a long rest) is a perfectly fine source of ranged damage for a spellcaster. You can even do the +1/+2/+3 thing with them by having each improvement add 1d10 damage, just like cantrips currently do with levels.

Simply solving the problem of spellcasters not having anything to do while not casting magic with "more magic" was just really fucking lazy.

 

[WhatIsThePunchline]

So… I just met a party of players who know an evil vampire and regularly do errands and quests for him. They hang out with him and like him a lot despite the fact that he is known to have murdered many people and even sent a hoard of undead to attack the main hub city recently. The players are trying to actively stifle the authority’s efforts to find him and insist that they are the good guys…

People running dnd monsters as just some weird people with fun habits are the most annoying shit.

Dnd is one of few fantasy game that hits you over the head that no, in this game the evil troll/vampire/dragon/whatever eating people is in fact 100% unambigously a fucked up evil maneating monster that you really should be hunting down and murder as fast as humanely possible and people keep trying to subvert it. It's the most tired thing.

So you're telling me in your setting the undead are good but the angels are gasp evil? Astounding.

I agree. One of the things I like about B/X is the "Every soldier character is a rifleman fighter" mentality because even a high level casters don't have enough spells to make it through a dungeon. (Which off-point, but that was one of the things I never liked about 3.5 which was not enough low-level spell slots unless you min-max with feats and stats).

Granted 4e is guilty on the "no need to swap weaons" front, but implements were about equal to weapons.



I mean that's not more unreliable than a sword. More reliable, nothing happens when I miss. I like DCC having random effects even when you succeed.

Wizards don't have enough spell slots because wands and staffs and scrolls are supposed to be important. As are magic items. Of course that relies a bit more on the gm to let you actually find the stuff as loot (wands quickly grow way to expensive to buy and is your most important source for extra spell slots) or get you downtime enough to craft them. But there's a big difference between a mage that brings fifty extra spell slots with them in their pocket and one who doesn't, even if those spell slots are all some dinky 1st level spell.

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

All this stuff about casters

LOL

Brodkil railgun go BRRRRT! for 1d4x10, hits on a 5 or better. Bonuses? Meh, I'll look at them if my die roll is shit.

Damn, reading all of that makes me glad I did the minor tweaks to PF and am playing Chaos Earth.

 

[DDBCAE CBAADCBE]

People running dnd monsters as just some weird people with fun habits are the most annoying shit.

Dnd is one of few fantasy game that hits you over the head that no, in this game the evil troll/vampire/dragon/whatever eating people is in fact 100% unambigously a fucked up evil maneating monster that you really should be hunting down and murder as fast as humanely possible and people keep trying to subvert it. It's the most tired thing.

So you're telling me in your setting the undead are good but the angels are gasp evil? Astounding.

The vampire in question is very unambiguously evil from what I can tell. Like nothing about him seems to be quirky or fun, he’s just a vampire with an undead hoard. Mind you these players are all supposedly Good aligned ranging from Neutral to Chaotic so I don’t see how they can justify this behavior. They let a green dragon that they could have easily fought completely destroy an important magical tree once because “we aren’t dragon hunters” despite it being incredibly close to a populated lumber town.. is it me or do these players seem scummy? I was told I’m “toxic” because my character followed them when they went yo see the vampire then reported their activity to the local authorities

 

[WhatIsThePunchline]

The vampire in question is very unambiguously evil from what I can tell. Like nothing about him seems to be quirky or fun, he’s just a vampire with an undead hoard. Mind you these players are all supposedly Good aligned ranging from Neutral to Chaotic so I don’t see how they can justify this behavior. They let a green dragon that they could have easily fought completely destroy an important magical tree once because “we aren’t dragon hunters” despite it being incredibly close to a populated lumber town.. is it me or do these players seem scummy? I was told I’m “toxic” because my character followed them when they went yo see the vampire then reported their activity to the local authorities

Eh, It's not that unusual for groups that play around with undead not being evil to not have that good a grasp on what actually makes him not evil. Depends on what gm thinks. If he's genuinely running this stuff as it is the players are just dumb.

As for telling you that you're toxic, they sound like shit people.

 

[DeagleNationRefugee]

The vampire in question is very unambiguously evil from what I can tell. Like nothing about him seems to be quirky or fun, he’s just a vampire with an undead hoard. Mind you these players are all supposedly Good aligned ranging from Neutral to Chaotic so I don’t see how they can justify this behavior. They let a green dragon that they could have easily fought completely destroy an important magical tree once because “we aren’t dragon hunters” despite it being incredibly close to a populated lumber town.. is it me or do these players seem scummy? I was told I’m “toxic” because my character followed them when they went yo see the vampire then reported their activity to the local authorities

DM please remind me WHY these paladin hit squads keep attacking us??? It doesn't make any sense. We're THE GOOD GUYS.

 

[Road Work Ahead]

The vampire in question is very unambiguously evil from what I can tell. Like nothing about him seems to be quirky or fun, he’s just a vampire with an undead hoard. Mind you these players are all supposedly Good aligned ranging from Neutral to Chaotic so I don’t see how they can justify this behavior. They let a green dragon that they could have easily fought completely destroy an important magical tree once because “we aren’t dragon hunters” despite it being incredibly close to a populated lumber town.. is it me or do these players seem scummy? I was told I’m “toxic” because my character followed them when they went yo see the vampire then reported their activity to the local authorities

The GM should just change their alignment down to Neutral, problem solved.

 

[Corn Flakes]

The GM should just change their alignment down to Neutral, problem solved.

Alignment is meaningless these days. What the GM should do is have the monsters they're siding with fuck them over. They'll change their tune real quick when "not my problem" becomes their problem. That's why these creatures are villains and monsters, they're going out of their way to fuck with people.

 

[Road Work Ahead]

Alignment is meaningless these days. What the GM should do is have the monsters they're siding with fuck them over. They'll change their tune real quick when "not my problem" becomes their problem. That's why these creatures are villains and monsters, they're going out of their way to fuck with people.

Also a good idea. Sounds like these players wouldn't even see it coming. What do you mean the Evil Vampire betrayed us?

 

[DDBCAE CBAADCBE]

DM please remind me WHY these paladin hit squads keep attacking us??? It doesn't make any sense. We're THE GOOD GUYS.

This actually happened once but it was Clerics.

 

[Neo-Holstien]

I have a Dilemma, I have two characters I can play in an up coming campaign(5e, I am sorry), but can not tell which one will scale better (one member has munchkined a monster and has thus raised the difficult greatly) I have a battle master Fighter and a berserker Barbarian (Both Dex builds), what is more useful as a damange sponge and punishment giver in the 5-11 level range wizards who actually understand the rule book.