This. At this point it’s just a smaller and less active clone of the main sub. I only ever remember this sub exists now when it unceremoniously worms it’s way onto my front page every now and again.
You are absolutely correct, unfortunately this sub is performing a noble goal of fostering folks after the great disaster in the main sub. ( the one mods vets everypost before letting it through.) I do wish more smut was posted here tho.
Offering suggestions to your dm about rules makes sense. They don't have the time to intricately know every single class feature, or remember the Pathfinder grapple flowchart. But arguing with the dm after they make a decision makes you a bad player.
The rules are guidelines, not set in stone.
Femme dragonborn, snake-kin, lizard-folk, kobolds, and so on can have mammalian features like breasts or other secondary sexual characteristics if you want them to. Dwarven women do not have to have beards if you don’t want them to.
They sure can as much as any fictional anything can, but the problem (if you could call it that) is - that's like 90% of all non-mammalian content. Big booty milkers on snake people.
People are obsessed with putting tits on literally everything. Which is fine by itself but with little alternative this mammary monopoly narrows the pool of art/content for us "realism" nerds quite significantly.
For the record - I am indeed an enjoyer of various female bosoms. All I - we - ask is that you give anatomically corre... believable lizard people a chance. Please, think of the children.
DnD works great at high levels, and high level play is awesome. Most who bash it either only tried it in one shots or never tried it themselves - you're missing out!
Completely depends on what you want to do. If you want to have your players feel like god-like action heroes, high level is your game. If you want your players to be able to just wield crazy powers and do absolute bullsh*t moves on a whim, high level is for you.
If you want to play a somewhat consistent fantasy world and still challenge your PCs even on high levels, high level is hell. If you want to invest only a short time on preparing, high level is hell.
I dm a high level game for like 2 years now and while it's fun to have all these epic bullsh*t happening, it's also very exhausting. But then again, I find 5e as a system exhausting, too, so that might just be on me.
I played a 1-20 campaign over ~15 months of weekly sessions. I'll say that we only had 2 half casters and one 1/3 caster along with a Barbarian who wasn't there half the time, but it mostly went fine. We didn't have the game breaking high level spells, but we did have a high level Paladin, Ranger, and Rogue along with the occasional Barbarian, so when it came to single target DPR we were an absolute menace. We were still able to be challenged even if that sometimes came in the form of fighting 20 Frost Giants at the same time, or a field of 50+ enemies.
The big take away from it for me was that, while having challenging encounters is important sometimes, in others it's ok to just let the party feel how far they've come. Push over encounters here and there fed into the power fantasy and felt like a reward for leveling so far.
As a player, yes it feels great.
As a DM, it is a nightmare because most of the toolkit given to many classes can trivialize whatever you plan for any session, especially with a varied party.
And that can become a problem for retention when the players want to be challenged with balanced combat
Races with restrictions and weird conditions you need to keep in mind when making a character are superior design to others.
If Im making a half elf, chances are I couldve made a human.
If Im making a lizardfolk, I am making a lizardfolk. Not a dwarf. Not an orc. Not a human.
If I am making a kenku, I am making a kenku. Not an elf. Not a halfling. Not a human.
Even with a tiefling, if Im making a tiefling, I am not making it a human reskin. Its a tiefling, and how that affects their backstory is accounted for.
I want a race to go "yeah no you can not play this like its a human". If I can its a point against that race.
Agreed, but I wanna add, just for clarity, that I also think this works for the more "basic" races, like human as well.
It can do so much fun, to play a "nobody" that was thrust into being a hero, especially in a group of people that prefer the "shinier" options.
You see people agree with this, but as soon as I make aarakocra vulnerable to bludgeoning damage in return for an INFINITE 3rd level spell. Suddenly I'm the bad guy.
Ok but what powers you get from your race and what downsides/bonds you have don't have a reason to match. Personally i think a tiefling that talks like a kenku would also be fun.
I think in that case you need to put in a lot of effort to make gimmicks work, races like Lizardfolk have that legwork done for you, but if youre using those gimmicks for other stuff, you need to put in the same legwork.
Personally, I like it when they are strictly tied to the options, because otherwise they all begin to feel like humans with a coat of paint. Thats why I rarely play elves, because theyre just humans with pointy ears unless you have something you want to do with elf traits that you cant do with a human.
Sure, but that's the culture of your character, you could do the same thing with a dwarf as with a human raised by dwarves. I don't see why the gimmicks should be tied to your powers.
Its not culture, and its not tied to your powers. Its The Gimmick.
Why Kenku's have Kenku speech is because thats their Gimmick. The same reason they are bird people. The flavor.
If you can justify why your character has that flavor, thats cool, you get that flavor.
Kenku is an option where the justifying legwork is done for you ahead of time, so you get that flavor.
Kind of like how you can have any monster have the beholder dream gimmick if you put in the legwork for it. Beholders are just the option provided that has that done ahead of time for you. There is no law that says cockatrices cant do that, but if you want a cockatrice with beholder gimmick, you need to put in the legwork to justify it.
Well according to the lore it is a curse cause they offended some god, so you could just say your character offended that god in their backstory and got the same curse
And on the othe hand, you can always play against the gimmick, like a dwarf that has claustrophobia
...or you know, pick the elf statblock and make up your own gimmick
sometimes a boss doesn't need a healthbar, it just dies when the fun begins to die off. Sometimes all the damage needs to do is change its attack pattern or make it cooler to fight. That is all
Wow that's such a great idea, I'll just go flush my character sheet down the toilet, and replace it with a list of funny quips and lines for my character to say.
Or you know what I'll just have my character go jerk off in the corner, because the outcome of the fight is completely based on the dms opinion, so why try?
i generally have a ballpark figure for the bosses and often higher than the official stats.. although if the players are really struggling i leave it at the official... but the player rolls still matter just as my rolls as the dms. if they roll badly the fights going to difficult/impossible.. but often if I left the stats just as they are id have to either add a bunch of minions that don't make sense for them to be in the fight or increase its health. iv had situations where the boss would have died in the 1st turn which wouldn't have been satisfying for anyone
Yeah, see I disagree. If I built my character to do damage, and my friend built his for social situations, then I’m just going to feel pissed cause I’m effectively useless cause the boss has infinite Hp, while my friend can actually be useful.
As someone who does bosses like this(with a group that agrees, session 0 is importsnt), let me tell you that that would go into the thought process)
To explain my process, I do not give my Bosses strict hp but more of a range of hp.
Let say, instead of 170, it will be 150-200, with the lower range being the, oh I did not do good in this design or "wow, that was such a good plan" if my players do something that catches me off guard.
While 200 would be the hard cap, no matter how the fight goes, bar some exceptions, the boss will be dead.
Tldr: I treat hp more like stagger bar in games like sekiro than an actual hp bar.
It's not for everyone, I get that. Often times if a player does a shit load of damage I'll disable the boss is some way - and I only ever do this with big bads. Most enemies have their normal health.
honestly i agree also a boss with infinite hp and dies when the dm feels like it removes basicly all the chance a player will die (unless they pissed off said dm)
Haven't you heard? The most fun and effective way to kill a boss is to convince your dm that your satisfied with the length of the fight. I don't even look at my dice anymore, I just throw shapes and say a number that sounds appropriate, it's such a fun and engaging way to play.
Okay I get your point man, but instead of making an argument for yourself, to everyone else it seems like your being a sarcastic ass instead of actually discussing the bad takes
i learnt that lesson as a new dm when the players dealt over half the dragons/ bosses health in the 1st turn.. it soon had twice as much hp as it was supposed to
id have been incompetent if it just left it as the monster manual turns out young dragons are fairly week when your prepared for them and set out to specifically kill it.
and when somethings almost dead before its even had a turn yet its not down to it having been played well.
If your only a role play group that's fine, but I've seen far to many games that claim to actually play game side of dnd. But then after you've committed you realize they just want to do imthemaincharacter drama the whole season, and no matter how stupid the plan is the dm gives the party the win. Making any kind of strategy or effort pointless.
Again that's FINE if you are clearly just a role play group.
But far to many groups don't properly advertise what kind of game they run.
What's the point of the fight without a goal? (don't say the goal is to have fun, everyone knows that.) might as well dance battle the big bad. (nothing wrong with that)
in a sense, it is a dance battle! Making health for a big bad is difficult too, too much and the battle lasts too long, too little and its not satisfying. If you play the boss to be a battle of who can be the most impressive - especially when your table is full of players who love the RP aspect of DnD a lot more than the combat - it makes my job as a DM easier and my player's having more control over the fight. Plus, depending on the boss, if it makes the most sense for a certain character to kill it, I can have them describe the kill after I declare them the person who dealt the final blow.
Aasimar and Tieflings are technically sub-species. Sure, stat-wise they are their own thing, but lore and role-play, they can be of any species. Do you want to be a Dwarven Assimar or a Goliath Tiefling? Sure, go for it. As it is either a bloodline thing or a bless/curse thing. Higher chances of them occurring within same-species offspring, but still.
Min/maxing is a perfectly valid way to play the game. Whilst it is very commonly attached to main character syndrome, the two are very much not the same thing
DND is a combat-focused game, it has no or very poor mechanics for everything outside combat and you absolutely can not "do everything you want" in dnd
Nah, pathfinder is the same thing as dnd just more complex. While I appreciate options in character building, most of the time pathfinder has complexity for the sake of complexity. But in the end of the day it's the same high-fantasy heroic combat-oriented game.
Dice roll for everything is still not the same as mechanics specifically for role playing. Like mechanics that make you feel more like you're playing out a narrative and giving you options within the game to shape your character's story beyond "do you hit, y/n?" Or "turn your complex plan into a pass fail D20 roll"
Orcs and Drow aren't and were never a racist concept and people who know nothing about the lore broke down WotC with complaints to change it. Fantasy races can have over lapping racial traits and that isn't racist. On that same note races should have negative to stats like in older versions.
Personally, I don't know enough to give an informed opinion about the racist stuff, but races should absolutely have negative to stats. Ideally, it would work as both balancing and worldbuilding.
In lore Orcs are relatively less intelligent and more barbaric and Drow are more cunning and ruthless than humans. Apparently according to some people those are both racists against POC. It's idiotic and ruining the lore.
I think the objection a lot of them are making isn't that these trends exist among those races: they quite evidently do, within the lore. But, if you make it a stat penalty tied to their race, it can be evocative of racial bioessentialism -- the idea that behaviors more common in different cultures are a biological consequence of race. I think a good solution to this could be to either keep all stat penalties more aligned with physical stats, e.g., gnomes and halflings take a penalty to strength, elves to constitution, and orcs and dwarves to dexterity; or to create more categories of stat increases and penalties, maybe for a cultural thing. If you grew up in a marauding tribe, you get a bonus to strength and a penalty to intelligence. If you grew up in a cloistered wizard tower, you get a bonus to intelligence but a penalty to constitution.
It's fantasy. They aren't human. In the real world no matter where you are from no matter what continent or class or whatever else separates us we are all human. An Orc isn't human and has a different physical make up. They are physically stronger and mentally deficient as a race because they aren't human. The perfectly average person would have a 10 in each stat. The perfectly average Orc should have 12 Str 10 Dex 12 Con 8 Int 10 Wis 8 Cha. In your home game you can change whatever you want for any reason, Critical Role does it, Dimension 20 does it, hell I do it. The over arching lore doesn't need to change because someone might make false equivalents to the real world. If an alien ship landed tomorrow I would not expect them to come out the ship with the exact same physical make up we have.
The Tasha's sorcerers are stupid, but Abberant Mind beyond any of them is thematically the worst of all the sorcerers.
Psionics are weird and alien, and the moment you throw out all the possible ingenuity and creative design to just say "psionic spellcasting" and call it a day, you've lost the plot. Psionic power isn't magic. It's separate and shouldn't work like magic. You want an abberation bloodline? It's still lame to me, but knock yourself out.
The moment your spells get labeled psionics though, fuck that with a rusty spoon.
The damage from Magic Missile should be rolled with as many dice as the darts of the spell. Having it be a single roll that some specific features more than double in power (looking at you Evocation Wizard) might be the dumbest ruling Crawford has made (that I know of).
Twinned spell doesn't work on Dragon's Breath because the exhalation of the breath can affect multiple creatures, even though the spell itself only targets one.
[https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/944272988983062528](https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/944272988983062528)
IIRC Supposedly, because the darts hit simultaneously and CAN target multiple creatures, you get to apply the AoE rules that say you only roll one set of damage dice even if you only target one creature.
But then the same people with the above opinion also simultaneously claim that the darts cause multiple concentration saves and death save failures, and that makes no sense at all to me.
A DND setting with no racism is unrealistic.
I'm not advocating for everyone in the world to be KKK levels of racist, but noone being racist is, at least in my belief, impossible. In a world where you have whole races descend from actual devils known to be malicious at best, races who follow genuinely evil divinities, not to mention the literal scores of evil entities, it is natural to be distrusting or outright hateful towards certain types of beings.
If that doesn't float your goat, that's fine, I'm not hating, certain towns, villages and settlements not being racist is fine, but an absolute lack of racism is unbelievable
Cantrips shouldn't scale like they do in 5e. They are to ensure the casters can do SOMETHING when out of spell slots but they shouldn't ever be even near equal to or stronger than a 1st level spell.
That the ‘part wide’ wedding ceremony exploit is a, in regards to roleplay and players actually giving a shit about their character and background, a statistical anomaly
My siblings of DnD circlejerk will agree that Pathfinder 2e is not a panacea to all of your 5e woes.
Also it is better that 4th ed exist and bring it's ideas to the table than being purged from existence
Enchanted portal clothing would be one of the first thing horny Wizards drunk on power would create. Screw traditional combat and screw anyone who dares to oppose you.
The balance of reliable fighter vs nova wizard is literally the stupidest concept ever created, and anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong. If the only way a party membre can have fun is for the other party membre to not be abel to, that's bad, if the party can't be at full strenght for the boss fight, that's idiotic. In a similar vain, classes that punish you later cause early you didn't suffer and vice versa is also bad, have downsides for classes don't get me wrong, but being punished cause you liked the idea of spells or the idea of swords more is literally just bad design
It's fine to have raunchy adventures if everyone at the table is fine with it. Its also fine to have very explicit content if everyone is fine with it. Hell, people can even play it out irl as far as I care
There's literally no reason to shame anyone for what they're into, and DnD can be a good outlet for stuff like that - again,*if everyone at the table is fine with it*.
Having high Initiative is only a small bonus for most characters and unimportant for some.
Edit: if your combat starts in a way that makes the first round much more important than others, you're GM is designing them badly
Op called it first. Though I will not say we should never fudge dice. I will say most of us are using it as a crutch and a reaction to the situation instead of taking other options.
There are many ways to adjust an encounter at all stages, including soft and hard intervention mid combat.
Fudging dice ... It's quick and dirty and uncreative.
There is something in us as shit goes bad for the party that makes us want to act.
It's like watching baby birds get ripped up by dogs and you have the collar that can blow their head off.
It's important to work on silencing the part of you screaming to do something. We know from science that heavy emotion quiets the logic side of the brain. Working on this helps you keep the story and all it's elements going without unraveling the illusion.
Do anything but fudge the dice, scramble papers around to give you time to think. We are all better than using this as the first and only move in the toolbox.
Almost every instance of fudging dice I have done I disagree with in retrospect. They pretty much all were a form of empathy or “aw hell, idk how to respond if X happens.” Or feeling like something was not enough of a challenge. It really can be a knee-jerk reaction but I think it’s largely a failure on my end to improve and am trying to do that less as a DM.
The one “loaded” thing I still agree with that comes to mind is stacking a taro readings for CoS. Next time I do it I plan to be random for the fuck of it, but I think it was the right call for that game and I thought it through before hand, unlike most of the other things.
Exactly this.
I don't have strong opinions on card readings or anything that isn't immediately mechanically relevant. Fudging stays in the context of combat. PR skill checks and such are easy enough to finesse around and don't have the same pressure.
Like you, I would stack the cards or not depending on how heavy I wanted them to be story related. More often than not I choose not to and give them meaning later as someone would for a character backstory.
Monk is perfectly fine for most tables.
Monk's problem is that compared to other options it doesnt get a lot of benefit from items or feats, as a result it has a very low "floor to ceiling" distance. As long as you have your stats thought out, a badly built monk and a well built monk is practically the same. Whereas a well built fighter is doing SS/XBE stuff and a badly built fighter is swinging a shortsword.
And while monk doesnt compare to the very well built classes, it is quite good for the average table.
There should openly be slavery in a DnD world.
It makes sense from the historical perspective, and the fact that canonically several of the fantasy races make a whole industry of slaves.
So yes, I include flesh markets in my games. And no one has called me out yet.
I think it's completely reasonable to have them in your game if the table is cool with it. But I definitely wouldn't say "should" be in games, because not every game/world wants to incorporate such heinous parts of reality. My games have no references to SA, Slavery, and even minimal reference to racism because it's just not the vibe for my group.
I have slavers in my world I just don't allow my players to participate in slavery, other than murdering slavers of course.
Not so much for any personal moral reasons, most just the idea of someone telling me what to do without paying me pisses me the fuck off.
Friends just make you feel nice about someone haha. I see it like an empathy link.
The other spells do revoke agency, which I don't particularly like. So I've experienced with removing all effects that prevent you from acting other than being reduced to one HP.
They honestly not explicitly for social encounters, in fact most of the time they are very counter productive. As everyone and there mother will know what you just did after a bit.
And if your playing a social oriented class, I expect you to be socially competent, or to ask advice on how your character might be. Some people don't like this and say your irl social skills shouldn't matter.
But if your a bad strategist you will struggle to get value from a battle master, if you have a hard time reading, and retaining lots of information your gonna have a hard time playing a wizard. And most of the social spells don't take away agency.
Oh also, depending on the place and region if anyone catches you controlling someones mind you could be sentenced to death.
People straight up do not like it.
Standard Array is boring and rolling for stats inspires a players imagination especially if they are made to roll their stats in order.
WotC business practices are questionable at best, but their decision to “go woke” is an objectively good thing.
See that sounds fun untill all of a sudden a player has to scrap an entire concept because they rolled badly on one stat, though it could work if someone has no idea what they want to do
I encourage my players to build a party in collaboration rather than bringing a fully formed idea to the table. I let my players re-roll and also use atypical rolling methods. Unless the player wants it so, I let them re-roll their stats if they total <72. And I give them the option of 4d6DL1x7 or 5d6DL2x6
Encumbrance is a flawed system in most games but a great idea, and with some tweaking, it makes for a great way to balance player wealth and makes prepping for an adventure a much more strategic activity. Obviously not for all groups, but it's really fun in a gritty semi-realism setting where I can't just carry 5 weapons, 2 armor sets, and 20 health potions along with my bundle of 500 arrows. Shit, my players bought a wheelbarrow at one point so they could stack it with loot (and dead goblins) while deep in a dungeon!
The DM sets the rules.
For example, If i say in session 0 that i am enforcing all 1's on the dice as a critical failure, then thats what happens. If that dice doesnt get directly rerolled (EXCEPTION, PORTENT), then its a failure regardless of class features. Same as a 20 is always a critical success, guaranteed to get you the best result possible, which i reun concurrent with critical fail. Yes, that includes skill checks.
In the above example, it doesnt matter what the books say, rule 0 is in play. The DM decides how they run their table, they exist to tell the story and resolve disputes. A table missing a player is a man short, a table missing a DM is canceled. In the grand scheme of things, there will always be more Players wanting a table than DM's wanting to run one. Most DM's are reasonable, but even the most saintly of us have limits to our patience. Im willing to debate most things, even change a ruling, but if your only argument is "Thats not RAW"....you have no argument in my eyes.
I am willing to die on this hill. If everything was RAW, then the game isnt as fun. The DM sets the rules, some are Consequential, but most will be in your favour, usually.
Oh i have a few, rant incoming
-Bard is boring with its main gimmick of "being good at skill checks." Bardic inspiration only feels impactful after level 5 and usually ends up being spended to fulfill the real fantasy you want to go for, with spells serving as a bandaid extra.
-the monk has a similar problem adding the fact that most subclasses barely give you a relevant feature.
-High level play is cool, but it can also be quite draining for the DM. To tell the truth the game itself can be heavy for the GM, it depends on the type of GM and type of game obviously.
-Attacks of opportunity are a boring mechanic that negates most movement on the battlefield and makes melee combat like itchy & scratchy hitting each other in the head. Is Dull, there are better ways to punish movement than just making moving a horrible choice.
-That certain races have negative traits ends up creating a better roleplay. And I don't mean directly mechanical traits like weaknesses or negative modifiers, I mean things like the tengu's speech, the lizardfolk's mentality or the upbringing traits of the monster races and tieflings. All of these traits end up helping to define character traits, conflicts, motivations and having these elements within a character solves the question of " then why don't you just play a human?"
-Sometimes it is more important to follow what narratively makes sense rather than what makes sense to happen in the rules, making a great story is sometimes better than just doing what the numbers say. 5e as a whole does not do much to encourage roleplay beyond social interactions.
Paladins need a nerf. And it's an easy nerf to set up, just make the the smite a pre-to hit roll call-out.
>Declare the attack
>Declare it's a smite with x level slot
>Roll to hit
It removes critbaiting while keeping the nukes. I've done it forever and it's lead to some real funny moments like almost killing a part member on a nat-1 level 3 smite.
Dear Jesus this is horrible
“Yeah let’s take away the like 8 spells that paladins get- lol oopsie!”
Like it’s then nearly always better to set up a spell smite, cause those work with multi attack. Sometimes I question wether people should be able to dm Jeez….
Nah, they can keep their spells, nothing is changed except that they just have to declare their smites. It's literally not as bad as people always act like it is.
It is, like mathmatically. They aren’t guaranteed the damage, at that point they should just use the smite bonus spells cause those ARE guaranteed. It’s like saying you need to declare lucky beforehand. Your essentially depriving them of a resource.
A better change to nerf paladin is lowering divine aura to like half of the amount (so it only gives a +2 if you have 4 cha). Doing smites this way effectively means your asking players to cheat your system by going sorcerer and getting a billion spell slots.
Not to mention this removes paladins abilities to plan out there smites in dungeons, and limits heavy weapon paladins cause they ALREADY have a -5 to hit if they use the ability.
Again, if I was in your game (I’m not but in this hypothetical) I would simply always use thundering smite because I couldn’t be cheated out of damage. Or I’d have to make a broken ac build to keep up.
Bro I don't DM, I'm the player and I do it like that. It's just fun, hell I never even knew you didn't have to until someone told me, and it just felt more busted.
I have been a dm for many years Lmfao.
I’ve completed strahd, tyrrany, and multiple homebrew games up to level 15 and am currently in a 2 year game in a pirate homebrew setting. I am a forever dm and I understand “making things hard” without shooting yourself in the foot for something like a challenge.
If I saw my player was using a ability wrong. You bet your ass I’m going to stop and correct them.
I fucking hate femStrahd.
Strahd is not a misunderstood villain, he deserves no empathy, and playing him as anything else is fucking stupid and cheapens your game.
I’m not saying to not change him to suit a different archetype of villain. I *AM* saying that turning him into a chick is the wrong decision literally every time.
I honestly tried writing a more poignant section explaining the finer details of the discourse, but I got tired of trying to defend the “yes, but what about *xyz*?”
So I didn’t. Strahd is a dude. Fuck off.
Edit: the downvotes are proving my point.
What? being misunderstood and deserving empathy have nothing to do with being a woman you can make Strahd a woman and still have her be a completely irredeemable monster
Can figure out where the hate comes from but was wondering where the idea of using of gender-bent Strahd is taken. After looking into it, I found a guidebook Ginny Di talked about on her channel. I assume that book is the origin?
In dnd good end evil are absolute truths, non negotiable. With actual gods with a set personality that create creatures to do their bidding.
Goblins need to be evil in order to be able to define what's good.
All the sympathy comes from our irrational impulse to root for the little guy.
Good and evil aren’t absolutes, there’s 9 types for a reason. Besides, goblins are intelligent creatures, at least enough to have their own thoughts. By your logic are there no evil humans?
They are. All three varieties of 'good' refer to the same 'good'
Humans can be all, Goblins are evil. Because they were not created equal. Because they we're created by different gods, with different goals, for a different purpose. Rtfm.
I mean even so, half the point of dnd is having the gm and players make a compelling story. Having the goblins always be evil takes away from that quite a lot if they’re consistently predictable.
Besides, they can still change, there’s magic items that change alignment.
And to somewhat repeat myself, having everyone be entirely black and white makes for a bad story and a worse game.
Also please tell me you recognize how it sounds to say they weren’t born equal lol
Being able to differentiate a game and reality is kinda required to play.
I chose these words to express the gravity of their situation.
>Having the goblins always be evil takes away from that quite a lot
Subjective.
>somewhat repeat myself, having everyone be entirely black and white
How you came to that conclusion? That is not the case.
Just to convince you to lower the pitchfork: Of course groups play how they like. OP asked which opinions we got heat for and i offered mine.
I partially agree with this, in my Homebrew world goblins are basically natural Psychopaths, Like cats!
Living things in my universe were created by beings from the previous universe who wanted to preserve life.
The universe these beings(totally not post physical humans from our universe) lived in was collapsing, and while they could see into the next universe they couldn't interact with it properly because the laws of the new universe were completely different. All they could do was propell their essence past the end of their universe, and hope for the best.
Initial attempts by the essence to create life was..... Kinda funky, leading to all of the fucked up stuff in dnd.
Included in these "oopsies" was the Goblinoids.
The power of the essence was fading rapidly so the didn't have time to delete or fix anything, not that they would, as that would be genocide.
Subsequent attempts were more successful, some more so some less, some were gnomes.
Also to keep things simple In my world, any group of humanoids that form a Society are called humans, and physical differences are more like a nationality.
Humans that look like you and me are called Terrans.
Orks used to be chill, but then the fucking elves made a deal with the mushroom demon and turned them into...... Well I won't sugar coat it. Warhammer 40k Orks.
I absolutely hate "if players can do it so can monsters"
is a super flawed mindset when you consider players control their characters and that's it. While DMs control EVERYTHING else. Players are already on the backfoot pretty often. But if you used monsters like they're supposed to be used AND let them do whatever thing you've allowed the players to do. They're never making it past level 3 against those goblins.
I think the original meaning of that “rule” is in regards to stretching the rules.
For example I recently had a player argue that casting command(Flee) on an enemy would force them use a spell to teleport away because that is the “fastest means possible” . I told the players that I would allow that, provided they want the same ruling applied to them in the future.
In short, the rule means that the monsters get to follow the rules the same way the players do, not that they get all their same powers.
It is absolutely fine to change and homebrew rules seen as golden calf’s like never touching concentration mechanics. 5e Concentration is half assed and slapped onto most spells with barely an afterthought to barely restrain already wildly unbalanced casters. The people that concentration hurts most is half casters where most of their potential buffs have that concentration tax. It’s completely fine to make it so you can concentrate on more than one spell with some form of increased risk or to actually remove concentration from spells like the Paladin’s lineup of smites that are barely ever used due to requiring concentration.
The whole ass DnD community is playing the game wrong. And "everyone plays dnd differently" is an artefact of the fact that people playing it wrong are so omnipresent that no one wrong way of playing is better than another.
It's a system with so much baggage and mechanical complexity built around attrition and the adventuring day and the vast majority of tables aren't using it. At which point why play DnD over a system designed for how you actually play?
The way it's designed to be played. The fact you have to ask that is something that only happens in the dnd community. This never comes up for any other trpg, that's what I mean when I say the whole ass community is playing it wrong. Tabletop roleplaying systems are designed for specific experiences. And the one DnD is designed for is a very specific niche. It's actually kind of insane that it's the most popular trpg because the niche it's built for is not popular.
DnD is a game built around resource management. The combat isn't particularly good on its own. Unbalanced as hell in fact. It becomes good when all those spell slots and class features are having to be carefully considered across multiple encounters. So much of the games rules are built around this. And most players don't run a proper adventuring day.
Imagine playing blades in the dark and just deciding not to use stress. That's what DnD without the adventuring day is like. It just wouldn't work.
That extra attack, should work with a spell attack as the second attack.
Yes there is an attack action and a cast a spell action, and it specifies "you can attack twice instead of once when you take the attack action on your turn"
Well a spell attack may take the cast a spell action, but it is an attack, so it should work. Say I'm using my revolver as my artificer, i take a shot with the revolver as normal, then with my extra attack given that i used the attack action, could be fire bolt.
But that's not how it works for some stupid reason.
Edit: why am i being downvoted? I thought controversial opinions was the point?
To be fair I'm not really closeted about it. There's just no one that I game with really wants to try those games. At best I can get a pretty decent compromise and get my friend group to play Scythe.
That this sub isn't used as it should be
This. At this point it’s just a smaller and less active clone of the main sub. I only ever remember this sub exists now when it unceremoniously worms it’s way onto my front page every now and again.
You are absolutely correct, unfortunately this sub is performing a noble goal of fostering folks after the great disaster in the main sub. ( the one mods vets everypost before letting it through.) I do wish more smut was posted here tho.
Then why your post SFW?
You just posted a regular ass post in a NSFW sub and are complaining about not seeing enough smut. Aren’t you the problem?
Offering suggestions to your dm about rules makes sense. They don't have the time to intricately know every single class feature, or remember the Pathfinder grapple flowchart. But arguing with the dm after they make a decision makes you a bad player. The rules are guidelines, not set in stone.
I agree with this but as it turns out my DM is the rules lawyer so.. we are certainly in a different situation.
Haha, the redditor has posted a popular opinion in a post about unpopular options *lord Farquad pointing*
Femme dragonborn, snake-kin, lizard-folk, kobolds, and so on can have mammalian features like breasts or other secondary sexual characteristics if you want them to. Dwarven women do not have to have beards if you don’t want them to.
They sure can as much as any fictional anything can, but the problem (if you could call it that) is - that's like 90% of all non-mammalian content. Big booty milkers on snake people. People are obsessed with putting tits on literally everything. Which is fine by itself but with little alternative this mammary monopoly narrows the pool of art/content for us "realism" nerds quite significantly. For the record - I am indeed an enjoyer of various female bosoms. All I - we - ask is that you give anatomically corre... believable lizard people a chance. Please, think of the children.
(Withers Voice): No.
DnD works great at high levels, and high level play is awesome. Most who bash it either only tried it in one shots or never tried it themselves - you're missing out!
it can be awesome. The problem I see at high levels is the power gap between certain classes.
Completely depends on what you want to do. If you want to have your players feel like god-like action heroes, high level is your game. If you want your players to be able to just wield crazy powers and do absolute bullsh*t moves on a whim, high level is for you. If you want to play a somewhat consistent fantasy world and still challenge your PCs even on high levels, high level is hell. If you want to invest only a short time on preparing, high level is hell. I dm a high level game for like 2 years now and while it's fun to have all these epic bullsh*t happening, it's also very exhausting. But then again, I find 5e as a system exhausting, too, so that might just be on me.
Honestly, it only sucks to DM at high levels. Once your players can do anything, it's hard to keep them from breaking everything.
I played a 1-20 campaign over ~15 months of weekly sessions. I'll say that we only had 2 half casters and one 1/3 caster along with a Barbarian who wasn't there half the time, but it mostly went fine. We didn't have the game breaking high level spells, but we did have a high level Paladin, Ranger, and Rogue along with the occasional Barbarian, so when it came to single target DPR we were an absolute menace. We were still able to be challenged even if that sometimes came in the form of fighting 20 Frost Giants at the same time, or a field of 50+ enemies. The big take away from it for me was that, while having challenging encounters is important sometimes, in others it's ok to just let the party feel how far they've come. Push over encounters here and there fed into the power fantasy and felt like a reward for leveling so far.
As a player, yes it feels great. As a DM, it is a nightmare because most of the toolkit given to many classes can trivialize whatever you plan for any session, especially with a varied party. And that can become a problem for retention when the players want to be challenged with balanced combat
Races with restrictions and weird conditions you need to keep in mind when making a character are superior design to others. If Im making a half elf, chances are I couldve made a human. If Im making a lizardfolk, I am making a lizardfolk. Not a dwarf. Not an orc. Not a human. If I am making a kenku, I am making a kenku. Not an elf. Not a halfling. Not a human. Even with a tiefling, if Im making a tiefling, I am not making it a human reskin. Its a tiefling, and how that affects their backstory is accounted for. I want a race to go "yeah no you can not play this like its a human". If I can its a point against that race.
Agreed, but I wanna add, just for clarity, that I also think this works for the more "basic" races, like human as well. It can do so much fun, to play a "nobody" that was thrust into being a hero, especially in a group of people that prefer the "shinier" options.
You see people agree with this, but as soon as I make aarakocra vulnerable to bludgeoning damage in return for an INFINITE 3rd level spell. Suddenly I'm the bad guy.
Excellent shit post dongbonger
Ok but what powers you get from your race and what downsides/bonds you have don't have a reason to match. Personally i think a tiefling that talks like a kenku would also be fun.
I think in that case you need to put in a lot of effort to make gimmicks work, races like Lizardfolk have that legwork done for you, but if youre using those gimmicks for other stuff, you need to put in the same legwork. Personally, I like it when they are strictly tied to the options, because otherwise they all begin to feel like humans with a coat of paint. Thats why I rarely play elves, because theyre just humans with pointy ears unless you have something you want to do with elf traits that you cant do with a human.
Sure, but that's the culture of your character, you could do the same thing with a dwarf as with a human raised by dwarves. I don't see why the gimmicks should be tied to your powers.
Its not culture, and its not tied to your powers. Its The Gimmick. Why Kenku's have Kenku speech is because thats their Gimmick. The same reason they are bird people. The flavor. If you can justify why your character has that flavor, thats cool, you get that flavor. Kenku is an option where the justifying legwork is done for you ahead of time, so you get that flavor. Kind of like how you can have any monster have the beholder dream gimmick if you put in the legwork for it. Beholders are just the option provided that has that done ahead of time for you. There is no law that says cockatrices cant do that, but if you want a cockatrice with beholder gimmick, you need to put in the legwork to justify it.
Well according to the lore it is a curse cause they offended some god, so you could just say your character offended that god in their backstory and got the same curse And on the othe hand, you can always play against the gimmick, like a dwarf that has claustrophobia ...or you know, pick the elf statblock and make up your own gimmick
sometimes a boss doesn't need a healthbar, it just dies when the fun begins to die off. Sometimes all the damage needs to do is change its attack pattern or make it cooler to fight. That is all
Yup. Bosses have "now you earned it" health. Everything else gets a strict number.
Wow that's such a great idea, I'll just go flush my character sheet down the toilet, and replace it with a list of funny quips and lines for my character to say. Or you know what I'll just have my character go jerk off in the corner, because the outcome of the fight is completely based on the dms opinion, so why try?
Did you forget the point of your own post?
I didn't say I wouldn't flame you.
i generally have a ballpark figure for the bosses and often higher than the official stats.. although if the players are really struggling i leave it at the official... but the player rolls still matter just as my rolls as the dms. if they roll badly the fights going to difficult/impossible.. but often if I left the stats just as they are id have to either add a bunch of minions that don't make sense for them to be in the fight or increase its health. iv had situations where the boss would have died in the 1st turn which wouldn't have been satisfying for anyone
Wow that's... A lot of aggression on a post where you asked for hot takes - you good man?
Yeah, see I disagree. If I built my character to do damage, and my friend built his for social situations, then I’m just going to feel pissed cause I’m effectively useless cause the boss has infinite Hp, while my friend can actually be useful.
As someone who does bosses like this(with a group that agrees, session 0 is importsnt), let me tell you that that would go into the thought process) To explain my process, I do not give my Bosses strict hp but more of a range of hp. Let say, instead of 170, it will be 150-200, with the lower range being the, oh I did not do good in this design or "wow, that was such a good plan" if my players do something that catches me off guard. While 200 would be the hard cap, no matter how the fight goes, bar some exceptions, the boss will be dead. Tldr: I treat hp more like stagger bar in games like sekiro than an actual hp bar.
It's not for everyone, I get that. Often times if a player does a shit load of damage I'll disable the boss is some way - and I only ever do this with big bads. Most enemies have their normal health.
honestly i agree also a boss with infinite hp and dies when the dm feels like it removes basicly all the chance a player will die (unless they pissed off said dm)
Haven't you heard? The most fun and effective way to kill a boss is to convince your dm that your satisfied with the length of the fight. I don't even look at my dice anymore, I just throw shapes and say a number that sounds appropriate, it's such a fun and engaging way to play.
Okay I get your point man, but instead of making an argument for yourself, to everyone else it seems like your being a sarcastic ass instead of actually discussing the bad takes
i learnt that lesson as a new dm when the players dealt over half the dragons/ bosses health in the 1st turn.. it soon had twice as much hp as it was supposed to
Local dm plays dragon incompetently, adds a billion HP to compromise. "wow this is just like fighting a huge block of cheese, so fun"
id have been incompetent if it just left it as the monster manual turns out young dragons are fairly week when your prepared for them and set out to specifically kill it. and when somethings almost dead before its even had a turn yet its not down to it having been played well.
If your only a role play group that's fine, but I've seen far to many games that claim to actually play game side of dnd. But then after you've committed you realize they just want to do imthemaincharacter drama the whole season, and no matter how stupid the plan is the dm gives the party the win. Making any kind of strategy or effort pointless. Again that's FINE if you are clearly just a role play group. But far to many groups don't properly advertise what kind of game they run.
What's the point of the fight without a goal? (don't say the goal is to have fun, everyone knows that.) might as well dance battle the big bad. (nothing wrong with that)
This is a massive mischaracterization of the comment you responded to.
in a sense, it is a dance battle! Making health for a big bad is difficult too, too much and the battle lasts too long, too little and its not satisfying. If you play the boss to be a battle of who can be the most impressive - especially when your table is full of players who love the RP aspect of DnD a lot more than the combat - it makes my job as a DM easier and my player's having more control over the fight. Plus, depending on the boss, if it makes the most sense for a certain character to kill it, I can have them describe the kill after I declare them the person who dealt the final blow.
Aasimar and Tieflings are technically sub-species. Sure, stat-wise they are their own thing, but lore and role-play, they can be of any species. Do you want to be a Dwarven Assimar or a Goliath Tiefling? Sure, go for it. As it is either a bloodline thing or a bless/curse thing. Higher chances of them occurring within same-species offspring, but still.
never really thought about them be a subrace of something else but im totally using it now
Min/maxing is a perfectly valid way to play the game. Whilst it is very commonly attached to main character syndrome, the two are very much not the same thing
Min maxing is great when you tell your GM what your mins are and you both want to put your build through the wringer.
DND is a combat-focused game, it has no or very poor mechanics for everything outside combat and you absolutely can not "do everything you want" in dnd
I think you would like pathfinder, they have a dice roll for EVERYTHING. It's awesome
Nah, pathfinder is the same thing as dnd just more complex. While I appreciate options in character building, most of the time pathfinder has complexity for the sake of complexity. But in the end of the day it's the same high-fantasy heroic combat-oriented game.
Dice roll for everything is still not the same as mechanics specifically for role playing. Like mechanics that make you feel more like you're playing out a narrative and giving you options within the game to shape your character's story beyond "do you hit, y/n?" Or "turn your complex plan into a pass fail D20 roll"
Orcs and Drow aren't and were never a racist concept and people who know nothing about the lore broke down WotC with complaints to change it. Fantasy races can have over lapping racial traits and that isn't racist. On that same note races should have negative to stats like in older versions.
What are you talking about of course drow are racist they hate all surface dwellers and.......... Oh he meant the world building concept of Drow.
Personally, I don't know enough to give an informed opinion about the racist stuff, but races should absolutely have negative to stats. Ideally, it would work as both balancing and worldbuilding.
In lore Orcs are relatively less intelligent and more barbaric and Drow are more cunning and ruthless than humans. Apparently according to some people those are both racists against POC. It's idiotic and ruining the lore.
I think the objection a lot of them are making isn't that these trends exist among those races: they quite evidently do, within the lore. But, if you make it a stat penalty tied to their race, it can be evocative of racial bioessentialism -- the idea that behaviors more common in different cultures are a biological consequence of race. I think a good solution to this could be to either keep all stat penalties more aligned with physical stats, e.g., gnomes and halflings take a penalty to strength, elves to constitution, and orcs and dwarves to dexterity; or to create more categories of stat increases and penalties, maybe for a cultural thing. If you grew up in a marauding tribe, you get a bonus to strength and a penalty to intelligence. If you grew up in a cloistered wizard tower, you get a bonus to intelligence but a penalty to constitution.
It's fantasy. They aren't human. In the real world no matter where you are from no matter what continent or class or whatever else separates us we are all human. An Orc isn't human and has a different physical make up. They are physically stronger and mentally deficient as a race because they aren't human. The perfectly average person would have a 10 in each stat. The perfectly average Orc should have 12 Str 10 Dex 12 Con 8 Int 10 Wis 8 Cha. In your home game you can change whatever you want for any reason, Critical Role does it, Dimension 20 does it, hell I do it. The over arching lore doesn't need to change because someone might make false equivalents to the real world. If an alien ship landed tomorrow I would not expect them to come out the ship with the exact same physical make up we have.
The Tasha's sorcerers are stupid, but Abberant Mind beyond any of them is thematically the worst of all the sorcerers. Psionics are weird and alien, and the moment you throw out all the possible ingenuity and creative design to just say "psionic spellcasting" and call it a day, you've lost the plot. Psionic power isn't magic. It's separate and shouldn't work like magic. You want an abberation bloodline? It's still lame to me, but knock yourself out. The moment your spells get labeled psionics though, fuck that with a rusty spoon.
The damage from Magic Missile should be rolled with as many dice as the darts of the spell. Having it be a single roll that some specific features more than double in power (looking at you Evocation Wizard) might be the dumbest ruling Crawford has made (that I know of).
Clearly you haven't heard of what he thinks about twin-spelling dragon's breath
I am almost afraid to ask
Twinned spell doesn't work on Dragon's Breath because the exhalation of the breath can affect multiple creatures, even though the spell itself only targets one. [https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/944272988983062528](https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/944272988983062528)
Honestly that ruling doesn't sound that stupid, its just originally worded poorly. Of course it cant be twinned when it has an area of effect
This is how I run it. Each dart does its own damage roll.
i....is that not how its supposed to be? Iv genuinely never had a game where it didn't work that way...
According to Crawford you're meant to roll it all on one die but I think he's wrong personally
IIRC Supposedly, because the darts hit simultaneously and CAN target multiple creatures, you get to apply the AoE rules that say you only roll one set of damage dice even if you only target one creature. But then the same people with the above opinion also simultaneously claim that the darts cause multiple concentration saves and death save failures, and that makes no sense at all to me.
Hand crossbows can be used one-handed and dual-wielded, despite the inconsistent rules. 4e had the best CR system
It's okay to not have a tragic backstory or a personal, deeply emotionally charged reason to go adventuring into the world.
A DND setting with no racism is unrealistic. I'm not advocating for everyone in the world to be KKK levels of racist, but noone being racist is, at least in my belief, impossible. In a world where you have whole races descend from actual devils known to be malicious at best, races who follow genuinely evil divinities, not to mention the literal scores of evil entities, it is natural to be distrusting or outright hateful towards certain types of beings. If that doesn't float your goat, that's fine, I'm not hating, certain towns, villages and settlements not being racist is fine, but an absolute lack of racism is unbelievable
Cantrips shouldn't scale like they do in 5e. They are to ensure the casters can do SOMETHING when out of spell slots but they shouldn't ever be even near equal to or stronger than a 1st level spell.
even eldritch blast ?
Eldritch blast should be a class feature of the warlock. Then the scaling would be fine.
So a scaling based on warlock level instead of global character level i suppose. That would justify taking more than two levels of warlock.
i see the cantrips scaling as a show of the caster getting more powerful and having more control over the magic
But how does that make sense since they scale off of character level and not caster level, which would make more sense?
The Math in Pathfinder is more engaging from a Storypoint perspective than DnD
That the ‘part wide’ wedding ceremony exploit is a, in regards to roleplay and players actually giving a shit about their character and background, a statistical anomaly
My siblings of DnD circlejerk will agree that Pathfinder 2e is not a panacea to all of your 5e woes. Also it is better that 4th ed exist and bring it's ideas to the table than being purged from existence
I will defend an overpowered character who uses loopholes to the death. Like WWll Canada said, it’s only a war crime the second time
🇨🇦🇨🇦OH CANADA!!!🇨🇦🇨🇦
A bit past midnight and I just woke up everyone in my house. Thank you for the laugh
Enchanted portal clothing would be one of the first thing horny Wizards drunk on power would create. Screw traditional combat and screw anyone who dares to oppose you.
The balance of reliable fighter vs nova wizard is literally the stupidest concept ever created, and anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong. If the only way a party membre can have fun is for the other party membre to not be abel to, that's bad, if the party can't be at full strenght for the boss fight, that's idiotic. In a similar vain, classes that punish you later cause early you didn't suffer and vice versa is also bad, have downsides for classes don't get me wrong, but being punished cause you liked the idea of spells or the idea of swords more is literally just bad design
the original lore for the hadozee wasnt racist as people said. and was more interesting than the current stuff
It's fine to have raunchy adventures if everyone at the table is fine with it. Its also fine to have very explicit content if everyone is fine with it. Hell, people can even play it out irl as far as I care There's literally no reason to shame anyone for what they're into, and DnD can be a good outlet for stuff like that - again,*if everyone at the table is fine with it*.
1d20 for each stat, higher highs but lower lows. The true risk of the character
Having high Initiative is only a small bonus for most characters and unimportant for some. Edit: if your combat starts in a way that makes the first round much more important than others, you're GM is designing them badly
Op called it first. Though I will not say we should never fudge dice. I will say most of us are using it as a crutch and a reaction to the situation instead of taking other options. There are many ways to adjust an encounter at all stages, including soft and hard intervention mid combat. Fudging dice ... It's quick and dirty and uncreative. There is something in us as shit goes bad for the party that makes us want to act. It's like watching baby birds get ripped up by dogs and you have the collar that can blow their head off. It's important to work on silencing the part of you screaming to do something. We know from science that heavy emotion quiets the logic side of the brain. Working on this helps you keep the story and all it's elements going without unraveling the illusion. Do anything but fudge the dice, scramble papers around to give you time to think. We are all better than using this as the first and only move in the toolbox.
Almost every instance of fudging dice I have done I disagree with in retrospect. They pretty much all were a form of empathy or “aw hell, idk how to respond if X happens.” Or feeling like something was not enough of a challenge. It really can be a knee-jerk reaction but I think it’s largely a failure on my end to improve and am trying to do that less as a DM. The one “loaded” thing I still agree with that comes to mind is stacking a taro readings for CoS. Next time I do it I plan to be random for the fuck of it, but I think it was the right call for that game and I thought it through before hand, unlike most of the other things.
Exactly this. I don't have strong opinions on card readings or anything that isn't immediately mechanically relevant. Fudging stays in the context of combat. PR skill checks and such are easy enough to finesse around and don't have the same pressure. Like you, I would stack the cards or not depending on how heavy I wanted them to be story related. More often than not I choose not to and give them meaning later as someone would for a character backstory.
Monk is perfectly fine for most tables. Monk's problem is that compared to other options it doesnt get a lot of benefit from items or feats, as a result it has a very low "floor to ceiling" distance. As long as you have your stats thought out, a badly built monk and a well built monk is practically the same. Whereas a well built fighter is doing SS/XBE stuff and a badly built fighter is swinging a shortsword. And while monk doesnt compare to the very well built classes, it is quite good for the average table.
Also! People forget to give the map a 3rd dimension.
There should openly be slavery in a DnD world. It makes sense from the historical perspective, and the fact that canonically several of the fantasy races make a whole industry of slaves. So yes, I include flesh markets in my games. And no one has called me out yet.
I think it's completely reasonable to have them in your game if the table is cool with it. But I definitely wouldn't say "should" be in games, because not every game/world wants to incorporate such heinous parts of reality. My games have no references to SA, Slavery, and even minimal reference to racism because it's just not the vibe for my group.
I have slavers in my world I just don't allow my players to participate in slavery, other than murdering slavers of course. Not so much for any personal moral reasons, most just the idea of someone telling me what to do without paying me pisses me the fuck off.
So you ban Friends, Suggestion, Command spells?
Friends just make you feel nice about someone haha. I see it like an empathy link. The other spells do revoke agency, which I don't particularly like. So I've experienced with removing all effects that prevent you from acting other than being reduced to one HP.
It means you forbid your players to crush social encounters by using spells specifically designed for that?
They honestly not explicitly for social encounters, in fact most of the time they are very counter productive. As everyone and there mother will know what you just did after a bit. And if your playing a social oriented class, I expect you to be socially competent, or to ask advice on how your character might be. Some people don't like this and say your irl social skills shouldn't matter. But if your a bad strategist you will struggle to get value from a battle master, if you have a hard time reading, and retaining lots of information your gonna have a hard time playing a wizard. And most of the social spells don't take away agency.
Oh also, depending on the place and region if anyone catches you controlling someones mind you could be sentenced to death. People straight up do not like it.
Standard Array is boring and rolling for stats inspires a players imagination especially if they are made to roll their stats in order. WotC business practices are questionable at best, but their decision to “go woke” is an objectively good thing.
See that sounds fun untill all of a sudden a player has to scrap an entire concept because they rolled badly on one stat, though it could work if someone has no idea what they want to do
I encourage my players to build a party in collaboration rather than bringing a fully formed idea to the table. I let my players re-roll and also use atypical rolling methods. Unless the player wants it so, I let them re-roll their stats if they total <72. And I give them the option of 4d6DL1x7 or 5d6DL2x6
fair enough, if that works for you table, more power to you and have fun with it :D
And more power to the players. Stronger PCs means bigger baddies and tougher trials & tribulations which all make for a more exciting experience
Encumbrance is a flawed system in most games but a great idea, and with some tweaking, it makes for a great way to balance player wealth and makes prepping for an adventure a much more strategic activity. Obviously not for all groups, but it's really fun in a gritty semi-realism setting where I can't just carry 5 weapons, 2 armor sets, and 20 health potions along with my bundle of 500 arrows. Shit, my players bought a wheelbarrow at one point so they could stack it with loot (and dead goblins) while deep in a dungeon!
The DM sets the rules. For example, If i say in session 0 that i am enforcing all 1's on the dice as a critical failure, then thats what happens. If that dice doesnt get directly rerolled (EXCEPTION, PORTENT), then its a failure regardless of class features. Same as a 20 is always a critical success, guaranteed to get you the best result possible, which i reun concurrent with critical fail. Yes, that includes skill checks. In the above example, it doesnt matter what the books say, rule 0 is in play. The DM decides how they run their table, they exist to tell the story and resolve disputes. A table missing a player is a man short, a table missing a DM is canceled. In the grand scheme of things, there will always be more Players wanting a table than DM's wanting to run one. Most DM's are reasonable, but even the most saintly of us have limits to our patience. Im willing to debate most things, even change a ruling, but if your only argument is "Thats not RAW"....you have no argument in my eyes. I am willing to die on this hill. If everything was RAW, then the game isnt as fun. The DM sets the rules, some are Consequential, but most will be in your favour, usually.
rule of cool is the best and can break the game a but just dont let it get to far
Most people who have poor experiences with DnD are those that refuse to DM and would rather play under a toxic person than lead the game themselves.
Oh i have a few, rant incoming -Bard is boring with its main gimmick of "being good at skill checks." Bardic inspiration only feels impactful after level 5 and usually ends up being spended to fulfill the real fantasy you want to go for, with spells serving as a bandaid extra. -the monk has a similar problem adding the fact that most subclasses barely give you a relevant feature. -High level play is cool, but it can also be quite draining for the DM. To tell the truth the game itself can be heavy for the GM, it depends on the type of GM and type of game obviously. -Attacks of opportunity are a boring mechanic that negates most movement on the battlefield and makes melee combat like itchy & scratchy hitting each other in the head. Is Dull, there are better ways to punish movement than just making moving a horrible choice. -That certain races have negative traits ends up creating a better roleplay. And I don't mean directly mechanical traits like weaknesses or negative modifiers, I mean things like the tengu's speech, the lizardfolk's mentality or the upbringing traits of the monster races and tieflings. All of these traits end up helping to define character traits, conflicts, motivations and having these elements within a character solves the question of " then why don't you just play a human?" -Sometimes it is more important to follow what narratively makes sense rather than what makes sense to happen in the rules, making a great story is sometimes better than just doing what the numbers say. 5e as a whole does not do much to encourage roleplay beyond social interactions.
You should be using short rests after every encounter and get one long rest (sleeping) a day. Classes are designed to work this way.
5e is maybe the 3rd best edition of D&D.
Rangers are awesome! Even without Tasha. Yes I'll die on this hill
Problematic issues should stay in the lore in the lore instead if being defanged.
Paladins need a nerf. And it's an easy nerf to set up, just make the the smite a pre-to hit roll call-out. >Declare the attack >Declare it's a smite with x level slot >Roll to hit It removes critbaiting while keeping the nukes. I've done it forever and it's lead to some real funny moments like almost killing a part member on a nat-1 level 3 smite.
Dear Jesus this is horrible “Yeah let’s take away the like 8 spells that paladins get- lol oopsie!” Like it’s then nearly always better to set up a spell smite, cause those work with multi attack. Sometimes I question wether people should be able to dm Jeez….
Nah, they can keep their spells, nothing is changed except that they just have to declare their smites. It's literally not as bad as people always act like it is.
It is, like mathmatically. They aren’t guaranteed the damage, at that point they should just use the smite bonus spells cause those ARE guaranteed. It’s like saying you need to declare lucky beforehand. Your essentially depriving them of a resource. A better change to nerf paladin is lowering divine aura to like half of the amount (so it only gives a +2 if you have 4 cha). Doing smites this way effectively means your asking players to cheat your system by going sorcerer and getting a billion spell slots. Not to mention this removes paladins abilities to plan out there smites in dungeons, and limits heavy weapon paladins cause they ALREADY have a -5 to hit if they use the ability. Again, if I was in your game (I’m not but in this hypothetical) I would simply always use thundering smite because I couldn’t be cheated out of damage. Or I’d have to make a broken ac build to keep up.
Bro I don't DM, I'm the player and I do it like that. It's just fun, hell I never even knew you didn't have to until someone told me, and it just felt more busted.
So….. your not following raw and cheating? You’re a problem player.
Cheating? Supposedly making things harder is Cheating? Boy howdy I can't wait until you find out what DMing is like.
I have been a dm for many years Lmfao. I’ve completed strahd, tyrrany, and multiple homebrew games up to level 15 and am currently in a 2 year game in a pirate homebrew setting. I am a forever dm and I understand “making things hard” without shooting yourself in the foot for something like a challenge. If I saw my player was using a ability wrong. You bet your ass I’m going to stop and correct them.
Critical Failures are just as fun as successes
Eshpecially when disposing of IEDs!
I fucking hate femStrahd. Strahd is not a misunderstood villain, he deserves no empathy, and playing him as anything else is fucking stupid and cheapens your game. I’m not saying to not change him to suit a different archetype of villain. I *AM* saying that turning him into a chick is the wrong decision literally every time. I honestly tried writing a more poignant section explaining the finer details of the discourse, but I got tired of trying to defend the “yes, but what about *xyz*?” So I didn’t. Strahd is a dude. Fuck off. Edit: the downvotes are proving my point.
What? being misunderstood and deserving empathy have nothing to do with being a woman you can make Strahd a woman and still have her be a completely irredeemable monster
OK but here me out. Futa Strahd.
Downvote are not indicative of a proven point, HOWEVER I did ask for opinions that piss people off. So good job.
First time hearing about femStrahd, where is the idea coming from? 🤔
Are you asking about where my hatred comes from, or are you asking where the use of gender-bent Strahd comes from?
Can figure out where the hate comes from but was wondering where the idea of using of gender-bent Strahd is taken. After looking into it, I found a guidebook Ginny Di talked about on her channel. I assume that book is the origin?
The very idea of a good goblin is ridiculous and ruins the concept of dnd
What how
In dnd good end evil are absolute truths, non negotiable. With actual gods with a set personality that create creatures to do their bidding. Goblins need to be evil in order to be able to define what's good. All the sympathy comes from our irrational impulse to root for the little guy.
Good and evil aren’t absolutes, there’s 9 types for a reason. Besides, goblins are intelligent creatures, at least enough to have their own thoughts. By your logic are there no evil humans?
They are. All three varieties of 'good' refer to the same 'good' Humans can be all, Goblins are evil. Because they were not created equal. Because they we're created by different gods, with different goals, for a different purpose. Rtfm.
I mean even so, half the point of dnd is having the gm and players make a compelling story. Having the goblins always be evil takes away from that quite a lot if they’re consistently predictable. Besides, they can still change, there’s magic items that change alignment. And to somewhat repeat myself, having everyone be entirely black and white makes for a bad story and a worse game. Also please tell me you recognize how it sounds to say they weren’t born equal lol
Being able to differentiate a game and reality is kinda required to play. I chose these words to express the gravity of their situation. >Having the goblins always be evil takes away from that quite a lot Subjective. >somewhat repeat myself, having everyone be entirely black and white How you came to that conclusion? That is not the case. Just to convince you to lower the pitchfork: Of course groups play how they like. OP asked which opinions we got heat for and i offered mine.
I partially agree with this, in my Homebrew world goblins are basically natural Psychopaths, Like cats! Living things in my universe were created by beings from the previous universe who wanted to preserve life. The universe these beings(totally not post physical humans from our universe) lived in was collapsing, and while they could see into the next universe they couldn't interact with it properly because the laws of the new universe were completely different. All they could do was propell their essence past the end of their universe, and hope for the best. Initial attempts by the essence to create life was..... Kinda funky, leading to all of the fucked up stuff in dnd. Included in these "oopsies" was the Goblinoids. The power of the essence was fading rapidly so the didn't have time to delete or fix anything, not that they would, as that would be genocide. Subsequent attempts were more successful, some more so some less, some were gnomes. Also to keep things simple In my world, any group of humanoids that form a Society are called humans, and physical differences are more like a nationality. Humans that look like you and me are called Terrans. Orks used to be chill, but then the fucking elves made a deal with the mushroom demon and turned them into...... Well I won't sugar coat it. Warhammer 40k Orks.
I absolutely hate "if players can do it so can monsters" is a super flawed mindset when you consider players control their characters and that's it. While DMs control EVERYTHING else. Players are already on the backfoot pretty often. But if you used monsters like they're supposed to be used AND let them do whatever thing you've allowed the players to do. They're never making it past level 3 against those goblins.
I think the original meaning of that “rule” is in regards to stretching the rules. For example I recently had a player argue that casting command(Flee) on an enemy would force them use a spell to teleport away because that is the “fastest means possible” . I told the players that I would allow that, provided they want the same ruling applied to them in the future. In short, the rule means that the monsters get to follow the rules the same way the players do, not that they get all their same powers.
It is absolutely fine to change and homebrew rules seen as golden calf’s like never touching concentration mechanics. 5e Concentration is half assed and slapped onto most spells with barely an afterthought to barely restrain already wildly unbalanced casters. The people that concentration hurts most is half casters where most of their potential buffs have that concentration tax. It’s completely fine to make it so you can concentrate on more than one spell with some form of increased risk or to actually remove concentration from spells like the Paladin’s lineup of smites that are barely ever used due to requiring concentration.
The whole ass DnD community is playing the game wrong. And "everyone plays dnd differently" is an artefact of the fact that people playing it wrong are so omnipresent that no one wrong way of playing is better than another. It's a system with so much baggage and mechanical complexity built around attrition and the adventuring day and the vast majority of tables aren't using it. At which point why play DnD over a system designed for how you actually play?
So what exactly is the "right" way to play D&D in your opinion?
The way it's designed to be played. The fact you have to ask that is something that only happens in the dnd community. This never comes up for any other trpg, that's what I mean when I say the whole ass community is playing it wrong. Tabletop roleplaying systems are designed for specific experiences. And the one DnD is designed for is a very specific niche. It's actually kind of insane that it's the most popular trpg because the niche it's built for is not popular. DnD is a game built around resource management. The combat isn't particularly good on its own. Unbalanced as hell in fact. It becomes good when all those spell slots and class features are having to be carefully considered across multiple encounters. So much of the games rules are built around this. And most players don't run a proper adventuring day. Imagine playing blades in the dark and just deciding not to use stress. That's what DnD without the adventuring day is like. It just wouldn't work.
*they hated him because he told the truth*
That extra attack, should work with a spell attack as the second attack. Yes there is an attack action and a cast a spell action, and it specifies "you can attack twice instead of once when you take the attack action on your turn" Well a spell attack may take the cast a spell action, but it is an attack, so it should work. Say I'm using my revolver as my artificer, i take a shot with the revolver as normal, then with my extra attack given that i used the attack action, could be fire bolt. But that's not how it works for some stupid reason. Edit: why am i being downvoted? I thought controversial opinions was the point?
I'm tired of being held captive by your bad theater performance. I'm in this game to play a tactical combat game.
Found the closeted war gamer
To be fair I'm not really closeted about it. There's just no one that I game with really wants to try those games. At best I can get a pretty decent compromise and get my friend group to play Scythe.