dnd-discussion

[woven flint]

He wasn't evil
But he was forced into a Pact by a deal his father had made before he was born

Then again, his father didn't expect to have children...
But that Devil twisted fate just enough so the deal could come to fruition

The deal was that the first child of every generation would have their lifespan halved and have to work under that devil and carry out his deeds

Aarokocra only live 30 years, he was nearing 15 before he decided he had enough of the false worship and breaking his back to serve a devil he made no promise to

He couldn't even yell at his father about it because the Devil made him accidentally kill him and because the contract was so binding, it went unto himself

[limber crane]

Hello

[paper portal]

hii

[limber crane]

Woah your a warlock what do they do?

[paper portal]

warlocks have less spell slots but they get them back more often

they also have a signature cantrip called eldritch blast thats very good

[limber crane]

Wow 😮

[broken imp]

very very good

[high vine]

What do you guys think about the idea of the player making death saving throws but only letting the DM see the result? Like on a cup or something? Sounds kind of like a cool way to add tension

Players could use insight or whatever to get an idea of the result like "their condition appears to worsen!" Or vice versa

[fickle heart]

I honestly like this on principle, as it makes players going down feel much more dangerous.

[hidden spindle]

Its a lot better than when the DM does it alone in secret

[frail wasp]

wasn't really excited about it when we tried it

[proud gyro]

https://youtube.com/shorts/s2Y41lo4Y4w?si=_-KjYo_TYIyUy5zp

[severe fox]

I worked with my dm to make the dumbest dnd character possible

[paper portal]

alternatively you could just open #optimization

[knotty pasture]

Rationality and insanity are often just an inch apart

[severe fox]

I’m treading the LINE of both

[cobalt owl]

I don't do this, mainly because I don't think it's necessary

I also don't really care about whether it's meta gaming or not, I just think players deserve to know info like that

[severe fox]

Do people not let players roll death saves?

[timber turtle]

What DND monster would taste the best?

[severe fox]

Elves

Nah I’m joking but Cave Fisher might be up there

[cobalt owl]

Something something "immersion" "stops metagaming/uppy downy"

[prime basin]

succubus

[feral fulcrum]

I see we're two for two for cannablism

[lavish flame]

I've played enough NetHack to know that you should be eating any remains of Beholderkin you find

[meager fractal]

Why does the gelatinous cube taste like burning

[limber trail]

It's an acidic cube, acid generally burns

[frail wasp]

you're supposed to cook it first

[limber trail]

...

so that's why my mouth stings.....

[meager fractal]

Those Achaierai from 3.x probably taste like the best fried chicken ever

[hidden spindle]

Chicken

[lavish flame]

holy shit why didn't I think of that

[dense parrot]

I DID IT
I BOUGHT BALDURS GATE 3
Omg I’m broke again lol

[severe fox]

chat i found a game that bans stright up classes do i run away

[hidden spindle]

Are they all Sidekicks?

Cause that seems like fun

[severe fox]

no i mean like warlock and sorcerer (sorcerer is my main)

[hidden spindle]

Their table, their rules

[woven flint]

I have succumb to the urge.

I changed my Firbolg Wildmagic Sorcerer into a Moon Bard

[lavish flame]

yeah

[knotty pasture]

Eh if they don't ban Wizard or Bard, they could be decent alternatives

[lavish flame]

i guess hear them out on why, but you should dip highkey

[knotty pasture]

Unless this is a ban all mage classes + Bard

[lavish flame]

anybody afraid of something in a core rulebook is just not gonna be a quality DM idk

[hidden spindle]

Rangers only perhaps?

[severe fox]

its artifcer sorcerer and warlock

[woven flint]

I just realized that my Firbolg Moon Bard is gonna be turning invisible.. a lot lmao

[knotty pasture]

Eh Wizard and Bard's still there, up to you

[hidden spindle]

Then you're fine

[woven flint]

Nah laddies n' lassies, I ain't here.. ya hear?
Shhh...

[severe fox]

but metamagic...

[hidden spindle]

Metamagic Adept?

[severe fox]

its 2014 core rulebooks only

[hidden spindle]

That's a nice restriction

[severe fox]

ikr

play human, elf, dwarf, gnome, half elf, half long and halfling.

not even the whole PHB is here

i wonder what a half long is

[hidden spindle]

How often will you make use of their 3ft shorter or taller Disguise Self?

[knotty pasture]

What about Tieflings, Dragonborn, etc?

I think I would sortie with my Elf Ranger if I were in this table

[humble cairn]

That's extremely restrictive. I don't think I would play in that, but it's not automatically a run away? What is the stated purpose of these restrictions?

[lavish flame]

yeeeesh

[thick lotus]

What’s a good amount of low level creatures I can throw at my 7 level 1’s parry

I’m having trouble deciding what’s fair and what’s overkill

[severe fox]

they havent given a reason yet

[hidden spindle]

Human Beast Master Ranger though~

[lavish flame]

I'd cap it out at 5 tbh

[woven flint]

We're gonna be in the Feywilds, i think it just depends on what he's trying to do lol

[humble cairn]

What about it?

[hidden spindle]

The restrictions leave it open. So they're good

[thick lotus]

that doesn’t answer my question

It’s a large party purely because it’s a friends only thing. Non of us aren’t strangers

[hidden spindle]

Honestly, it sounds like a really good time.

[woven flint]

He's only gonna have 12 AC until level 4 where he'll get a DEX and CHA asi and have 13 AC and 20 CHA lol

But, he can also turn invisible quite a bit

[severe fox]

12 ac sounds a bit low

[woven flint]

Yeah, well, he's a pretty Low Dex Bard, yea.

[hidden spindle]

But ey, 20 CHA is nice

[severe fox]

i ee

true!

[humble cairn]

It's not apparent yet, but a lot of times being this restrictive also comes with a lot of species based stereotypes. Not always great, at least for me.

[woven flint]

Twas only so much I could do with the array we were given!
Which wasn't bad

11, 13, 16, 12, 12, 19

Dm decided he wanted to rolls stats for the party and that's what we got lol

He doesn't typically do that, lately he's just been trying different things with stats

[hidden spindle]

Restrictions are fun for me I suppose

[woven flint]

Most likely gonna be sittin' me happy arse in the back!

[humble cairn]

For me it depends on what the restrictions are for.

[hidden spindle]

Makes it fun to play with what the DM wants

[woven flint]

I could also just take spell sniper at level 4 🤔

Forget the AC n' just be the silly sniper bard

[hidden spindle]

I enjoy Ritual Caster. Spell Sniper for EB?

[hidden spindle]

That's the perfect mystery

[knotty pasture]

As long as its not too many, makes for fun brainstorming

I have 6 PCs and a self insert for this purpose, almost no amount of bans will trap me from playing what I want

[humble cairn]

Ehhhh ... I don't like to play the "will this DM make me uncomfortable with racism?" roulette.

[rare ember]

I have rolled my ability scores for my druid character, my strength score is an astonishing 3, but hey. My wisdom is 20 after background and species.

I just BARELY manage to overpower the rat statblock strenght wise.

[ripe nimbus]

usually I think restrictions like this specific one just come from DMs wanting a slightly less weird fantasy world or liking the aesthetics of older editions of D&D's default settings (where tieflings and dragonborns were very uncommon), which are both fine preferences

[paper portal]

i love my RAW shenanigans but i always have more normal characters ready to play lol

[ripe nimbus]

and, like, the DM is perfectly within their rights to restrict what character options make sense for their setting, after all. many of the D&D species are setting-specific or conflict with the themes of some settings. (more radically, outside of the PHB there's no reason to assume a character option is allowed "by default." for one, lots of people just don't own stuff other than the core books)

[ripe nimbus]

hope your DM isn't playing variant encumbrance...

[humble cairn]

Yeah .. and a lot of time when they want that aesthetic they also want the stereotypes and other uncomfortable stuff associated with that aesthetic.

[ripe nimbus]

i dont really think there’s a distinct set of stereotypes associated with elves in games that don’t allow tieflings and dragonborn vs with elves in games which do

i do think there are stereotypes associated with elves—ones written into the book even—but they’re present even in games ive played that allow tieflings and dragonborn

[humble cairn]

There are. Some of the, class related, like letting elves be wizards or rangers, but not barbarians.

[flint ledge]

Some games don't allow Tieflings and dragonborn?

[humble cairn]

This game: #dnd-discussion message

[flint ledge]

I mean well duh but is that common?

[humble cairn]

That's a different question, and I don't know.

[stuck shuttle]

I doubt it’s common, they’re some of the most popular species to play

Though exact statistics are going to be hard to come by, just by the sheer number of DMs that have run / do run games

[ripe nimbus]

i don’t think banning any phb races is common, but if someone does ban any, it’s gonna be dragonborn and tieflings

[ripe nimbus]

i dont think ive seen anyone try to bring back ad&d race-class restrictions, tbh

[thorn abyss]

Hey guys, curious.

Where would you say “creative liberties” end and “breaking rules” begins?

For example. A town of people who turn into werewolves who aren’t crazy. I think it’s a fun idea but it feels like it breaks monster rules

[ripe nimbus]

that doesn’t sound like it’s breaking any rules, it’s just changing a setting conceit

or adding a new one in

[flint ledge]

It's sorta your world as the DM, you make the lore monster rules. Especially with the new MM

[signal imp]

It doesn't break the rule but it would keep players on their toes

[lavish flame]

Unironically breaks no rules whatsoever you are the dungeon master, if these ppl are chill, then they're just chill

[knotty pasture]

When something deviates from RAW/RAI in theory

In practice, following RAW/RAI literally also gives birth to many exploits so there's no true answer to this question lol

[toxic sand]

I dont like Dragonborn, but also try to make a habit of not touching core species despite my distaste. I generally don't allow weird races though.

[signal imp]

As long as the player and the dm are having fun with the story.

[knotty pasture]

My hot take is that I'd ban Half-Elves and Half-Orcs

You're either human or an elf/orc

[stuck shuttle]

At base any time you change the mechanics of something you’d be “breaking the rules.” How serious that is depends on what you’re changing and the people you’re playing with.

[round mountain]

To be fair, you will constantly find rules that are worded oddly or have conflicts between old and new rules

[stuck shuttle]

In my opinion I’d draw the line where it breaks consistency or expectations in a way that counters player investment into their characters to an overbearing degree.

[round mountain]

For me, I enjoy the logical discussion on how magic actually works. For example wall of force. Does it cut off breathable oxygen? It's not stated.

[distant cliff]

hi

[round mountain]

Hai

Another thing, if nothing can physically pass wall of force, that means light too. If it was literal, wall of force would literally create a dark, soundproof, vacuum that light can't escape. You would realistically die inside it in minutes.

So I think it's safe to take certain liberties in how you think something should work

[karmic echo]

you know

how do you all go about making the backstories for your characters, cause i think im kind of an oddball here

in that i generally don't do much writing beforehand, but i get deeper once i actually have to roleplay them

like, in my dragon heist game, my idea for a character was that i wanted to play an evil aligned character, but not like in a murderhobo get the party into problems kinda way

[cobalt owl]

I do the same sometimes

[glass granite]

Why would it be a vacuum?

[cobalt owl]

It depends on whether inspiration strikes before or after game stsrt

[glass granite]

It would be sealed, but there’s still matter IN the barrier

[round mountain]

Maybe used vacuum a bit loosely. But essentially there's gonna be a true pressure difference inside versus outside

[paper portal]

both (current) versions of dnd explicitly dont work with real life physics

[karmic echo]

so the idea i had was ok this is a guy that grew up poor and mistreated by society, and so he wants to "win" against everything and everyone, only looking out for himself and very very few other people

[round mountain]

Yeah but you have to assume some physics. It's more like a common sense expectation is going on

[paper portal]

why would your character be travelling with their party then

[karmic echo]

ah heres the thing, he is a very very high functioning evil person

[paper portal]

RAW you assume no physics (which yes breaks the game even further )

[karmic echo]

in dragon heist, you are all owners of a tavern, and he really wants to make money off it

[knotty pasture]

Follow the guideline of what I did before adventuring, why did I adventure, what do I hope to get out of adventuring

But otherwise yea my concepts are kind of half baked on a closer look and it'll take dnd sessions to iron them out proper

[round mountain]

Look at it this way, when it says nothing physically pass through it. That means it's assigning things that you should assume.

[karmic echo]

and like, he is not anti social by any means, he just doesn't care much for heroics. there was this time last session where after a battle our healers were helping some bystanders that were injured, but we had some important info we needed to deliver so he was like

folks can we stop caring about these randos and get on with our actual business

[glass granite]

I mean you’re also a rando

[round mountain]

When I make a character I think of what class I wanna play then make up a story of a person that would be that class

[knotty pasture]

No the sentence was connected lol, Pug isn't calling anyone out

[glass granite]

Oh

Ooof mb

[paper portal]

yeah i tend to decide mechanics first, its easier to make a cool character around a good build than a good build around a cool character imo

[karmic echo]

the thing i was learning as i played him though was that like, depending on how things turn out he can probably be redeemed, another player told me the way they viewed him was that like, he wants money and power as a way to shield himself from being mistreated, but what he really needs is like, care and proximity to other people

and this was all like not stuff i intended from the start

it emerged as i was playing him

[round mountain]

Yeah, I have trouble matching an idea to a sub class versus building the idea around a subclass

Like I was looking at circle of spores druid, came up with someone cool

[knotty pasture]

The order doesn't really matter right? Especially when flavoring is free

You can make an idea to suit a subclass or decide on a subclass and fit an idea in it

[round mountain]

Flavor only goes so far

[knotty pasture]

That being said I am guilty of making an idea to suit a subclass

My 4th PC experienced way too many rewrites because I literally can't decide what I want for it

[paper portal]

not really its just a matter of how you wanna do stuff

[round mountain]

• I want my character to be a ninja that uses magic (guh is that rogue, wizard. Maybe sorcerer. Do I take assassin?

• I want my character to be a Pact of the genie (I know exactly how to do this now. This is literally just Aladdin)

Basically

[paper portal]

yeah thats how i see it too

[knotty pasture]

Question since we're kind of brainstorming based on your campaign for fun:

• Does your DM follow Tasha's rules (you can assign race stat bonuses wherever you want instead of being fixed based on race)
• Can Druids wear metal armor

[ripe nimbus]

well wall of force also specifies that it’s invisible, which is only possible if light passes through it

“no creatures or objects,” in the usual D&D sense of “object,” seems to be the meaning of “nothing” there

[karmic echo]

druids can wear metal armor

and tasha's is honestly better yeah, (way better than having it be tied to your background like 5.5)

[knotty pasture]

No I mean in Dolly's campaign, cuz by RAW you can't

[karmic echo]

oh i see

[knotty pasture]

And Dolly's DM seems v focused on only allowing some PHB options

[flint ledge]

I personally like it being tied to your background way more

Though Tasha's is also pretty good.

[karmic echo]

i think the freedom to have your stats not necessarily be tied to what you did beforehand

the origin feats are cool tho

[karmic echo]

tbh it wasn't even a mechanical thing

the extent to his backstory was like, warlock dragonborn, his patron is himself from an alternate dimension where he became a lich

wants him to get the dragon heist treasure for unknown reasons

[flint ledge]

I mean it makes some sense, though I get it

[karmic echo]

the build was like, a very normal undead warlock

and then as i played it i got really inside his head

[humble cairn]

Even original 2014 PHB didn't say druids can't wear metal armor, just that they don't. SAC cleared it up.

[knotty pasture]

All the more reason to wait for Dolly's clarification

[hot gate]

Ye. They explode

[round mountain]

I need to reread it but I totally believe you and that makes sense to me. But the core issue is that you have to make assumptions on what is reasonable. Also with the wording. If nothing physically can pass through, does that mean things can magically pass through. What kind of magic. I think they could have just said it's "akin to an indestructible wall". Would be more sensible to me

But I'm also not as smart as the makers. Just a bit of silliness I find in specific wordings.

[flint ledge]

They probably tried to avoid some rules lawyering like: Well my attack passes through the wall cause I'm not targeting it (or something akin to that)

[round mountain]

It's possible

[north palm]

Hello, I have a question. Is Destructive Wave a good spell?

[paper portal]

eh

10d6 is nothing to be sneezed at but its a 5th level slot and a con save

[north palm]

There is also the fact that it's a paladin spell that bug me a little

[flint ledge]

It's fine I guess. Not like the greatest spell

[knotty pasture]

Tempest Cleric also gets it as part of their spell list

[tough lynx]

10d6 is 35 average damage.
Con save is a 60% chance to succeed half on a save.
35x0.6x0.5+35x0.4=24.5 average damage in an AoE.

[flint ledge]

How many 5th level spells do paladins get?

[paper portal]

at what level

[knotty pasture]

Like a fair amount but its only at level 17-18 that you get one level 5 spell slot

Two at level 19-20

[flint ledge]

Yeah I thought so

[north palm]

The Paladin is level 17 but has a level in warlock

[paper portal]

unrelated but can i call you luci

[north palm]

yes you can

[north palm]

that was for his amont of spell slots

[paper portal]

wow!

[ripe nimbus]

nah the wording could definitely be better

you’re right

[paper portal]

all dnd wording is fabulous with no flaws

[round mountain]

heh

[flint ledge]

Definitely

[cobalt owl]

It's always nice to see artist wips of your characters

[fallow lintel]

good news my dm retired

[flint ledge]

That's good news?

[fallow lintel]

but one of my players said that was a lie but the other one including me.. agreed that he rlly retired

[flint ledge]

Wait do you mean retired from being a DM or retired from working?

[fallow lintel]

i wasnt the dm but he retired from working
he said dnd was too hard and i think he has dnd books in his house

:/

[paper portal]

hi somebody

[flint ledge]

Hey wings

[fallow lintel]

i seen my dm play last jan 16

i was watchig rhem while reading

maybe he gonna throw away his homemade dm screen n his custom dice tray made of carboard

[idle oar]

Well if you're looking for a new group to play D&D with, check #find-a-game to learn how to use the Looking For Game channels here on this server to find a group/game.

[stark arch]

can i duplicate spell scrolls? crafting a spell scrol while using one as an example to copy instead of preparing a spell from my spellbook ?

[hot gate]

Having the spell you're crafting the spell scroll for prepared is one of the requirements for crafting it, so that sadly wouldn't work.

[stark arch]

ok thx

qeustion about this thing "Undead Fortitude: If damage reduces the zombie to 0 hit points, it must make a Constitution saving throw with a DC of 5+the damage taken, unless the damage is radiant or from a critical hit. On a success, the zombie drops to 1 hit point instead." does that mean LAST damage taken? or TOTTAL damage taken durning the fight?

[humble cairn]

"How does X rule work?" is generally a #dnd-rules question, for future reference, but in this case the damage refers specifically the instance of damage that reduced the zombie to 0 hp.

[twilit summit]

Hello everybody

[vivid pelican]

If I made a mafia-based game, would yall join?

[twilit summit]

Nah, cuz I suck at speaking english

[vivid pelican]

I have an audio translator

[limber trail]

You can put out a looking for players form and see if people would

[hot marlin]

#non-dnd-topics or #find-a-game

[limber trail]

This channel isn't really for recruiting

[vivid pelican]

Im just saying IF I made one

I just wanna know whos into that kinda stuff

[hot marlin]

Considering that "mafia-based" is extremely vast and vague, I don't think anyone could answer you without more details

[twilit summit]

So I can speak my language?

[lyric viper]

This would still be the wrong channel for that. Is this a D&D game or another game?

[undone rain]

Loxodons sure are an interesting species

But i kinda like em

[still plover]

Would you have some ideas to share about that in #dm-world-building ?

[hoary totem]

How would you buff Undying Warlock but keep its gameplay separate from the Undead Warlock? (Keep the features defensive and supportive)

[kindred river]

Morning

[fallow lintel]

nothing im bored

[kindred river]

Ha! Same

[fallow lintel]

im having dinner rn

[kindred river]

Uuuh we should do something

[kindred river]

I'm having lunch soon

[fallow lintel]

my dm retired from dnd he thinks dnd is too hard

i wanna be the dm at grade 5💔💔

[kindred river]

Oh been there, I've become the DM instead

[worn lagoon]

how many sessions in did this happen

[fallow lintel]

none

[worn lagoon]

incredible

[fallow lintel]

i saw them play last jan 16 and ther didnt in feb 6 and mar 6

and the (retired) dm is just playing granny instead of dnd

[undone rain]

Stopped before they even started

[stiff rock]

Definitely takes a certain type of person to be a DM

[atomic kayak]

Bit of a difficult exercise because, from a design standpoint Undead has all the exact same mechanical endgoals as Undying, just with more damage tacked on

[spark zealot]

That being either unbelivibly creative, or unbelivingly cruel.
Or both in the worst case

[buoyant oar]

Being a Dungeon Master isn't hard.

It can be intimidating.

It is a lot of work. But it's not difficult work.

[limber trail]

It's ultimately play, just like the rest of the folks at the table. It should be play for you. It's just a different kind of play

I do think everyone should give it a go

[spark zealot]

Im supporting this.
Had a huge fun when i first tried with my closest friends.

It was a mess but still a very fun expiriance

[kindred river]

I agree

[stiff rock]

I think it only ends up being play to a specific type of person though. I know someone who was really good at DMing but he just found it too stressful/boring to do it longterm

[kindred river]

Tho I'm not as prepared my peeps don't hate me that much

[limber trail]

I 100% agree, I think moreso that if you can't find a way to make DMing play and to make it fun, you might end up struggling long term

[stiff rock]

Definitely agree yeah

[undone rain]

I know i sure as hell cant

[hot gate]

It's like "I can't draw". The only think stopping you is practice!

[undone rain]

I can come up with great ideas but i can forget a ton of things, i also stutter at times making it a bit hard to do voices

[hot gate]

I basically don't do voices as a DM and I've just learned to run with it.

[stiff rock]

Yeah it's pretty common for me as well to just summarise what the NPC says in my normal voice

Especially for dialogues between multiple characters

[undone rain]

I honestly want to learn to draw but i just dont have the patience. So i resort to heroforge instead

[hot gate]

That's valid, heroforge is great

[undone rain]

A lil restricting at times but it works

I can still feel proud of myself for making smth

[jolly hound]

What do you guys think a thematic uncommon magic item would be for my sea Druid? We’re doing a pirate campaign

[hot gate]

A wind fan could be fun

[undone rain]

I kinda wish we had more celestial races

Aasimar is all well and good but a few more wouldnt hurt

[livid owl]

Ratatosk are celestials

[paper portal]

ratatosk isnt an official race

[livid owl]

True, but ,
It's on DND beyond which makes it. Slightly less UNOFFICIAL

[jolly hound]

Ouuu that’s not a bad idea

[hot gate]

Bonus points if they can use it to affect ship speed and direction

[undone rain]

Screw it onto the back of the ship and you got a free motor

[livid owl]

I'm curious what your ideas are for another celestial race? Would it still lean holy, or more space themed?

[hot gate]

True, I usually upgrade content released there to "Third-Party", which is slightly fancier than "Homebrew", even though it's still technically so.

[undone rain]

Hmmm id say perhaps space themed but still a bit holy

[livid owl]

Yeaahhhhh
It's like , WotC approved homebrew almost

[undone rain]

Its like the bloodhunter, unofficial but known enough to ALMOST be official

[livid owl]

Yeah!

Sidenote I enjoy Bloodhunter a lot

A lycanthropy class is.... Really cool (among other things but, Lycan is my favorite subclass)

[atomic kayak]

Fortunately it being on ddb as third party content does nothing to contribute to its level of officalness.

[hidden spindle]

I would have Spare the Dying not count against the numbers of Warlock Cantrips.

That's about it really.

[livid owl]

We had this discussion already. It's acknowledged that it's 3rd party content, which is slightly above homebrew

My wording here was mostly joke-y

[hot gate]

Oh yeah don't worry, that was clear

[livid owl]

Slightly related but is Exploring Eberron 3rd party or not? I'd assume 3rd party just from the player species lineup

[limber trail]

It’s third party, yeah

Now, it is also created by the original author of the eberron setting iirc

But it’s not an official wotc book

[livid owl]

Oh that tidbit is cool
The original author thing

[shrewd grotto]

what is the class/subclass that involves the most amount of gambling

like, i was thinking sorc wildmagic with chaos bolt

[limber trail]

Definitely wild magic sorcerer

[hot gate]

That's probably it, yeah

[knotty pasture]

Wild Magic Barb too, very fun

[atomic kayak]

I simply have to disagree, there is no real functional or hypothetical difference between third party and homebrew, they are the same thing just different names.

At least with partnered content, it is possible for it to actually be official content (ex: Wildemount).

[flint ledge]

I mean 3rd party content is typically made in a more professional setting by multiple people. At least some of the more popular ones unlike homebrew which is usually made for a table specifically

[atomic kayak]

In theory, in practice a lot of the more popular third party stuff is lower quality than stuff that is ""just"" homebrew

Like a lot of kobold press stuff

Hence why as a label they are functionally just interchangeable in terms of quality

[livid owl]

If we're getting into semantics about it then yeah there's 3rd party with PC races that have a burrow speed for Pete's sake

People just accept 3rd party as 'more official ' because it made it onto fancy website. You don't have to like 3rd party and I never said you had to?

I would only say they're different in that more people are familiar with them BECAUSE of their boosted platform

[atomic kayak]

The irony there is the stuff that makes it onto ddb gets on there because of popularity off of it

[keen valve]

Bloodhunter is just two-to-three things crammed together and called a new thing.

[atomic kayak]

But my point moreso being that people treating third party (and/or more specifically, third party on ddb) as any level of official (just "more" or otherwise) leads to a lot of confusion quite often.

I see people saying all the time that random third party stuff on ddb is official because of how people talk about it ("because its on ddb")

People thought the few bits of critical role homebrew on the site (namely bloodhunter) were official for years before ddb started hosting other third party content despite it being nowhere near official

[livid owl]

I mean
Would you rather triple class...?

[keen valve]

With that logic we should have no multiclassing, only classes to fill the voids of those multiclasses.

And then classes to fill the voids of those multiclasses.

Until... the whole world is a class!!! MUHAHAHAHA.

[livid owl]

Bloodhunter is made unique by it's subclasses imo

[atomic kayak]

Tldr: saying "something is popular enough to be considered official" is at best, a completely unhelpful statement

[humble cairn]

Most of the character ideas that people come with are better off as monoclassed builds than multiclassed.

[keen valve]

I would actually lose my lid if someone said the Minecraft book was official and thus necessitates representation in all dnd content.

[humble cairn]

I would say 80% of the character ideas that people bring to #character-discussion as multiclasses are better as monoclassed. I'm not sure why people want to multiclass so much.

[pliant sapphire]

Making original builds is fun

[humble cairn]

At the cost of it actually working in actual play, though?

[knotty pasture]

On the one hand, there aren't as many multiclassing builds out there as there should be cuz the meta is pretty set in stone and deviating from it means that you will mess up your PC

[keen valve]

It's because we want to find something that exactly fits how we see and want our characters.

[atomic kayak]

A solid chunk of that, at least in online spaces, comes from the obsession with "builds" and "optimization" - in particular when those concepts come down to people who are new to the game and have no reason to care about it (and thus, know about it)

[knotty pasture]

On the other hand, I don't think we should withdraw information either, give it to the person and let them decide what to do with that info

[livid owl]

I don't think that was ever said in a serious manner in the entirety of this conversation.

Now did I say one was more familiar and thus easier to be received? Not in those exact words but it's what I meant. My statement of it being not unofficial was again, a joke at most and a bad one at least.

[humble cairn]

Yeah, that's what I help people with, and it's almost always easier to use monoclass with reflavoring than using multiclass.

[atomic kayak]

#dnd-discussion message

[keen valve]

I wonder how D&D would be like with a playbook type system instead. If we would come across the same issues or not.

[humble cairn]

PBTA style playbooks? That's an entire universe of differences.

[atomic kayak]

Yea depends on what you mean by playbook

[keen valve]

Yes, treating magic as a separate applicable system.

[keen valve]

Call me Victor the way I be frankensteining.

[humble cairn]

Ok so you are meaning something specific, but I don't know which meaning of "playbook" you're using, and it's not helping. But I guess it doesn't matter because I don't really care about homebrewing 5E anyway.

[keen valve]

That felt dismissive, I feel like we could've handled that with some better tact.

[livid owl]

I just don't understand what the conversation is by this point.

No one was arguing it was actually official and you're fighting ghosts here? I don't mean that in a rude way I just don't understand what you're arguing for.

Other than 3rd party content should never be brought up ever because that's unhelpful I guess???

It's just an option that's easily accessible to new DMs skimming DND beyond which is why I even know about it to begin with

[humble cairn]

I play 5E preeeety close to RAW, not because I think 5E is perfect, but because whenever I start thinking about homebrewing 5E I start taking out all the things I want to change and end up tossing classes altogether, at which point it would be much easier to simply play a different game.

[atomic kayak]

My first thought was sports playbooks - in which case that would end up horribly

[humble cairn]

I don't mean an of that offensively and I apologize if it hurt your feelings, it wasn't meant to. But I honestly and genuinely don't care to discuss homebrewing 5e.

[livid owl]

#homebrew

[keen valve]

I understand that and respect that.

[humble cairn]

And I thought I should tell you that rather than lead you on in hopes of further conversation down that line.

[atomic kayak]

I feel like my tldr was a good summary of what I am talking about - both in reference to the specific stuff in the channel I had seen that prompted it initially but also just from the general way people talk about these things.

Nowhere did I say that it should never be brought up - just that treating it as any level of official (which is both what was occurring at the time and a thing people do extremely often) is not a helpful thing to describe them as

[keen valve]

This is also very correct, it was a miss-measure of mine to bring up something off-topic to the channel, so it's better that we return to it anyways.

[humble cairn]

5E is a perfectly decent system that plays D&D perfectly decently, it doesn't play anything else very well and people trying to make it into something else always seem to put in more work than is worth the effort, imo. I'm not interested. I am pretty interested in helping people use the system we have to make their character work, and usually all it takes is people who are wiling to accept that flavor is what is real in-game, and not mechanics.

[keen valve]

As in the belief that there is a separation of mechanics and flavour?

[still plover]

Shots fired!

[humble cairn]

Like if you want to play a Venom like symbiote? Moon Druid is right there and works pretty great as long as you accept the flavor that your powers are from the symbiote rather than nature magic.

You wanna play a biokinetic psion who uses their psychometabolic powers to enhance their body for physical combat? Barbarian is right there and works great.

[atomic kayak]

Yea, I like 5e because of what it is. While I can tolerate some minor things being changed (in my case, usually just small "quality of play" things), a lot of "popular" changes are things that just. Fundamentally change things in a way that makes it not feel like 5e to me.

If i want a different system mechanically I would use a different system.

[crimson gulch]

yeah if i sit down to a game and the house rules are longer than an index card im out

[keen valve]

There's a lot of good systems people should try, but I think people are intimidated by the reading and learning and chance for embarrassment. So few people who even get into D&D don't even play D&D so much as make a character then sit on it for a while whilst maybe only barely touching one game. So the aspect of venturing out to a new system at all is impossibly daunting.

[humble cairn]

The ability scores and the mechanics are just the representation and metagame. The flavor and the description of the character is what is actually real in the game world.

[knotty pasture]

Tbf finding a game is difficult

[livid owl]

Amen

[keen valve]

A man.

[paper portal]

i think it depends, there's one I'm in that's pure RAW so obviously that means a lot of things have to get banned lol

[knotty pasture]

Making a character ends up being more fun than actually being on the field properly

[livid owl]

Bobbie and the A-men!

[crimson gulch]

no, banning RAW offical options is weak

[paper portal]

truth nuke? lemme ping you in optimization with the thing we were working on there

[knotty pasture]

Wings don't you dare forward this I'm doing the honors

[atomic kayak]

(That actually relates back to a thing I alluded to earlier, in regards to the online community and the buildbrain stuff. A lot of people just make characters ""on paper"" and never/rarely ever actually play. Which warps viewpoints extremely quickly and easily)

[green mirage]

Chat can I ask, a question about the social dynamics of my group

[paper portal]

RAW all npcs can phase through walls and you can gain unlimited infinite range teleports at level 3 i dont think most people want to be playing that

[atomic kayak]

There's a huge difference with ttrpgs between "on paper" and "actually playing"

[still plover]

Go right ahead.

[humble cairn]

RAW can be silly at points.

[crimson gulch]

what no, thats Stupid, Page 19 of the dmg has you covered

[atomic kayak]

Its not like wargames where they are much more synonymous

[paper portal]

hi haen i see you lurking

[keen valve]

Ever since my seventh game or so, I've started to notice that too. I've once or twice had a person come up with an idea and then only realise in retrospect that their expectation for what playing them would be like, wasn't what it was actually like.

[crystal latch]

Spells cause the desired effect

[humble cairn]

A DM is good for using their brain to make all the weird silly parts of RAW actually work as intended.

[knotty pasture]

I should ask anyways, how far do DMs go with Conjuration Wizard's Minor Conjuration in tables

Since the whole RAW thing showed up

[crystal latch]

There are also good parts of dumb RAW like bears being a species of fish

[paper portal]

most of them wont let you summon tangler grenades lol

[atomic kayak]

Yea nah, as much as some people like to act like those things are RAW, they aren't

Thats also an issue with parts of the community

[keen valve]

God dang it the fish bear is back.

[limber trail]

No actual real game of DnD that is played by people on any consistent basis will allow half of that nonsense

[green mirage]

Basically we've been playing together for 8 months or so and it's been pretty fun, but I've noticed how an imbalance was created with how a few characters don't really contribute much to the game and fights and how one player often steals the spotlight with shoddy interpretations of rules and questionable dice rolls

How would you tackle this

[keen valve]

I'm willing to bet, as I have read the DMG and PHB, I could make up something mildly to the tune of how those books phrase things, and have a bunch of people believe and trust me and then use it as a source. Because, to be perfectly honest, not a lot of people are not reading all that.

[paper portal]

yeah thats why im saying pure RAW needs a lot of bans cus i agree with you

[limber trail]

The answer is not bans, it’s just saying no to players trying stupid stuff

[tough lynx]

That is a ban

[crimson gulch]

no thats a flawed interpretation of what RAW means

[atomic kayak]

Yea. Multiclassing is one of the more common areas it comes up in (as was being mentioned earlier) because a lot of multiclass "builds" assume efficacy at specific levels and neglect the thought of "what happens when I am stuck between those levels for 3-10 sessions"

[tough lynx]

Saying no to players doing something is a ban

[crystal latch]

Phasing through walls is true because the only rule preventing you from going through walls prohibits "adventurers" from "normally" walking through walls
This means that if you are not an adventurer you can walk through walls
You can also walk through walls abnormally

[paper portal]

wait i didnt know the second part

[atomic kayak]

Still a very large difference between "people believing it because they didnt read" and "its actually RAW"

[keen valve]

Sorry, yeah that was off topic, wasn't it?

[limber trail]

Yeah when I say DMs should say no to stuff this is what I mean. Any self respecting DM will say no to this. You’re not banning anything, you’re just saying you can’t walk through walls.

[crystal latch]

That is a ban

[crimson gulch]

Bad faith interpretations = not = RAW

[paper portal]

so by doing that you're banning walking through walls

[still plover]

Are you a player in this game or the DM?

[paper portal]

we agree with you

[atomic kayak]

For example, what Haen is saying is an example of something people say is RAW, but isn't

[crystal latch]

"bad faith" is a buzzword
This is an error in the rules

[crimson gulch]

no its actualy something in the DMG that is talked about

[viral kraken]

don't really need to worry about a player trying to say that, since the same thing letting them keeping them from going through walls is the thing keeping them from falling through the floor

[hidden spindle]

DMG covers this squarely

[green mirage]

I'm a player

[paper portal]

just dont fall through the floor abnormally then

[lyric viper]

Good Faith reading of the rules and what actually makes sense for the game (Which is RAW):

Players Exploiting the Rules (DMG 2024, Page 19)

Some players enjoy poring over the D&D rules and looking for optimal combinations. This kind of optimizing is part of the game (see "Know Your Players" in chapter 2), but it can cross a line into being exploitative, interfering with everyone else's fun.
Setting clear expectations is essential when dealing with this kind of rules exploitation. Bear these principles in mind:

• **Rules Aren't Physics. **The rules of the game are meant to provide a fun game experience, not to describe the laws of physics in the worlds of D&D, let alone the real world. Don't let players argue that a bucket brigade of ordinary people can accelerate a spear to light speed by all using the Ready action to pass the spear to the next person in line. The Ready action facilitates heroic action; it doesn't define the physical limitations of what can happen in a 6-second combat round.
• The Game Is Not an Economy. The rules of the game aren't intended to model a realistic economy, and players who look for loopholes that let them generate infinite wealth using combinations of spells are exploiting the rules.
• Combat Is for Enemies. Some rules apply only during combat or while a character is acting in Initiative order. Don't let players attack each other or helpless creatures to activate those rules.
• **Rules Rely on Good-Faith Interpretation. **The rules assume that everyone reading and interpreting the rules has the interests of the group's fun at heart and is reading the rules in that light.

Outlining these principles can help hold players' exploits at bay. If a player persistently tries to twist the rules of the game, have a conversation with that player outside the game and ask them to stop.

[uncut zenith]

Is the fact that it’s common sense enough that people can’t walk through sufficient to not been a written rule really an issue with the rules system?

[crystal latch]

The DMG added that to excuse all future holes

[lyric viper]

Good faith reading of the rules is RAW, but also yes, sometimes RAW is silly if taken completely literal with no good faith (not to say bad faith).

[still plover]

When you say some folk don't seem to be contributing, how do you mean? Not getting big numbers in combat or staying at the back while there's a discussion, having no opinion?

[lyric viper]

This is true for every edition and pretty much every single TTRPG.

[pliant sapphire]

You cant make a rule for everything, is impossible

[crimson gulch]

Yes Exactly

[crystal latch]

Someday we'll get a class with 9th-level slots at level 1 and people will unironically argue that it's balanced because if you read it in good faith it gets its 9ths at level 17 or something

[keen valve]

Sorry, this is a bit of a small aside. Is it a fish bear/bear fish or a merbear?

[oak stone]

nanami!

[humble cairn]

Interpretating RAW in a way that makes a world that doesn't make sense is also RAW, in my opinion, it's just that RAW has a built in clause for a DM to step in and say "this doesn't make sense nor is it fun and therefore it won't work at this table."

[oak stone]

salaryman from jjs and the guy who got killed by mahito

[green mirage]

I meant that a few characters aren't contributing mechanically. The players seem engaged I think

[paper portal]

it's because the staff of fish affects polar bears, people like to joke that bears are fish in dnd

[flint ledge]

You can't make a reasonable rulebook that doesn't assume good faith interpretation (by reasonable I mean reasonably long)

[atomic kayak]

Variations and portions of this concept are also in the 2014 set of books

People insistence on claiming "ummm actually!" On the most bad faith interpretation of things does not make those things they claim RAW

[lyric viper]

You cannot make rules to cover everything and every scenario and some things rely on what seems common sense for that table.

RAW can indeed be silly if taken literally. My favourite example is jumping rules with cats and elephants.

[crystal latch]

Perhaps the world being modeled by the rules doesn't make sense

Maybe the Second Sundering broke the concept of walls

[lyric viper]

So the question with discussions like these is... what's the goal?

[limber trail]

A key part of the GMs role in a ttrpg is to adjudicate the rules. A DM's role is to look at the weird stuff in rules and say "No, that's not how that works"

[livid owl]

Psychic damage
6d8 to be exact

[hidden spindle]

Good faith is understanding Halflings can hide behind a creature and not immediately get found

[crimson gulch]

a ban is Saying "No Humans or elfs in my world"
Not a ban is saying "Walls work as expected"

[worn lagoon]

i like ring of three wishes genie

[atomic kayak]

Yea theres silly stuff that is actually RAW like the jumping stuff.

There's also silly stuff that isn't actually RAW like the genie warlock ring of three wishes

The stuff Haen has mentioned falls into the second category

[paper portal]

idk who's disagreeing with this lol

[humble cairn]

Silly, makes-no-sense, RAW is also RAW. The DM homebrewing a solution that makes sense is also RAW, but that specific solution is homebrew.

[woven flint]

Hello, friends

[oak stone]

me

[knotty pasture]

Btw if I may, isn't all of this semantics anyways

[keen valve]

I am going to write dissertation on merbear anatomy in the future, and I will forward that somewhere in this server.

[oak stone]

I disagree with anything grr

[livid owl]

Tokii get out while you still can it's a madhouse in here

[crimson gulch]

ok so, Fish bear, What?

[still plover]

As long as the players are engaged, that doesn't really feel like a huge issue. But perhaps it would be worth an out of game chat about tactics and such.

One player hogging the spotlight is a separate issue, though.

[livid owl]

Semantics arguments in DnD is like a fish to water it feels like 😭

[crystal latch]

The more times badly written rules get pointed out, the higher the likelihood that a niche error is eventually corrected in a future update etc.
I want walls to work, I want cover to not only apply against spells (rare 5.5e W for fixing this), I want spells to cause the described effect rather than the desired effect etc.

[oak stone]

@still plover Is ur pfp supposed to be g man

[woven flint]

Changed my Firbilg Wildmagic Sorcerer into a Moon Bard

Imagining him playing a fiddle, probably something not built for a being his size.. yet still playing beautifully 🧐

[knotty pasture]

Both parties are agreeing that passing through walls is dumb, just that one thinks its RAW that should be banned while the other party thinks its a part of a DM's job to stop interactions like these

[still plover]

It is. Did some light filtering on the original image.

[keen valve]

Fishbear to water.

[knotty pasture]

Both sides are agreeing to the same thing but with different wording

[lyric viper]

Is there a RAW aspect that genuinely needs errata to be playable? Cus fair enough, rules through out the editions can be well.. frustrating. But I think some things don't really need erratta to be playable.

[livid owl]

7d8 psychic damage (joking)

[oak stone]

well how would you pass through the wall phasing or just breaking through it

[hidden spindle]

Roll openly

[atomic kayak]

The issue is coming from claiming RAW stuff that isn't actually RAW

[paper portal]

lets not get back onto this lol

[woven flint]

You're smelly
Vicious Mockery

[knotty pasture]

I like phasing

[crystal latch]

Familiars having familiars/simulacrum spam/similar uncapped minion hordes come to mind

[livid owl]

LOL

[green mirage]

The fact is that this one player has been taking the spotlight by often taking too many actions, attacks or playing playing by interpretations of rules that are a little bit questionable and often favor him

[oak stone]

I js got into chat bruh

[oak stone]

I HATE phasing

[knotty pasture]

Thanks Diego

[oak stone]

I once fought a enemy that can phase

[green mirage]

He carries most of the fights alone

[lyric viper]

100% agree with noping the simulacrum chains

[oak stone]

dm made him phase through me and I was being pupetteered by the enemy

[crystal latch]

5.5e tried to fix the simulacrum problem but treated a symptom rather than the disease

[lyric viper]

(I say as a DM who allowed simulacrum chains)

[humble cairn]

Hiding and invisibility is kind of there, imo.

[livid owl]

WHY would you do that to yourself!?! (Silly)

[restive blade]

Hey guys

[oak stone]

Thanks dnd oc

[hidden spindle]

Very nice

[viral kraken]

for the fun twist when the simulacrum army becomes the new bbeg

[still plover]

That would be one to take to your DM, but a heads-up to the player first would seem to be a courtesy.

[flint ledge]

Simulacrums obviously shouldn't be able to summon another Simulacrum

[tough lynx]

Do turns exist out of combat?

[lyric viper]

I trusted them. ❤️‍🩹

(No for reals, it didn't end too badly because they used it for RP stuff like shop management an crafting, buuuuuut it could have gone worse. They're good players)

[hidden spindle]

Hiding being found vs seen

[woven flint]

I've only used Simulacrullm twice

Both times were with my War Cleric

I made a Simulacrum of our Sorcerer and a Simulacrum of my Cleric (Which was flavored by the dm as appearing as my Deity because he wanted to fight too)
We killed a Lich with a double Sunbeam 🔥

[livid owl]

LOL well I'm glad it worked out well 😂

[crystal latch]

There's a much bigger problem than just the fact that simulacra could cast simulacrum themselves
The big issue is that "you can have only one of this thing at a time" type things encourage increasing number of people to "buy" more slots
And in a game with magic items this means having your familiar use a spellwrought tattoo of find familiar and chain that, then have each familiar cast Simulacrum on you via enspelled item - or whatever other equivalent means do the job

[limber trail]

2024 fixes this by not letting simulacra cast the spell

[oak stone]

one of my dms didn't do turns for non combat so me and some other guy would get ignored while the dms friend did everything

I got like 3 turns the whole campaign

[lyric viper]

See I'd say no, because it feels like it's a combat convenience. Things don't happen in turns.
But I agree the rules aren't the clearest on that.

[oak stone]

2 were combat

[crystal latch]

2024 does not fix this because dirt cheap minions, hirelings etc. can still use magic items to cast simulacrum and enspelled items are really cheap

[atomic kayak]

Ive had a single scenario where someone was able to do a "true" simulacrum chain (ie: the time and resources to do so)

It didnt really matter because of the tier of play, so they had appropriate threats to deal with (which meant they never had more than a handful simulacra with them - the rest were off doing other things they needed)

[knotty pasture]

Honestly at that point you gotta ask if scrolling your phone while its not your turn, only pausing to occasionally take notes, is actually acceptable

[tough lynx]

I cannot remember the consequences of turns existing or not existing but both break the game RAW

[woven flint]

At the end of the day..

Nobody out Simulacrums Manshoon

[knotty pasture]

You'd still kind of be in the loop by answering off notes, but at least you aren't just staring into blank space from being ignored

[paper portal]

sounds about right lol

[atomic kayak]

Part of the issue there is the assumption of "I will be able to get all the required items/hirelings to do this"

Its an issue thats common with a lot of things people say have issues RAW

[woven flint]

May all the Manshoon who fell during the Manshoon wars rest in piss (I hate Manshoon)

[limber trail]

We gotta kill another manshoon

[atomic kayak]

Yes they do

[crystal latch]

My solution to sim chains would be

• material component expensive enough that you're basically paying for spell scrolls equivalent to the resources gained
• material component price scales with CR/level of the target
• the simulacrum has half the class levels of the target creature

[crimson gulch]

If you have unlimited down time and crafting materials your playing the equivalent of mine craft creative mode in dnd, that's not how you should run campaigns

[oak stone]

Dirt cheap?
dirty deeds done dirt cheap😱

[woven flint]

We gotta kill all his simulacrums until we get our hands on the real bastard and throttle him

[tough lynx]

So I’ve had 2 people say yes turns exist out of combat and 2 people telling me no

[crystal latch]

Furthermore, delete Wish's ability to bypass material components above a certain gp threshold

[hidden spindle]

They can. Stops from casting Cantrips every second to every six seconds kind of deal

[limber trail]

If we kill two a day, he won't be able to keep up

[keen valve]

Had no idea who this was, had to look him up, but I am glad to know that D&D canonically has a sith lord equivalent character.

[atomic kayak]

Turns are a part of a round. Rounds exist out of combat because rounds are just a unit of time (6 seconds)

RAW Initiative is only for tracking the order of turns when the order matters - they don't stop existing just because the order doesn't matter

[lyric viper]

That one giant who had custom multiple simulacrums of a single aarocokraa she found pretty

[crystal latch]

Actually RAW is dumb with turns in 5.5e and afaik vampires don't burn in sunlight out of combat

[lyric viper]

Give me the 1hp Multi-simulacrum.

[woven flint]

Manshoon made so many Clones and Simulacrums of himself that they had a war.

Nobody knows if the REAL Manshoon is still alive or not, but it's so funny

[atomic kayak]

This has not changed in 2024

[limber trail]

My party is going up against a wizard on thursday who's gonna have a simulacrum in there to help him out

[atomic kayak]

Who needs simulacrum

Just have a bunch of spellcasting (dragon) children instead

[humble cairn]

I think I would like the rule set to be reasonably clear enough that a DM doesn't have to take so much energy and time out of telling a story fielding edge cases. And 5E 2024 is like .. mostly there? But with some exceptions.

[woven flint]

Manshoon and Xanathar have one thing in common
And that's Paranoia-maxxing

[crystal latch]

5.5e changed certain wordings to try and patch bag of rats type exploits (zero of which were broken in this game) and ended up making it at minimum ambiguous whether turns and rounds exist outside of combat
Thus, vampires only take damage from sunlight in combat

This did not need to be altered

[atomic kayak]

No, it didnt

[paper portal]

hey you can bag of rats to make fiend levelling more doable its clearly broken

[atomic kayak]

Turns and rounds still fully exist outside of combat in 2024

[woven flint]

||Knome, watch us get back to Waterdeep and us have been gone for like.. two days and Manshoon and Xanathar are just having war on the streets||

[limber trail]

Well, this situation relies on the teleport spell so... only eight guys are coming with, and there's already four of them. Dragons aint gonna help them either, they're working with some giants. Plus, he just really, really, really needs to be in two places at once

[humble cairn]

Some people will go over the rules with a magnifying glass to try and find ways in which they can be read to break the game, but I don't think the text needs to necessarily have to accomodate them because I feel it comes from adversarial expectations anyway.

[limber trail]

Jarlaxle is gonna keep us sorted right? right?

[paper portal]

yeah its just part of how language works that theres gonna be some weird holes in it

[lyric viper]

I feel like it's doing better than earlier editions at least. There's been a rare few moments in 5e where I've had to go 'Wait, what is RAW even trying to do here'. Unlike in AD&D where it was 'Oooooookay. So we have to just DIY this.'

3.5 was a strange mix between 'Oh good there's a rule for this' and ' Oh no, there's a rule for this'.

[crimson gulch]

Monte cook had a really good perspective

But offensive phrasing aside, it’s a decision that every designer’s got to make. For every table of great players interested in having fun, there’s often one player who insists on arguing about the phrasing of a rule in the book. This player will find (or attempt to find) a loophole or contradiction and exploit it to their own advantage. So you have to decide, do you design for that one player, or for all the others?

Source link https://montecook.substack.com/p/designing-for-bleep

I feel like dnd is for all the others and you can easily remove the players that engage in the kind of play that is antagonizing everyone.

[woven flint]

I just realized that our Waterdeep campaign has not One, not Two, but THREE incredibly Paranoid BBEGS lmao (if you count the Mad Mage)

[paper portal]

clearly this means dnd rules should be written in binary code

[limber trail]

Jarlaxle is chill at least

[atomic kayak]

100%

[viral kraken]

i had one player who came into my campaign a little adversarial, since they came from a 3.5 background, but iirc it only took a few sessions to get them with the program and show them we are here to collaborate, not misinterpret the rules at each other

[hidden spindle]

If you can't Hide in a room full of 'allies', there's an enemy in the midst

[limber trail]

I have absolutely no clue who or what the mad mage is so I'm just along for the ride

[crystal latch]

Rules design teams should include at least one person who knows what kind of holes to look for, it's an important part of proofreading

[atomic kayak]

Nah, theres a difference between looking for holes and what you are claiming

[woven flint]

All I know is that he made a Mega Dungeon and is called The Mad Mage for a reason lol

[paper portal]

yeah same as how any game should have a (preferably many) bug tester

[crystal latch]

No game is made worse by removing unnecessary ambiguity
At worst nothing happens, in most cases it's a noticeable improvement

Ideally you would have a level of ambiguity where every rule can be interpreted as clearly as "roll 1d20" not meaning "roll 1d12"

[hot marlin]

What kind of ambiguity are we talking about here? Rules ambiguity?

[humble cairn]

Mmm ... okay but what is necessary ambiguity, to you?

[atomic kayak]

The fact that you consider things like "the game doesn't say you can't walk through walls so you can walk through walls" (even ignoring that it says the opposite of this) is "ambiguous" is precisely the problem.

[crystal latch]

I don't believe in necessary ambiguity, but I'm just using "unnecessary" in case some level of ambiguity is unavoidable in a specific scenario for whatever reason

[hidden spindle]

Huh

[limber trail]

You're forgetting that the goal of the PHB isn't to be a bulletproof work of legal text. It's to convey how the game works in a way that people can understand incredibly easily. Someone should be able to read the PHB and know what a thing is for and how they can expect it to work in gameplay. Nobody reading the page on how walls work is gonna go away from it thinking enemies will start walking through walls. But if you turn it into 3 paragraphs of legal speech, you're gonna have people scratching their heads thinking the rules are more complicated than they are.

[paper portal]

yeah cus english is a shoddy language that means a bunch of nonsense sometimes

[atomic kayak]

Especially considering the fact that this sort of mindset is really only present in a very narrow portion of the community goes to show that its not as ambiguous as claimed

[crystal latch]

What portion of the community has read the rulebook sentence by sentence?

I imagine a large chunk of the playerbase gets their information on what the PHB contains from YouTube summaries

[lyric viper]

And while it doesn't mean one shouldn't eratta rules, the rulebooks are also very clear you can have a grand time not reading the entire book.

[viral kraken]

would be nice if like M:tG they had a simple set of rules for the players, and then the like fifty times larger "comprehensive rules" for clarity. i really liked that in mtg

[tough lynx]

Hopscotch is 5e

[minor cargo]

I don't have numbers to back it up, but a lot of my players do not use YouTube (or other summaries). They read the PHB (or other rulebook).

[hot marlin]

At the end of the day, the game is not aimed at aliens from another dimension where people have no concept of walls. We assume everyone playing is a relatively functional human being with basic understanding of how reality works, and the basic understanding that the game is set in a place that, except where mentioned, works like reality

[crimson gulch]

Agreed, I run games full time, 7 days a week, huge amounts of players, and i don't have to deal with situations like have been discussed here this morning

[paper portal]

yeah i agree thats a good way to do it

[lyric viper]

In fact it's commonly suggested not to read the entire book sentence by sentence, especially for newer players. You don't have to play fully RAW, and f something feels off, you can look it up and go 'Oh, that's how' or 'Nah, I prefer my own rules' and that's valid.

[atomic kayak]

Its the classic "noted exceptions imply a general rule"

If everything is written out as a weird exception, then it creates (potentially conflicting) general rules.

The walk through walls stuff is ironic in this case, because its one of the cases where there are exceptions that imply the general rule of "you cannot walk through walls without an ability that let's you"

[woven flint]

Jumping from one thing to another? 🧐

[tough lynx]

If you don’t need rules to play 5e anything is 5e

[hot marlin]

Even the law does not aim to be foolproof. The law is full of cases where the standard includes "Would a reasonable person do X/understand it as meaning X"

[viral kraken]

gonna start up my next session and be like, "well everyone last session was able to stand on solid ground, but i just learned that dnd doesn't have collision with floors, so everyone in the world starts falling"

[lyric viper]

The goal is to be playable and be fun, and convey the general gist of that. The more you need or want the rules, the more useful the books become.

And yeah there is a somewhat grey area when D&D becomes another game, but there is still understable broad categories

[atomic kayak]

Yea the average player is not interfacing whatsoever with the RAWbsurd part of the community. Even if they are in online communities they still aren't

[humble cairn]

So let's talk about hiding and invisibility in 2024. I, personally, think this is an area in which the 2024 rules need more clarity because it does lead to valid readings where you can hide behind a bush and then walk out in broad sight and stay invisible. I know other people disagree that this is a valid reading, but I think that's because they are already applying the "common sense" DM filter, and I don't think that's good enough. See when we're trying too decide whether or not something is "necessary" ambiguity I feel like we should be lead by the genre instead of realism, and in this case is where realism and fantasy conflict. A commonsense realistic interpretation says "of course you can't just walk into broad sight and stay invisible" but a fantasy interpretation very much includes stealthy heroes who can literally be invisible based on pure stealth skill. I wish for some clarifications on whether we should be led by realism or fantasy in this specific case.

[woven flint]

I'm 5e, nice to meet you, 5e!

[tough lynx]

Driving a car is 5e

[lyric viper]

See, this is where I feel it's taken to be a strawman. No one is saying you should calvin ball it and the rules are entirely uneccessary. But that not all the rules are.

[crimson gulch]

yeah 2024 lost clarity here trying to simplify it

[crystal latch]

The wall thing could be worded better as something like "moving through objects is impossible unless stated otherwise" + size limitation i.e. you can move through a space filled by an object two sizes smaller

[paper portal]

no you dont normally fall through floors as a player, they have to be abnormal for that to happen (also its walls specific i think but shh thats not as funny)

[hot marlin]

Yeah I think most people, at least everyone I talked to, is in agreement that the 2014 rules were better when it comes to stealth

[crystal latch]

2014 stealth was better worded yes

[woven flint]

The WALL is CONFLICTED!

[lyric viper]

It's not a helpful comment to just go 'Well then anything is 5e'

[atomic kayak]

The only thing I'll say here for that is the fact that, completely ignoring the "of course" bit of things, is the fact the rules in the hiding scenario are very specific about what kind of finding the check is for - its not for all finding per the language used.

[paper portal]

and then theres surprise rules to break everything

[crystal latch]

Yeah, surprise in 5e is broken

[hidden spindle]

But there's no other way to 'find' but a search action

[paper portal]

less broken than echo OAs at least :3

[atomic kayak]

The funny thing about 2014 stealth rules is that they actually had all the same (hypothetical) issues people say 2024 has

[crystal latch]

5.5e making Hide specifically give the Invisible condition (which doesn't make you invisible) was a pointless decision

[crimson gulch]

no, the fact that it says you gain the invisible condition is a brand new issue compared to the 2014 rules

[atomic kayak]

Surprise in 2014 though is not anywhere near as broken as portions of the community made it out to be however - there were a lot of (incorrect) claims about how it worked and a lot of assumptions about scenarios that fully made it not work in most cases despite the claims

[crystal latch]

Surprise is broken because a free extra turn on round 1 is really good

[viral kraken]

they changed that in 24

[atomic kayak]

It being invisible isnt the thing I'm referring to

The "you can stay hidden (in 2024 this would be the invisible condition) when doing things that expose you" logic is what im referring to

[humble cairn]

Surprise '24 is much less skewing in terms of balance.

[crimson gulch]

one ambiguity i dont like in the 2024 rules on certian monsters, is that the way they have phrased the exact definitions of the magic action, because there are things that monsters can do as a bonus action that Should be Explicitly magical like shapechanging

i actually made a video on edge case rules from 2024

[crystal latch]

The surprise nerf was one of the extremely few occasions where 5.5e applied a nerfbat to something that was actually broken, rather than the usual nerfing of overrated slop

[atomic kayak]

On paper yes it can be quite strong.

In practice it also is only trigger able a fraction as easily as people claim - both in terms of without meta gaming and then even with it it still doesn't trigger that often

[atomic kayak]

Even in 2014 a lot of shape changing and things like that were not (mechanically) magical

[atomic kayak]

(Yes this includes PWT and other methods like that)

[tall delta]

Does dnd beyond have a tool for tracking bastions from the 2024 rules or any other programs have this?

[tough lynx]

15 stealth at level 3 beats out almost all passive perception

[atomic kayak]

Thankfully passive perception isnt the be all end all RAW

[tough lynx]

You beat the passive perception

You get surprise

[atomic kayak]

Hence

[viral kraken]

iirc bastions are a special character sheet on ddb? i don't recall for sure tho since i do not use it

[crimson gulch]

i dont think it has that on dnd beyond

[lavish flame]

Roll20's 5.5 Character Sheet can do Bastions, but DDB doesn't have support iirc

[crystal latch]

PwT is good enough that it's worth using a Wish to get it if you otherwise can't

[hot gate]

Yup! https://media.dndbeyond.com/compendium-images/free-rules/dmg/bastion-sheet.pdf

[viral kraken]

roll20 does and the official home of dnd on the web does not? that's wild

[atomic kayak]

Easiest example i like to use is that, it doesn't matter if you "stealth back up" after a combat where you make noise (ie: all combat) - even if the other enemies in the dungeon don't know where you are, they are alerted (because they heard your combat) and now can't be surprised, regardless of your stealth score. This is RAW as well.

So RAW its actually used in a lot of official modules

[crimson gulch]

Yeah, dnd beyond is terrible for running the game and tracking everything

[viral kraken]

i just use a google sheet for my player's bastions personally, i gave each player the ability to edit one sheet in the workbook, and then i have a sheet we can all look at with what each facility at each person's bastion is up to

[undone rain]

Hi everybody with dndbeyond you too can stumble around for 5 minutes to make a simple ability check

[cunning moat]

Random thought: A wizard conjures muffins for breakfast and is happy to share with the party who've been living on hardtack, jerky, and game meat for over a week.

The wizard neglects to mention that they're high fiber bran muffins. The party is reduced to half pace the next day as they repeatedly stop to scout in the bushes.

[humble cairn]

I mean I, personally, would love for stealth to be more overtly supernatural in the world.

[hot gate]

I usually have a discord channel set up for that.
Also, I'm sure someone on foundry has probably made a module for it by now...

[crystal latch]

I would certainly like skills to have supernatural uses at higher levels

3.5e epic skill uses were a good move

[hot marlin]

There are games for that. This is essentially the basic way Exalted works, especially when playing solar

[viral kraken]

i do love discord, it will be sad to see it start turning to ash before my eyes later this year when the IPO happens. gotta get moved over to a new alternative before then

[hot gate]

Fair point

[crystal latch]

3.5e had DCs for stuff like "balance on the surface of a cloud" or "crawl through a space narrower than your head"

[hot marlin]

Some things need to remain impossible without a spell.

[viral kraken]

tbf those are in the epic level handbook

[humble cairn]

But yeah, that's what I was talking about when resolving ambiguities, should we be led by "realism" or genre?

[crystal latch]

5e doesn't even give a framework to implement such a thing because proficiency bonus scales from +2 to +6, 4 points across 20 levels of gameplay
Anything doable with a skill check at level 20 is likely doable at level 1

[humble cairn]

Keep in mind, while I think this is a specific case where the rules desperately need clarity, on the whole I think 5E, and 2024 even more, generally just work fine.

It has a reasonable amount of clarity that I don't think needs to hold up to the microscopic scrutiny of people who are looking for ways to break it because most of those ways are unreasonable.

[atomic kayak]

Relative DC scaling across the level range works pretty fine in 5e at large.

Proficiency makes a notable difference, as do increasing player stats (alongside other abilities and magic items that can add bonuses)

[livid owl]

Cloak of Protection my beloved

[humble cairn]

Which things, specifically, depend on who you are asking.

[hot gate]

Pretty much the main genius of the system in my mind.

[atomic kayak]

And ofc, the likelihood of a check simply requiring a higher number than can be achieved at a lower level (ex: a number of DCs above 20)

[lyric viper]

I do remember Epics vs Exalted discussions and broad vs narrow powers from my 3.5 days.

[hot marlin]

Referring to "balancing on a cloud" or "squeezing into a space narrower than one's head" with a skill check

[atomic kayak]

Fwiw, in at least a few adventures there are a decent few supernatural things that can be accomplished via checks (including iirc, an athletics one)

[humble cairn]

Sure, again, depends on who you are asking.

[hot marlin]

Sure

[crystal latch]

High level skill applications should reflect the fact that the PCs are superhuman as represented by their other capabilities

[atomic kayak]

They can and do yes

[hot marlin]

There is a difference between superhuman skill and the ability to simply do impossible things. There is no amount of skill that would allow a human being to crawl into a space narrower than their head. This requires not skill, but actual supernatural ability

[crystal latch]

The only supernatural/magical thing I can think of that 5e explicitly allows you to do with skills is requiring Arcana prof to craft magic items, or Arcana checks to identify a spell

[humble cairn]

But do we need some sort of way to gatekeep beginning characters form doing similar with really lucky rolls? Ehh, I am not 100% sure.

[hot marlin]

In the case of crawling into that space, the supernatural ability required would be either very soft bones, or being reduced in size

[livid owl]

I'm sorry this whole conversation has me thinking of Plasmoids

[hot marlin]

Hence why I said human being

[crystal latch]

Or the epic skill usage would just be the universe devolving into "myth logic"

[livid owl]

I know I know
I just
.... It's very plasmoid coded the entire predicament

[hot marlin]

You may then be better served checking out the game Nobilis

[humble cairn]

Which sounds great, to me.

[humble cairn]

Ahh, I need to play that again.

[crystal latch]

Athletics check to hold up the sky, Nature check to fact-check the laws of physics followed by Deception to convince the universe you should be falling upwards, Sleight of Hand to steal the moon (+10 DC if underground)

[hot marlin]

"Hold up the sky"? What does that even mean?

The sky is not a thing

[humble cairn]

Keep night from falling?

[crystal latch]

I was thinking of Atlas in Greek mythology

[hot marlin]

In Greek Mythology, the sky is a person, who gave his name to a certain planet. In D&D the sky is the sky, like ours

[crystal latch]

But I guess grapple the abstract concept of all the celestial bodies in the sky above you and then throw them at someone

[lyric viper]

Get Cú Chulainn's Salmon leap and insane feats in here.

[hot marlin]

Again, all this is better served by other games

At the end of the day, you are arguing for D&D to contain things that go against the base paradigm it operates on.

[viral kraken]

man the salmon cannon!

[hot marlin]

Why mod D&D to do those things when those other games already have a paradigm made to accomodate those ideas?

[crystal latch]

D&D has historically had quite absurd uses of skills at epic levels

[lyric viper]

1e had a little of it. Beign based on fantasy archetypes, 18+ strength did allow for heroic levels of atheleticism.

And 3.5 epics are well...

They did squeeze through 1 inch gaps.

[crystal latch]

Like, you could make an Escape Artist check to slip between the force of a wall of force

And this is good because it makes skills remain quite relevant even as max available spell level increases

[halcyon bison]

I like this idea it’s silly

[lyric viper]

Toot your harmonica at a god, make them into a loyal fanatic.
But 3.5 Epic levels were... well 3.0 Epic levels were both fun and also 'We're just spitballing at this point, aren't we?'

[crystal latch]

My big issue with 3.5e/3.0 epic levels is that it's very clearly a subsystem grafted onto the game as an afterthought and it shows

It shows very clearly in the math

You cannot easily design a system like that with an unlimited level cap when your numbers don't grow at the same rate

[fallow burrow]

So how exactly does this all work

[timber turtle]

Would a horse be a valid starting item?

[crystal latch]

At level 20, 3/4 BAB is a -5 to hit penalty compared to full BAB
At level 100, it's a -25 penalty so if a fighter is not hitting with an over 100% hit chance a rogue is only hitting on a nat 20, all else equal

Hence the change in math

[lyric viper]

You could try asking your DM and the answer is probably going to be no in most cases. But can depend a lot on the context. Where are you hoping to get a horse from RAW?

[loud tendon]

Do you mean d&d in general? We have a channel for newer folks #dnd-newcomers with some links to get you started.
Have you checked out the basic rules yet?

[fallow burrow]

No I mean like the server more specifically tbh

[hot marlin]

Well yeah. D&D stops working when numbers get above 30. And it already gets pretty wonky from 20 to 30.

[crystal latch]

Ironically, 5e would be more suited to having an epic-level supplement because every type of roll uses the same proficiency bonus

[hot marlin]

It's just the basic consequence of using a D20.

[cerulean monolith]

Mathematically, once you get to bonuses above 10 the roll on the die becomes largely secondary to the outcome

[lyric viper]

We have #channel-guide For finding out which channels do what and what you're interested in. Otherwise it's mostly just jumping into a conversation.

If interested in finding a game, check out #find-a-game

[crystal latch]

Reducing d20 variance via high modifier is good in general

[cerulean monolith]

Is it?

[fallow burrow]

Ty man big help

Ty to calamity

[crystal latch]

d20s pair well with big modifiers, smaller modifiers work better with a system with a less even distribution on its core die - 2dX or 3dX for example

[hot marlin]

It absolutely isn't. This goes against the core design philosophy of this edition, being bounded accuracy

The variance is a feature, not a bug

[loud tendon]

Check out #channel-guide to see the sort of sections we have for this server. Much like d&d where specific beats a general rule, if we have a specific channel for a topic (ie: character builds #character-discussion ) the question or discussion goes there. Want to know how a rule might actually work #dnd-rules

Otherwise, general discussion of the game goes here.

Groups can be found with #find-a-game

[lavish flame]

new chance to make the classes cooler would be fine with me

[crystal latch]

Bounded accuracy wasn't even properly implemented and what they did implement is an abomination

[viral kraken]

ya they could have had it, but they missed the mark

[humble cairn]

Meh, seems to work fine to me.

[hot marlin]

Agreed. We need more bounded accuracy, not less. Therefore, modifiers should get even lower and variance should be even more important.

[crystal latch]

The primary consequence of bounded accuracy is "death by a thousand cuts" being the best damage strategy

[cerulean monolith]

The point of a variable outcome resolved by dice is to have randomness. If it’s a feature of the system that outcomes become less variable as the game scales up, then having dice also becomes less important as things scale.

[hot marlin]

Yes. That is how D&D is supposed to work

[crystal latch]

No, it's not if you look at previous editions

Didn't mean to reply to myself

[hot marlin]

Addendum: This is how D&D 5e is supposed to work

[crystal latch]

5e is indeed supposed to work in a manner that incentivizes horde summons

[umbral girder]

That is what the Mob rules are in the DMG are for

[crystal latch]

It is indeed made with the explicit intention of getting a mob of peasants to shoot a dragon to death with nonproficient longbows

[humble cairn]

D&D 5E is kind of your starter system that is friendly enough to new players and which can get some decent performance from. It's not a high octane system for expert gamers, and that's a good thing.

[lyric viper]

MMmm, I was going to say I like bounded accuracy over all but then Action Economy is soveriegn. So yes, large numbers of weaker mobs can be a threat to a higher lvl PC sounds right, but then combat slows dramatically.

It can be pretty hard to make powerful lone bosses feel like a threat without giving them way more legendary actions and multiattacks in combat to balance out. Minions seem neccessary.

[stark arch]

some one got some cool idea how to roleplay summon group of lesser demons with the summon lesser demons? i had in mind like i would schout in abysal i summon thee in the name of orcus com forward from the abys and heed my commands sky would darken and lighting would riple acrous the sky thus opening crack in the dimension and demons would spawn trough it

[cerulean monolith]

I would say the primary consequence is that, much more often than not, doing something fun at the table feels like a consequence of your own specific actions rather than just being how things are built. It makes choices feel more impactful

[crimson gulch]

Dragon wins initiative breath weapon and no survivors is my experience with that method

[crystal latch]

Positioning issue

I've killed dozens of dragons with a skeleton horde

[paper portal]

to be fair thats the haen diff we arent built like you

[humble cairn]

5E rewards smart tactics, but doesn't make them absolutely necessary, meaning it is forgiving and that, too, is a good thing.

[crimson gulch]

90 foot cones of breath beat skeleton hoards

[crystal latch]

The scariest thing for a skeleton horde isn't an AoE monster which will get shot to death, it's fighting against something with AC 20 points higher than their attack modifier and a way to give them all disadvantage without nearly passing its turn

[humble cairn]

And I don't think the game is really meant to be run in such a way in which smart tactics are necessary.

[stark arch]

give ur skeleton all wands of magick missile. solves any problem

[lyric viper]

I feel like MPMM creatures had a bit more oopmh to them to handle higher level issues of needing to balance out Action Economy at higher levels without increased number of participants.

More minions on either side seemed to really slow down combat for me (But then again- 6 players)

Even when we made the roll20 macros for animated objects and raptor hoards.

[crystal latch]

The last monster my party fought in our heavily modified Eve of Ruin game had an AC of 40
This made it so that our battalions of minions could do quite little against it (though we still fished for crits just in case) and most of the work was done by [+10 ability mod, +6 PB, +3 arcane grimoire, +3 amulet of the devout, +2 to hit from staff of power, +1 from a homebrew consumable, +1d4 from bless, +1d4 from emboldening bond] 20th-level PCs

Hello Tie, what AC was it exactly?

[faint thicket]

35 I think but it had the shield spell and multiple reactions

[flint ledge]

Dnd is sadly designed in a way that more people fighting is rewarded, though I personally don't think that comes up too much at most tables

[crystal latch]

Makes sense, and there were two of them too

[lyric viper]

I feel like that goes for most games TBF

[crystal latch]

Fighting an overgod moment

[faint thicket]

I need to remake that BBRG for 3.5

[knotty pasture]

And so many campaigns are designed for 4-6 people too, can't imagine the drastic increase in firepower by just filling it up to 6 people instead of sticking with 4

[crystal latch]

What was he? Wizard 20/cleric 20?

[lavish flame]

I think generally people understand that summoning a ton of allies is the dominant play, I just also think everyone recognizes that it slows the game down.

[umbral girder]

Big Bad Ravioli Guy?

[faint thicket]

Yeah since he was originally vecna but I retconned that

[crystal latch]

It doesn't really slow the game down much if you know what you're doing - practice makes perfect

[faint thicket]

Typo moment lol

[lyric viper]

But yeah I remember poor Zugg Zugg being bullied by 6 lvl 8 players. (Although I was also a newer DM to 5e at the time) and I failed to give her minions because I assumed a CR 23 would be enough by herself.

[crystal latch]

I could manage my entire horde in like... 30-45 seconds per round?

[lavish flame]

I don't play with people who know what they're doing lmfao

[umbral girder]

New boss fight everyone, Ravioli guy. I’m working on one already.

[hot marlin]

Action economy is king

[faint thicket]

There are a lot of practices that make it a lot easier to deal with, it only gets bad when you have hundreds of minions like that final fight did

[flint ledge]

I do think certain 3rd party books took an interesting approach like letting a boss go at the end of each player's turn

[hot marlin]

Well, it is and isn't. There is no amount of zombies that will pose a meaningful threat to a fully rested level 20 party

[crystal latch]

"I shoot the thing with my EB, it's alive, my 24 skeletons shoot the thing, my specter throws a magic stone"
Roll d20s, count hits, roll damage, remind DM to move target back 10 feet per EB hit and that the thing is now slowed 10 feet, end turn

[stark arch]

unles you give them all wands of magick missile

[hot marlin]

Question: How do you have 24 skeletons?

[crystal latch]

Animate dead

[red steppe]

This is perfectly fishable

[hot marlin]

Nah, skeletons and zombies cannot use wands of magic missiles

[atomic kayak]

They can technically

[viral kraken]

drink a lot of milk

[stark arch]

whre it says it cant?

[glad arch]

Ac 40 dont even bother with attack rolls, just go savung throws

[red steppe]

Do you do dice rollers for hordes?

[atomic kayak]

More a matter of getting all those wands in the first place. Among other things

[hollow stone]

you need a minimum 3 int to cast spells afaik

[faint thicket]

His saving throw mods were worse...

[hot marlin]

The basic spellcasting rules. And magic item rules.

[atomic kayak]

No such requirement no

[glad arch]

Half on save and chip down that way

[red steppe]

this also didn't matter cuz his saves is so high

[faint thicket]

Yes

[red steppe]

(i will assume triple digits atp)

[hollow stone]

i was lied to.

[atomic kayak]

Neither of those prevent skeletons and zombies from using magic items though?

[lavish flame]

how many wands can be made from 1 tree

[red steppe]

based

[crystal latch]

Our tactics for that boss largely involved just shooting him

[lyric viper]

My mind went to using the entire tree as a giant bazooka-wand.

[hot marlin]

Magic items in general, no. Wand of magic missile, yes.

[faint thicket]

Use a dice roller, roll 20d20, count the hits (best to just tell the player the AC)

[crystal latch]

We also had a moon knight with all the 5e magic items that buff claw damage

[hot marlin]

Skeletons and zombies can't talk, they can't say verbal components.

[faint thicket]

What rule are you talking about

Not ever magic item requires a command word

[viral kraken]

dear lord! just use mob rules

[delicate owl]

Spells cast from magic items have no components.

[crystal latch]

Some magic items allow the user to cast a spell from the item, often by expending charges from it. The spell is cast at the lowest possible spell and caster level, doesn't expend any of the user's spell slots, and requires no components unless the item's description says otherwise.

[atomic kayak]

Verbal components arent language

[stark arch]

Wand of Magic Missiles doest say you need to speak a command. says you use action

[umbral girder]

Magic items don’t require components

[hot marlin]

Oh yeah

Damn I forgot about that

[atomic kayak]

But also yea, magic item spell

[lyric viper]

Strap the wands to their heads like lazers.

[flint ledge]

I mean the guy had shield anyway so wand of magic missiles doesn't seem particularly effective

[lyric viper]

I'd still maybe question if they're smart enough to understand the command to fire their lazers, but...

[atomic kayak]

But even still, verbal components arent a known language. You don't technically have to necessarily be capable of speaking a specific language to use verbal components

[lavish flame]

Zombies can say "Braaaaains" and Skeletons can say "Rattle me bones!" so they can cast spells

[stark arch]

my skeleton uses a wand of magick missiles i want more its sooo good 😄

[crystal latch]

I'm pretty sure I didn't even spend a spell slot in that encounter

[red steppe]

in THE overgod fight?

[crystal latch]

Yes

[red steppe]

What did ur army look like holy

[flint ledge]

Well no they can't speak at all it's defined on their stat block they understand languages they knew in life

[stark arch]

i acualy got skeleton minatiures that holding a magic wand 😛

[atomic kayak]

Point being verbal components are a thing outside of speech

[sly crest]

frickin' undead with frickin' laser beams on their frickin' heads!

[crystal latch]

The army our party entered the dungeon with was

• me
• my simulacrum
• night blade CR 1/2
• 3 blazebears
• 4 polar bears
• 10 skeletons
• 4 Karrnathi undead soldiers
• imp familiar turned into amethyst greatwyrm true polymorphed into demilich, Pact of the Chain w/IotCM
• daemogoth titan
• our ranger, kobold gloom 15/ass 3/dss 1/life 1 with ascendant dragon's wrath antimatter rifle
• our wizard, CL twi 3/chron 17
• wizard's sim
• wizard's familiar, bat turned into amethyst greatwyrm
• Silly Blue Slaad
• our other wizard, CL peace 1/chron 19
• other wizard's sim
• Ireena Kolyana, shadow sorc 17/hexblade 3
• Ireena's simulacrum
• Harambe, apau perape demon (Tome of Beasts)
• Voldemort, CR 20 homebrew statblock that I found online for a Harry Potter 5e conversion
• Sauron, uses Sul Khatesh statblock (planar bound)
• Moon Knight, tabaxi Moon Druid 3/Beast Barbarian 6/Divine Soul 1/Gloom Stalker 3/Assassin 4/Battle Master 3
• Moon Knight's sim

There's a very good reason for all of these lmao

[sly crest]

I made the ugliest face when I saw Harambe

[stark arch]

daemogoth titan home brew? cant find him online in dnd monsterbook

[knotty pasture]

Harambe and Voldemort enter a bar together...

[lyric viper]

Might be getting a tad too into details of a personal game

[flint ledge]

"A Verbal component is the chanting of esoteric words that sound like nonsense to the uninitiated. The words must be uttered in a normal speaking voice"

I think being utterly incapable of speaking means you're unable to form specific sounds at a audible volume

[crystal latch]

Strixhaven book

[faint thicket]

Why did I allow this you may ask? Genuinely lost my mind at this point in the game due to how badly written eve of ruin was I just started doing nonsense and allowing insane RAW readings for fun

[crystal latch]

The insane readings in question involved treating LOTR 5e as a 5e supplement and us using Dream of the Blue Veil

[atomic kayak]

Yes, but they are not language and do not follow those rules

[faint thicket]

Speaking of daemogoth titans, you should try getting these as minions, they are some of the best support minions in the game

[humble cairn]

I think you play a very different game than most.

[crystal latch]

Most of the army didn't even take a turn in the last encounter iirc

We won round 1

[tough lynx]

If you ever run annother game can I please play in it that looks so fun omg

[lyric viper]

Again, just poking in a bit because we're getting into the weeds of a personal game, which isn't going to be as accessible a convo for folk not part of this game (Also, want to try and avoid spoilers for Eve of Ruin).

Might just need to refocus the topic to more common ground or if folk want to keep delving into that, either an appropriate channel or DMs.

[faint thicket]

Sure

[tough lynx]

Let’s gooo

[red steppe]

Man I wish I was in that game, would've been a great opportunity to do crazy stuff

[crystal latch]

It was wild, especially since level 13 or so when we became gods

[tough lynx]

May I ask how many long rests it took?

[faint thicket]

There is definitely some fun to be had in these kinds of games, though once you get into tier 4 it stops making sense

[atomic kayak]

Understatement of the century

[crystal latch]

We lost track after the first century

[lyric viper]

Folk:

Might just need to refocus the topic to more common ground or if folk want to keep delving into that, either an appropriate channel or DMs.

[flint ledge]

I would argue having to mouth certain words even if not connected to a language rules them out cause if they were able to do that why wouldn't they be able to speak

[atomic kayak]

Particularly because the "cant speak" on the blocks is in regards to language

[lavish flame]

I still reason that the fiction of these monsters does often include some level of speech

[atomic kayak]

Indeed

[sly crest]

only if the skeleton says they've got a bone to pick with you

[atomic kayak]

It both works within rules and definitely within the fiction

And thats besides the fact that in the rules it doesnt matter in the first place because magic items

[minor cargo]

Or if they want to give you a good ribbing.

[atomic kayak]

Oh no

[lavish flame]

so like a Zombie saying some magic words doesn't feel all too crazy given I saw Zombie Scarlet Witch doing magic in that marvel show

[faint thicket]

Since magic items make it so it doesn't matter anyways, I wonder if there are some undead that can't speak but still uses spells like normal

[atomic kayak]

Its starting

[red steppe]

would replicating spell effects count

[atomic kayak]

There's more than a few things that don't have language at all that can cast spells

[faint thicket]

Nah since it says replicate the effects, so the components aren't required

[red steppe]

Fair enough

[flint ledge]

I know it says that, it just seems like if they can't formulate regular language it's not really reasonable they'd be able to form verbal components imo

[atomic kayak]

Maybe, maybe not.

Part of the reason I was just talking in terms of rules, which let's them do so

[stoic haven]

Mornin

[severe rampart]

Morning everybody

[minor cargo]

Good Moradin.

[lyric viper]

*Lawful Good Moradin 😛

[minor cargo]

I had to message my group this week to cancel D&D tonight. We usually play at night, but my work day is going to start at 3:30am my time (instead of my typical 9am ish), so I won't be able to stay up, DM the game, and then get enough sleep.

The number of times my day job gets in the way of D&D... 😪

[umbral girder]

DM while at your job /jk

[severe rampart]

Make DMing be your job /j

[minor cargo]

I ran the numbers on it recently, actually. For the amount of income I'm looking for, it's not possible.

[umbral girder]

The Uritz method I see

[tidal halo]

I’m so proud I made a thing and my players are happy about it

[severe rampart]

Unfortunate, not all of us can DM 9 parties at once-

[crimson gulch]

yes

[tidal halo]

Nein

[severe rampart]

Best feeling

[tender fossil]

Just run them all through first edition tomb of horrors. It gets easier as you go quickly

[tidal halo]

I thought I did bad but they all say they loved it

[severe rampart]

Meet the robertsons
Nice work goob!, Really good session!
"They all hated me."

[tidal halo]

That lives in my freaking head rent free that and lamb chops

[severe rampart]

When you feel like you did horrible but then your players actually had fun

[glad arch]

My dm after hearing a mostly unprepared session was one of my favorites up to that point

[tidal halo]

Literally exactly how it went

[woven flint]

I got to retire my Harengon Bladesinger yesterday
He's pursing fatherly duties
But, he used a wish spell to give the entire party (including himself) a permanent Rary's Telepathic Bond because that was one of the biggest tactical advantages the party had lol
Also so he can communicate with them as long as they're on the same plane of existence

[severe rampart]

legit after a session a player of mine said "It feels like these sessions are getting better and better!" and I was like

Themberchaud feasts

[glad arch]

How fun a dm think the session was and how fun the session was for players seems inversly proportional

[severe rampart]

seems to be

[woven flint]

Now he can mentally send them pictures of his dragon children whenever 🧐

[severe rampart]

I guess the root of it is the improv stuff

[woven flint]

He's also arranging to have a meeting with the Grandmaster of Flowers himself, Bahamut 🧐

I can imagine he'd send a Telepathic image of himself having Tea with Fizban to his former party members
Or, hell maybe just straight up having tea with the Platinum dragon in his true form

[severe rampart]

when I need a thread from the lady of pain to kill that one hag I'll make sure to visit Tokii's Harengon

[woven flint]

Dude, my Harengon has been through some crazy things

Now that he's retired, he's probably going to use True Polymorph to become an Adult Spirit Dragon because he's raising two you dragons himself, and, well, he's only a Harengon lol, they live like.. 70 years Max

[severe rampart]

how long was the campaign he was in

[woven flint]

Oh, the campaign is still ongoing and I'm still in it

I just retired him because he didn't want to put his children or the party at risk by raising a Reborn draconic Deity, but also, he wanted time to be a father to his children.

I replaced him with an Air Genasi Artificer fellow

They're not biologically his children, but fate ultimately made him a father

[jovial shadow]

Sure you can, doesn't mean you are running them effectively.

[woven flint]

He was level 15 when he retired and had an Artifact that allowed him to cast any spell so long as he spent charges equal to the level (the book had 9 charges daily so..)
He also had 30 Int from said Artifact

[glad arch]

Legendary dad lore

[woven flint]

His job isn't necessarily dine yet, though
He's gotta meet with some deities to discuss said Reborn draconic Deity because as soon as he hatched again, he imprinted on my Harengon Wizard because he was already raising a dragon to begin with lol

He's meeting with Bahamut because the Deity is his brother

So, yeah, Legendary dad lore

The world's most Jovial and intellectual Rabbit Man
Meets the most Jovial and Tender of Dragon deities

My character might make a reappearance one day as an Adult Spirit Dragon
But as soon as he sees the party, he'll probably instantly shapechange back to give them a big ol hug lmao (he's staying an NPC though)

[umbral girder]

Or he doesn’t Shapechange for the Hug.
instant TPK /jk

[woven flint]

By the time he actually sees them again, the party might already be level 20 and it'll be the finale of the campaign

[kind bramble]

I'm curious what'd happen if detect thoughts is used on a person who has an entity inside them (essentially two minds in one) in this case a hexblade warlock where the patron is a shadowy entity that has used her grief to think it's a spirit inside her beloved's sword, when she accepted the pact and grasped the hilt the entity entered her body like a parasitic bond still making her think it's the sword speaking to her despite being a voice in her head manipulating her. so my question is this. would the surface thoughts part of detect thougths also detect the entity's surface thoughts. essentially listening to two radio stations at once. the thoughts occur at the same time

[crimson gulch]

anyone capable of running 9 camapigns is doing it very effectively to keep that many partys happy and commited

[languid lintel]

i heard a lot about the most experianced player being the dm if theres newbies involved but what do we do when no one has played dnd before lol

[crimson gulch]

then you all figure it out togeather

the new starter kits are great for introducing new players AND new Dungeonmasters to the game, i highly reccomend the new Heros of the borderlands box set

[jovial shadow]

Preferably you find a DM or watch a few videos of game play etc.. No sense in the blind leading the blind

[languid lintel]

i mean

dnd seems like a game where you can basically make your own rules

[hot gate]

Well, that would just be free-form roleplaying. D&Ds rules are what make it D&D. But you certainly don't have to internalize the entire book to get started. A few pages from the free rules already send you well on your way.

Here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/br-2024/playing-the-game

There are also adventures that are intended to help you run your first game as a completely new DM
https://media.wizards.com/2023/downloads/dnd/Peril_in_Pinebrook_COMPLETE.pdf

[blissful ibex]

Literally just need like half the info in the 'Playing the Game' section of the free basic rules and to build your character with the second chapter and you're golden

[jolly canyon]

Myself and my group never played before until I bought the Heroes of the Borderlands Box set and we just went to town on it. We had a blast(I was the dm)

I made plenty of mistakes but it happens

[blissful ibex]

literally walked a new table through that first section of the game rules the other day and between questions and side converstaions it only took like 2 and a half hours

[hot gate]

Very good and normal, as long yall had fun. I don't even want to count the number of mistakes I made in my first game, but we all learned!

[blissful ibex]

there's not that much to it

[jolly canyon]

Exactly, Deva. My friends are chill with me pausing to look up a rule I forgot or looking up a statblock

[red steppe]

DMs often do yeah

we play calvinball with dnd

[hazy yarrow]

Why is it genuinely humiliating torture trying to find a dm

[faint thicket]

Because 5e in general is very hostile for DMs due to needing to rely on rule zero a lot while also not being that entertaining to build for. This has led to an over abundance of players but not enough DMs to actually play so it's very hard to find a good one out in the wild since most are just sticking to the same friend group anyways

[hazy yarrow]

This is the correct answer and it bums me out

I dm myself and yet it felt just as terrible trying to get players so maybe there is no winning 💔

[faint thicket]

Moment, I'm not too big of a fan of the player culture of 5e myself. I mostly just stick to the same group

Plus I think my dming style would be too hard for most

[humble cairn]

Wow, that's certainly a take.

[faint thicket]

It comes mostly from friends who played other ttrpgs before entering 5e and I came to agree with them

[humble cairn]

I came to D&D from other games as well, but I guess I don't DM D&D very much.

I do know that I didn't really look for a DM, I was invited to a game by a DM I had been talking to here on the server.

But I also have the attitude that everyone is at the game table and responsible for helping everyone else, including the DM, have fun.

[faint thicket]

I got lucky when searching for a DM, dude found a post of my right after I made it

[hidden spindle]

Players outnumber DMs

And table size is... bottleneck

[humble cairn]

As a player, you should be trying to help your fellow players, this includes the DM, have fun by being entertaining, patient, and willing to go with the flow.

[hidden spindle]

Nevermind the scheduling

[faint thicket]

Agreed, just a lot of the community for some reason don't treat DMs right and the rules themselves kinda make it hard since you have to work a lot harder

(the amount of times I have seen people refer to DMs as not players of the game annoys me)

[humble cairn]

The thing is I come from games that are even more GM dependent.

[jovial shadow]

It's okay to have "fun" as long as it is understood by all involved on what definition is. Some DM's thinks it's fun to TPK for example.

[crimson gulch]

because most ot the great dms have full tables allready unfortunatly

[humble cairn]

Part of the social contract is that you have things like Session 0 to get on the same page about what is fun.

[grizzled verge]

Why are there so few magical archery items?

[hidden spindle]

They only need a +3 Weapon & +3 Ammunition is all

[atomic kayak]

Symptom of ttrpgs in general

There are exceptions ofc, but most are literally designed to have more players. Which in turn means that the environment will in general always have more players floating around

[hidden spindle]

Then there's that one guy who does it for a job

He looks genuinely happy

[crimson gulch]

theres more than just one

theres Hundreds of us that run games as a full time job, its great

[hidden spindle]

He's great

Inspiring

[grizzled verge]

You could say that about every fighting style though, why do melee characters get all the cool enchantments.

[chrome karma]

Idk how to post in looking for a dm lmao

[blissful ibex]

because casters get spells

[hidden spindle]

All you need is to hit though. And deal damage. The thing with them is; some wars are best fought with coin.

[blissful ibex]

there's instructions in #find-a-game

[faint thicket]

So in theory it's to balance the fact that melee is more threatening, in practice melee doesn't do enough to deal with the risks

[hidden spindle]

Nothing fancy, just time, and money

[jovial shadow]

Because the best DM's are dead or old and retired. What's left is very few good ones who run tables, and many new ones who run a few and quit or never show up.

[hazy yarrow]

Genuinely what is the point of looking then

[hot marlin]

That is such a cynical take

(Cynical in the sense "overly pessimistic and untrue", not in the sense of "relating to the school of philosophy")

In truth you need to either broaden your search or just admit that most people run games for their friend group, therefore just get your group together

[crimson gulch]

yeah, in the last 10 years with 5e taking off there are more Dungeonmaters now more than ever who are energetic and running great games

and so many folks that cant find the game themselvs, step up and run it themselves

[dark pewter]

There will always be new GMs, as long as the hobby continues to grow

[coarse ravine]

Because players complain then the dm thinks they aren't good enough because they are already perfectionists... just a concept for anyone running non arena style quests

[dark pewter]

I've inspired three of my regular players to try DMing, and one of them runs his first oneshot next month

[coarse ravine]

Anyone can do arena style quests

However real quests take planning

[crimson gulch]

amazing when that happens, i have 8 players who learned how to play in my games that are running their own sesions these days too

[coarse ravine]

Then you plan and plan and players still complain. So yeah less and less dms cause dms try to be perfectionists

[hazy yarrow]

I’m already dming 💔

[dark pewter]

I went from running four games every two weeks, to running two and playing three (outside of paid tables)

All of my GMs play at my tables

[crimson gulch]

so many of my players are constantly inviting me to play at their tables but im booked solid so its a rarity

[humble cairn]

I'm playing under one of them. The Urizt lineage/school of DMing.

[red steppe]

There's also some poor guidance in the DMG right?