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gerusz

@ gerusz @ttrpg.network

Posts
4
Comments
85
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Hot Take: 5e is too bloated with unnecessary rules and should be simplified

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  • It's a game, not a simulator. I mean, how would I handle fireballs then? Would I roll for lung damage due to the targets breathing in hot air (enforcing realistic consequences), or would I just disallow the spell because magic is not realistic? Or if the enemy gets shot by an arrow, would I roll for organ damage?

    And of course you have to account for the fun of all players. Would it be fun for the wrestler player to take out any humanoid in two turns? Probably. Possibly. Would it also be fun for the archer and the swordsman who still have to play by the normal game rules instead of the power fantasy of a "hurr durr wrestling is da ultimate martial art" player, and have to actually use their attacks to overcome the enemies' AC and whittle down their HP? Doubtful. What's the point of having them around if the wrestler can just choke everything because that's the part of combat that the DM suddenly starts simulating realistically?

    Either enemies can survive a dozen arrows, being roasted alive in their armor for a minute, being stabbed with a rapier a lot, etc... and they can last long enough versus a wrestler that just choking them doesn't become the dominant strategy, or they can be choked out in a realistic timeframe but they can also be instakilled by an arrow or a sword.

    If you only take one element of the game and turn it "realistically" OP while the rest remain fantasy, you're liable to fuck up the whole game for everybody else. Now there could be a merit in playing "dark and gritty, all damage is super lethal" games but then that's not really D&D anymore, something like Mörk Borg might be better for it.

  • Hot Take: 5e is too bloated with unnecessary rules and should be simplified

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  • The problem with this is combat balance. I wouldn't want to give players an ability that can take out an archmage in 2 turns, no save, without any resources used.

  • Hot Take: 5e is too bloated with unnecessary rules and should be simplified

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  • I'm not a wrestler or a wrestling fan, so no clue for most of them. Bars and holds... well, I think the automatic damage to the grappled creature that is dealt with the unarmed fighting style is meant to symbolize damage dealt by various holds and bars, so that would apply here.

    Airway chokes are extremely impractical in D&D; every creature can hold their breath for a number of minutes equal to their CON modifier with a minimum of 1, and that means 10 rounds. I wouldn't bother trying to simulate that, just deal the 1d4 damage and move on.

    Blood choke... well, that's a different matter entirely. I would most definitely require the grappler feat and the unarmed fighting style for this. Say, you forgo the automatic damage to the grappled target and instead force the target to make a CON save, DC = 8 + your PB + your STR mod. If the target fails, it gains a level of temporary exhaustion (that lasts while you're choking it), if it fails by more than 5 then it gains 2 levels, and if it hits 6 levels it falls unconscious.

  • Hot Take: 5e is too bloated with unnecessary rules and should be simplified

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  • I don't think that's in the rules. Like, at all. The unarmed fighting style allows you to deal damage to a creature grappled by you, the grappler feat allows you to pin a creature you grappled (which is just fucking useless since both of you become restrained), and you can make a shove attack to push a creature prone. But there's nothing in the basic rules about an unarmed attack that deals damage and knocks the target prone.

    The alternatives for flavoring are:

    • Battle Master fighter, trip attack. Technically it must be a weapon attack, but if you have the unarmed fighting style, a natural weapon, or are a monk multiclass, I'd be inclined to allow it.
    • Open Hand monk, Open Hand technique. This is probably the best alternative that is 100% RAW.

    Of course a more permissive DM (like me) could allow you to make a fairly hard athletics check once you have grappled the orc and have two free hands, then resolve it as a 2d6+STR bludgeoning damage attack.

  • The spell which gave me my grudge against 5e

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  • You can always take the shove action. PHB 195.

    Using the Attack action, you can make a special melee attack to shove a creature, either to knock it prone or push it away from you. If you're able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them.

    You only need the subclass (or the feat that gives you maneuvers) if you want to do it as part of your weapon attack.

  • Tales From the Tables episode 31: Innocence Lost

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  • She is also a 700-year-old wizard, so she wouldn't be inclined to give a fuck about the "social stigma" of a Tiefling child.

  • Advice needed: encounter balancing for a party with 3 paladins

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  • I tried restraining the paladins before.

    Any restraint that can be escaped with a save is useless. They all have very high strength scores, not too shabby DEX, and there's the Aura of Protection. And when I tried any other restraint, they just misty-stepped out of it because, hey, why have a class that can tank, heal, buff, DPS, and be the face of the party when you can have a class that can tank, heal, buff, DPS, be the face of the party, and can jump in the face of any ranged enemy who tries to abuse their one weak spot? "Party balance? Dafuq is that?" - WotC, probably. (I'm just glad there's no fighter in the party, they would feel absurdly useless.)

    I know about The Monsters Know... but if the monsters knew what they were doing, it would be a reeeeeeeeeally boring campaign, because the monsters know not to be where this party is.

    Thanks anyway!

  • Advice needed: encounter balancing for a party with 3 paladins

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  • Any fireballs?

    Worse. One of the other players is a Forge cleric. Wall of Fire, Guardian of Faith, or Spirit Guardians all make mincemeat out of minions. Then there's a hexblade who can treat minions like medkits on legs. And a ranger who can use hail of thorns to cluster bomb them.

    My goal of course isn't a TPK, it's to make them sweat for their victory, for once. And in that, I'm feeling like a failure. Combats should feel meaningful, after all, with real stakes and uncertainty. But as of now the only uncertainty about them is whether the paladins will finish it in 3 turns, or 2 because they roll a crit.

    (I do have a mindflayer encounter prepped in the near future, but it won't last long either. If any of them make the save vs. the mind blast - and some will, because 1) Aura of Protection, and 2) Their dice loathe me - then they will turn it into calamari in about 0.00234 nanoseconds. Whatever minions I throw in won't matter at that point.)

  • Advice needed: encounter balancing for a party with 3 paladins

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  • Thanks for the tips! Though I'm not too sure how to implement them more than I already am:

    1. It's a homebrew campaign and I'm trying to use the encounter balance tool from 5e tools. But it's still worthless; I threw "absurd" encounters at them and they still obliterated it.
    2. Unfortunately I'm not sure how to create an alternate objective for a combat encounter that isn't also achieved by just destroying the enemy in 2-3 turns. Kind-of like Counter Strike; sure, you can try to rescue the hostages or plant the bomb but it's often easier to just kill the opposing team. Sure, I did manage to run a boss fight that lasted longer because they had to complete secondary objectives (get some of his blood with a special dagger, then defend the allied casters conducting a ritual that would turn off his insane regeneration) before they got to nuke him, and the fight had two more phases after that. But that's not an amount of prep that I'm willing to do for any run-on-the-mill difficult encounter, it was the arc-villain of one of their backstories.
    3. Misty step. :(
    4. Sure, if they murder the shit out of a gang of bandits who gave them some trouble in the second session, that's fine. The problem is when they take down the homebrew CR17 fire giant lord in less than two turns in-game, and less time IRL than it took to actually homebrew it. (At least I learned that 3 legendary actions are only adequate for a party of 4; for a party of N the number of legendary actions for a boss should be N-1.)

    The next big quest they will probably undertake is slaying a dragon. (They know about the dragon, it's a known problem in the region, and they expressed interest in slaying it both in and out of character.) I plan to introduce the dragon by having it wreck a related side mission they are sent on, but I can only hope and pray to Tymora, the Lady, and any other deity of dice rolls that I won't have to tear up the prep for the next 9-10 sessions thanks to some lucky dice rolls from the players' part.

  • Non-male BBEG inspiration?

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  • Advice needed: encounter balancing for a party with 3 paladins

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  • The smite damage isn't even the biggest of my problems. (It's up there, yes, but not in the #1 slot.) The passive auras are more annoying. Seriously, no-resource spell damage resistance? Whose brilliant idea was that?! Was it even playtested?

    Though either way, any ideas about tossing in a lot of enemies without turning the game into a slog? I already had to break out the hourglass to keep turns under 10 minutes (6-player party...)

  • Advice needed: encounter balancing for a party with 3 paladins

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  • Yup. My best idea at this point is to toss a mindflayer at them, not a single one of them have a positive INT modifier.

  • Quiver of endless arrows > "I don't track ammo"

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  • Too much math for 5e's design philosophy, and with bounded accuracy it would need a crit on the strongest enemies anyway.

    The actual implementation of that system could take a number of forms:

    • PB/LR for every class that is proficient with the given weapon. (The most basic implementation, but also screws over pure martials in favor of half casters.)
    • PB/LR for every class that is proficient, but fighters regain PB/2 uses when they use Second Wind.
    • PB/LR for every class that is proficient, PB/SR for fighters, monks, and barbarians.
    • PB/LR for every class that is proficient, fighters regain all uses when rolling initiative.
    • Etc...

  • Quiver of endless arrows > "I don't track ammo"

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  • For now it's just a fourth wall break because none of the players questioned it.

    If they do ask, the lore reason is:

    "DM" stands for Dunnusaidu Marudu, an ancient philosopher and the inventor of hedonism in this universe. When he died, he decided that even though he has experienced all the possible sensations that his current body and the current time period can provide, he still hadn't had enough. He had enough followers to become a minor god, and his spirit wanders the world, possessing random people for a short while to gain new experiences. He is not malicious which is why he created this talisman that appears on those possessed by him, he usually doesn't speak much when he does this, and he never makes major life decisions in the given body.

  • Quiver of endless arrows > "I don't track ammo"

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  • Reminds me of how they incorporated weapon type-specific attacks in BG3. Stealing this one for sure.

    Yep, that whole weapon maneuvers system should be backported into base 5e stat, with slight modifications (i.e. they would be PB/LR instead of 1/SR, since short rests in the tabletop version are less regulated).

    (Or alternatively they could auto-proc on a crit.)

  • Quiver of endless arrows > "I don't track ammo"

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  • If one of my players can't make it and it's not possible to remove their character from the group storywise (meaning I'll have to control their character in combat), the character will immediately equip the "Talisman of Protection from DM Stupidity". What it does is:

    • When a character holding this item dies, they fall unconscious instead and disappear into a demiplane. While in this demiplane, the character is stable at 0 hit points. When the party takes a long rest, the character will reappear near a random other player character as if they had also taken a long rest.
    • If the player retakes control of the character while they are still in the demiplane, the character reappears next to another player character of their choice with 1 hit point.
    • If all other player characters die, the character in the demiplane will die too. If the method of their original death would have left a corpse, the corpse will reappear adjacent to a random player character's body. Otherwise, they will disappear alongside the demiplane.

    Basically, it makes them immortal unless a TPK happens.

  • It is widely believed that monks have too few resources, here's a house rule I made for my campaign's monk player. (Made in 1 minute)

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  • It could be tied to per-rest. Similar to the fighters' weapon mastery in OneDnD, switching stances could be tied to a long or short rest instead. Just call it something else, like katas. (Yeah, yeah, they are trying to move the monk away from the strictly Eastern roots, but they could give this as a flavor option.) You drill one of the katas in the morning and then you can use the basic ability associated with it for free:

    • Kata of the Wildfire: aggressive stance,
    • Kata of the Mountain: defensive stance,
    • Kata of the Zephyr: mobile stance.

  • This campaign will be smooth and meticulously planned out

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  • I did a bit of googling and I'll be damned, looks like even the official Roddenberry Productions Facebook/Instagram account picked it up. OK, that's it, I peaked, my life is all downhill from there.

  • It is widely believed that monks have too few resources, here's a house rule I made for my campaign's monk player. (Made in 1 minute)

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  • Or: Monks have 3 stances: aggressive, defensive, and mobile. Switching stances costs a bonus action, and you can assume one stance freely when you roll initiative.

    In aggressive stance Flurry of Blows is free.

    In defensive stance Patient Defense is free.

    In mobile stance Step of the Wind is free.

    This way monks are not just a worse rogue, their basic abilities are now actual basic abilities.