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This dude has some thoughts again...



I normally like him, but that video was kind of mediocre. I think he's already made all those points in his other videos.

I don't think I could run 5e, I find the combat way too slow, and there aren't enough interesting choices to merit it. I'm playing in a game of it right now, and I'm a level 7 Wizard. Every time combat rolls around, I just dread it. I'm bowing out of the game soon though. It'll probably be my last official DND game before the next edition.
 
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Dog, guard 25 gp
 
I normally like him, but that video was kind of mediocre. I think he's already made all those points in his other videos.

I don't think I could run 5e, I find the combat way too slow, and there aren't enough interesting choices to merit it. I'm playing in a game of it right now, and I'm a level 7 Wizard. Every time combat rolls around, I just dread it. I'm bowing out of the game soon though. It'll probably be my last official DND game before the next edition.
I don't think there's really much new and insightful to be said about 5e at this point.
 
Dungeons are size-ist and non-biped-phobic. :clown:

"Ackshually" the 5e rules for sizes is pretty easy. Grapples can work on up to one size larger than self. Creatures can squeeze into areas one size smaller than self, costs +extra foot per foot Spd (as different source, does allow stack with Difficult Terain), incurs Disadv on Atk and DEX save. Volume limits larger creatures teaming up on smaller, but allows smaller creatures more spaces to team up against larger.

So an Ogre, Large, usually cannot be grappled by Small creatures, like halfling & gnomes. No feat needed. Also that ogre can squeeze into typical dungeons as most PCs are Medium. Again 5e core is pretty solid in its convenience.

But yeah, it is a harder challenge to have roleplay discussion like we did in the earliest Complete Handbooks. What could it mean to explore this race/class/kit combination in a breathing setting?; how could we behave with verisimilitude to its feeling of authenticity? The siren song to mechanical widgets is huge nowadays and such old published best-practices chats are like Sierra Games moonspeak (as Tristram coined) to this new age, an impractical indulgence.
 
Agree, neither of us cares for this sort of play but apparently a lot of people want to be able to take their characters from table to table and thus the push for standardization across the board insofar as balance goes.
I run into a similar mindset when recruiting online, where people already have a character they want to play before they know what the campaign is. I've never been locked into a single character that way so it's a bit alien to me.

I've never had good luck with organized play and will never try it again but I'm happy to let them to do their thing.
 
Agree, neither of us cares for this sort of play but apparently a lot of people want to be able to take their characters from table to table and thus the push for standardization across the board insofar as balance goes.

I can understand some of the appeal. I mean, it is an opportunity to show off your own skill at character creation, strategy and roleplaying skills within some preset constraints.

When I played briefly in a new group, I remember the GM responding with awe that I'd spend my turn's action on Helping the fighter (Aid action that grants advantage to the next attack on a specific foe). Or that I'd use a spell like Tasha's Hideous laughter outside of combat to essentially win a public debate by making the other guy look like a crazed fool. It's fun to show how we can think outside of the box once in a while with new folks who are stuck in generalized routine.
 
Apropos of nothing, yes Ladybird Ladybird, I did notice your new cat person avatar. :wink:
I wish my hair was that good.

It's called setting balance. What would and should happen given the realities of the setting does happen. Centaurs split their hooves if they don't get shod. Ogre's aren't going to be able to squeeze through a goblin bolt hole.
Personally I just assume that's part of what a centaur spends their clothing and upkeep budget on; I trust my bipedal characters to know to buy clothes because they need them, not sure why a centaur would be any different. Of course, if you make me RP it, I'm gonna use it as an opportunity to make friends with the blacksmith, because I figure it's not often that their equine clients talk back.
 
So are these cows or aliens Muppetborn in the "Mah Nà Mah Nà" song? I assume the archetype Animal, with the bearded sunglasses dude being archetype Monster (due to his Mah Na Mah Na being the 'Yaaaay' feature battlecry), even though conceptually both archetype names could cause confusion. But you could make an argument that these pink vacuum muppets are more Aberrations type, however that would cripple the Beast Bond feature and nerf the build.




That said, I dunno if it would be too much of a cakewalk to read all three as Monster archetypes. Having three-part Monster Muppetborns doing cascading 'Yaaaay's harmony before each SR gives an explosive DPR spike to GWM/SS feats as it erases their penalty for extra damage and might be overbearing for late campaign's BBEG set piece battle. Cross these a capella Monster Muppets with Sorcadins and Padlocks nova throughput and you could have your Kermits & Miss Piggys one-round, or even one-shot!, Tiamats by early Tier 3... :alien: :angry:

:clown: Do I really have to point out it's sarcasm? :blah: Yes. Yes, I do. :clown:
 
I'm trying to decide whether to get Original Adventures Reincarnated #5: Castle Amber or Tasha's Cauldron of Everything as my now apparently seasonal D&D book purchase. Could someone weigh in on the pros and cons of either? At the moment, I'm thinking rules expansion would be preferable over the adventure module, but I am not sure yet.
 
Do you need more rules? Do you have a lack of subclasses? Are you unhappy with the way races are presented in 5e?
 
I'm trying to decide whether to get Original Adventures Reincarnated #5: Castle Amber or Tasha's Cauldron of Everything as my now apparently seasonal D&D book purchase. Could someone weigh in on the pros and cons of either? At the moment, I'm thinking rules expansion would be preferable over the adventure module, but I am not sure yet.
I would go for Tasha's. Adventures are easy and you can convert a lot of cheap/free OSR stuff 1:1 in a pinch. Rules are always useful, even if you only use some of them it adds to your toolbox as a GM and understanding them grants you greater mastery over the system
 
Agreed: there are so many adventures out there that are easy to adapt to 5e, and Tasha's has a lot of great material (rules) and character options.
 
In addition to the racial customisations that I've explained previously, Tasha's features two new subclasses and rules patches for each class, a new class (The Artificer) that you may not have, details for a number of possible patron types PC's may work for, new spells and magic items, rules for sidekicks, some inspiration tables for things monsters might like and could get PC's out of a fight, rules for a bunch of places PC's probably won't want to go to, and some examples of puzzles you could put in an adventure.

The puzzles chapter is a bit of a dud (They're kinda rubbish, and if you use the example ones as-is you'll be in for a bad time because most players are gonna own this book), and the "things a monster might like" page isn't really telling an experienced GM anything they wouldn't already know, but the rest of the book is solid.
 
I really dig these for some reason. They're pretty flexible, elegant, straightforward and can even make decent 'mundane humanoid' enemy classes.

It must just be my love for the combat / skills / magic class-concept trinity.
Me too. They're great for simplicity and adding NPCs to a party without outshining the PCs.

AND really easy to create and manage. Just pick any creature of CR 1/2 or lower and add the stats from the template. Hell, these could be used to make stronger enemies too (mini-bosses and bosses).

Best rules in a while, IMHO.
 
I really dig these for some reason. They're pretty flexible, elegant, straightforward and can even make decent 'mundane humanoid' enemy classes.

It must just be my love for the combat / skills / magic class-concept trinity.
I use sidekick system for henchmen, retainers, enemies etc and it works fine. I quite like it in fact.
 
Between the pink colour and the gaping round mouths, aberrations isn't what sprang to mind, but something more ... inflatable.
Speaking from personal experience?

(I TEASE! Please put the chainsaw down! NOT THE FACE!)
 
I own not a single inflatable companion. I don't judge though.
There was one time some colleagues and I were going to purchase an inflatable lady, fill her with blue powerade, and put her in another colleague's truck.

We decided not to do it eventually, because it would be sexual harassment and we'd be (Rightfully) fired.
 
All this talk of races has me thinking it's time I finally put my foot down and exclude all but the races I specifically want from my next campaign. I've long fretted about doing so because I've tried to offer 'mass appeal' D&D as much as possible, especially because two of the players in the next campaign will be pretty new, but I'm just so tired of elves/dwarves/halflings, etc.

I'm tired of half-heartedly including them in settings or storylines when I don't personally give a fuck about what minor interest they bring to the table. I'm tired of the fact that most people just roleplay them as humans anyway. I think my disdain was sharpened recently by my experience playing Pillars of Eternity on steam. In that pseudo-D&D setting, there was almost no distinction between humans and elves, nothing special or iconic. What's the point of that?

So now I ponder which races I actually would include alongside humans. preferably something alien, something weird enough that the setting couldn't just treat them like humans, that players would be strongly inclined to do something interesting with them.

I've been thinking of using the shardmind and the wilden from *sinister thunder crack* 4th edition. The crystal people and the plant people. A race that used to be part of a giant living gate and a race that was born (sprouted) yesterday. Doesn't get much weirder than that while style being playable. What's cute is that if you line them up next to humans you've got animal, vegetable and mineral, like a game of Twenty Questions. :hmmm:

They also have a nice spread of mental focus (shardmind), physical focus (wilden), and versatile/Mario (human).

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There are a few issues with this lineup of course. For instance, they don't exactly have the best visual identity, especially the wilden being pretty damn ugly in all official art. There is also the real possibility that no player will like them (they didn't exactly set the world alight in *sinister thunder crack* 4th edition) and will thus feel constrained by a lack of races to choose from.

Anyway, I'll keep mulling it over.

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Stick to your guns! Saying no is often more important than saying yes. It really structures the world quite a bit and prevents it from becoming an amorphous mass. It is particularly helpful if your players are not particularly interested in making really unique stories and bringing them to the table for themselves
 
I remember, in a long-running campaign, supplying new players with information packets with basic information about the world. It included a section detailing what races existed in the campaign world. There were no halflings in the world but there were 3' tall squirrel-like folk I'd written up as a player character race that more or less filled a similar niche. There were still players who handed me a halfling character despite the bold text that there were no halflings in the world. The number of times I heard some variation of, "Oh, he fell through a magical portal," was quite infuriating.

Now, ask me about the time I was starting a new campaign and had a guy drop in wanting to play his 21/23 level Ranger/Mage...
 
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I'll just leave this here ...

There's quite a sad story behind that site - I knew the chap who did it.

Originally it was a parody of realdoll.com. The chap who did it was a really talented programmer but slowly going blind through macular degeneration. Last I saw him - getting on for 20 years ago - he could still work with delphi as he could make out the shapes of the keywords. I lost contact with him when I left Christchurch but I dare say he's blind now, although he used to maintain a web presence not all that long ago.
 
Believe it or not you can do some slick action stuff with 5e if you grok the action economy, movement, and how contested skills work. I am not saying 5e is a pulp fantasy game by any means but it's a powerful system nonetheless and I feel like people disparage it without giving it a fair chance. For instance page 271 of the DMG has rules for climbing on top of Huge or Gargantuan monsters, That's a good example of the many things a DM can do with the system if they put their mind to it.

If a player wanted to leap on to a man-ape's back and stab the shit out of them like Conan I'd rule that the PC needs to make two successive contested Strength (Athletics) checks against their opponent. Mechanically it is the same as grappling an opponent and shoving them prone, the PC ends up with advantage on attacks while the monster has disadvantage and their movement is set to 0. I make tons of rulings like this while running 5e confident that my rulings are fair and repeatable.
 
Yeah there are a lot of options with ability checks and saves to improvise, but I am always getting wary of asking players to roll too often ( Justin Alexander Justin Alexander's article on Rolling to Failure is a good read).
Absolutely agree on that, I do a lot of passive skill checks, particularly on anything Lore or Perception based. That said, asking for two contested Athletics checks in combat isn't crazy or out of the ordinary to pull off a heroic feat that grants a huge advantage. With two attacks a level 5 Fighter do it in 1 round.

FYI almost all the creatures in the MM have terrible Strength (Athletics), especially in comparison to Strength-based characters like Fighters or Barbarians. Grappling is fun and effective.
 
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