Taltaron
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Hey best dnd friends. I have a backerkit for dnd item cards if you want to check it out.
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Nismu
AC4400CW
#3 remember when I was a level 1 adventurer, DM? Do you remember when I was excited to play my first campaign, Mr DM? when you booby trapped that door and I didn't even know that was a thing you could do. Do you remember? Do you remember when you killed me? So yeah I'm going to spend 45 minutes checking a door. THIS IS YOUR FAULT!
grandfalloon
As a forever GM, I'd say a third to half the shit GMs complain about is because of GMs, much of which is encouraged by easy-to-change rules.
FaeVikingPrincess
casting a spell USED to provoke an AoO in 3.5. We need to bring that shit back. But make some changes. Like a spell that is supposed to be a melee touch attack, that only has a verbal component or material and the character has their focus, it should not provoke. That way the spells that force you to be adjacent to someone doesn't make you provoke an AoO on a character who likely has crappy AC and HP.
wckd1356
#6 It used to be like that GOND DAMN IT !!!
InitHello
#4 It's not accidental, either.
Taltaron
sakm
#14 I have bad news. #12 is AI
Taltaron
Ghasp, I’m sorry
rshini
#8 D&D basically is fine-tuned for it's own subgenre of fantasy - dungeonpunk. Attempting to force it to work outside that niche is dumb, you're better off actually playing other systems. I know there's people who are trying to make 5e work for fucking *Dragonball Z* and a gadget character like Bulma completely broke the system.
D&D is NOT a systems/setting agnostic rule set. You want something you can slam any genre into, FATE, Savage Worlds and GURPs are better choices.
grandfalloon
Piggybacking: Yes, you COULD make it work for an awful lot of things, but for most of them you need to build an entirely new set of classes to level 10 or so, maybe spells and races, and ensure that they're somewhat balanced. Building a new class can be fun (though you're probably not as good at it as you think), but do you really want to build like 6 of them for your Victorian London one-shot?
stridert212
#6 lol they used to actually. It was amazing. You'd have to take feats to prevent it.
Huor
For me, the hardest part of being a DM was keeping a straight face.
TheMostKink
#6 That's what Mage Slayer is for.
celestedrake
cmdrnero
#6 a better way to fix the balance issue with martials vs. casters is to remove attacks of opportunity from the game. All they do is lock martials in position, slow combat, and reduce fun. Better to replace them with actions that grant enemies advantage against you. Like casting a spell, opening a door... AOOs are already a bad thing, more bad does not make things better.
magus200342
#6 minor nitpick on this one, the balance on casters is to enforce the rules on spell materials, and reduce the amount of gold gained. That's all it takes (in 5e anyway, not sure about 6 or older ones)
Rogahar
Also, doesn't casting a spell trigger AoOs anyway?
magus200342
Naw, prolly should be baked into all martials tho.
If you take mage slayer feat you can do that. And I think there's a subclass feature that allows it, can't remember who gets that tho.
Wizdos
It used to in older editions. In 3rd edition you had to do all sorts of stuff to avoid getting slapped for trying to cast a spell in close combat. Just one of the things lost to the smoothing out the newer editions of the game have done.
2074red2074
But you can just use your component pouch and it's assumed that you have anything that doesn't cost GP. Outside of that, most spells' components aren't super expensive for their levels. If you want some fun times, take away your casters' components. Magic areas where all sound is muted for example, so they can't use verbal components, or take away their pouches so they lose materials. Then when they stumble on a bat cave, they'll realize "Oh shit, I have guano now!"
rshini
unfortunately bookkeeping is rarely fun for anyone - and feels like the GM has to hover over players to keep them honest. The balance should come from in-play trade offs, not busywork
magus200342
Idk, I wouldn't have a player at my table that I couldn't trust to be honest. If a player is willing to lie about not buying bat guano the last time they were in town, they can't be trusted to give the number they rolled or anything else.
And the in play trade off is the components and gold costs of everything? I'm not sure I know what you mean here.
Most of my behind the screen work is considered busy work lol, I still enjoy it, that's a per person thing but fair point there.
nobodyspecial995
#4 f'n dwarves
adamlstf9
Oy! Come say that to me face ye fookin knife-ear!
Morkath
3Davideo
#6 Wait, they don't?
MrTeabearparty
That was a 3.5 edition and Pathfinder thing. In 5e it doesn't unless you have the Mage Slayer feat.
celestedrake
#3 The true trap is paranoia.
celestedrake
...Or a flying invisible gelatinous cube situated above a perfectly sized pit trap. Even if the party kills it they are still in a pit of acid.
celestedrake
finntastrophe365
#6 Magic balancing has been ruined by the folks who want all the fun without the work. Casting magic should be powerful and a massive pain in the ass. That's the trade-off. A martial should win in a 1v1 in a spur of the moment fight and the caster should win with prep.
HamburgerTelephone
Sorry, best I can do is that stupid Warlock “I win” against melee.
Felberin
Not actually ever run successful DnD table, the one session we tried on 2e ended with one guy putting his socks in another guy's mouth because they were so bored of my descriptions. ... anyway, I personally don't agree to this kind of general rules of thumb, As baseline it does sound fair, but I think there should be room for customization and specialization. So "melee wizard that slings spells while dodging attacks" could be possible, but with some other caveats like lack of high level spells.
Rogahar
Pathfinder solved this with the Magus class, which is exactly that - an arcane spellcaster who specializes in delivering their spells on the painful end of their weapon of choice :D
Hexrowe
#1 Volo is a well known ignorant prick, though.
bulgarianBarbarian
Hey, Volo gifted me a manor!
Bobdole010
It's said Volo handles a quill as well as a surgeon handles a scalpel
MikeRInternetTraveler
There may be some minor cosmetic damage
TheWombatStrikesAgain
Agreeing to his surgery actually has a surprisingly good outcome, though absolutely everything tells you it won't.
annonymouse211
Aw Volo. "Pbpbpbpbp...."
TheWombatStrikesAgain
Yeah, but VGtM had so much more lore and flavor than the sterile MoM and then 2025 version of the Monster Manual.
I don't need setting-neutral monster books. If I want to give a monster a different lore for my setting, I can just say "this replaces established lore x". But if you have someting in place, at least you have something to default to, if you didn't feel like writing original setting-specific lore for every fucking monster.
override367
"I am a hobgoblin who fled my legion because my desire for innovation wasnt matched, the college only was interested in war magic, I wanted to create wonders"
"Yeah take a number, every hobgoblin is like that, also the college teaches arts and crafts and community mentorship now"
WOTC is sanding the settings until it's just a flat plane and everyone is just the same guy
SchuKadaj
I know a lot of people are happy about 2024 rule adjustments, but I just am _not_ vibing with it _at all_ then again I made a druid 2014 set up and everything is now 2024 set up and it just doesn't work the same.
override367
I am absolutely thrilled with 2024 play wise, moon druids are the only casters who really got an nerf (meanwhile non moon druids are better), but even then - they get *some* buffs (and if you want to stay a wolf until 20, you're far less nerfed by doing so), but Moon Druids were really poorly balanced before
It's more or less aces across the board with rule changes, except sidegrades like qually shitty stealth rules
But it has no lore to speak of, the races are just reskins of the same dude
override367
oh yeah and rangers still suck
Transmorph
#6 4e did this. 3e fanboys got very mad. It's amazing how many "5e fixes" are just reinventing 4e rules but with a bit less math and an extra paragraph of fluff.
FaeVikingPrincess
The fixes in 5e were basically removing the bloated crap from 4e though. Keeping the things that worked and tweaking them a bit isn't a fix. I still don't like combining spot and listen into one thing. I do like that they grouped together things like tumble, jump, climb, and balance.
sadurdaynight
Grew up with orig red, blue, etc d&d. Played 2e add w a group long ago. Looked at some current d&d books and it all reads like anime...every character has "moves" they can do, like spells, but just special martial attacks. We used to just role play what the attack was by bullshitting some stuff based on the dice.
TorrentialUpPour
And *significantly* less balance. 5e took the worst parts of the previous two editions and mashed them together: 3.5e's balance problems and unhinged late game deity-tier casters along with 4e Essential's 'players only get to pick maybe three things about their character's class progression'. 5e did a great job of making itself approachable to a more casual audience while simultaneously being a prime example of why casual RPGs forcibly put all the work onto the DM for balance or fail entirely.
BoredLyron
What do you mean by "casual RPG's"? Games with lighter rules than D&D, or something else?
TorrentialUpPour
Yes, games intended to be rules light that often involve high DM interpretation of situations that the rules don't cover. Which is usually mitigated by the RPG itself being 'low concept', i.e. being close to reality so that the playgroup is more likely to have a similar understanding of unspoken rules; such as how physics works. (1/2)
TorrentialUpPour
The further you deviate from reality and into a 'high concept' setting (high magic fantasy, high powered superheroes, super advanced scifi, etc) the more necessary extensive rules and groundwork becomes. Players need to know how teleportation works if they plan to stop it, they need to know how time dilation works, they need to know how antimagic works, how summoning works, etc. (2/3)
TorrentialUpPour
The group as a whole needs to understand those concepts in detail if it's a constant refrain/theme, and it is in high level D&D. But 5e fails to lay that groundwork in it's own ruleset, so it falls on the DM to figure out and communicate all the surrounding circumstances and nuance and details in advance, and that puts a ton of pressure and workload on them. (3/3)
OgreEye
Pf2e does this and is considerably better balanced than any dnd edition
bearstrap
P2 is my favourite system to GM. It's a physics engine with initiative. MUAHAHAHAHA
adamlstf9
Pathfinder has always been improved DnD.
levyathyn
4e got a lot of heat, from a loooot of people--myself included. Now I was wary as fuck about the weird... 'spell like' systems for everything; turning certain martial classes into like, elemental magic warriors for no reason, the whole MMO look and feel kind of thing, the lack of basic shit like using rope in the early 4e days, it was wack. And while the system had some good ideas, it was complicated, loaded with bloat, and just not fun. But there ARE ways to do it, but better.
FaeVikingPrincess
Another thing about 4e is was it was an obvious cash grab because of how they split so much of what was supposed to be just CORE content into several different books making you have to pay like 4 times as much just to get the same amount of content as the 3.5 PHB and DMG.
levyathyn
Oh yeah. After 3.5e and the deluge of supplement books we got for so long, WotC just WotC'd it and they really, really wanted to push those books and rules. It really didn't help that every class had an entire spellbook full of abilities to print.
Taltaron
… but 3x did have this?
dragoonwraith
3.x had AoOs for spellcasting... that were extremely easy to get out of. And it also features caster dominance never seen before or since. Even 4e’s intentionally-godlike 30th-level characters couldn’t keep up with highly-optimized 3.x casters, even if the latter were limited to 20th level and blocked from (ab)using Epic Spellcasting. (And I say this as someone who plays 3.x far, far more than any other edition of D&D.)
Transmorph
3e had AoOs from spellcasting, yes. But I meant 4e nerfed casters, in general.
Taltaron
Ah sorry, I misunderstood you. Yeah, 4e had a lot of cool ideas. Skill challenges, 1hp minions, bloodied effects.
TorrentialUpPour
3.5e did have it. Tome of Battle gave martials 'spells' in the form of stances and maneuvers... they weren't (usually) magical in nature but mechanically they functioned similarly to spells by having conditions that needed to be met, limited uses, and producing a specific effect beyond just damage. It was a precursor to 4e's 'powers'.
Taltaron
I always bring book of nine swords to my games.
dragoonwraith
Far and away the best-designed book in the edition (though the bar is not, generally speaking, high; second place is Expanded Psionics Handbook and that has the soulknife). Tome of Battle has extremely tight balance along its the base classes, very few “trap” options (allowing you to just pick what sounds cool, and it will be—nothing else in the edition can say that), and almost zero game-breaking abuse (iron heart surge and white raven tactics maybe, depending on ruling).
dragoonwraith
The “Nine Swords” themselves, though, are pretty much stinkers. Weapons of Legacy is probably the worst-designed book in the system (MUCH more competition there, though), and the Nine Swords use that system.
heckruler
#6 Is this some new-age garbage I'm too old school to understand? Of course casting a spell provokes. If it hits, then that's a concentration check. If they fail the check, the spell fizzles, the slot is just gone.
https://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/actionsInCombat.htm
And, reading up more Barbarians don't get tired? Wizards have a never-runs-out spell? Nothing has d4 HD anymore? ...you fucking pussies. 5th ed is just one blanket rule: "if this adversely affects players, no it doesn't".
Revicus
From your description and link to the D&D 3.5/D20 SRD, it initially sounds like you weren't aware the rules have changed since that edition, but then after the link you demonstrate clear awareness of and access to fifth edition rules changes like different base hit dice, at-will cantrips, and changes to Rage. I don't understand.
heckruler
I mean, obviously I know they have changed, that's what an edition does. It's supposed to convey my shock and just how watered down and sad those changes have made the game. The whole "Is this some sort of X that I'm too Y for" is itself a meme. A sort of widely shared inside joke that's common knowledge. A template or, dare I say, a THEME, that can be broadly applied to more than one situation. But keep with it kiddo, I'm sure with some experience this scary new world will start to make sense.
heckruler
(Oh Noes! A spicy comment! To the downvote button Jenkins while I clutch my pearls. )
Revicus
All right. So it was feigned ignorance and citation of an obsolete rules source as a rhetorical device. That would have been simple enough to say without the inexplicable hostility, but thank you for the clarification.
heckruler
Do you honestly believe your own comment was without hostility?
Revicus
Yes. You said something that I found confusing. I expressed confusion, with the hope it would elicit clarification. (It would, in hindsight, have been more polite to ask directly. I apologize for that.)