The Gaming Den

Also, while everyone here seems confident that AC will start around 18 and go up from there, most of the play reports I've seen have inexplicably listed people playing with 15s and below. Heavy armor + Shield will grant AC 18 at 1st level. Capping out at 20 AC once they get some cash. Up to 19/21 f...

Since nothing besides hitting zero has any effect on you, it's reasonable to claim there's no actual injury until that happens. Just fatigue or combat weariness or whatever. No it is not. • If hit point loss isn't wounds, why are the spells that restore them explicitly curing wounds? • If hit point...

No. Don't even fucking START that shit with me. It is never, EVER reasonable to claim that "no actual injury occurs" if you are taking hit point damage. Fuck you and your healing surge fapfest. I'm not telling you anything the game isn't telling you. Either you accept no injury occurs, or...

You can see the shades of it in post #1 of 'Pathfinder is Still Bad,' and if you dig into older posts about Pathfinder, you can find Jason Bulmahn telling people to fuck off with their numbers and shit, and nothing outside of campaign anecdotes that supported his personal play style counted as 'tes...

An empowered, twinned bolt of glory is a fucking twelfth level spell. I actually forget the rules for casting spells like that, but it's firmly in epic, which is not generally considered to be well balanced. Never heard of rods of metamagic, I take it. If I remember correctly, I used a rod of twin ...

It is stupid how you can just take a short rest and basically erase all injuries you have sustained. So a dragon eats your face and you take 50 damage, but you rest for an hour and all those injuries are gone if you use your healing surges. Fuck this game. Healing surges are retarded. Depends on wh...

It's an RPG. Anecdotes are all we have besides the numbers. There's no lab setting for this. And, wrong. You can easily test encounters in 'lab conditions.' One thing WotC has never been able to figure out is you don't playtest with campaigns. You build shitloads of sample characters and put togeth...

8 PCs or gestalts vs a boss monster and an excessive number of companions completely layered in special snowflake bullshit. Ok then. I suspect the problem had nothing to do with the system and everything to do with trying to pretend Mac Trucks and stock Honda Civics make perfect dune buggies. Alter...

Quickend Eldritch Blast, 4(d10+4+d6) is a monstrous avg 52 damage at level 6. Which BTW, competes with a Fighter's average damage. At level 20. That being said, even going all out to drop 50 damage a round doesn't mean too much at level 6. Reasonably, that probably doesn't even kill most CR 3s and ...

Because that story, makes it sound like the 3e encounter system worked perfectly. Your DM only pitted your group versus 'easy encounters'. Which the DMG describes as:"The group should be able to handle an almost limitless number of these encounters." Though the DMG advises you to use more...

So Warlocks have to shoot multiple blasts instead of one potent blast. Problem is, one Class ability allows you to add charisma to the damage of Eldritch Blast. Now, does this apply one time or many times? The 5veMind boggles. Somebody told me this is a high level controversy already at the WOTC fo...

It obviously applies to every casting. It's also still underpowered. By 5th level when a Warlock has gotten his second 1d10 damage beam a 5th level Sorceror can have Haste as his concentration spell and choose the twin spell and quickened spell metamagic. That means a 5th level Sorceror can throw 3...

I don't think 5E D&D will support level dips for long. You end up behind on stat bonuses and opportunities to gank feats. Eventually the game will release enough classes and alternate classes and enough feats so that it just becomes a trap option unless you're doing something extra-abusive. It ...

Rawbeard wrote:must have missed that invocation. I R stoopid. That is actually pretty sweet once you start shooting multiple beams out your arse.

Actually there's a huge argument going on the WotC forms about whether each beam should get the bonus or only the first hit. It's really funny.

(Unless you're suggesting that this is 4e all over again and the bow is an inherent piece of the skeleton that is irreplaceable.) I'm telling you that your instincts for decent design... D'aww, shucks. :loveya: But seriously, I've had this same argument with two people IRL already that were trying ...

Fun part of the book. Identifying the "I win" spells that allow casters to end/bypass entire encounters vs the trap spells. Some of the old standards are still awesome, but some became trap options. Some old traps became awesome, but by and large it looks like mostly 3.5 spells reprinted ...

A ranged attack option. Although that may be my own 3.E thinking coming into the mix, me making the assumption that there will be flying monsters who use flight tactically instead of wandering into melee for no reason. So simple weapon proficiency? That was my point after all. Their (zombies) damag...

Lago PARANOIA wrote: I'd like take this moment to remind people that you have to blow the DM just to have the option of using a feat.

So noted.
I'd also like to remind people that any DM that prevents you from taking feats is a [EDITED].

Edit: Wow, I can say fuck but not [EDITED]?

What Deathfork said. 5e is right now favoring 1 or 4 level dips. 4 or 3 depending on if you really want that 17th level thingy. Some of them are pretty good. Spell Thief and Death Attack are probably worth giving up that Feat. Thief's Reflexes probably isn't. Also, Fighter4/Paladin 16 can work too....

Are the classes front loaded enough to encourage 1 level dips? 1 level...usually not. Interestingly, dipping your foot into another casting class when you're already a caster is a pretty good deal. Your spell slots and maximum level never take a hit. You gain spells known based on level, but depend...

You can bump your AC 1 higher by using Shield of Faith... You can also heal someone within 60 feet for 1d8+2 hp as a swift action. At 3rd level you'll grab Spiritual Weapon which will add another 1d8 damage attack per round for an entire combat and Magic Weapon for +1 to hit and damage on all your ...

You can only even attempt to pick the lock if you have a set of thieves' tools. So you don't quite get the situation where level 1 commoners with no skills succeed half the time. Not quite, but anyone who gets their hands on thieves tools can do it. So that kind of speaks more to that fifth option,...

Zombies and Skellies each have their strengths although contrary to what Deathfork seems to think one strength of Skeletons is definitely NOT that they have martial weapon proficiency letting you arm your whole group with whatever you want. Seriously dude what fucking edition do you think this is? ...

[*] The third one is that, thanks to bounded accuracy, they just have to accept that barely trained peasants are sometimes going to be able to write world-class symphonies and make beautiful full-plate. Looks like it's going to be this one. I'm reading a scan of Horde of the Dragon Queen Characters...

Half-Orcs went from you'd have to be a nut to use them as anything but a Barbarian or Fighter to a compelling choice for anybody who wants that +2 Strength and +1 Constitution with a bunch of other goodies and no downsides. They'd be great Thug Rogues, for instance. I suppose if a Strength based Ro...