The Gaming Den

No amount of rules text will ever be able to reach out of the book and slap someone who's determined to be a bad GM, but good rules can still benefit someone who's trying to be a good GM but has no idea what they're doing.

Chamomile wrote:No amount of rules text will ever be able to reach out of the book and slap someone who's determined to be a bad GM, but good rules can still benefit someone who's trying to be a good GM but has no idea what they're doing.

This. I remember being 12 and thinking that D&D was just going to work out fine, which led to my siblings being murdered by skeletons and everyone wandering off t do something else pretty much immediately.

Chamomile wrote:No amount of rules text will ever be able to reach out of the book and slap someone who's determined to be a bad GM, but good rules can still benefit someone who's trying to be a good GM but has no idea what they're doing.

Good rules can also make it clearer to everyone else at the table when the GM is determined to be bad, so they can make better choices about how to spend their free time.

violence in the media wrote:

Chamomile wrote:No amount of rules text will ever be able to reach out of the book and slap someone who's determined to be a bad GM, but good rules can still benefit someone who's trying to be a good GM but has no idea what they're doing.

Good rules can also make it clearer to everyone else at the table when the GM is determined to be bad, so they can make better choices about how to spend their free time.

I had this very discussion with a group of my friends the other day when I was explaining some of my design decisions. At least two of them, when I introduced the idea that characters will all 'have' to have and maintain assets/contacts/etc and have a life outside of being a murder hobo, then asked 'What if the GM just goes around fucking with all their stuff or a particular player's stuff and ignores the Doom Countdown* altogether?'

You cannot make rules for people who are going to ignore them but by making a framework that structures how things are supposed to go the shared information can help players as well as GMs. I think that making a functional CR system is going to be absolutely critical for what I want to do in my heartbreaker because it both helps GMs get a sense of what would be challenging for players and it helps players understand when they've been hosed. This assumes a close to ideal CR system of course.

On the topic of monster complexity in 3rd: the stat block has multiple lines of lists of references to other rules. Special attacks, special qualities, feats, plus sometimes spellcasting and spell-like abilities. Sometimes the items in those lists are just flavor, or things mandated by the monster creation rules (everything has Alertness and Weapon Focus to fill HD feat slots), sometimes they're absolutely critical information like Flyby Attack. You have to memorize how all the important ones work and at least the names of all the unimportant ones so you know not to chase those references down. And they're divided up by the requirements of the monster creation rules, not for fast information reference. It'd be a huge improvement to have a separate list that repeats the ones worth looking up, or at least to just bold them.

I also think that, since everything is digital now anyway, it'd be worth experimenting more with redundant information. You can have both a 3E-esque pile of callouts for why a monster works how it does, and a more concise flowcharted attack routine for a DM trying to run it without breaking flow. Not only is there no physical page limit, collapsible text boxes can make it so there's not even a screen space limit. You could even default to a 2E style "Wyvern. CR 6 Melee flyer with poison" as long as it expands or hotlinks to the detailed version.

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On flight maneuverability: I'll admit, I'm totally the DM who avoided ever using a flying monster with maneuverability worse than good, because I didn't feel like learning these rules. You Lost Me's explanation that a wyvern's poor maneuverability is why it actually works to lure it into a cramped space is the first time I've actually understood why those rules exist in the first place.

Instead of turning radii, would it work for poor maneuverability to increase a creature's hitbox for that turn instead? What I mean is: Flight 6 (Poor 2) = fly 6 squares, but when this creature uses flight, it may be attacked it as if it was in any space within 2 of its current space, until the start of its next turn. I don't know if that's too abstract, but it does make it easy to hit clumsy flyers in confined spaces.

Whipstitch wrote:I remember being 12 and thinking that D&D was just going to work out fine, which led to my siblings being murdered by skeletons

This is quite a timeless and poetic image

To those who have suggested using both feats and ability score increases: do you grant them both every 4th level (and at 19th), or do you stagger them?

JigokuBosatsu wrote:

Whipstitch wrote:I remember being 12 and thinking that D&D was just going to work out fine, which led to my siblings being murdered by skeletons

This is quite a timeless and poetic image

And/or something out of a Jack Chick tract, but I'm like 90% sure they mean in game murdered.

Appropriate skeleton avatar sentiments.

"To those who have suggested using both feats and ability score increases: do you grant them both every 4th level (and at 19th), or do you stagger them?"

On that... could I just take Lucky and Great Weapon Master and Polearm Master and Owl Buddy for my feats as a Battlemaster Fighter and still be ahead of a Champion Fighter only pumping stats?

I'm not one of the people who mentioned feats + ASIs together, so I can't comment on that. I can say that your feat build would be better than the non-feat build, but that's partly because Champion is significantly weaker than Battlemaster.

In general, a build that pumps its primary stat performs worse than a build that selects useful feats (like PAM, GWM, Lucky). The feat build is probably only going to be better in combat, but that's what matters most of the time in 5e games. The most effective builds usually involve taking both ASIs and feats together, because there are only so many useful feats in 5e and at some point +1 to hit and +1 damage is worth it.

ASI every four levels to allow all PC's bonuses to keep up. Feats where class tables indicate Feat/ASI.

The Feat + ASI setup a few groups I know have settled on is Feat and a +1 ASI with some feats costing the whole ASI (primarily Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master).