Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[Prak]

I liked the approach in the Chroma Squad video game: being transformed is better, but since it comes with a complete healing, it's better to wait until you've got low HP before transforming.

This explains why you might want to not instantly transform at the first sign of danger, but not necessarily why you didn't start the day transformed - unless the buffs are really quite minor.

Also, I don't remember transformation taking an action of the kind that could be spent moving or attacking in Chroma Squad, although it has been some time since I actually played.

It's also worth considering if there are any features you lose in magical transformed... form. The secret identity conceit of many magical girl things functions similarly to losing stealth abilities (specifically, the ability to blend in and be deemed beneath notice) when you transform, and it wouldn't be out of genre for magical girl abilities to come with dramatic displays that ruin your more literal Hide and/or Move Silently.

So, the premise is that the Big Bads are trying to seed magic into the mundane world, let's say they're trying to grow the magical "capacity" of the mundane world to the point where they can enter it.

The way they're doing this is by using the current, very low, magical capacity to create big spectacles that make more people believe in magic, which will increase the capacity.

So the trade off of entering one's magical persona is that they risk being seen, and increasing that capacity through their actions.

Ie, if they run around transformed all the time, they further the villains' plans. So they have to use their magical personas carefully so they don't do more harm than good while fighting the monsters created by the villains.

So far, I've decided that in their mundane personas, they retain hp, skill points, and feats that they meet the prerequisites for in their mundane form. Because that seems the easiest way to handle those things. In their magical persona, their ability scores improve*, and they gain their class features. If their Int mod is higher in their magical persona, then any skill points spent from that increase are only available in their magical persona.

*their mundane ability scores are flat 3d6, and they add a d6 and drop the lowest die in their magical persona. So, like, for their mundane str, they roll 3d6, and get 3, 4, 5, for 12. Their magical persona str is normal D&D ability score rolls, so they add another d6, getting another 5, so they drop the 3, and their magical persona str is 14.

But I'm not 100% set on handling the forms this way. I do want the characters to be tougher than normal people in mundane form, but I'm not committed to having the same hp in both forms.

[Blade]

I have a similar approach of "power vs risks" for my Mech vs Kaiju game, where physics-defying Kaijus exist because there's a "mythical" plane parallel to ours, where (to put it shortly) the rule of cool apply instead of the rule of physics.

The PC can also use the rules of the mythical plane to be able to do amazing stuff. However, the more they do, and the closer the mythical plane gets from the physical plane in the area (maybe it has a larger scale impact as well but that is unknown at the start of the campaign). This means that the Kaiju gets more powerful as well.

In terms of rules, the game uses a dice pool mechanism. The "level" of the influence of the mythical plane acts as a multiplier for the successes of the PC, but for the Kaijus it acts as a multiplier of the dice pool. This increases the randomness, making it harder for players to manage risks.

Also a higher level of the mythical plane tends to mess enough with physics to make the outcome of events less obvious. For example cars might explode after a collision for no good physical reason. It also tends to raise the stakes: a defeat with a high level of mythical plane will be far more impactful.

[deaddmwalking]

So, the premise is that the Big Bads are trying to seed magic into the mundane world, let's say they're trying to grow the magical "capacity" of the mundane world to the point where they can enter it.

Like, most people do believe in magic.

NPR Article about a PEW RESEARCH question indicating 80% of Americans believe in miracles.

Just as many believe in Angels.

How many people believe that their rituals somehow impact whether their team wins or not?

Why Everyone Believes in Magic (Even You)

[Omegonthesane]

Most people believe in subtle deniable magic instead of obvious flashy verifiable magic. The specifics of your belief in magic are going to change somewhat if yo usee someone performing actual repeatable miracles before your very eyes.

In terms of mechanical advice, the proposed stat changes are overcomplicated, you'd be better off just giving them a +3 across the board instead of going from 3d6 to 4d6k1. Requires fewer things recorded on the character sheet. The specific idea of tracking skill points in your magical girl transformation seems painful to contemplate.

[Korwin]

Did someone, somewhere do the Data Sets for the Tome classes for pcgen?

[OgreBattle]

The Thai news I watched the other day had one of those 'crime recreation' segments

But it was about a man who summoned a spirit and the spirited shot Frieza finger lasers in his house and burned the stairs. That sort of magic gets on the news in Thailand fine.

[Ice9]

I was thinking about how to emulate the pacing (people starting fights at their lowest power-state and ramping up over time, not using the strongest attacks at the start) seen in many anime, without meta mechanics. Here's what I ended up with:

* Characters that are involved in this system have at least one energy state beyond baseline. More powerful ones have more states.
* The benefit of additional energy states is twofold:
-- 1) Raising to a new energy state is an instant/immediate action and is both a heal and a powerful counter. Not infinite, it would only partially counter a much stronger effect, but anyone of roughly the same strength is negated.
-- 2) It boosts your stats based on the local power level.
* The local power level is generally zero, although there could be specific areas where it's naturally higher. By simply willing it to increase, it will rise (in the vicinity) every round. More people doing so makes it rise faster and to a higher maximum.
* An elevated power level is obvious to anyone who has these abilities, and the more it's elevated the farther away it can be sensed.
* Total asskicking ability is basically [base power] * [power level when you activated your latest energy state], but if the current power level is lower than your energy state you're forced out of it (either instantly or it wears off over a few rounds, IDK).


So, if you come into a fight at your highest state, you're only a little stronger than not doing so (states might have some passive buffs for reaching them, but relatively minor).
If you immediately raise state every time the power level rises, you'll be the strongest possible until you max out, but after that much weaker than someone who held out for as long as possible in each state.
And since each state-raise is also a counter, you'd want to hold off on your strongest stuff until your opponents were maxed-out and couldn't negate anything else.

You can charge up fully by yourself as an ambush, but this is of limited effectiveness, because:
1) It can be sensed, interfering with the "ambush" part.
2) Unless you seriously outrank your foe, your initial attacks won't quite drop them as long as they keep raising states, and when they max out it will be at a higher PL than you are.

Charging up in one spot, quickly moving to another to kick ass - if the energy states don't immediately end when you leave the heightened power level, then probably you should pull a bubble of the high-power area around with you, which means it's a similar situation to the ambush.
Long range attacks - either balance them accordingly, or make the raised-energy area large enough that your targets are still inside it.

[Dogbert]

So the trade off of entering one's magical persona is that they risk being seen, and increasing that capacity through their actions.

So you want to run The Esoterrorists: Weeb Edition? Because thay may require a level of buy-in the average dnd player may not possess (they don't care for the world. I know I wouldn't).

[Prak]

I mean, ok, sure, but it works as the premise for a campaign.

Plus how many people believe they might actually see, say, a troll appear in the middle of a high school football game, hulking out of a football uniform?

So the trade off of entering one's magical persona is that they risk being seen, and increasing that capacity through their actions.

So you want to run The Esoterrorists: Weeb Edition? Because thay may require a level of buy-in the average dnd player may not possess (they don't care for the world. I know I wouldn't).

It's a premise. And it's ultimately no more ridiculous than D&D's "brave ravenous monsters and vicious traps for some gold" when you could also just start the first session by saying "Ok, my paladin says 'Pazuzu, Pazuzu, Pazuzu.' When Pazuzu shows up, I wish for a ring of Efreeti commanding"

[czernebog]

I was thinking about how to emulate the pacing (people starting fights at their lowest power-state and ramping up over time, not using the strongest attacks at the start) seen in many anime, without meta mechanics.

This sounds a lot like how that turning in Risk cards to get armies works: each time someone does it, the number of armies you get from the next batch of cards goes up.

There are other little mechanics like earning extra armies if a card you turn in matches a territory you hold. Maybe you can steal from there (like: you earn tokens from doing cool things in combat, increasing your power level requires turning in tokens, you have to power up if you have a certain number of tokens, you get extra perks if you power up by turning in the right kinds of tokens).

[Thaluikhain]

Why Everyone Believes in Magic (Even You)

That's not a great article. People sweat when cutting up photos of relatives, therefore they must believe in magic?

Most people believe in subtle deniable magic instead of obvious flashy verifiable magic. The specifics of your belief in magic are going to change somewhat if yo usee someone performing actual repeatable miracles before your very eyes.

Second that (with an added quibble that miracles aren't miracles if they are repeatable and verifiable).

[OgreBattle]

I was thinking about how to emulate the pacing (people starting fights at their lowest power-state and ramping up over time, not using the strongest attacks at the start) seen in many anime, without meta mechanics. Here's what I ended up with:

Well in 'real fights', somebody seeing your techniques can then formulate counters.
In Shinobigami, there's a rule where using a move for the first time makes it harder to block or unblockable if strong enough, and other characters or NPC's can spy on you to learn your technique because it's a ninja clan secret war themed game.

Part of it is dramatic timing and theatrics too, "This isn't my final form" comes from Hindu epics, Monkey King fighting Erlang who grows multiple arms to power up.

It can also be a matter of your powered up form having a time limit, or taking up energy that requires more than one night's sleep to restore. With the 'real life' example it takes professional fighters multiple months of intense and moderated training to fight at peak performance at one day. Training injuries are also fairly common.

"This causes injuries" is another way to go, like after the super mode winds down the stress on muscles and skeleton causes a penalty


Also 'in real life', some fighters will learn their opponent's patterns before landing a 'slow' heavy attack. So it could be a matter of as a fight goes on defenses are scrutinized and the accuracy for the big bang finisher is increased.

[Prak]

Why Everyone Believes in Magic (Even You)

That's not a great article. People sweat when cutting up photos of relatives, therefore they must believe in magic?

Not to mention, there's a big difference between "our brains are electrified fat and do weird things" and "I believe in trolls."

[OgreBattle]

In D&D5e are there any multiclass combo's that stand out as strong

[Chamomile]

Smite-heavy paladins are probably the strongest single-class concept you can get in 5e without getting into blatant cheese builds like the bone lord or glyph wizard. The paladin's smites operate off of spell slots, not specifically paladin spell slots, so you can go Paladin 2/Sorcerer 18 to pick up all the proficiencies and the smite, then feed the smites with your sorcerer spells, which can also be used as regular sorcerer spells. But wait, there's more! Throw in a single level of warlock any time after first and you get Pact Magic, which you mostly don't care about except in that it allows you to restore your spells - not your warlock spells, just spells - with a short instead of long rest. This is pretty situational, since ordinarily any time you can rest for one hour, you can probably rest for eight hours anyway, but in situations where short rests are significantly easier to come by than long, tossing a level of warlock onto any spellcaster build can drastically extend your stamina.

Though these still underperform at most levels the bone lord using the build of Wizard 20, necromancy sub-school, cram as much Animate Dead into your spell slots as possible for maximum skeleton archers.

[Grek]

The paladin's smites operate off of spell slots, not specifically paladin spell slots

Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one paladin spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target, in addition to the weapon’s damage. The extra damage is 2d8 for a 1st-level spell slot, plus 1d8 for each spell level higher than 1st, to a maximum o f 5d8. The damage increases by 1d8 if the target is an undead or a fiend.

But wait, there's more! Throw in a single level of warlock any time after first and you get Pact Magic, which you mostly don't care about except in that it allows you to restore your spells - not your warlock spells, just spells - with a short instead of long rest.

No.

Multiclass spellcasting progression in 5e is complicated, so I forgive you for fucking it up. But it absolutely does not work like that.

Spells Known/Prepared are determined for each class individually. Our hypothetical Paladin 2/Warlock 1/Sorcerer 17 gets one plus Cha mod 1st level spells prepared off the Paladin list, two 1st level spells known off of the Warlock list and eighteen spells known of between 1st and 9th level off of the Sorcerer list. Each spell keeps track of where you know it from and bases its save DC and attack bonus off of the appropriate stat for that class. In this case that's always Charisma, but a Wizard/Cleric multiclass would have some save DCs adding +Int and some adding +Wis.

Spell Slots treat Spellcasting and Pact Magic differently. You get your Pact Magic spell slots as if you were a single class Warlock of whatever level and you get your Spellcasting spell slots by summing all of your classes with the Spellcasting feature together (with halfcasters counting for half and thirdcasters counting for a third) and comparing the total to the 'Multiclass Spellcaster: Spell Slots per Spell Level' table on page 165. The hypothetical Paladin 2/Warlock 1/Sorcerer 17 has a single 1st level Pact Magic spell slot that refreshes on every short rest and the Multiclass Spellcaster spell slots of an 18th level Multiclass Spellcaster - four 1st, three each of 2nd through 4th, two 5th and one each of 6th through 9th.

Pact Magic spell slots and Spellcasting spell slots are only interchangeable in the single specific way that the multiclass rules say they are interchangeable - that you can cast any of your spells known/prepared using any of your spell slots. All other features that require spell slots require that you supply spell slots of the appropriate type. You can only generate Sorcery Points using Spellcasting spell slots. You can only fuel Invocations using Pact Magic spell slots. Paladin Smites require Spellcasting spell slots. And you don't recover Spellcasting spell slots using the method that it specifies for recovering Pact Magic spell slots, because those are two different class features and the multiclass rules make no provision for them stacking together like that.

[Chamomile]

The paladin's smites operate off of spell slots, not specifically paladin spell slots

Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one paladin spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target, in addition to the weapon’s damage. The extra damage is 2d8 for a 1st-level spell slot, plus 1d8 for each spell level higher than 1st, to a maximum o f 5d8. The damage increases by 1d8 if the target is an undead or a fiend.

This is pulled from the Paladin rules on Roll20 right just now. I guess it's possible there's errata that's made it to the printed books that the Roll20 compendium hasn't gotten? Or possibly vice-versa.

Pact Magic spell slots and Spellcasting spell slots are only interchangeable in the single specific way that the multiclass rules say they are interchangeable - that you can cast any of your spells known/prepared using any of your spell slots.

That would be a sensible thing for the rules to say, but it is not what they say. Pact Magic says it refreshes your spell slots on a short rest, and never specifies your Warlock or your Pact Magic spell slots. The multiclassing rules say you can cast spells from other classes out of Warlock slots and can cast spells from Warlock out of other classes' slots, but it never says that this is the only way they interact. You can argue that Pact Magic's "refresh spell slots on short rest" ability applies only to Warlock spell slots specifically is that it was probably intended to only refresh Warlock spell slots and that having that power be under "Pact Magic" is supposed to imply that it only works for Warlock spell slots, but what it actually says is spell slots, full stop, not Warlock spell slots or Pact Magic spell slots. And the Pact Magic description itself frequently refers to "Warlock spells" specifically rather than "spells" in general, so it's not like classes always default to ambiguous phrasing.

EDIT: Double-checked the errata. Switching smite from paladin spell slots only to spell slots ambiguously was actually an intentional change.

[OgreBattle]

Looking around a bit... there was errata that clarifies paladins can use any slot for smite:
https://media.wizards.com/2015/download ... ata_PH.pdf

Paladin2/SorcererX then shows up in various D&D5e build discussions.
It seems like a fun sorcerer swordsman protagonist build. So I'm guessing it accomplishes more than the eldritch knight gish subclass single class stuff? Whenever I browse the reddit for fighter/caster builds it seems to be paladin/sorcerer or paladin/bard and sometimes eldritch knight/any full caster is mentioned.

[Grek]

The EK archetype has two things going against it, action economy anti-synergy (at level 5, you get the option to make 2 weapon attacks in a single action, but then at level 7 you can do 1 cantrip and 1 weapon attack, but then at 11 you can do three weapon attacks, but then at 17 you can cast a non-cantrip and get one attack) and the fact that it only gives you 1/3rd casting with almost all of your spells needing to be abjuration/evocation when in practice you'd all of the spells you'd really be interested for pre-combat buffing are in other schools.

[merxa]

There is also the various sorlock builds, combining warlock with sorcerer.

[OgreBattle]

Hexblade warlocks come up as a popular dip for a beam saber melee magic user.

I like looking at these kinds of multi-classes, but in play I've only done bladesinger full wizards for waving a sword while casting. Having character concepts that only come online at lvl 6+ is too long, I feel like a multiclass should work at lvl 3 but most D&D classes since 3e are written to discourage dipping.

[OgreBattle]

Came across this handy analysis of 20th century warfare morale and 'gutfulness' affects on combat effectiveness:
http://bob-wargames.uk/Rules%20of%20Inf ... bat.htm#1a

Basically 10-20% of the infantry or fighter pilots or tankers do 90+% of the killing, and the rest dive for cover.

[deaddmwalking]

The Pareto Principle (or 80/20 rule) is true in most places and times. You'll often seen it as '20% of the sales reps produce 80% of the sales'.

What's funny is that if you try to assemble a team of just the badasses, you still get this result. That is, if you have 5 groups, and within each group you determine the 20% that are most effective, then assemble the top 20% of the five groups into a new group, it'll still be a few individuals that produce the MOST. In this case you'll probably find that your 'super team' made up of top performers still performs better than your teams made up of the remaining 80%, but within that team there will still be people who produce unequally.

[merxa]

5e almost seems made for dipping, especially as higher level magic isn't as potent as it was in 3e.

[Dean]

Basically 10-20% of the infantry or fighter pilots or tankers do 90+% of the killing, and the rest dive for cover.

Go further and the effects get even more dramatic. It's been measured that only about 1% of soldiers shoot to kill. They've faked combat conditions, telling soldiers targets of exactly the same size they've trained on have enemy combatants behind them and squads that were landing 500 shots in a minute land about 5. It's not just jitters, people genuine don't want to participate in combat even if you pump them full of racism and ship them somewhere they'll never return. Worse still this is a known "problem" for militaries and their solution is still to feed, train, and move 99 other people just to get one psycho that'll actually kill people they want dead.