The Gaming Den

Artificer published.

Partial spellcaster that gets an homunculus (aka CR 2 beast with a bunch of pseudo construct traits), can enchant items so they provide spell benefits to the wielder at the cost of their own concentration and pulls permanent magic items out of his ass every 5 levels.

First specialization is Alchemy that pulls vials of acid/fire healing pots and whatnot out of his ass magic satchel.

Second specialization is gunsmith.
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Yes, you heard that right, magitech boomstick.
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After 5 editions, D&D finally adds an official class that can focus on guns.

If you ignore the guns in the 3e DMG, I guess. Or don't consider PF to be a legitimate offshoot. Or Iron Heroes. Wasn't there a wacky ass AD&D thing that let you be a John Wayne lawman?

Anyway, the class is...not good. It's a 4th level caster with no extra attack (because fuck you), a horrible spell list until 2nd/3rd that has no offensive ability until Haste (because fuck you), a rapidly obsolete buddy like the official Ranger without even the ability to game poison/Beast Sense (because fuck you), the choice between being a shitty Rogue or a shitty Warlock (because fuck you), and the arbitrary ability to make crap magic items with arbitrary time limits, that bring up an attunement rule I didn't even know existed (because fuck you).

The only thing that it has is fucking with the concentration/multiple buff rules, thus ruining one of the only mechanical tricks the Sorcerer had going for it.

No, I don't count 3rd party and rival offshoots as "official". The 3E DMG indeed had gun rules hidden in a corner, but no specific class to focus on them. Unless I missed the part where Frank did a rifleman cleric guide instead of an archer cleric guide.

The homunculus is still useful as a flying mount, just kite most monsters to death.

Kinda underwhelmed, I've seen various artificer/alchemist homebrews for 5e that feel more fleshed out or more focused. Choosing between a bag of potions/bombs or a gun also seems an unnecessary restriction, it's not like doing both makes you more versatile than a wizard/cleric/druid.

Making them cast spells like a lower level wizard is also a missed opportunity. Having artificers only cast with infusions (what the 5e artificer does at lvl4 is still limited in scope) would be thematically nice. Have a list of known spells to infuse in potions/bombs/ammo so if you really wanted you could shoot hitpoints back into your buddies like a Monster Hunter gunner.

Thinking about the design space for artificers and alchemists in D&D (as a whole, not just 5e which doesn't really have crafting rules), a big problem is that Wizard already exists as a class that brews potions, breaths life into artifice, crafts magic swords, and also turns bat poo into 6d6 damage.

Going on a tangent I'd divide the D&D magic system into.... well basically the Shadowrun system. With every new edition of D&D and addition of classes for 'em I just see a point buy system as better for the lvl 1-6 dungeon crawling they love.

Mask_De_H wrote:If you ignore the guns in the 3e DMG, I guess. Or don't consider PF to be a legitimate offshoot. Or Iron Heroes. Wasn't there a wacky ass AD&D thing that let you be a John Wayne lawman?

The Greyhawk hero-deity Murlynd had the John Wayne thing going on. Maybe that's what you're thinking of.

Also, there were stats for guns (and lasers) in the 1E AD&D DMG (in the section discussing conversions to and from Boot Hill and Gamma World), but they were clearly just an afterthought.

@Mask - it doesn't get an extra attack because it's a rogue replacement with the scaling damage. It isn't good, but that's why. It looks even shittier than a rogue, though, which is pretty damn impressive.

But a gun class (or half class) seems about as necessary as a guisarme class.

Voss wrote:@Mask - it doesn't get an extra attack because it's a rogue replacement with the scaling damage. It isn't good, but that's why. It looks even shittier than a rogue, though, which is pretty damn impressive.

But a gun class (or half class) seems about as necessary as a guisarme class.

In 4th edition you actually did need a guisarme class and I did on a bet. Set the 4rries heads on fire.

-Username17

So, the first product WotC have announced for 2017 is ... a collection of 7 previously published adventures, converted to 5th edition. (One of which, Tomb of Horrors [sigh] has apparently already been converted to some version of D&D Next in Dungeon.)

Seems like a horrible lack of ambition, or inspiration, or both.

It's vaguely interesting that they wrapped mostly greyhawk adventures in a thin skin of forgotten realms bullshit. It smacks of some concept of marketing for a single default setting, but typically they aren't doing anything with it.

Hidden shrine of Tamachan sounds vaguely familiar, but I've never heard of forge of fury or dead in thay before. I know I didn't pay much attention to 3rd edition modules (or late 2nd I suppose, the metaplot transition modules put me off the concept), but I'd expect some name recognition.


And... April. Late April. Roughly 6 months between shitty and shittier releases involving minimal effort sure points to a healthy product.

Dead in Thay was a D&D Next module.

Forge of Fury was the first sequel to Sunless Citadel. If you don't remember Sunless Citadel had sequels, you are not alone. Technically, Sunless Citadel was part of an adventure path that went to full retard. Basically the adventures start pretty good and tapidly go down hill. The final installment is Bastion of Broken Souls, an adventure so stupid we did an OSSR on it. Forge of Fury is from way before that and is basically OK.

-Username17

I liked Forge of Fury pretty well.

The main opposition is a young black dragon in an underground lake. Dragons are very difficult for their CR in general - with home field advantage this one needs the PCs to be +1 or +2 levels over the expectation for the module to really do well. The dungeon itself is a dwarven fortress. It is now occupied by Duergar and I thought it had some interesting social encounters for the most part.

Chamomile wrote:Dead in Thay was a D&D Next module.

Ah. Forgot they sold playtest shit for actual money.

The plot summary is fairly hilarious though: Evil wizards threaten the other side of the continent and a terribly misnamed Macguffin (elemental power nodes called 'the bloodgate,' presumably a random adjective-noun generator was involved) must be wrecked in a tomb of horrors tribute dungeon. That just sounds extra awesome when trying to figure out how a melange of playtest documents even function.

Voss wrote:And... April. Late April. Roughly 6 months between shitty and shittier releases involving minimal effort sure points to a healthy product.

D&D, and tabletop RPGs as a whole, are dying because they haven't been able to transition to modern design; in favor of re-treading nostalgic favorites. Problem is the market for that thing is literally dying and they will only last a little longer than the old-school wargames.

I'd like to blame WoTC, but their card and board game design has moved on quite a bit. It really has more to do with the parochial mindset of most tabletop RPG designers, coupled with a general lack of both math skills and social skills to organize effective playtests. The pool of talent doing tabletop RPG stuff is just really weak nowadays (with very little new blood).

Back when Dungeon did its list of the greatest adventures ever released, Forge of Fury got ranked and Sunless Citadel did not. Maybe that sentiment is still felt in the halls of WotC. Meatspace people I know always preferred Sunless Citadel, though.

My personal opinion is that Forge of Fury is better than Sunless Citadel, but even if the adventure quality for Sunless Citadel were objectively better, it's still for lower-level characters, which probably makes it less fun for a lot of players. Third level you have two feats and 2nd level spells, and I think the adventure advances you to 5th.

Zinegata wrote:

Voss wrote:And... April. Late April. Roughly 6 months between shitty and shittier releases involving minimal effort sure points to a healthy product.

D&D, and tabletop RPGs as a whole, are dying because they haven't been able to transition to modern design; in favor of re-treading nostalgic favorites. Problem is the market for that thing is literally dying and they will only last a little longer than the old-school wargames.

I'd like to blame WoTC, but their card and board game design has moved on quite a bit. It really has more to do with the parochial mindset of most tabletop RPG designers, coupled with a general lack of both math skills and social skills to organize effective playtests. The pool of talent doing tabletop RPG stuff is just really weak nowadays (with very little new blood).

Don't forget video games. If you want to play an elf or a wizard or something there are tons of games that let you do this, and they can and will experiment with mechanics in a way that tabletop won't.

CapnTthePirateG wrote:

Zinegata wrote:

Voss wrote:And... April. Late April. Roughly 6 months between shitty and shittier releases involving minimal effort sure points to a healthy product.

D&D, and tabletop RPGs as a whole, are dying because they haven't been able to transition to modern design; in favor of re-treading nostalgic favorites. Problem is the market for that thing is literally dying and they will only last a little longer than the old-school wargames.

I'd like to blame WoTC, but their card and board game design has moved on quite a bit. It really has more to do with the parochial mindset of most tabletop RPG designers, coupled with a general lack of both math skills and social skills to organize effective playtests. The pool of talent doing tabletop RPG stuff is just really weak nowadays (with very little new blood).

Don't forget video games. If you want to play an elf or a wizard or something there are tons of games that let you do this, and they can and will experiment with mechanics in a way that tabletop won't.

Eh. I question both 'tons' and 'experiment with mechanics.' I've been trying to track down some interesting to play in the RPG vein and coming up with complete lack of success. Even the ones that do exist are pretty much the exact same mechanical formulas over and over again.

So what 5e classes have y'all found personally interesting to play, or had more narrative power than others?

What kinda gish classes and builds are solid at lvl9? There a class that would let me telekinetically swing a sword around or attack with a JoJo punch ghost?

I haven't found anything about what object size various weapons are for Animate Object. Would a longsword be a small or medium?

Zinegata wrote:The pool of talent doing tabletop RPG stuff is just really weak nowadays (with very little new blood).

This is a cultural thing, I think, on the part of the gaming companies themselves.

I applied for a job at WotC years ago, and actually got pretty far along. It was early in 4e, though, and I was still shit at game design (how the one book I have to my name got published will always remain a mystery to me), so I think they didn't like what I did for powers or my monster write-ups.

I'm a lot better now than I was then - a decade or so of working on a thing in your spare time will do that, as will lots of reading - but I have no interest in working at WotC anymore. Since I have ideas of my own, I probably wouldn't fit in.

Part of it, I think, is the OGL. That opened up a lot of breathing room for people to homebrew, and so folk like myself who had an interest in getting into the hobby professionally who didn't moved on and are instead just working on stuff on their own.

codeGlaze wrote: Critical Role is saving DnD?

Does this video have a tl;dw for people who don't immediately know or care what Critical Role is?

Critical Role is a bunch of voice actors streaming their D&D game on Wil Wheaton's gaming channel. They're more watchable than most tabletop gaming streams because they're all professional performers.

I haven't seen the video, but I assume CR is 'saving' D&D by being the most visible promotion for the hobby, because the actual D&D division at Hasbro doesn't have a fucking advertising budget.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Critical Role is a bunch of voice actors streaming their D&D game on Wil Wheaton's gaming channel. They're more watchable than most tabletop gaming streams because they're all professional performers.

I haven't seen the video, but I assume CR is 'saving' D&D by being the most visible promotion for the hobby, because the actual D&D division at Hasbro doesn't have a fucking advertising budget.

QFT
Explained better than anything I would have come up with.

The explosion in "mainstream" tabletopping kind of implies there's a market waiting to be tapped into by some actual talent, no?

Felicia Day's gaming channel. Wil is a contributor to the channel (mostly TableTop and guest appearances) but doesn't run it.