I'd say the Rage beyond Death feature of the zealot is pretty major to how they're played. A level 14 barb may have 150 hitpoints or more, plus their resistances, but people play the zealot in high level games for this feature.
The idea of getting to fight to 0 hitpoints, then keep fighting until you die and then still not relenting until the fight ends is rad. Hell I'd say that their level 3 and level 6 features, while cool, were designed after their level 14 feature and designed to let you get as much out of that final feature as possible.
It's a shame that knowing average monster hitpoints is generally metagaming and there is no ranger option or similar to show you this.
It would be cool to follow a fireball. If you know the enemy you're fighting has about 32 hitpoints for example, such as the thug, and a band of them got hit by a fireball for 30 damage, sleep is a perfect spell. But getting this combo off in game always feels a little metagamey in a way that just makes it ineffective.
Id assume that's a liability thing? I'm not too sure as I believe it's legal to be topless in NYC, although probably not Dublin, but it's almost definitely not a crime to show 9/11 imagery.
Idk if anyone else follows the rule of thumb of "let the party pull the same trick 3 times before you make it backfire".
In a story, it would fail on the third try, in a game, it would never fail. I find 4th time doesn't leave many people dissatisfied but also doesn't let every encounter be trivialised.
Bust out your fireball empowered cultists responsibly.
I am a bit old, and never got why so many people watch "actual play". I've done it once or twice to get the mechanic of a game, but found the experience more technical/boring than fun....
I find I really need to get over the hump into it feeling like a parasocial relationship, which is kinda a shame. The only time I've enjoyed actual plays is when I've seen people who I was already fond of from other internet content play, and on top of that, never in a gimmicky setting like a promotion one-shot.
Basically it's not for the actual play, it's for living through their friendship, then occasionally the drama of the game spills forth and gives it an extra kick.
Yeah I absolutely do not miss snagging my headphone cable on every door or drawer handle in a 1 mine radius. Also I think I used to go through 3-4 sets of headphones a year by wearing out the cable, spending the last few weeks precariously holding the cable 24/7 to enjoy the music.
Wireless does have it's issues but I'm on my 2nd wireless pair, both bought in the £30 region and it's probably been 5+ years since I used wired now. Battery hasn't been an issue really, and although I lost one headphone on my previous wireless set, I can live with it.
I absolutely support the want for a headphone jack so people can choose wired, but I'd still choose wireless.
Mine was a Wild Magic Sorcerer that vehemently believed he was a regular city guardsman and explained every bit of magic he produced away as pure happenstance.
Tome of beasts also has a little more bite than standard 5e, I think they've called their design 5e with teeth before, one of those books is also now available on D&DBeyond too if that's to the person's liking.
All that content is under various OGL / CC licenses too so it's available on open5e.com
I'm not particularly clued into the industry but I'm not shocked. From what I've seen, Cynthia Williams believed the most profitable direction for D&D was to monetise game game at a very granular level like microtransactions, as we saw in the OGL debacle, plus her focus on the VTT was likely going to manifest in a similar way.
I'd say the explosive success of Baldur's Gate and the surge in WotC talking to practically all games companies possible, it's clear they've set their sights on a hopeful path to continued revenue growth that does not offend any fans.
My assumption is that Cynthia simply centered her leadership on a path that is no longer the direction the company has deviated from.
2-3 years of pumping shit video games is 2-3 years that they aren't fucking with the core product, which is the only part I don't want ruined. The can make bad games, bad merch, bad brand tie-ins or anything else for all I care as long as they don't harm the game.
Any gumshoe game, probably something shorter than Nights Black Agents: The Dracula Dossier. If I set it in my own setting, I'd like to use Bubblegumshoe to do my own telling of "Tomorrow When the War Began" basically what happens if on the summer camping trip after your last school year, your country is invaded. I can't quite tell how good Gumshoe is for homebrew settings however.
My other want is to run a worldbuilding game such as the quiet year, for the queen or microscope, hacked to set up a concise and thematic noir mystery inspired by fiction like Disco Elysium, The City and the City or The Nice Guys, with a rich and vibrant world that the players are invested in as they built it. I'm tempted to hack the bladerunner RPG by Freeleague for the actual police procedural afterwards.
Thank you, I've realised that my approach seems a little different from other here, where I try to pick an RPG for an idea that's forming in my head, based on the genre and tone, settling on an RPG that's 80% there but people love the ruleset, then I chop and change it to get close enough to 100%.
This is probably detrimental in a few ways too, as some games like Lancer are unchangable until I'm familiar enough to peel apart the interwoven mechanics and lore, and I'm not going to touch it because I almost never run official settings and adventures, particularly in longform games.
I will shout out both Alice is Missing and For the Queen, which both get worse when they get altered, because their strength comes from their simplicity and then probably ridiculous amount of playtesting.
Our sorcerer got some officers to confront the person who stole his identity and we turned the human trafficking ring over to the guard who pulled everyone out relatively safely....
I mean we can basically justify the law keeping faction to act and respond in whatever way suits the story.
Perhaps the police are a mercenary company paid to guard the local clergy, so reporting their misdeeds is moot.
Perhaps as you said it's that the law keepers are an order of paladin's who must uphold their oath of enforcing the law or lose their magical connection.
Perhaps the closest to a guard force up to that point has been the ruling warlord's loyal warriors, and to your party, they're the enemy.
If the party become too over reliant or too wary of the police, have them reform in plot, for better or for worse.
I was weirdly forgiving of Fallout 76 (never played it, I'm not too hot for multiplayer games) because it was made so soon after fallout 4. It always felt like one of those DLC that got so large that it got released as a standalone game, which practically any large game studio has done and Bethesda did with Arcane's Dishonored 2 and Death of the Outsider.
A huge soft spot I have for the elder scrolls comes from the heroic fantasy exploration with enormous orchestral music and adventure in every direction, something people say about Starfield is that it's large and sparse, which is accurate for a grounded space game but goes against what makes half of Bethesda games fun. Fallout falls in the middle of the pack being far more pulpy than Starfield and in 4, I feel this was a large issue with it feeling bland; it's pulpy wackiness was toned down when it should have gone up.
I don't expect Bethesda to give me the video game equivalent of game of thrones but I do expect the Saturday morning cartoon that I'm equally fond of, and they still hold all the ingredients to make that recipe. Unfortunately Starfield was always tonally wrong for that, but ES6 is perfect for it.
Don't get me wrong, I'll still only buy ES6 a year or so after release, maybe 2-3 if it's really crap, but I think a fair few of the ways that they've deviated from the working formula post Skyrim may not be an issue here.
I feel that they can't just jump out of it, as that basically just nullifies the spell entirely, I generally imply the plants are actually grabbing people.
As for pulling out their crossbows, at level 5, enemies are already begining to move from humanoids with equipment to unique creatures. A wereboar or ettin for example doesn't have any RAW ranged weapons.
The spell is also absolutely amazing to pair with another Spellcaster with consistent AOE damage such as moonbeam or ideally sickening radiance or cloudkill. That's the real army killer as once the spell is up, you can take cover and let them be microwaved while they can't reasonably counter you.
I think the difference really comes if fireball would reliable actually kill your opponents and if that's your objective.
A phalanx of hobgoblins have 11 hitpoints each, so their half damage on a success is still likely to mean they go from full to dead in a fireball. Hypnotic pattern would probably still take out 3/4+ of them, but now you and mop up the incapacitated creatures.
Hypnotic pattern is more versatile as it's humane and can be used to achieve multiple objectives, but when it's life or death, nothing kills like fireball.
You'll run into the same power with every spell that limits creatures movement, and I'd say for a 4th level spell, that movement limitation is about right.
From level 5-7, I could see myself throwing a dozen CR 1/2 hobgoblins at a party looks a.
At level 9, a CR 5 boss, a pair of CR 2 lieutenants and 8 CR 1/2 minions would also be a fun fight. I'm pulling both these numbers from page 68 of Forge of Foes, a great 3rd party suppliment.
If I suspected the PC was itching to use fireball, I'd give them a killer use for it soon after they hit level 5, such as the aforementioned 8 wide, 4 deep phalanx of hobgoblins that could be incinerated in a single blast from this. If you're not familiar with lightning rods, if the idea of specific things to make the PCs feel cool, undead for the cleric to turn, mundane archers for the mink to deflect, or dense, weak enemies for the sorcerer to fireball. The mother of all lightning rods is the one you set up soon after they get the ability to show how it shines.
Also if you use the minion rules such as those created by MCDM, then at basically any level, those mooks will be instantly killed by this effect, it's great empowerment for the player and if it's budgeted for in your encounter creation, not fun spoiling.
Celestial video games: Beautifully polished, graphically perfect games that define visual benchmarks for years to come. No interesting content under the surface.
Devil video games: Competitive deck builders that are always receiving nerds and buffs that seem to only harm you, where everyone always seems a little better than you.
Demon video games: Horribly un-optimised sandbox creation games that people only use to cause massive destruction.
Fey video games: Absurd dating sims that exclusively feels like the creator simultaneously has never spoken to anyone romantically in their lives and also fucks.
Yeah I really doubt streaming would change anything to 4:3.
Disney+ famously changed classic Simpsons to 16:9 and in the process, cropped enough to make some visual gags not work, but I can't imagine them preferring 4:3 over 16:9.
It's up to the DM if it comes across like a portal to enter the bag or an impossible space like the TARDIS. Air does not flow between as you can suffocate and air would carry the sound, but I always rule it as feeling more like in impossibly large space rather than a magical portal.
Honestly if you wanna give your party a bag of holding, sticking it on a bugbear assassin who uses this tactic and then uses the bag to dispose of bodies is a fun way to introduce it.
Anything the players do, I be DM can do too, yt if it uses a niche magic item, the DM better be prepared for it to end up in the hands of the players.
To be fair I'd just rule in favour of the players the first time it comes up. If they want it as a silencer with the prerequisite of putting it over someone's head, that's cool because the enemy will struggle and make it difficult.
If it's debut was from an enemy doing it to a PC who said they'd yell extra hard to call for help, I'd probably ask for a skill check and say the sound does pass through.
At the higher budget level, where basically the products can afford plenty of art, I basically never see games using the 5e engine? Perhaps I'm wrong here but beyond the splintering of many of the companies that previously made 5e content like Darrington Press, MCDM, Cubicle 7 and Kobold Press, I don't think I've seen any non-amareur RPGs based on 5e on the horizon.
I do see a lot of powered by the apocalypse game, and within that a few forged in the dark games, but powered by the apocalypse is so varied anyway that I don't see it as an issue. I also see Freeleague using the same engine for their games but that's a specific company using their engine.
Hating on D&D is a past time that's as old as D&D. I agree though, the attitude towards the franchise ignores that they are generally making a few good small steps for each corporate, huge step back. It's still my workhorse system while I explore games with deeply different tones and mechanics but I haven't found a want to replace it at my table at all.
If I'm reading your message right, I'd like to mention the infinite ways to flavor the 2014 5e rogue. Firstly the rogue gets no resting based resources so it's effectively always on, secondly despite some flavourful descriptive names like sneak attack and cunning action, it's classic abilities are really just bonus damage, more bonus action mobility and expertise.
This means the rogue is really easy to play as a lot of plain professions. Stick your expertise in medicine and flavour your sneak attack as surgical strikes and you have a surgeon. You can do the same with being a ballet dancer, labourer, merchant, scribe, mechanic, whatever. All you need to do is pick your most relevant expertise.
Yeah and using it to cook dinner is much less broken than using it to generate 1500 GP from the 5e commerce that is not a simulation of any actual economy.
If I had a player use it for a narrative meal, I'd absolutely allow it, and if they were using it to just generate gold, I'd make them jump through hoops to find a buyer.
In Dracula, which is probably as good as we get for established vampire cannon, two quite different vampire coffin based shenanigans happen that stand out to me:
Lucy Westenra is preyed upon by Dracula to the point of death, where she is entombed in a coffin within a crypt. As the curse takes effect, she rises at night to hunt local children but returns to the coffin each night. This is where her undeath comes to an end as the hero's defeat her here.
Our titular character and general vampire icon, Dracula, has a scheme to set up home in London. He does so by moving 50 boxes of dirt (I believe Transylvanian earth) to different locations around London as he needs them to sleep in. I can't remember if these are canonically coffins or just dirt boxes he sleeps in. Regardless, it's definitely not where his grave lies. He was however buried in the tomb within the chapel of his castle, where he later rose in undeath.
So I'd say in all of Bram Stoker's accounts, vampirism restores a being to undeath some time after they perish, and this place is essential to their rest, meaning they must rest there in a deathlike state, or take their burial place with them, such as the dirt of their grave (which sounds like a legal loophole God should have spotted). They aren't always returning to their grave every night, but the rules say they must, so they make do with moving what God sees as their burial place via moving their earth that entombed them.
This system is really cool, but it seems like not that many people are playing it. I think the name "suited" is probably not helping the matter... While clever, it makes it kinda hard to google....
I haven't played suited but it's worth asking if you've played it or GM'd it already and if you have, did you feel lacking? Or are you wanting to be as prepared as possible for your game before the first session?
How would this work? I'm not familiar at all with rolemaster but is this effectively a mega shield spell? How I currently understand RPGs, easily blocking an effect that takes 3 rounds to pull off feels kinda irritating, but I don't know the system to understand it properly.
I'm coming up to start a campaign soon as a bladesinger wizard, probably flipping between a duelist style character and a classic wizard controller. I really wanted a tank in the front line, such as a barbarian or moon druid so I could dance around and stab, but I'd never mention that the other players because I'd want them to have full choice in character.
The party is a higher wis than dex monk who is best with ranged weapons, a stars druid who stays out of the fray to snips people with guiding bolt and the archer constellation who also prioritised Dex and a warlock with eldritch blast of course... who is also using wisdom as their spellcasting stat. One player who may or may not join depending on if we play online is also playing a wise elephant man ranger who uses a bow.
I love the 7 wisdom wizard I've come up with and think she'll actually be really fun to play, for the 30 seconds of combat that she'll be alive for at least.
I wonder how calvados retains it's apple flavour, I've never really thought about this beyond once being told that distilling mead is pretty pointless because the spirit would have lost almost all flavour.
I was hoping somebody could point me in the right direction or just tell me if I'm being foolish here. I'm aware of the YouTube slime tutorials, but I was wondering if there's a level deeper than slime tutorials for the real good slime content.
Funnily enough the YouTube algorithm looks at titles, so if you watch a lot of bootleg musicals on YouTube, you also recommended softcore slime fetish content.
Or at least my girlfriend does, maybe I should ask her about that...
It's kinda cool that on full moons a good creature keeps showing up and aiding the heroes and thwarting the BBEGs lieutenants, and it turns out it's the BBEG who can't remember doing it; It's a good way to color them an nuanced and not entirely evil while still hamming up the campy villainy the rest of the time.
I've often thought that an all werebear society is the optimal decision for both werebears and society. It's not a curse at all, it's a blessing. Werebears would want people to act like them while the average person would want to have good compulsions and be far more powerful on top of that.
I had to restart my game midway through act 1 due to technical reasons. One thing I found was that my protagonist just felt so flat and two dimensional compared to any tabletop character I've played (which is a limitation of the medium so I don't mind).
My new character is leaning into this.John Baldurgate is a human fighter white guy who is gonna romance Shadowheart and pick the lawful good options everywhere.
I've never set myself such a hard limitation in any game.
In my setting I dropped darkvision for dwarves because I wanted to make it scarce, but even the dwarves that don't study light or dancing lights use their many lighting inventions that were developed for underground exploration such as flairs and glow sticks, and gas lighting for their main settlements.
I also gave them all spiderclimb just because I like the way that fucks up how they'd build those settlements as down is only a necessary direction to know when you drop something, even their tankards work at all orientations and are basically sippy cups.
Oh yeah of course, if it's for personal use, always take everything you like from anywhere, and if it's for professional, I still think it's cool to take ideas.
The only thing is that if this is for 5e, you may wanna drop something from their stats such as dwarven resilience as this trait is reasonably powerful as it's effectively a hands free climbing speed which any marksman type character could cheese. One option is to make it the ability to cast spiderclimb at will, so it still has the limitations of requiring concentration (which is entertaining to imagine a dwarven bar brawl on the ceiling where everyone is knocking eachothers concentration out and falling to the floor, just to run back up) and it wouldn't work in an antimagic field too.
I’ve noticed this too, I can manage it but I am definitely holding my phone much closer to my face than the rest of the time on the app. It’s the same size as the rest of the comment text but feels smaller, maybe because I can compare it to the keyboard size?
The DM of my current game is literally in the same boat as you, we’ve gone into tier 3 and he’s asked for a hiatus because wrapping up the complex web of all of our side adventures, plus our own lives making us all exhausted for games needed reworking.
In the meantime we’ve just played Alics is Missing which was a blast, I’m looking forward to our DM being ready to restart but only when he’s ready.
Valve’s hero shooter Deadlock leaks with screenshots, gameplay details - Polygon ( www.polygon.com )
I fear no man.... Kinda ( lemmy.world )
NYC's 'Portal' to Dublin to temporarily close after incidents of joy, mischief, occasional nudity ( www.fox5ny.com )
What's that my martial friend? Through the door you say, which you'll then block? You know just what to tell me. ( lemmy.world )
Bonus points for having an athletic friend hold the door closed afterwards until the screaming stops.
What do you enjoy in "actual plays" ?
I am a bit old, and never got why so many people watch "actual play". I've done it once or twice to get the mechanic of a game, but found the experience more technical/boring than fun....
[General question to the Android community] Have you given up on the audio jack, or do you still only buy devices that have it?
(Posting this here rather than !askandroid as it's a quite general question)...
What's your hottest character idea that you didn't get to play (long enough)?
Mine was a Wild Magic Sorcerer that vehemently believed he was a regular city guardsman and explained every bit of magic he produced away as pure happenstance.
God forbid we try to make the game anything but a cakewalk ( ttrpg.network )
Wizards Of The Coast President Cynthia Williams Steps Down ( dungeonsanddragonsfan.com )
cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/12955133...
What RPG have you been dying to run?
...and why haven't you run it yet? :D
So this happened ( ttrpg.network )
Our sorcerer got some officers to confront the person who stole his identity and we turned the human trafficking ring over to the guard who pulled everyone out relatively safely....
[Opinion piece] Starfield Killed My Hype For The Elder Scrolls 6 ( www.thegamer.com )
Listen here you little shit ( lemmy.world )
3rd level spells ( startrek.website )
Apparently I'm a dwarf ( lemmy.world )
Even in this poorly made comparison shot I made you can tell the difference between streaming and "self hosting" ( lemmy.world )
Jack Ryan S3 E3
Their ideas are as interesting as they are frightening ( ttrpg.network )
I once had a player that wanted a Decanter of Endless Water just to waterboard people 😳
Did you have ‘post-apocalyptic Downton Abbey’ on your TTRPG bingo card for 2024? ( www.polygon.com )
From the official description:...
Facts. ( ttrpg.network )
What is your favorite reflavor/reskin of officially published RPG material? ( kbin.run )
When I say "RPG material," I mean things like statblocks, classes, etc.
Other than Fireball, What's the best spell for cooking? ( ttrpg.network )
Remember to always check creative uses of spells with your DM.
Vampires learned it from the Fey. ( ttrpg.network )
Does anyone have any tips for GMing Suited? ( www.escapeboxgames.com )
This system is really cool, but it seems like not that many people are playing it. I think the name "suited" is probably not helping the matter... While clever, it makes it kinda hard to google....
*Counterspell This* ( startrek.website )
cross-posted from: https://startrek.website/post/5735388
"Oh the stories I could tell you, many of them true" ( ttrpg.network )
I will preserve all the things ( lemmy.world )
Where to look for musicals?
I was hoping somebody could point me in the right direction or just tell me if I'm being foolish here. I'm aware of the YouTube slime tutorials, but I was wondering if there's a level deeper than slime tutorials for the real good slime content.
Werebears ( lemmy.world )
How I go about choosing what character to play ( lemmy.world )
And my world has new lore... ( lemmy.world )
Is it me or the comment edit font is a bit to small?
Basically the title, while I can change overall comment font, the font when editing the comment seems to stay the same...
How was your 2023 RPG season?
End of the year is coming, so let’s talk about our 2023 RPG year. Was their any great moment? Nice discovery? Projects finally achieved/started?