The General D&D thread

Eric's right, mate. Dray and Half-giants were already there, they just statted them as Dragonborn and Goliaths to avoid making two races you'd only ever use in that setting, or, worse, having two sweet races players aren't allowed to use at all.

(In case you couldn't tell, I'm a huge fanboy of how 4E managed not to fuck Dark Sun like they did Forgotten Realms.)

On using Goliaths: The Half-giant path is a pretty sweet one, really. Alternatively, you could make them born soldiers originally bred by a wizard for a war of some sort, and after the war concluded they became wandering mercenaries. Or, turn their theme on its head- instead of living on mountains, they live in mountains. Flying mountains.

Perhaps they're Half-giants originally bred by a wizard that controlled a city atop a flying mountain. She made them to be the perfect soldiers for a war she was waging against another Archmage, and when she was defeated they were set free to live on the mountain-fortress-city-thing.

Alternatively, cowboys that ride huge drakes and talk with a Deep Southern accent.

If you'd like to give us an outline of your setting, we might be able to contribute more substantial ideas.

@Cyg: My friend Dusty's specialty is running fricking huge parties and splitting them into cells, running two, maybe even as much as three or four adventures at once. He gave me three tips for the situation:

One, make it awesome. If you can't think of something just as cool as if the party were to stay together, don't encourage it.

Two, what you can do depends on the size of your group. A group of four is okay to split without problems, and so is a group of eight or ten; however, in the 5-7 range, things get a bit difficult to run properly.

Three, don't overbook yourself. If you need to, run the two games on separate days until they rejoin, or if need be get an assistant DM to help you.

edited 3rd Mar '11 8:24:10 AM by Diamonnes

I actually find the Goliath cowboy idea so amusing, that I might use it.

And I haven't given much detail about the setting yet, because it's still in the beginning stages, so there's not much detail to give. The only thing I have set for sure, is that both lighthearted and serious games can take place there, due to regional differences in the gameworld. The Land Put to Death in the far north is more suited to grim struggle against the dark, but the Hawaii-expy Goldsun Archipelago is more suited to humorous games of the PC's trying to enjoy a well-earned vacation, only to be interrupted by some form of trouble.

I want more Obyriths to fight.

You play D&D, Vorpy?

Me and vorpy used to DM for each other, actually. 4E. I think in the end I got lazy though, and started letting others in on the D Ming. that's when the game went to hell! (ﾉ`Д´)ﾉ

I see :O

My DM is in Boot Camp for another 6 weeks or so, so I've assumed direct control over the campaign, running a bit of a sidequest (totally kosher, I swear!).

The adventure is pretty crazy. Including poisoned dragon omelets and an obnoxious gate guardian!

edited 8th Mar '11 5:08:49 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

In most settings, the races seem somewhat segregated. Elves live in their forests, humans in their cities, dwarves in their underground fortresses, and so forth. With the execption of adventurers and races like halflings, the races don't seem to mix socially that much.

What do you think is the best way to handle a more integrated world?

Look at Australia IRL.

Pay no attention to the Pauline Hanson behind the curtain.

It's been almost 10 months since I last played D&D. I'm the only DM of the group at the moment, and all I DM are nWoD games.

I miss my bard.

Right now I'm in two home games. One is paragon tier, the other is heroic. I started out with the latter, after playing the former I have to say I don't really enjoy heroic so much since the low levels feel very restricting.

The paragon is more fun to play. But the heroic is much funnier. I was cracking up pretty hard tonight when I suggested to the DM that in order to carry three barrels of ale alone I would fashion a cart out of an scavenged box with makeshift wheels made of picked up shields.

I feel for ye man.

Since I have a terrible sense for balance, I pose a question: the 4E Assassin. Are they overpowered? Underpowered? About even with the others? I really like the flavour, but I do not want to play one and either suck spectacularly or outshine everyone else.

I haven't gotten the feel for the new Executioner (but note: it's an Essentials class so ...) but my understanding was that the pre-Essentials assassin was considered to be bottom tier in most cases due to the impractical nature of Assassin's Shroud.

Speaking of assassins, the party (sidequest I'm running while the DM is away) is half-way through (Long Fight rules: DMG 2) a battle against an Executioner/Assassin/Rogue/Whatever themed boss with a smoke motif.

Fight stats: recharging close burst attack that deals poison damage and asphyxiates the target (Save ends). While asphyxiating, the target must roll an Endurance check (DC 22) whenever they would pass a saving through against a poison effect (including asphixiation!)-on a failure, the save is treated as a failure!

Basic melee attack: Can deliver poisons (which are readied as a minor action), and gives a -5 penalty to saves until the end of the boss' next turn!

Ranged attack: Targets three different creatures, and can deliver poisons (no -5 penalty though).

Death Attack property: If the boss reduces a creature to 15 HP or less through a damaging hit, the target is instead reduced to 0 HP. When at 50% HP, this increases to 30 HP.

POISONS

Blight of Shadow: Ongoing 20 poison damage (save ends). Each failed save causes the target to suffer 20 cold and necrotic damage.

Heart-Stopper (Rechargable): No basic effect, but every failed saving throw against this poison counts as a failed death save. Any bonuses against death saves (such as a Warforged's ability to take 10 on death saves) applies, however.

Deadly Venom: A separate poison damage instance (no ongoing effect).

In our campaign we use "Supports," which means that the presence of NP Cs gives each player a bonus, both a persistent bonus, and a daily (per PC) bonus, meaning that the party has a few extra tricks up its sleeve (namely: Resistance 17 to poison, which makes the battle go from unwinnable to manageable) and a daily power to spend two healing surges, make two saving throws, and slide oneself one. Oh, and a "Failed skill check is treated as a natural 20" power.

Also, one of the P Cs is a dwarf, so that nifty +5 bonus to saves against poison will finally come in handy.

It's a battle that doesn't rely on damage to be threatening, but if anyone drops to 0 HP for long enough for the boss to act, it's time for an action point to Coup de Grace. It's a good thing they've got a pretty powerful healer with Mark of Healing ready.

Moreover, their average DPR is enough that there probably won't be more than four rounds of combat, making it next to impossible for Heart-Stopper to actually be threatening; if it weren't for the boss' shadow aura (involves creating total darkness, thus granting total concealment, though there are a number of ways to counter-act this), the battle would actually be pretty pathetic.

Whenever I build fights like these, they always look so amazing on paper, but then when it comes time to run them, the party just completely stomps them... ahh well.

having monsters using coup de grace? thats brave of you man. I could never use coup de grace, although I've threatened it a few times, no one I've played against has ever died.

Am I too soft, or just unlucky?

In 4E, Coup De Grace is hard for monsters to pull off at mid to later levels (much easier early on) because for most enemies, critically hitting is way less difference in damage than for P Cs. So that 2d10+11 damage (Average 22: 14th level) becomes 31 damage. By 14th level, most characters have over 62 HP (possibly excluding the wizard) so it becomes an issue of going from -5 to -36, meaning that if the healer raises them from 0 (as is what happens in 4E) then that entire turn is wasted.

That's why traditionally Coup De Grace isn't useful-you need an enemy that's designed for it for it to be meaningful in the first place.

Anyone know of any good 3.5 rule variants that make combat less Critical Existence Failure-y? One of the things I find hard about balancing encounters is the fact that it's near-impossible to damage someone enough to take them out of the fight without straight-up killing them.

One of the rules I've seen shifts armor to quasi-DR, where when you take damage, your AC converts up to its value into nonlethal damage (eg, if your armor bonus to AC is +8 and you take 10 damage, you'd take 8 nonlethal damage and 2 lethal damage), but that tends to just make things easier because magical healing heals an equal amount of lethal and nonlethal damage (eg, if you heal for 10 points, you heal 10 points of lethal and nonlethal damage). The obvious answer is to houserule that away (I'd generally think of giving lethal damage higher priority; if you have 15 lethal damage and 30 nonlethal damage and are healed for 20 HP, you end up with 0 lethal damage and 25 nonlethal), but I was wondering if anyone else had run into any good rules for that sort of thing.

edited 24th Mar '11 6:49:05 AM by NativeJovian

Creatures don't die until they're at -25% Max HP. Healing effects heal from 0.

That's an implementation that was utilized shortly before 4E hit the shelves, since the writers were like "HOLY FUCK, OUR YOU DON'T DIE IF YOU'RE BENEATH 0 IDEA IS THE BEST THING EVERZ LULZ"

Might overpower heals though.

in 4e: they introduced the status effect bloodied, which occurs at half HP. You could implement that in 3.5, and also, you could houserule that once a player becomes bloodied, they start losing their ability to focus in combat, and give them penalties to movement and broaden their flanking vulneralbility or something like that.

The concern seems less to be Critical Existence Failure (which is, a reduction in HP does not reduce your ability to function in combat) but more with the inability to deny actions via HP loss without killing the character outright.

Another option that's pretty simple to implement; just give your monsters a few powers they can only use while not bloodied (I.E. "Standard; recharge 6; not usable while bloodied; 4d8 + 10 damage) and say the players cannot use their most powerful abilities while bloodied. (Or, in the case of fighters and such, they take attack penalties as Dyna suggested).

I myself just use a rule of thumb based on the players' own intentions, or those of whoever's attacking them. Remember that the rules are guidelines, and sometimes it's okay to mess with them for the sake of the game.

edited 24th Mar '11 2:00:47 PM by Diamonnes

well, I am opposed to denying actions OUTRIGHT/ (as, thats unfun) however, having an injury does affect your ability to do combat, to cast spells, to play a guitar... to courting a lady...

Xd you get my point.

People see a trope, follow the trope. Disregard rest of post. :/

if only you could enforce upon your PC's to actually roleplay pain. Am I right?