Best Version of DnD?

[DocPiske]

It occurs to me that this forum is much too cordial. Are we sure we're on the internet?

Edited September 16, 2017 by DocPiske

[Club]

16 hours ago, DocPiske said:

It occurs to me that this forum is much too cordial. Are we sure we're on the internet?

 

Most of the weirdos have migrated to 'social media,' leaving 'the internet' a much nicer place.

 

-----

 

Regarding the earlier talk about junk builds, yeah, I remember newbies trying to play sorcerers in 3.x, and even in pathfinder. Such a trap, by the time you have enough experience to know what you need, it's too late to select it. You either needed somebody to hold their had during character build (To the point of nearly handing them a pregen and their first few level-ups) or tell them to play a wizard instead.

 

 

even beyond that, there are the different types of players. I recommend 'Robin's laws of good gamemastering,'  old book you can find if you do a search, or from SJG's site; he does a decent breakdown. There is the guy who wants to fight, the one who wants the most powerful character, the one who plays the character for the story, the one who wants to play the character according to their motivations, the strategist guy, and the guy who wants to play an archtype.

 

That is why you spend time before a campaign, even before chargen, on expectation management. Is your shadowrun game going to be full of buzzsaws capable of throwing eighteen dice and consistently getting four initiative passes, gangers with tragic backstories, or sneaky special ops types that rarely fire a shot? Are they rookies moving up, or trained pros from way back? How forgiving are the cops (Do they follow stuff up when leads start to run dry or only reach for the low-hanging fruit, do they get pissed when you shoot APDS 'copkiller ammo' at them?) Gangers can't pull their weight in a fight designed for buzzsaws, buzzsaws don't typically have the social skills to contribute to a plot that doesn't center around fighting, and the sole spec-ops is either going to have nothing to do, or be the keystone of the session.

 

A big one is if your players are trying to play iconic characters (They are who they are, and any changes are only toward their iconic identity if they stray; Batman, Superman) or are they dynamic characters, like spiderman who goes from highschooler to young adult to married family-man, to 'divorced' professional superhero, and now to playboy spider-bat. (Nope, not bitter about those last two at all)

Edited September 17, 2017 by Club

[Zink]

14 hours ago, Club said:

are they dynamic characters, like spiderman who goes from highschooler to young adult to married family-man, to 'divorced' professional superhero, and now to playboy spider-bat. (Nope, not bitter about those last two at all)

 

I don't really follow spiderman but this made me blink. The married part I can get because he was always after Mary Jane. But the divorced and then playboy spider-bat?

[Club]

Spiderman got WEIRD after the after the 2007 'civil war' story arc. I was looking forward to seeing how he'd deal with his identity being public, but they pulled a DC and retconed that, plus his marriage to MJ, out of existance in a deal with the devil; then a few years after that the writers had 'him' (Mind controlled) start a company that went big.

 

That was about the last time I picked up a comic; I don't know what has happened since.

[pcktlnt]

Just now, Club said:

Spiderman got WEIRD after the after the 2007 'civil war' story arc. I was looking forward to seeing how he'd deal with his identity being public, but they pulled a DC and retconed that, plus his marriage to MJ, out of existance in a deal with the devil; then a few years after that the writers had 'him' (Mind controlled) start a company that went big.

 

That was about the last time I picked up a comic; I don't know what has happened since.

Well...that's one way to kill a superhero one grows up with.

[BlazingTornado]

52 minutes ago, Zink said:

The married part I can get because he was always after Mary Jane.

But had you known he and MJ got married all the way back in 1987?

[Zink]

Nope I actually didn't. Comics I followed a fair bit when I was a kid were the various Conans, Groo the wanderer, Rom spacenight and some of the Xmen stuff. Read a bit of other things but not a lot and not for a lot of years. Been catching up of some of them that are free online.

[TheAuldGrump]

You know, in ten plus years, I have never encountered a crippled or 'junk' sorcerer build, in either 3.X or Pathfinder, whether played by a newbie or a veteran.

 

And this is in spite of really not liking the sorcerer class in 3 and 3.5.

 

Not because it was crippled in any way, I just found the class so darned boooorrrring! Sorcerer has my vote for Most Improved Class between 3.X and Pathfinder.

 

Other classes... yeah, I have seen a crippled Ranger, Rogue, or Bard - but that is because skill monkeys have so many places that they can put their points. But I also have no problem with a player reallocating their points if what they have does not work. (The low Wisdom Ranger being an example.)

 

But, again, I think that the junk or crippled build problem is way overblown - just one of those things that 4e players like to point at, while 3.X and 3.P players go 'What you talkin' about, Willis?'

 

It happens, but less often than people complain about, and I suspect that most GMs are pretty open to folks fixing their characters when they don't work out. (In fact both 3.5 and Pathfinder have rules for reworking and retraining characters.)

 

Really - in any game, the GM should be willing to work with the player to make a working character, not just in D&D or Pathfinder.

 

The Auld Grump - well, maybe not in Paranoia....

[Doug Sundseth]

10 minutes ago, TheAuldGrump said:

You know, in ten plus years, I have never encountered a crippled or 'junk' sorcerer build, in either 3.X or Pathfinder, whether played by a newbie or a veteran.

 

And this is in spite of really not liking the sorcerer class in 3 and 3.5.

 

 

...

 

But, again, I think that the junk or crippled build problem is way overblown - just one of those things that 4e players like to point at, while 3.X and 3.P players go 'What you talkin' about, Willis?'

 

It happens, but less often than people complain about, and I suspect that most GMs are pretty open to folks fixing their characters when they don't work out. (In fact both 3.5 and Pathfinder have rules for reworking and retraining characters.)

 

My experience exactly. 

 

Sorcerer can be a bit tricky to get a really good character, just because you have so few chances to make choices and so few choices to make. As long as you have a mix of spell types, though (force damage, fire damage, cold damage, and electrical damage isn't a mix of spell types ), a sorc is likely to be playable. Precisely because of those limits, though, it can be a good class for a player with limited system knowledge: "Which of these six things would you like to do this round?" is a lot easier to handle than (say) setting up a daily spell list, deciding what spells to buy with cash, and deciding when to use the really good stuff is for a wizard.

 

That said, I've always allowed a rebuild if the character isn't working out the way the player wants, particularly for a new player.

[TheAuldGrump]

Pathfinder, in particular, adds a lot of options with the archetypes - which I am pretty sure is something in 5e as well, or something rather like it.

 

Classes underwent a good deal of deconstruction in Pathfinder - and 5e built on it. (I still haven't played any 5e beyond some limited playtest experience - not against it, mind, just happy with Pathfinder, and I am the one that runs most of our games.)

 

The Auld Grump

[Sylverthorne]

PF and 3.5e do let Sorcerers swap spells out - I think at any level they learn new spells, they can change their spell list, if something isn't working.

 

My rule for characters in games I run is 'if you haven't used it, you can swap it out for free. If you /have/ used it, we can discuss it'. I like the training and retraining rules, but I don't think they've ever actually come up, just because I don't have an issue with retooling a character if a thing just isn't working.

 

Hero Labs has a 5e character builder, based off the SRD, that I mucked about with a little bit. Found it interesting, haven't really poked many of the options, but ... interesting. And in this case, that does in fact mean interesting, and not 'polite reference to terrible'. ^^;

[Jokemeister]

Like others here, I also let players respec their character if they aren't having fun.  At the end of the day, if the player isn't having fun - then what is the point?  Obviously, there are limits (eg if you are constantly respeccing your character, then I'm not going to allow it) but as long as things are within reason, I'm generally okay with lots of things that are intended to make the game more fun for players.

 

I remember a conversation I had with someone many, many years ago (to be fair, my RPG days are all many, many years ago  ).  At the time, I was working with a player to build their character for a 1 PC campaign.  During character creation, I had let that player "cheat" by improving some of that PCs stats after the initial dice rolls.

 

A different player found out about this and felt that this was a mistake and that the rules of character creation should have been followed (as they were the rules!).  My view at the time (and which hasn't changed over time) is that the PC is only as powerful as I allow and its easy to keep the game challenging by throwing tougher monsters (or just tweaking existing monsters to give them a little more oomph) at the PC.  Ultimately, boosting that PC doesn't make any difference to the campaign but made a huge difference to the player playing that PC as they now hen felt they were more like the mythical hero of yore.

 

Obviously, you couldn't do this in a party based campaign where you have multiple players and PCs. 

[Nunae]

My party also has some sort "that character is waaaayyy stronger than my character!" situation for like half a year. It mostly manifests itself in a joking matter, when people complain that it is "the druid's turn again?!" 

But it has also lead to some respeccing situations, none really addressing the problem.

The problem is that a lot of my players are super careful not to exhaust their ressources. Like casters rather using cantrips or weapons in the first few rounds of combats against an enemy that is clearly scary. Or the barbarian not raging in the very first round of combat by default. Or not using your class abilities at all. First time we ever saw sorcery points being used was when the sorcerer's player wasn't there and his sister played his character. Everyone was in aww. Same goes for the cleric, but in her defense, having channel divinity only once per day kinda makes it feel like you should maybe safe it. 

Anyway, our druid is kind of the opposite. He summons beasts until his spell slots run out. Then he casts the next smaller spells and turns into a beast himself while concentrating on it. And he took the sentinel feat which allows him one reaction pretty much every turn.

I'm not really  mad about them underperforming in terms of damage, since they are a big group anyway and this means I don't have to scale up the adventure as much. But I'm sick of the constant jabbing towards the druid when I've told them again and again that they have to use abilities, normal sword swings don't really get that much stronger through leveling up. 

Rant over.

 

On another note, our sorcerer dude went to England to study (or his gf wants to study there and he tagged along or something). Which opened up a slot, now being filled by the younger brother of our Barbarian's childhood friend or something. Poor dude tried to DM DSA (Das schwarze Auge, German answer to DnD, but from what I understand it always has to happen in a certain setting) for all kinds of friends before, but never got anyone really invested enough to read the rules, so he seems very happy we have a group that survived to 5th level. He also read most of the rules before his first session, despite us saying we first wanted to see if this was a good fit, so I liked him already.

He now plays an elderly fighter who used to be a soldier and now protects caravans for money, but the last one he was with got smashed anyway with him as the lone survivor. That's how he got stranded in the Underdark alone until he meat the party. They proceeded to raid a Netherese tomb together, he actually used all his battlemaster maneuvers and in the end, they found a talking sword. That sword is only the second magical item the party has ever found besides healing potions. 

I thought they would give it to the Barbarian, but somehow he decided to rather use his non-magical axe instead?  The war cleric might also had been a good choice, but somehow, maybe out of politeness, the new shiny sword ended up with the new guy. I kinda felt bad about that. But I also didn't want the sword (who talks) to just say who she wants to go with, since that seems like too much involvement on my part. After all, she knows none of them, so voicing preferences on her part would be odd. 

 

[VitM]

10 minutes ago, Nunae said:

My party also has some sort "that character is waaaayyy stronger than my character!" situation for like half a year. It mostly manifests itself in a joking matter, when people complain that it is "the druid's turn again?!" 

But it has also lead to some respeccing situations, none really addressing the problem.

The problem is that a lot of my players are super careful not to exhaust their ressources. Like casters rather using cantrips or weapons in the first few rounds of combats against an enemy that is clearly scary. Or the barbarian not raging in the very first round of combat by default. Or not using your class abilities at all. First time we ever saw sorcery points being used was when the sorcerer's player wasn't there and his sister played his character. Everyone was in aww. Same goes for the cleric, but in her defense, having channel divinity only once per day kinda makes it feel like you should maybe safe it. 

Anyway, our druid is kind of the opposite. He summons beasts until his spell slots run out. Then he casts the next smaller spells and turns into a beast himself while concentrating on it. And he took the sentinel feat which allows him one reaction pretty much every turn.

I'm not really  mad about them underperforming in terms of damage, since they are a big group anyway and this means I don't have to scale up the adventure as much. But I'm sick of the constant jabbing towards the druid when I've told them again and again that they have to use abilities, normal sword swings don't really get that much stronger through leveling up. 

Rant over.

 

I have played with a few people over the years that are, I guess the best description is "vaguely offended", that mundane weapon strikes cease to matter around mid-levels and that you need to have relevant feats, class abilities, or magic to contribute. 

[BlazingTornado]

Yeah, 5th Edition tries its best to avoid that. Creatures IMMUNE to nonmagical damage tend to be very powerful archdemons whose CR exceeds the level cap of 5E anyway or, or very thematic creatures like a demilich.

There's still some weaker creatures that combattants can't be too good against, like wights... but that's why you carry torches, alchemist fire vials and the likes.