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I assume I will be acting after the goblins but here is my Perception: 1D20+5 = +5 = 22.

I would say that they both rationalise. If I had to put it in DnD terms Thanos would be more LE compared to Steppenwolfs NE.

The problem with these analogies is that religion and sports don't ultimately impact everyone (I suppose the argument could be made for religion in a metaphysical sense, but let's stick with just this plane of existence for the time being), and certainly not in the sense that politics do. And let's not forget that politics pervade religion, sports, what people choose or do not choose to eat......

Yes he's evil, but he rationalizes his evil, whereas Steppenwolf doesn't bother and doesn't care, he just wants what he wants.

No, he is pretty much just Evil.

To echo this, not only does not have an impact or bearing the policies of governing a polity, but it may not even be about the policies of governing a polity. The vast majority of conflicts that I consider important aren't political conflicts. In my invented setting, the vast majority of invented governments have no bearing on nor are they intended to be comment on real world governments or...

You are right, but it sort of reminds me of AD&D...all the things you got for having a strength score (a bend bars lift gates check etc.); so it's not needed but it has some thematic weirdness points for me :-)

It was the cost of the adventures. I used to run Encounters back during the playtest, where they provided the adventures for the DMs to run (usually to highlight some aspect of the playtest). The DMs got to keep the adventure, which was basically the reward for 10+ weeks of work. When Murder in Baulder's Gate came out, they wanted the DMs to purchase the adventure instead. The store owner went...

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?469105-A-Collection-of-Guides-A-Library-of-Character-Builds That thread has a list of class guides/handbooks to advise players of all classes.

In my game I’m actually rolling Champion and Battle Master together for my brother’s character. So far he’s been the hero in combat, but that’s really thanks to Combat Superiority and Action Surge. He’s only rolled a 19 once or twice in about 7 sessions with ample combat. I made this decision by comparing the Fighter to the Paladin which dramatically overshadows most classes. At this point I’m...

No, but the reason that it does not is not something I can go into, because the explanation is political. ;) I think I can hedge around it though by way of analogy. Whether or not one eats pork is not for most people a religious statement. But for certain religious groups, it is. Of course, one would expect a very pious religious person might declare that his every action was in some way a...

The whole Body a Temple think is just too bloated and weird. A simple +5 ft speed at 3rd level is fine, the rest is of that ability is completely unnecessary.

Would you consider Thanos from the Avengers 3 movie to be a misguided villain? And of course from the Justice League Movie is another sort of villain, Steppenwolf, he is a henchman of Darkseid. Darkseid just wants to rule, and is a bit more of a 2-dimensional villain than Thanos.

I recently came across this - I think it might be a bit too god at level 18, maybe I would change it to "-3 incoming damage" or something: https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Champion,_Variant_(5e_Subclass) Sorry if this has been posted before.

He answers the question clearly about using it with extra attack. Did you read his comments in the link I posted?

I think you guys are missing my point. Could I have made this encounter deadlier? Absolutely, no question. Do I often run different encounters than just blop of monsters against the tank....of course, absolutely. But I would argue, take the equivalent 6th level 3e edition paladin, and have him face 20 3rd edition monsters that get 2 bow attacks, and are tough enough to eat one full fireball...

Also, most deadites = skeletons

Skeleton 7 Wight 5 Wraith 7

Tomato, tomhato, my point is that it’s unique among features that interact with AC, and that is what throws people off about it.

Ah, details. When you are talking about a paladin with magically enhanced AC and additional buffs blocking the doorway, the CR 3 baddies are pretty useless. That's a good encounter to narrate (or have the players narrate) an easy victory rather than go through the motions of dice rolling to resolve... the inevitable. Then again, as long as you are throwing a score of wights against them,...

Good use of a chokepoint can nullify a numbers advantage. CR doesn't account for terrain or good tactical ability.

5e doesn’t have a concept of touch AC. Even if we were to compare to touch AC in 3e, wearing heavy armor never increases your touch AC, and often decreases it. What I’m doing is interpreting where the challenge lies in overcoming a creature’s AC. The challenge is not in penetrating the armor, but in landing a blow in a spot that the armor does not cover. I guess you could call it “touch the...

I'm just coming to the end of the campaign. !. I was ok with everything. 2. No loopholes that I came across. 3. There were no must haves. 4. 15 pts should be ok 5. The races we have used s far were elf, human and dwarf. I don't forsee any problems with alternate races. 6. Keep a track of which NPC the party kill and how they die. Because they may come back,with a grudge about how they...

As an admittedly imperfect being, I believe a great many things affect the nature of my characters - from strongly held beliefs to how sucky the Cracker Barrel service was earlier in the day. As long as it sets memorable and enjoyable tables for my players, it's all good.

The rule did not state you lost your attacks, but obviously it could be worded better. Why would you find it useful to bonus action bash someone to thoe ground after attacking them? Setting up others in your combat, perhaps those with the -5 +10 feats - making shield mastery a more support fest than a give me more hits fest- which seems more in keeping. Allowing you to move away, now that...

This here is a part of the problem in how you, and others, are trying to answer this. The original Sage Advice, and his recent correction, deal with Shield Master being used by a character who only has one attack per round, not characters with multiple attacks or Extra Attack, etc. People asked him about these as separate questions and the replies to those further muddied the situation when...

BARON HAVOK REAL NAME: Professor (ex-) Nicodemus Bellerose ARCHETYPE: Sorcerer/Energy Projector PL 9 (136 Power Points) STRENGTH 0, STAMINA 1, AGILITY 4, DEXTERITY 4, FIGHTING 4, INTELLIGENCE 4, AWARENESS 6, PRESENCE 4 POWERS (Origin – Empowered): Levitation: Flight 4 (30 MPH) • 8pp; Mystic Senses: Senses 6 (Counters Concealment/Visual; Counters Illusion; Magical Awareness, Radius) • 6pp;...

I will name the leader of Right Branch Heights: Yannif After their boat is secured, Nalvis and Mekric go with Yannif to have tea. They tell their story to him, up to and including the execution of the leader and their last trip from the marsh. Nalvis ends with, "We still have business with the Orngaddrin so we are travelling there next. Do you have any quests we could perform for you?" ...

This seems germane to the topic: To Create An Enemy Start with an empty canvas Sketch in broad outline the forms of men, women, and children. Dip into the well of your own disowned darkness

Yeah I gotta say - I tend to see the divide between consume content and more interaction content as pairing interactive with younger generations - when I see a generational component at all.

That's probably true. But part of the fun of such a power is forcing the target to make choices. Say as an example, you're a Battlemind|Rogue hybrid with Lightning Rush and that attack oneself power. If the monster tries to avoid attacking you, you force it to attack you and then it attacks itself anyway...

Raven Elk is perplexed by the seeming randomness of this discovery of transport. He was certain that if he used way on the symbol that was at the center of the 4th porch that he would find himself back where he started. He stared at each symbol intently. Then he smacked himself with a face palm to his forehead. Raven Elk saw the same symbol he had traced before. This time he focused on the...

I actually quite like the skeleton. Growing up, skeletons showed up again and again on Dragon magazine covers. Easley’s artwork made them fearsome and gnarly. They’re low-level workhorses, and can fit into almost any adventure with little work. And Harryhausen’s skeleton battles remain movie magic history. As for the mummy, sure, Karloff’s Frankenstein is awesome, but The Mummy is another...

In 5e "touch AC" is treated as Dex saves- avoid getting hit. At least thsts ehst I recall for a designer commfnts.

I rather liked in Jan Fridegård's Trälen Holme series both the Polythiestic priests and Christian priests both vie for power in the population of a somewhat cosmopolitan Swedish settlement. Often using the same tactics. To the former thrall protagonist Holme they are essentially the same. Authoritarians trying to get what he earned with his own blood, sweat, and tears. Which is all to say,...

$28,096 pledged of $12,000 goal 569 backers 6 days to go

Except barkskin is not an AC *modifying* effect; that has been the crux of the issue since the beginning of this thread. It's an AC *replacement* effect. I otherwise agree with you; I would prefer if it was the "heavy armor" equivalent to mage armor, with similar duration (8 hours, no concentration), but that's not how the spell is worded.

Certainly, though with the understanding that this does, ultimately, only prove my point :p

Not just the younger generation. I've been in this camp since long before MMOs were a thing: I love exploring and learning about someone else's world from the ground up - which is why I prefer homebrew settings to canned settings as with any canned setting there'll be some unavoidably familiar aspects and I prefer it to be all new - with the unexplored bits remaining a mystery until we get to...

You sound nice.

I can not think of any famous iconic DnD villain that is just a misguided good person.

AFAIC it pretty much would preclude them from playing in their own settings (assuming a typical campaign game rather than a one-off or exhibition), not only due to the player inequality but due to the DM having to look to the setting's creator for info, and-or for permission to change things. Add to that the enormous gulf between player knowledge and character knowledge for that one player as...

I would argue that natural armor works differently because, like any armor, it is modeling the difficulty of hitting the creature with it in a vulnerable spot, not the difficulty of hitting it hard enough to break through. The surface area you can hit and do meaningful harm to the creature is less than that on a similarly nimble creature without the same natural armor. However, I would agree...

Double post

I didn’t say OP. Said imbalanced. Anyways, I think the game would have been designed a bit differently if bonus actions didn’t have actions tied with them

The print copy of Career Ops arrived today. I'm very happy with how it came out. It looks great. A print edition will be available on Drivethrurpg soonish.

This isn't a thing. Or I should say, this isn't a thing about AL. There is no charge for AL from WOTC. There is no requirement in any way that AL games charge to play, any more than there ever was a charge to play in Pathfider Society. If you are encountering a fee, it's purely that game store doing it, or some DM doing it. It has literally nothing to do with AL. There is no "AL Fee". And I...

Of course. But better that than under-explaining it, which is what we have here.

All true. However, in the game one's AC determines whether you're going to take damage or not, so it's that threshold we need to look at. Here I disagree. To put it in 3e terms, you're conflating touch AC with full AC. Sure, Barkskin doesn't make the Druid any harder to touch but it does make the Druid harder to damage...which in most cases, if you're the Druid, is what really matters. :) ...

Yep. And with good reason. I cannot go into that reason in this venue, as my reason *is* political. So, we will have to just note we disagree with each other, and let it drop.

Couldn't the wights have held their actions to shoot the other party members when they used the doorway? Sure the attacks would be at disavantage, but 20 of them should drop a squishy caster.

Paladin had a 22 AC, protection from evil (giving disadvantage to all undead attacks), and heavy armor mastery (-3 damage per attack). He was standing in the doorway, so could not get surrounded on all sides (and we don't use alternate flanking rules). And of course can heal himself. Note that with a wight's +4 to attack, that is only a ~2% chance to hit with each attack, and on average it does 3...

That's logical, reasonable, and it would be totally persuasive but for the fact that no other implementation of bark-hard skin (or similar) is handled that way. Golems and other constructs, treants and awakened trees, even warforged in the new Eberron guide--they all handle natural armor in a way that can accomodate stacking AC benefits from cover, or haste.

Hey all, I'm just letting you all know that I'll soon be ready to start posting again. I just have to refresh my memory of where we were. It might still be a week or so. I'm going to give my player's in my Crow God game a chance to get back into their adventure before I get you guys going. I need to ease my way back in and reread some of the Starfinder stuff. FYI, I'm also taking a writing...

Initiative has always been looked at as a very powerful bonus in my group. That said, that is the least of my concerns. If it effected initiative it would not be the end of the world.

Did the rules change from the document they released some time ago?

I'm wondering how you did not at least drop the paladin? Eight of the wights could have swarmed = 16 attacks with longswords (1d10+2) or longsword/life drain in a single round (all with advantage if using flanking). Then the wraith drops down from above, if necessary. Meanwhile the other 12 wights (or however many are left at that point assuming some PCs went first and were able to take some...

Forever bitter that his shifty, no-good brother - a Trickery cleric! - dated the bard with a country twang and a bad reputation.

Group name: how about River Crew? I like it. Let's go with it. The man presses the palms of his hands together in front of himself and gives a slight bow. He speaks in Eastabin since he was addressed in such. "Welcome to Right Branch Heights. I see by the Norikadians with you, that you are from the rocky shores out on the point. With what has transpired here, I feared trade would be lost...

Hey guys, So, I'm finally at a place where I'm ready to start posting again. The bed bugs are gone (knock on wood), and my current writing class has put me back in a creative vibe. My plan is to write a summary of what has happened after the group killed the wererat and then fast-forward back to island with the tower, if that's okay?

That's where I know him from! That was bugging me.

Tempestuous.

Was there something you’d like to say?

Fair enough. You're not alone in this mindset. I have a completely different experience. I run the WotC adventures and often find the party struggling to survive. We do have a party of 4. Every additional party member does add a lot of power. I personally don't think the game really works at 6+ PCs. 5 should still be okay though. The #1 thing I've heard people doing is have monsters just...

A lot of people here seemed to think it was being run by WOTC so I'm not surprised by the name change.

During the Viking Period, a Norse family has its own sacred customs. Norse sacred traditions are individualistic. They are a network of overlapping local traditions. Traditions that are happening in one location can be absent in an other location, even a nearby one. The Old Norse term hof, meaning ‘shrine’, literally means a ‘farm’. The Norse have a custom where an individual will set aside a...

Skeleton 7 Wight 4 Wraith 10 Let's make things... interesting. :)

Skeleton 6 +1 = 7 Wight 6 -3 = 3 Wraith 13

Every family has its own sacred customs. Norse animism is a network of overlapping local traditions. Many customs are unique to a specific family or group of farms. Sociologically, Norse animism resembles Native American animism. The same kinds of diversities (by individual, by family, by clan, by locale) happen in the same kinds of ways. The Norse lack organized religion. The Norse...

Overall it was 6 encounters: 1) A stone golem 2) A room filled with Glyph of Warding Traps (6th level version) 3) A room with unhallow (darkness) containing a Vampire and 5 mirrors of opposition. The mirrors were set in places that the darkness part didn't get to. Only 1 of them actually triggered in the fight (on the rogue). 4) A treasure room containing 2 cursed sets of armor, an...

Taylar looks around at the seventh porch so he can tell his friends what is there. He is not so foolish as to try and explore this place alone and since he does trust the porch symbols to reliably get him back to the group, he starts down the steps. "I was hoping I could fly," he says to himself.

The problem with that is - why would a shield bash be so good a move that you'd want to use an attack action to position the opponent for it? The opposite, of course, is manifest. I think it's tied to the attack action to make it a parallel to two-weapon fighting which is also a bonus action attack linked to an attack action.

Except the class has not been altered, and you would be hard-pressed to demonstrate by any reasonable standards that it has. At first glance, on a very fundamental level, one offers a narrative check against a much greater power, while the other expands that greater power while weakening the weaker power.

Magic Using monsters can be tricky for PCs - if the DM's can use them effectively. Sounds like they will have a quite a ride ahead of them.

Yep!

I dunno about "low end undead," I too was hoping for good Halloween flavor. You see, my favorite Halloween monster (and costume, and horror movie genre, and Hollywood villain) has always been the Mummy. From Borris Karlov to Arnold Vosloo, Carter and Lord Carnarvon in history class...I've always thought it was the most interesting and most awesome. Ancient curses and mysteries, forbidden tombs...

I don't see shove + dodge as being overpowered. Dash + shove makes a nice combo that makes perfect sense, and shove + withdraw does as well. I've seen enough dodge + spirit weapon to know that while it is effective, it isn't overpowered. I think this combo would be on par with that.

You hardly have any proof of this however, while there is a lot of proof they payed respect to a pantheon of gods. The æsir most notably. And yes they could die, ragnarok was a thing after all. Most polytheistic religions wanted their gods to be flawed as well. Like it seems to me that you like Norse stuff, but one aspect of them is heavily against your beliefs and opinions. So rather then...

Nope. He never says he ruled against RAW. He never once mentions that phrase Rules As Written. The fact he, and Mike Mearls for that matter, both had conflicting and contradictory interpretations tells us, without any debate needed further, that the Rules As Written were not clear. That they needed intepretation, and that it wasn't that easy to intepret it because the guys who wrote it were not...

Can’t speak for others, but I am hoping for a iconic Halloween flavored victor. Skeleton is the last of those left.

In general bonus action need tied to specific actions “triggers” or the games has more imbalance. Dodge is the worst culprit imo. But maybe the solution would have been to specify no offense abilities when taking the dodge action.

Absolutely **if** you allow it to be done before the attack action. But my bet is if the original feat had had the flavor text below it would have bedn see as perfectly fine. "You use your melee weapon attacks to setup your opponent, positioning them for a shield bash. When you take the attack action you may follow it with a bonus action shove using your shield."

Did your version include the lines, "Ask him if the Seal came with a warranty." "Even if it did, I'm pretty sure the Ob have voided it."?

Trees can’t benefit from partial cover because they can’t move. You’re going to hit a tree that is not behind total cover, the attack roll is just to see if you hit it hard enough. A creature affected by Barkskin can benefit from cover, however. It adds 2 to the threshold that needs to be met or exceeded on an attack roll to hit its body. The value that is calculated as 10 + Dexterity Mod by...

Your point is excellent. There is no utility that I can see to tying the shove to the Attack action in any way. Shield Master shove (knockdown) + booming blade should be possible, and Shield Master shove (knock back) + ranged spell attack without penalty should also be possible. The more I think about it, the more linking the shove to the Attack action seems to be just a needless complication.

You'd think that, but I'm originally from Wisconsin and am a lifelong Packers fan. I agree with you that the Giants and Eagles are the two wrong sides of a particularly ugly coin. :)