Some random house rules for things that bothered me

Ancalagon · Jul 4, 2018

Also, perhaps the d&d hanzo asked the Kami to bless his blade and they answered his prayers... a legendary swordsmith may know ancient rituals and secrets components. She doesn't have to be a wizard!

Ymdar · Jul 4, 2018

Gwarok said:
3 Speaking of magic swords, always bothered me that simply giving a +1 to a sword now made it magical and it can cut ghosts. Didn't seem like there was any way to give someone a weapon improvement that simply meant it was a sharper, stronger, better made weapon without also giving it super powers. What is the difference between a sword made by a master smith and one made by a merely competent one? And no one that can't fling fireballs or make miracles happen can make a decent sword? I'm pretty sure Hattori Hanzo never cracked a spellbook or studied at Hogwarts. This also never sat right with me.

I'm admittedly don't really have in-depth knowledge of Japanese history but I'm not sure if Hattori Hanzo had to duel with a ghost.

However wielding a sword from a renowned master-swordsmith indeed gives you tremendous respect (or fear) from your peers which would definitely translate to certain social advantages or disadvantages because of the ornamentation.*

EDIT: In certain settings of course.

Staccat0 · Jul 4, 2018

Honestly, in a world with magic spells and magic weapons I assume that masterwork swords would matter about as much as masterwork swords matter in a world with guns.

In my setting, magic weapons are fairly rare. I’ve just taken it as an opportunity to highlight fantastical stuff like Mythril or armor made from spider silk..

That said, we play with encumbrance rules so it’s easier to make players care if a weapon is made from a really light metal.

If I were adapting a pre-written module I would probably lift your idea here and just make all the +x items masterwork items. As it is, I just don’t like using +x weapons.

TheCosmicKid · Jul 4, 2018

Gwarok said:
We seem to have no problem with their carrying capacity going up with size, seems to me this isn't much different.

At that point, shouldn't you consider just... increasing their Strength score? Carrying capacity goes up with size partly so as to allow giants to lift really heavy things without totally warping the combat math. But if you want to warp the combat math, the solution seems obvious.

Gadget · Jul 5, 2018

Bacon Bits said:
I think the issue is that "magical" is actually a real and significant bonus in 5e, even "+0 magical." Many of the higher level creatures resist or are immune to weapon damage... unless the weapon is magical. That means that for most campaigns, high level creatures have no special resistance to the attacks of martial characters. AC doesn't scale with level anymore; that's why a CR 3 Knight and a CR 16 Marilith both have AC 18. Yet some of the same creatures just have magical resistance that there's no way past. The difference between fighting a Balor as a Fighter and fighting a Balor as a Wizard is tremendous. Dragons can be largely the same. There are a lot of special magical defenses in the game that you just have to change tactics for, but the only special martial defense can be overcome by the weapon from the treasure hoard you found 12 levels ago.

Fiends, elementals, golems, and dragons are kind of all like this. A Fighter with a basic magic weapon is one of the most terrifying things in the game. If that's intentional, then it's weird that they get magic weapons beginning around level 3.

I mean, yeah, "the game isn't balanced around magic items," but that doesn't mean the game doesn't intend for you to find them. Quite the opposite! The treasure rules tell you to give them out. Look at what the Wizard has to deal with. There's layers of defense there that encourages some hesitation. Not for Fighters. I mean, yes, the game needs to be accessible, but a) spellcasting classes need to be accessible, too, b) "everything martial" shouldn't be a button mashing strategy that's also the best possible strategy against most high CR creatures.

Like the Wizard needs the Fighters help here. What does the Fighter need the Wizard's help with? Utility magic and hordes of chaff?

Points well taken. I think in the admirable effort to simplify things, 5e has created a few holes. I feel that spells like Stoneskin could, like Bladeward, work against all bludgeoning, slashing, piercing damage. The fighter is still getting a +x damage from her magic weapon, so it is of some benefit. That being said, the Marilith's teleport ability hinders the fighter just as much as the wizard, and it is just as vulnerable to the wizard's Magic Missile or a Wall spell as anything else. That seems to be the key point here: most spell casters have multiple tools in their belt and can switch up tactics when they are stymied in one direction; not so much the fighters.

Gwarok · Jul 5, 2018

TheCosmicKid said:
At that point, shouldn't you consider just... increasing their Strength score? Carrying capacity goes up with size partly so as to allow giants to lift really heavy things without totally warping the combat math. But if you want to warp the combat math, the solution seems obvious.

The thing is STR caps at 30, meaning at most, compared to the zenith of mortal human STR at 20, at most the differential that could be realized is that the Tarrasque at STR 30, our genre's Godzilla, is essentially getting merely twice the benefit from it's STR as say, Dwayne Johnson, who for the purposes of this metaphor has a STR 20. Just doesn't seem to make sense. I laughed when I saw the stats for the Tarraasque. Don't get em wrong, it's pretty fierce, but still needs minimum 2 rounds to take out say, an Efreet or Djinni. Or even a CR 5 Earth Elemental whose damage resistance it can't bypass. Seems a bit odd. I up the damage bonus for STR by size though, and all of a sudden everything makes a lot more sense. Obviously the CR's will need to be adjusted, but that is absolutely the least of my concerns.

I also find it odd that so many folks seem to feel that fidelity to the CR rating system is the primary goal. CR X monster can only deal Y damage/round. That we should change the reduce the damage to conform to the CR, regardless of fidelity to common sense, which even in a fantasy game needs to be somewhat on par with reality or things can get really silly really quick. As the old saying goes, "I agreed to suspend my disbelief, not hang it from the neck until dead."

TheCosmicKid · Jul 5, 2018

Gwarok said:
The thing is STR caps at 30, meaning at most, compared to the zenith of mortal human STR at 20, at most the differential that could be realized is that the Tarrasque at STR 30, our genre's Godzilla, is essentially getting merely twice the benefit from it's STR as say, Dwayne Johnson, who for the purposes of this metaphor has a STR 20. Just doesn't seem to make sense.

What I'm saying is, if this bothers you, just blow up the Strength cap and give, say, Large creatures scores in the 21-30 range, Huge creatures scores in the 31-40 range, and Gargantuan creatures scores in the 41-50 range. It's cleaner and more conceptually straightforward than sticking with the default rules but tacking on multipliers for size.

jasper · Jul 6, 2018

1. Giants. You could add their CR Level to the damage. So a hill giant add +5 damage to any hit. Or you just add their strength stat as damage. so +21 to the hit. Note this will be a special add type of damage not available to the pcs.
3. Is just flavor. Your pc wants a sword master make a +1 sword. go collect x,y, and z damage.

Afrodactyl · Jul 6, 2018

I'm running SKT at the moment, and I must say the giants do hit very, very hard. Particularly Fire and Storm giants. The party at the moment is more likely to flee from those rather than fight them head on. Other giants they don't have too much issue with.

This may be unique to giants though, I've seen plenty of creatures in the MM that don't hist all that hard for their size.

Li Shenron · Jul 12, 2018

Gwarok said:
1) Giant creatures hit really not much harder than medium ones. Big things should be REALLY scary to fight in close combat for man sized stuff, even if you are the greatest fighter in the land encased in the best armor, a T-Rex is not a laughing matter. Jaime Lannister in his prime with that Valerian sword would still find some excuse to not slug it out with one of those Frost Giants. Really just a level of suspension of disbelief I've never been able to make peace with.

2) Magic items that are rated "Very Rare" or thereabouts yet seem vastly inferior to lower quality or lower rated items. Specifically in this case comparing Staves of Fire or Frost to a Staff of Power, all of which are Very Rare but miles apart in usefulness. Also, the fact staves seem to just be weapons for specific purpose instead of a general tool to help wizards to their thing.

3 Speaking of magic swords, always bothered me that simply giving a +1 to a sword now made it magical and it can cut ghosts. Didn't seem like there was any way to give someone a weapon improvement that simply meant it was a sharper, stronger, better made weapon without also giving it super powers. What is the difference between a sword made by a master smith and one made by a merely competent one? And no one that can't fling fireballs or make miracles happen can make a decent sword? I'm pretty sure Hattori Hanzo never cracked a spellbook or studied at Hogwarts. This also never sat right with me.

My personal preference on how I'd handle those problems:

1) I wouldn't change the ability scores of the monster, since they have other repercussion. If you want more damage, I would just add more damage dice. This is a very simple and self-contained change that directly achieves the wanted outcome (more damage) without other consequences. In our games, what has been scary about monsters with multiple damage dice is critical hits, because as you know only the damage dice are multiplied in that case: the otherwise boring Ogre scared our PCs (at low levels, of course) because the longer the combat dragged on, the higher the chance of the Ogre scoring a critical (at least one of our character was nearly killed by massive damage this way, and was saved by 1hp only!)

2) Rarity and utility are not proportional by default, so if you don't like their combination you can always change an item's rarity (easiest fix) or modify the item's properties (more interesting). Also, rarity really only comes into play when rolling for random treasure, which is not mandatory. As soon as you roll for a Holy Avenger, your party has one of them: who cares then what is the official 'rarity' of Holy Avengers? What matters is whether the PCs have it or not.

3) You could just bring back the concept of masterwork weapons. I don't know why it was cut from 5e.