Azurewraith
Explorer
The images in my head right now are full of win.. a halflings head would be about crotch height on a normal nabbing correct?
D&D 5E Rogues without Darkvision
- Thread starter Leugren
- Start date
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
That idea has merit. It mitigates one of the halfling's worst weaknesses (low mobility), monks don't usually grapple things anyway so your small size doesn't matter much, it solves your darkvision problem, and assuming you're thinking of a Rogue/Monk multiclass it simultaneously boosts damage a bit (preventing the monk from mostly plateauing at level 5), gives Stealth expertise to make Pass Without Trace more effective, and gives you a Cunning Action to exploit that insanely high Stealth skill. And if you pick the right kind of halfling (Lightfoot) you can hide pretty much anywhere in melee since there will almost always be a Medium creature around somewhere (e.g. another PC).
There are worse ideas than a Rogue 2/Shadow Monk multiclass.
Saeviomagy
Adventurer
And the sound of a footstep is normally perfectly hearable, but stealth checks let you change that.
Sure, but the characters are supposed to be basically super heroes. They can take on a flying, fire breathing, elephant-sized creature with a pointy metal rod, but they can't run a peak-real-world level marathon (and recall the origin of the term marathon while you are at it).
Yeah, I covered that. You can get close with a 20th level character, two classes, a specific race and a feat. And some would argue that those two classes are quasi-magical.
Teleport circle is 5th, no risks. Wind walk and teleport via plants are 6th, again minimal risks.
And like I said - running a competitive marathon takes a 20th level character, so 6th level spells are comparatively low level. I never mentioned the whole party - just one character being able to run a real world marathon. The fact that the magic character thoroughly outdoes the martial character AND takes the whole party with him is just icing on the cake.
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FormerlyHemlock
Hero
So, what's the problem? Are you looking for house rules? Or just making a point? If the latter I'm afraid I've lost the plot--I don't remember what the original point was that made marathons and sprinting come up.
I've considered importing the sprinting rules from AD&D (and even worked out how I would do it). I've also considered tweaking the rules for flying creatures to let them travel more quickly on the second and subsequent rounds of movement in a particular direction. So far neither has actually come up in the game so I haven't yet made a ruling, but I have a rough outline in mind for what I would do.
If the absurdly low movement speeds bother you, you can fix them. And yes, it would have been nice if WotC had just written them better in the first place, but that's water under the bridge.
Saeviomagy
Adventurer
The original point was about stealth being something a character can be good at, and D&D tending to take the approach that if you don't have magic, you can't do anything that approaches real-world levels of performance, let alone heroic things.
I think that's kind of what's happening here: people are assessing that a rogue cannot hide in a room when the lights are on, even from unaware foes, which of course leads to the idea that any rogue that needs light to operate is worthless.
The reality should be that the bulk of monsters also need light to operate properly, and that in most places that are being used there will be plenty of darkened areas to hide in.
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CapnZapp
Legend
The idea that a light-needing rogue is at a disadvantage has nothing to do with the absurd notion you can't hide with the lights on, and everything to do with the inability to see, walk and therefore skulk in areas of complete darkness.
If you light up all your dungeons to accommodate human and halfling scouts, that's great, but in a general campaign where this isn't assumed, I'll much rather choose a Darkvision-endowed race, thank you very much.
If you light up all your dungeons to accommodate human and halfling scouts, that's great, but in a general campaign where this isn't assumed, I'll much rather choose a Darkvision-endowed race, thank you very much.
One of the easier ways to handle the sprint speed if that's a real issue at your table is reduce the rounds time to 2 or 3 seconds. Range and ranged attacks should have some meaning so if you just boost movement speed it may make distance meaningless except on the largest of battlefields.
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
Turn 5E into hyperkinetic GURPS, you mean? That's a good approach, but it has two (minor) issues:
(1) It doubles the duration of spells in combat.
(2) It's a linear transformation which makes walking humans way too fast (7 mph), horses about right (27 mph), and dragons (36 mph) and giant eagles (27 mph) too slow--they should be able to go up to about 80 mph at least. (Compare speeds here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_by_flight_speed)
Since walking speeds are by far the most common in D&D, I'm not sure that applying a linear doubling as you suggest is the way to go. It's an interesting idea to explore though.
I'm sure there are more issues than that even.
For 1 I'm not worried very few spells have a duration that is combat meaningful to me as in they already have durations way past the length of any fight we've done. One time we went past 10 rounds and a spell dropped but that was end of campaign boss battle.
For 2 as we are already drscribing movement as a combat hustle I'd just go with overland speeds for walking.
As a shadowrun player the big issue with short combat turns is out of combat time. Lone star has a response time of 1 minute let's say. The players have wiped out everyone and are long gone in 20 turns of actions. Once everything gets broken down into combat turns outside old school D&d minute rounds time gets funky. I blow minutes while packing my bags for my bike ride into work but by game rounds it was like 2-3 rounds of actions. I'm not sure how 18 seconds stretches into 3 minutes but it does.
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
As a shadowrun player the big issue with short combat turns is out of combat time. Lone star has a response time of 1 minute let's say. The players have wiped out everyone and are long gone in 20 turns of actions. Once everything gets broken down into combat turns outside old school D&d minute rounds time gets funky. I blow minutes while packing my bags for my bike ride into work but by game rounds it was like 2-3 rounds of actions. I'm not sure how 18 seconds stretches into 3 minutes but it does.
Good point.
You can solve this issue by messing with the initiative system though (Speed Factor-ish variant)--in fact, just last night, a PC warlock got in an archery duel with a gnoll which lasted long enough for two other gnolls to come to his aid about a minute later. The key concept: if both parties choose Delay as their action, nothing happens that round. This mirrors both sudden flurries of action and lulls in combat, just as happens in real-life combat. The lulls happen when both parties are waiting for the situation to change before committing to a course of action. Think "good, old-fashioned stare-down."
