Search results

  1. Fanaelialae

    D&D 5E (2014) Damage thread

    I guess we run fairly different styles of games. Even in dungeons, I often have the hallways interconnect. The denizens know the tunnels while (unless they've already explored the area) the PCs don't. So turtling like that is a good way to have your back line flanked. But yeah, it can work if...
  2. Fanaelialae

    D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

    So true. It's happening to me right now. New owners took over and laid off most of our UI team, then transferred the remaining guy to a different department. Then, when they realized there was no one left to do UI development, they asked me to learn how to do it. I said sure, because it's a...
  3. Fanaelialae

    D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

    I'd say if it happens regularly it could be seen that way. If it's only an occasional thing, then not that big a deal. Sometimes characters get taken out of a fight. You get knocked off a high ledge in round 1 and have to spend the rest of the fight climbing back. Or you take a high damage crit...
  4. Fanaelialae

    D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

    That's 10% (or 25%) each round. I assume that at least one of these encounters went a minimum of 10 rounds since the character was perma-banished. Meaning that, with a save every round the 10% guy has a 65% chance of making a successful save before the effect becomes permanent. And that's not...
  5. Fanaelialae

    D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

    It's far less common IME in 5e as well. Twice a campaign? I recall 3.x games where that sort of thing happened multiple times in the same session. Banishment is a bit of an outlier. The devs are already targeting it in the revision, so I would say this is more a case of an individual spell...
  6. Fanaelialae

    D&D 5E (2014) Damage thread

    There's some truth to that, but I take issue with the fact that typically melee cannot actually perform the role of defender. Usually, this is actually performative on the part of the DM, who opts to have the monsters focus on the frontline rather provoking a single (often meaningless) OA, and...
  7. Fanaelialae

    D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

    You're overlooking all of the other ways that 3.x had to boost those numbers beyond the bounds of class, such as feats, magic items, etc. For the most part, those don't exist in 5e. In 3.x you could have a cloak of resistance +5 (for example), which added +5 to all of your saves. Now compare...
  8. Fanaelialae

    D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

    That's why I preferred daggers. Slightly less attacks, but they could be thrown or dual-wielded in melee equally well. Plus, magical daggers were not uncommon, IME.
  9. Fanaelialae

    D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

    That's an odd claim. BA doesn't eliminate the treadmill. In 5e, for example, DCs scale and so do proficient saves. At an equivalent rate, no less. That's a treadmill. All BA means is that, unlike 3e, your non-proficient saves will often have a better than 5% chance of success, because the gap...
  10. Fanaelialae

    D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

    If you want the math to not stay the same, have your high level party continue raiding the same type of goblin dens that they did at low levels. The math will be "different", though I'm not sure how satisfying an experience they'd find it.
  11. Fanaelialae

    D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

    What I was saying was 70% both ways. IOW, you have (at best) a 70% chance of saving with your best save. You have a 30% chance of saving with your worst save (IOW, a 70% chance of success for the attacker). Casters have the option to choose a wide variety of saves, but casters aren't the only...
  12. Fanaelialae

    D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

    You can get better, sure. IMO, it shouldn't be so much better that an enemy only has a 5% chance of landing an ability against that save. (Not counting very rare one-time enemies like gods, for whom that's fine since it's a one off.) Ideally, the numbers shouldn't normally skew so hard that...
  13. Fanaelialae

    D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

    You can be good at way more than 2/6. That's just what everyone gets. There's the feat that gives you an extra good save, as well as class features that do the same. Moreover, if you're a paladin (or simply near a paladin) your bonus could be as high as a +16. There are other bonuses (ring of...
  14. Fanaelialae

    D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

    IMO, if you went that route, you'd need to do the same for saving throws (have it just based on the ability score sans proficiency). Alternately, you could use the higher of the ability score or proficiency for both.
  15. Fanaelialae

    D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

    Perfectly predictable might be boring. On the other hand, too random is frustrating. You can't make real tactical decisions if things are too random. Personally, I think 5e finds a pretty good range between those two extremes.
  16. Fanaelialae

    D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

    I disagree. The monk has an excess of stun, and the monk isn't even considered a top tier class. Casters, by comparison, are generally constrained by concentration regarding such effects.
  17. Fanaelialae

    D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

    Given those two options, and no others, I would say the correct design choice is to tone down the powers. I'd rather have a decent ability that works a normal percentage of the time, than an absolutely OP ability that only works a tiny percentage of the time. The latter is in most cases simply...
  18. Fanaelialae

    D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

    They would've been level 13ish minions, so yes. That was kind of the beauty of how 4e scaled monsters.
  19. Fanaelialae

    D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

    Because (IMO) the way to fix the caster/martial divide isn't to give the casters all sorts of cool powers and then make it so that they can't ever stick the power at high levels. Let the casters have cool powers that actually work. Just make martials better than they currently are.
  20. Fanaelialae

    D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

    IMO, old school saves and spell resistance weren't great. They made sense in their context, particularly the way AD&D saves scaled. There were a lot of save or die effects, so having a high chance for successfully saving with a heavily invested character made sense. That said, heavy blanket...
Top