D&D 5E Heroes Feast---holy moly this is an uber spell

[The Crimson Binome]

Out of curiosity, is this effect susceptible to being dispelled? Could you decide to spend your 20 lbs of gold, only to have it blinked away in six seconds?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I would stop risking my life, traipsing through dank caves and looking for monsters. For various reasons, some of which should be obvious at a meta-game level, this is not an option for the Player Characters.

Any game where the reward for success is to stop playing the game is poorly designed.

So, chess and Go are poorly designed then?

Don't get me wrong, I like infinite games (where the reward for success is that you get to keep playing--like an arcade game) and D&D works pretty well as an infinite game. But there's nothing wrong with playing it as a finite game wherein eventually "you all live happily ever after" and move on to a new campaign.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Out of curiosity, is this effect susceptible to being dispelled? Could you decide to spend your 20 lbs of gold, only to have it blinked away in six seconds?

Yes. Everything in 5E is very susceptible to Dispel Magic. It's one of the stranger features of the system.

As an aside, I'm considering a house rule which reverses the rules for Dispel Magic: instead of auto-success when Dispel is equal to or greater than the target spell, and rolling otherwise, I might make it auto-fail if Dispel isn't at least equal to the target spell, otherwise you get to roll. That way it wouldn't be trivial to dispel e.g. 9th level Imprisonment with a repeats attempts from a 5th level mage to Dispel it.

I'd leave Counterspell unchanged though.

 

[Flamestrike]

1. At this stage my PC primary motivation is the investigation and thwarting of the cult.

Money will help you do this greatly.

I can imagine a lot of things, but unless the DM plays along i'll just end up with a highly delusional character. That is why i ask if the DMG has any tangible rules for wealth-political power accumulation. I wish we were playing a more free form campaign, but unfortunately we aren't.....

What are you talking about? Your DM wont let you purchase a small army, employ assassins, spellcasters or spies, or purchase a castle or other base of operations to disrupt the cults activities? All of which help you at what your character is singlemindedly focussed on doing.

Think about it this way. If you (the person) wanted to take down some real world group of religious zealots bent on world domination, would having a billion dollars help you in your task?

Also, are you a cleric or paladin or member of an orginisation like the Harpers? Why arent you giving them money to help you thwart your nemesis, or to help them advance their goals?

Do you need some kind of meta 'power level' attached to this so you can get a 'tower of might +1?'

I kinda feel bad that you have never engaged in buying a tower or keep for yourself (replete with hirelings) and mapped it out etc. In AD&D and BECMI (once you hit the Companion rules) it was a major part of the fun of the game.

I get the feeling your PCs never devote time to socialising at the pub, flirting with attractive members of your target demographic, buying luxury items, donating to worthy charities, saving for the future etc (like real people do?) are are you still slumming it like a 1st level chump. I also get the feeling all your characters lack wives, children, brothers, sisters, a home and are pretty much murder hobos who only aquire wealth to get better at the murder bit, while remaining hobos.

Not a criticism mind you. Youre certianly not alone there.

 

[TheLoneRanger1979]

What are you talking about? Your DM wont let you purchase a small army, employ assassins, spellcasters or spies, or purchase a castle or other base of operations to disrupt the cults activities? All of which help you at what your character is singlemindedly focussed on doing.

What i am asking is if there are actual mechanisms in the DMG for doing this. I have some of the 2E books around and in them i can find content that helps arbitrate the process (prices and wages of mercenaries i.e.). I don't have the DMG for 5E on the other hand (and as a player, it's probably a bad idea to have it anyways), hence the question

Think about it this way. If you (the person) wanted to take down some real world group of religious zealots bent on world domination, would having a billion dollars help you in your task?

It will, by helping buy a stealth bomber

Also, are you a cleric or paladin or member of an orginisation like the Harpers? Why arent you giving them money to help you thwart your nemesis, or to help them advance their goals?

Nope, my PC avoids organisations for now. His origin and his resent experiences have made him not just a sole survivor but a paranoid one to boot. This may change in the future though...

Do you need some kind of meta 'power level' attached to this so you can get a 'tower of might +1?'

It will sure help if there is a "bartering base". Like say, base price of goods. If iron and wood can have base prices, why not estates and mercenaries?

I kinda feel bad that you have never engaged in buying a tower or keep for yourself (replete with hirelings) and mapped it out etc. In AD&D and BECMI (once you hit the Companion rules) it was a major part of the fun of the game.

You and me both. Unfortunately when 1E and 2E were going strong, where i live DnD was as much stuff of myth as legends as actual unicorns and pegasi were. Even today adventuring groups for pen and paper are hard to find, even more so for 1E and 2E. I do have a great time reading the books i've found so far. If i ever get to GM a game, they would be a great source of inspiration.

I get the feeling your PCs never devote time to socialising at the pub, flirting with attractive members of your target demographic, buying luxury items, donating to worthy charities, saving for the future etc (like real people do?) are are you still slumming it like a 1st level chump.

Actually, to my great and pleasant surprise my current group are a merry bunch and they do spend a lot of time in brothels and inns. They haggle about the prices, but that is not for me to judge
Not my PC though. This one is a grumpy fellow, secretive and wary of strangers. I don't think he will get much joy in his life until he finds the ones he thinks are responsible for the destruction of his home. The resent attempt on his life did not help this much.

I also get the feeling all your characters lack wives, children, brothers, sisters, a home and are pretty much murder hobos who only aquire wealth to get better at the murder bit, while remaining hobos.

I can't speak of the others of course, as i am not entirely informed on their backgrounds. My PC surely had a family before the adventure started and it's possible his father Valas is still alive. Old and in hiding, but alive.

EDIT: In the current stage of our campaign, we have reached the first major urban area that we might spend some time in and if my PC can't find suitable gear to buy and replenish, he planned on finding banks to invest some of his gold as a first step in rebuilding the estates. One of the reasons why i asked if there are mechanisms for doing this actually.

 

[feartheminotaur]

Please. This is most certainly a criticism. Typing that it isn't doesn't negate using "two-dimensional characters" in the pejorative sense (and "murderhobos" is nothing but) or saying things like "I feel sorry for you". You've made it clear you don't think some players are playing 'the right way' and your disdain for those that don't is pretty clear (e.g., the Diablo crack). Condescension and "I pity the way you play" ARE criticisms.

Players (and DMs) that enjoy murderhobo games, or any variation that's a 'dealbreaker' for you, don't need you to set them free. Not everyone needs to be, or should be, persuaded to your way of thinking (all of your responses boil down to "here's how to play better and/or correctly"). And I'm not sure why anyone would feel the need to convince someone what they want is wrong.

What they need is an understanding from the beginning what the rewards, in-game, for playing are going to be. Hey, maybe the players want a free-form game and the DM isn't capable/willing to oblige (It goes both ways. How many thousands of threads have there been about "OP PCs" because they creatively used their in-game rewards a way the DM didn't like?).

If @TheLoneRanger1979 sits down at a table and says "I don't care about keeps or titles, I want to play a game where I can buy magic items" and the DM says "No, you can't buy magic items. You're going to get gold you can use to buy keeps or titles because I find it exciting", neither style is wrong, nor is one superior to other. What it is is the beginning of a soon to be posted "Bad DM/Problem Player" thread.

Rewards and game style are the kind of details that should be discussed up front, session zero. If the way the majority wants to play is not your thing, you don't need to "kinda feel bad" for anyone or make snide little put downs like "tower of might +1", you just need to walk away from a game you won't enjoy and let them enjoy the game they want to play.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

Man, when my Warlock gets the money Im buying a big creepy tower at the edge of town, replete with secret doors, death traps and captured monsters and my hired minions. There I shall practice my foul rites.

I'll map the sucker out too. Then I'll start to demand tribute from the local farmers.

Hopefully adventurers will hear about it and come to slay me so I can steal their magical items and loot.

*Wrings hands together and twirls moustache, laughing evilly*

I did this once! Way back in AD&D I had a LE necromancer warlock (read: witch kit) I managed to get pretty high level and ready to be retired from play. So I had him build a lavish manor (complete with attached stone wizard tower) in the middle of the woods outside of town, and populated it with undead servants and a few gargoyle sentries. He eventually became the local "boogeyman", his surrounding woods thought "haunted" by the locals.

I sketched it all up and drew the maps as well.

Over the years I would often find ways to incorporate him into my games. Still do.

Oh, the memories. Good times. Good times indeed.

I should dig up those old maps. If I can find 'em maybe I'll post 'em up here...

 

[The Crimson Binome]

So, chess and Go are poorly designed then?

Don't get me wrong, I like infinite games (where the reward for success is that you get to keep playing--like an arcade game) and D&D works pretty well as an infinite game. But there's nothing wrong with playing it as a finite game wherein eventually "you all live happily ever after" and move on to a new campaign.

Fair enough. The economy of D&D makes sense if you're meant to stop playing after you find your first hoard. While I have never played in such a campaign, I can imagine one where acquiring sufficient wealth to retire is a reasonable end goal. In the games I've played, characters would generally have earned that much after a dozen sessions or so, but were expected to keep on going for various reasons.

 

[Flamestrike]

Please. This is most certainly a criticism. Typing that it isn't doesn't negate using "two-dimensional characters" in the pejorative sense (and "murderhobos" is nothing but) or saying things like "I feel sorry for you". You've made it clear you don't think some players are playing 'the right way' and your disdain for those that don't is pretty clear (e.g., the Diablo crack). Condescension and "I pity the way you play" ARE criticisms.

Players (and DMs) that enjoy murderhobo games, or any variation that's a 'dealbreaker' for you, don't need you to set them free. Not everyone needs to be, or should be, persuaded to your way of thinking (all of your responses boil down to "here's how to play better and/or correctly"). And I'm not sure why anyone would feel the need to convince someone what they want is wrong.

What they need is an understanding from the beginning what the rewards, in-game, for playing are going to be. Hey, maybe the players want a free-form game and the DM isn't capable/willing to oblige (It goes both ways. How many thousands of threads have there been about "OP PCs" because they creatively used their in-game rewards a way the DM didn't like?).

If @TheLoneRanger1979 sits down at a table and says "I don't care about keeps or titles, I want to play a game where I can buy magic items" and the DM says "No, you can't buy magic items. You're going to get gold you can use to buy keeps or titles because I find it exciting", neither style is wrong, nor is one superior to other. What it is is the beginning of a soon to be posted "Bad DM/Problem Player" thread.

Rewards and game style are the kind of details that should be discussed up front, session zero. If the way the majority wants to play is not your thing, you don't need to "kinda feel bad" for anyone or make snide little put downs like "tower of might +1", you just need to walk away from a game you won't enjoy and let them enjoy the game they want to play.

The post stemmed from an argument of 'I dont get any mechanical benefit from having lands or titles'. As in: If purchasing a title granted the character +3 to all persuasion checks, he'd purchase it, otherwise 'whats the point'.

My argument is 'use your imagination and think - what would my character want/do' and then do that (regardless of whether its in your characters best intrest).

Murderhobism is all well and good, but (in my experience) it stems from quite shallow characterisations. Nothing wrong with it if thats your cup of tea mind you. Its not mine. I like to have three dimensional characters (that are also mechanically potent).

I have a PC in my game that I run that hordes money. When I asked what his half-orc barbarian would do with the money he said (after reflection) 'wine, women and song'. When I asked him why he hasnt spent any on it, he replied he's saving it for magic items. The parties swashbuckler OTOH is spending extrordinary amounts (and Im cracking out the carousing table in the DMG). He's woken up in NPC and PCs beds, gotten himself beaten up and robbed, won (and lost) at gambling, and generally gotten a name for himself around town (and been awarded a fair bit of inspiration).

Each to their own. My point was really that by crawling into your PC and spending money on stuff from titles, to land to servants to just living the high life, you might not get any hard and fast mechanical benefits from it, but youre playing your character and its an element of the game that the poster in question might just be missing out on.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

3. I can imagine a lot of things, but unless the DM plays along i'll just end up with a highly delusional character. That is why i ask if the DMG has any tangible rules for wealth-political power accumulation. I wish we were playing a more free form campaign, but unfortunately we aren't.....

Yeah...that would be kind of annoying. At least it sounds like you know what the assumptions are for what your characters are able to do in that campaign. It's better than continually trying things and your DM not letting you succeed (for instance).

The rules for most of these things are in the DMG on pages 126-131.

 

[Herobizkit]

I find that in most vanilla fantasy D&D games (ie the pseudo-European model where society hasn't progressed past the Medieval Era), the most valuable thing a regular person can be expected to buy with Gold is land and (possibly) the accompanying titles.

1e D&D accurately reflected this with their Stronghold rules baked-in with level progression.

5e does try and support "side projects" like running a business or a stronghold, but such projects are handled during Downtime - the time when adventurers aren't off being heroes.

Once the adventurers stop being heroes and settle down, their story is pretty much over. Mind, their stories don't _have_ to be (especially in games with lots of courtly intrigue, or perhaps guild intrigue like in Eberron)... but unless the protagonists of you story continue to be protagonists, there is little reason to continue their stories.

With piles and piles of Gold, you can't buy a stealth bomber to take out the enemy cult - they don't exist. Best you can hope for is to raise an army and slug it out. Hiring characters with PC class levels higher than your own is kind of cheating, but hey, if your DM lets you...

And yes, I get that "you're only limited by you and your DM's imaginations". My DM was not prepared when I came up with a plan to make a flying Airship - but I have one now, and it's both unique to the campaign world and awesome.

 

[Arial Black]

If you were a treasure hunter and you found a million old Roman gold coins... what would YOU do with your new wealth?

....Um....buy a magic sword?

Well, I could spend half of it on loose women, half of it on booze, a third half on chocolate and...well, I'd probably just waste the rest...

I seem to remember one Conan RPG where it was a game rule that your cash got halved every week on the assumption that you spent it like this anyway.

 

[TheLoneRanger1979]

With piles and piles of Gold, you can't buy a stealth bomber to take out the enemy cult - they don't exist. Best you can hope for is to raise an army and slug it out. Hiring characters with PC class levels higher than your own is kind of cheating, but hey, if your DM lets you...

In 1E and 2E i think you needed to be at least level 9 before you could hire mercenaries. Is there such a cap in 5E?

EDIT: or maybe this was about followers.....

 

[Merudo]

Can familiars/animal companions/raised undead/summoned monsters take part in the feast? My party typically has less than 12 people in it.

 

[jaelis]

Can familiars/animal companions/raised undead/summoned monsters take part in the feast? My party typically has less than 12 people in it.

The spell imposes no constraints, so any creature able to eat should be able to benefit. I would probably disallow skeletons and zombies.

 

[CapnZapp]

Yes, it's powerful. However, it does cost 1,000 gp per cast, so it's hardly a spell you can use in a routine situation.

You don't need to use it in a routine situation.

In any situation where it would be exactly as awesome as described, a thousand gold is pocket change.

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[CapnZapp]

Is that 200 points of damage before or after you account for Protection From Poison, which you would otherwise have been using?

Not comparable. Not even close.

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[CapnZapp]

I think more people would have more fun if they completely abandoned the idea of money being there to buy magic iitems. Of course if that is how you are coming into the game you'll be thinking, "what can I spend my money on?" You shouldn't be coming into 5e that way though. You should be thinking, "I'm rich! No more cheap inns and torn clothes for me!" It's time to buy real-estate, pay for expensive cruises, wear that jewelry you found rather than selling it.

These kids today...*Shakes head*

Reserving a few thou for casting spells with expensive material components remains fairly trivial, however. Filthy rich minus 1,000 gp = still filthy rich.

Unless you deliberately hand out much less gold than default it's time to let go of the idea that material component costs have an actually game balancing effect.

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[CapnZapp]

So much this. I think it's a bad habit from video games like Diablo, wherein gold is just a number that you genuinely can't do anything interesting with except buy weapons, because it's not really a role-playing game.

Sometimes you get the impression that some people, when reading the story of the Goose That Laid Golden Eggs, would immediately ask whether you can use those eggs to buy magic swords. "And if not, then what's the point?"

If ever you feel like you somehow have nothing to spend money on in D&D, try:

1.) Offering a giant guard a sack full of gold to skedaddle,
2.) Paying for a new roof for your widowed neighbor,
3.) Buying a fancy car^H^H^Hmanor to impress girls,
4.) Buying orphans out of slavery when you can't feasibly free them by violence without causing legal trouble for yourself,
5.) Hiring a dozen hobgoblin mercenaries to fight for you,
6.) Buying a thousand hobgoblin mercenaries to fight for you.

If none of these choices appeal to you, then I guess you live 24-7 in a dungeon. Hence the name "murderhobo."

But why should the game be better just because it does not support

7) buy a shiny new magic sword

To me it's completely self-evident that a game that supports 1-7 is better, more flexible, and can be applied to more playing styles than a game that only supports 1-6.

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[Ancalagon]

But why should the game be better just because it does not support

7) buy a shiny new magic sword

To me it's completely self-evident that a game that supports 1-7 is better, more flexible, and can be applied to more playing styles than a game that only supports 1-6.

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This is a fallacy. Look at say, pathfinder with a gazillion choices. Infinite builds right? Except that only a very small subset is optimal.

If you have 6 choices, and you add a seventh choice that is clearly better than 1-6, you have effectively reduced choices, not increased...

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