Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 7004620" data-attributes="member: 6778044">Perhaps Achilles's spear is too low as well? I kind of agree with the breath weapon, but based on the size of dragons (I continue to use 2e as a reference, which made dragons very, very large), if a gargantuan creature is big enough to hold you in its hand the same way you might hold a hamster, then it has the potential to do some serious damage. This isn't something I've changed yet, but it's something we're considering.A 4e raging dragon ability to inflict aura damage was a new ability for those of us that have been using Red Dragons since the late '70s. While JRRT's dragons are certainly an influence, they aren't the only one. I'm really not even that much of a fan of the metallic/chromatic dragon approach, at least not in the way they are illustrated. But that's a different issue and doesn't change the abilities of the creature itself.It's a comment on how the game design often dictates the need for additional abilities. This isn't new, it's just when you change the design of the game (and 4e changed it significantly), you often have to create things to fit that design.For example, in 5e a new fighter archetype grants you abilities at 3rd, 7th, 10th, 15th and 18th level. If there was a new archetype that you wanted because you had one ability that you thought really defined a different type of fighter, you have to come up with four additional abilities to flesh out the archetype design. An alternative might be to create a feat, but creating a feat that's available only to fighters of a particular level isn't entirely within the current approach.In 4e (although I'm probably misremembering here) there seemed to be a lot of abilities tied to bloodied, which was sort of the purpose of the condition (I don't recall any sort of global effect, nor disadvantage given when bloodied). Like the one time instant recharge and reaction use of the dragon's breath weapon, they tended to be beneficial to the creature that was bloodied. I also seem to recall that as time went on, more creatures received bloodied abilities. We have the potential of combat fatigue when you are reduced to less than 50% of max hit points, and the chance continues until you are healed. No matter how many levels you eventually suffer in the combat, it's restored during a short rest (about 10 minutes in my campaign). This ties directly into our description of hit points as a small amount of physical health, combined with skill, luck, and stamina. It also points in the general direction of morale and the probability that intelligent creatures are more likely to try to retreat, escape, or surrender when they are on the losing end of a battle.I'm not saying our rules are "better" or "right," they simply exist to support the kind of story we like.That sounds very cool. I'd probably add a chance that the affected characters might drop what they are holding as well.I'm not complaining about any particular ability, and that paid off well in your campaign. I prefer something like pushes up to 15 feet, or even 12 feet, I'm not married to a 5' square since I don't use battle mats even when using minis. But that's a presentation thing that doesn't really change the ability itself.Again, my concern is that the added abilities change the nature of the creature itself, from one edition to the next. It's irrelevant if you started playing D&D in 4e, because your campaign has no connection to the earlier editions. On the other hand, if you're like Matt Colville, 5e eliminates a lot of things he likes about 4e. Skill challenges were notoriously problematic, and they redesigned the mechanic several times if I recall. To me it was designing a complex game system where none is needed. Not everything needs to be mechanized, and while a skill system in an RPG naturally leads to people thinking a dice roll is required and preferred, we've found we prefer the opposite, which is fewer die rolls. In most cases the course of the game is handled by the conversation at the table, with skills resolved with a combination of passive skills and take 20. There are times where we have active skill checks, but they tend to be contested checks, or a method to determine something like how much time it takes to succeed, or only when the challenge would be considered at least hard. And the categories of hard, very hard, and nearly impossible are different in our campaign, based on your skill, not an arbitrary DC. Something with about a 50% chance of failure is hard.</blockquote>

Verification