D&D (2024) Wrapping up first 2-20 2024 campaign this week, some of my thoughts

Whereas I strongly question the value of the experience. If “stress testing” results in a style of play that no one else is emulating, then the results are meaningless. Who cares if you do nothing but march enemies straight into hyper focused combat characters that are way overpowered?

The have to at least be reasonable initial parameters before data can be valuable.

Agreed. Stress testing the limits of a video game on a PC/console to see if it breaks the game is different than getting extreme in a TTRPG that takes the game to a point a small small percentage of people will take the game to.

Feel like you would want a maximum amount of right down the middle playtests to formulate opinions.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Missed that one. Don't let PCs read the DMG.

Scroll and potions should probably be only thing players can reliably craft. And that's a maybe.
I generally allow crafting components for common and uncommon items to be bought instead of quested for but anything Rare or higher is going to require some effort. Though I'm kind of wondering if I should rethink that given some of the items categorized too low.
 

I generally allow crafting components for common and uncommon items to be bought instead of quested for but anything Rare or higher is going to require some effort. Though I'm kind of wondering if I should rethink that given some of the items categorized too low.

That's what I'm thinking as well.
I've been thinking of a basic crafting materials list. Healing potion needs herb+holy water.

Anything not on that list is quest time to find the power components.

I don't care about vicious weapons and rings of resistance if it's DM. Hell selling one is probably not an issue.

My late 3.5 house rules were removing item crafting for 2E version.
 

Whereas I strongly question the value of the experience. If “stress testing” results in a style of play that no one else is emulating, then the results are meaningless. Who cares if you do nothing but march enemies straight into hyper focused combat characters that are way overpowered?

The have to at least be reasonable initial parameters before data can be valuable.

Oh I don't know, there were a lot of valuable insights provided by the OP:

Viscous weapons punch well above their rarity and the DM needs to think about allowing them.

Allowing both purchase and crafting or even either, in the middle of a published adventure can be problematic for the adventure.

It looks like fighters, even champion fighters, are quite effective and that's without making them "magic."

Plus others

I may have had some (probably too many) criticisms - but there has been some valuable stuff there!
 

Yeah, there are some uncommon items that punch WAY above their level.

Such as a weapon of warning - which (2024) gives advantage on initiative to all allies within 30 feet and also essentially acts as a sentry, waking up any allies if there is a fight breaking out. You only need 1 in the party and it's a big benefit for an uncommon item (which are relatively easy to craft).
oh jesus that is a 2014 item, they still didn't fix it? Way too good for an uncommon item
 

oh jesus that is a 2014 item, they still didn't fix it? Way too good for an uncommon item

Well, the 2014 version made the entire party immune to surprise - which while ridiculous was somewhat niche.

The 2024 version makes the party immune to surprise in the 2024 rules (by negating the disadvantage to initiative, the only effect of 2024 surprise) but provides a very non-niche benefit applicable to pretty much every combat - so it's actually much better than the 2014 version!
 


Well, the 2014 version made the entire party immune to surprise - which while ridiculous was somewhat niche.

The 2024 version makes the party immune to surprise in the 2024 rules (by negating the disadvantage to initiative, the only effect of 2024 surprise) but provides a very non-niche benefit applicable to pretty much every combat - so it's actually much better than the 2014 version!
Yeah, I can see that as being too powerful. Not something I'm likely to hand out without some thought.

But, I wonder how much impact how groups roll initiative change things. For example, if you do group initiative for monsters - where basically all the monsters go at the same time, this would be a huge advantage. OTOH, if you do individual initiative, like I do, for monsters, even with the party getting advantage on initiative, the fact that I'm generally rolling initiative up to seven or eight times in most encounters, means that it's still pretty likely that some of the monsters are going to either go first, or at least second.

This is what I'm talking about when people start reporting their experiences. Small changes in how things are run can have very large effects. Do you use a battlemap or TotM? Is your campaign largely dungeon crawls or something else? Do you randomly generate monster HP? (An option on Fantasy Grounds for example that means that I literally have no idea how many HP monsters have before the encounter starts). How much time is allowed in the campaign? For example, my Lost Mines of Phandelver: Shattered Obelisk game took nearly two in game years to resolve LMoP and about two months to resolve Shattered Obelisk. There absolutely was no downtime in Shattered Obelisk to the point where even scribing new spells into spellbooks was a challenge.

So on and so forth. There are so many variables that making any sort of conclusions is very difficult.
 

Yeah, I can see that as being too powerful. Not something I'm likely to hand out without some thought.

But, I wonder how much impact how groups roll initiative change things. For example, if you do group initiative for monsters - where basically all the monsters go at the same time, this would be a huge advantage. OTOH, if you do individual initiative, like I do, for monsters, even with the party getting advantage on initiative, the fact that I'm generally rolling initiative up to seven or eight times in most encounters, means that it's still pretty likely that some of the monsters are going to either go first, or at least second.

This is what I'm talking about when people start reporting their experiences. Small changes in how things are run can have very large effects. Do you use a battlemap or TotM? Is your campaign largely dungeon crawls or something else? Do you randomly generate monster HP? (An option on Fantasy Grounds for example that means that I literally have no idea how many HP monsters have before the encounter starts). How much time is allowed in the campaign? For example, my Lost Mines of Phandelver: Shattered Obelisk game took nearly two in game years to resolve LMoP and about two months to resolve Shattered Obelisk. There absolutely was no downtime in Shattered Obelisk to the point where even scribing new spells into spellbooks was a challenge.

So on and so forth. There are so many variables that making any sort of conclusions is very difficult.
Giving every member of the party an effective +5 (what advantage is roughly worth) on initiative is pretty big no matter how you do it!

I can think of any number of recent combats where the situation would have changed drastically if that had been present.
 


Remove ads

Top