>>97884240
>>97884240
>Because in-game no one wanted to get involved with the cursed sword. It's still my characters fault that our Bard became possessed because despite his impatience it was me who brought the sword onto the boat
>I also wasn't trying to take blame for it either, so whenever another Player tried to argue about it with me I would say "I had a plan, why didn't he listen to me" and I figure that annoyed some people. At the very least they acknowledged that someone else would have become possessed later on had we left the sword there
>So, in-game everyone either is annoyed with me or thinks lesser of me because the Bard became possessed because of negligence and I didn't feel too bad about it


Nah. This story feels far too incomplete, or every player but yourself is retarded.

>DM gives players very obvious adventuer hook
>bard player refuses to touch it, because its clearly cursed
>warlock player figures out a solution
>later for no reason, the bard decides now is the time to touch it.
>"don't touch it"
>""iM gOnNa ToUcH iT""
It's probably best not to light any campfires; otherwise you'll be blamed when the bard sticks his hand in it and burns himself.

>>97884241
Rarely do any of my games comprise players that are capable and willing to buy into the mood, but I've had some moments at one, usually involving the abused-child warlock, the mysterious entity that's his patron or the warlock's kid brother whose soul is enslaved by the patron.
Or this time they witnessed a hunter who disrespected the lands by slaying a spiritually important beast for no good reason get sucked into another plane and judged and executed by these weird eldritch creatures of legend. That was neat too and they gushed about how horrifying it was afterwards and how based on the scene how little they wanted to fuck with them. Like, guys, the Watchers are only CR 11, get a grip.

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Reposting in a new thread.

What do you think?

>>97884035
mtg has phenomenal work that you can use for tokens et al

>>97884387
I'd be tempted by it. Two things however purely to sate my inner munchkin first of all your vow of poverty monk can carry around thousands of gold for years if the adventure makes them unable to donate it. This of course requires very special circumstances and is only worth mentioning in a vacuum.
Secondly
>you can only accept rewards in the form of a coin
makes you unable to receive rewards in the form of favors/services or items you could otherwise carry eg. you could not as a reward for a quest get someone to fix your lute or get you a new one.
I would alter this clause to make it where you cannot accept a reward if possessing it violates your oath.
Also is this only for monks? The benefits make me think so but I think it would be interesting if adapted for other characters

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Color me naive but I'm excited for the Ravenloft stuff.

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>>97884451
>first of all your vow of poverty monk can carry around thousands of gold for years if the adventure makes them unable to donate it.
Yeah, in that scenario, it would have to be left behind for someone else to take it.

>Secondly
>>you can only accept rewards in the form of a coin
>makes you unable to receive rewards in the form of favors/services or items you could otherwise carry eg. you could not as a reward for a quest get someone to fix your lute or get you a new one.

Good catch. I should have mentioned any "monetary" rewards could only be accepted in coin. You can explicitly accept rewards in the form of favors or services. It was part of the treasured item section, but it should be made clear in accepting rewards as well.
>Also is this only for monks? The benefits make me think so but I think it would be interesting if adapted for other characters
Yes, it's only for monks. I was actually going to adapt it for paladins and clerics as well, but the ADDH wore off and I got bored after finishing this one.

Clerics and paladins would receive fewer benefits and have some additional changes

>gains bonus origin feat
>+gain proficiency with a treasured item
>gains expertise with that item
>gains unarmored defense using DEX+WIS/CHA rspectively instead of bonus KI
>Can own and wield a wooden shield as long as the shield has their holy symbol on it and does not count toward their wealth. The shield can be made of metal exclusively for dwarves or forge clerics if they craft it themslves.
>clerics can choose a +1 to weapon attacks and rolls or to spell attack and damage rolls.
-no bonus AC
-bludgeoning weapons (still on the fence about this but I think it's cool because)
-The vow is not made to yourself, but directly to a god. The damage type can change depending on the type of god. I don't know; I'm making all this up right now

And the scaling to DC is only for their channel divinities, not for all their spell save DCs

>>97884530

What a sick piece of art
>combat wheelchair
oh come the fuck on man

>>97884676
All the alt covers are quite nice, I like cover E personally but they’re all well done

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What's the best stuff from 3.5e that needs to be brought into 5e?

>>97884676
In a world of flying reptiles they speak 4 languages and tiny wizened creatures that cast spells using dragonfly dust, you're gonna draw the line at a wheelchair?

>>97884704
Epic level handbook. Savage Species. Monster Manual 3.

For fuck sake, I was going to update the OP to include the new better scans. Guess I'll do it next thread.

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>>97884702
>Cover E

E for Exotic!

>>97884702
Cover E is nice
>>97884710
yes

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>>97884710
Dragons are cool. Wheelchairs are lame.
Be more creative.

>>97884749
>>97884766
I'm disabled. I'm not in a wheelchair but I was for 5 months. You guys disappoint me. There's so many other things you could legit be mad about but you're choosing a wheelchair.

Oh no! I have to wear glasses so ig I'm not allowed to read books anymore!

>>97884778
>I'm not in a wheelchair but I was for 5 months.
Why didn't you saw off your legs so you could keep using one? Were you so mad and angry about being in one that you just couldn't wait to get rid of it?

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>>97884710
Yea wheelchars are fucking retarded. They aren't there to accomplish a fantasy, they are there to own anyone who complains about wheelchairs by being able to call them bigoted. Combat wheelchair cucks always need to be called out.

>>97884387
>your DM determines the severity
This sucks
This sucks all the time always
Write actual mechanics for it lazybones

>>97884884
In my entire time playing tabletop I have never actually seen anyone play a disabled character other than like handicapped, but not handicapped blind samurai shit. Yet /tg/ spends so much time and effort complaining about this shit like it is some common thing they see all the time and frankly.. I don't believe it. I don't believe you have ever had someone at your table personally try to play a crippled character. I think you just like whining about shit.

>>97884778
Eas being in a wheelchair better for worse than walking?

>>97884778
>>97884787
Malice or idiocy anons?
You have had multiple explain the problem for literally years now so which is it?

>>97884932
This whole conversation started off because of a piece of official art with a wheelchair'd character in it. It wasn't as if it was brought up out of nowhere. And it probably would have ended there if people didn't feel compelled to defend this thing that supposedly never actually happens.
Can we leave it at that, or are you going to insist on wagging your finger some more?

>>97884676
What makes it a combat wheelchair? Isn't Alanik Ray a noncombatant in the 5e modules?
Oh, wait, your brain has just been poisoned by pol-slop. Touch grass.

God I love how much you dumbasses get triggered when you see a wheelchair. It's like fucking clockwork and it is fucking hilarious.

Go back to 3.5, you boomer cucks.

>>97884778
5eg was taken over by poltards a few years back, and they like to feel victimized by the inclusion of wheelchairs regardless of context.
The person in the cover that they are getting triggered about is cannonically in a wheelchair due to him being from a more modernized fantasy setting as well as being a noncombatant NPC who sends the players on missions through the domains of dread.
No one in 5eg can actually read so they assume it is just part of some imaginary campaign of persecution against them.
Don't lose hope. They're all just idiots who don't shower and get mad at drawings.

>>97884932
Based.

>>97884884
Isn't Ravenloft less about powerfantasy and more about being hampered and weakened by the forces of darkness? It seems to me like a handicapped character would fit the vibe of ravenloft well since there are lots of characters in the lore who are disfigured or crippled beyond the repair of magic.

>>97885138
because an adventurer in a wheelchair is fucking retarded, literally.
Any handicap is a death sentence

>>97884241
What would happen if Strahd ever got over his oneitis? Like maybe he got really into trains instead.

>>97885138
>It's like fucking clockwork
Exactly. Everyone who isn't a broken clock can recognize that being in a wheelchair is a disability. It isn't a fun or quirky character flaw.
You're no different than a flat earther laughing about "triggering globetards" when they point out the most obvious information.

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>>97885221
>Characters shouldn't have challenges they need to overcome
Also., Alanik Ray isn't a fucking adventurer, you slack jaw.

>>97885277
Lol, that's a pretty shit comparison, chud. But I guess if you were good at understanding things, you wouldn't be crying about wheelchairs in a fantasy roleplaying game.

>>97885385
It is humorous to me that the popularity of combat wheelchairs can entirely be laid on the feet of the performatively outraged, who spread its gospel across the entire internet, to point out how very offended and damaged they were by this wheelchair.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy of asspain.

>>97885385
>but how does people thinking the Earth is flat affect you personally?
It doesn't. Which is why pointing out the Earth is round isn't "crying about flat earthers".

>>97885412
How does it feel to have gotten SO triggered, you streizand effected a thing you hate into public consciousness?

>>97885420
I wouldn't know. I don't hate flat earthers. I just laugh at them for being retarded when I see them mentioned.

>>97885433
Man, it's kind of sad when you just entirely lose track of the conversation like that.
It's like you've got alzheimers or something.

>>97885454
Oh sorry, I wasn't trying to upset you

>>97885138
It has become a dogwhistle for leftism in general in the industry and y’know, the board has been flooded with election tourists who ruined it for the last decade

Where can I find official WotC/5e artwork? I've heard that dndbeyond has them, but I don't really find much there...

>>97884404
I'll take a look.

Eloquence seems like the most powerful bard subclass. Unsettling Words just seems very broken.
And I say this as someone who plans to play lore bard in the near future.

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Wizards can't cast spells anymore if they wear glasses because they are DISABLED.

Oops, the fighter lost his hand! DISABLED.

THE BARD HAS LARYNGITIS!

DISABLED!

If the wheelchair was a magic carpet, would you be ok with that? What if it could magically grow wheels when/if needed? What fucking difference does it make? Why care so much about such an inconsequential thing? I seriously don't understand the pearl clutching over this. I never see older people even give a shit about such a thing. Just you guys. Are you all 12 fucking years old?

>>97885944
Why are you getting so mad over something so inconsequential?

>>97885979
Just pointing out the hypocrisy. Does that bother you?

>>97885984
>Just pointing out the hypocrisy.
Likewise.
Is there anything I should be bothered about?

>>97885991
Nothing I said was hypocritical. You're reaching.

>>97886005
You're the one who got upset over something you said was inconsequential. I don't see why you're getting so bothered about having that pointed out.

>>97884778
>I'm disabled. I'm not in a wheelchair
Yeah, most retarded people don't need a wheelchair, you don't need to announce it like some kind of achievement.

>>97886015
Who says I'm upset, you? Are you the expert on upset posters? I can post whatever I want, in whatever tone I want to. You suppose much about something you have no true inkling about.

>>97886026
Oh but I was in a wheelchair and you're a faggot.

>>97886030
Okay, overcoming your need for a retard wheelchair isn't worth bragging about

You think we’ll get a revamp of the classic Stone Prophet game adventure?

Exciting adventures in a desert to kill a mummy

>>97886035
I hope it happens to you someday. It's a terrible thing to go through and you're acting like a flip faggot about it. I recovered. I hope you don't.

>>97886027
>I can post whatever I want, in whatever tone I want to.
Likewise. You're free to try out a calm tone whenever you're ready.

>>97886043
If I become retarded tomorrow and need a wheelchair for it, I will simply not post about it in /5eg/ like a retarded faggot.

>>97886085
Hopefully, you won't be able to anyway. Win-win.

>>97885543
Are these "leftists" in the room with us now, Grandpa?

>>97885944
I especially don't get the outrage since Alanik Ray has a partner that helps move his wheelchair around obstacles for him.
It it is the same thing with cyclops and Professor X.


Can everyone finally shut the fuck up about wheelchairs? This all started because some chuds saw a noncombatant NPC in official art who is in a wheelchair and they started shitting their diapers about how "This is woke culture being forced down our throats! There's a war on Christmas and my D&D! This is a very genuine panic and I don't care that my pedophile president has made gas double in price!"

Suck up your tears, you pol-rotted slopguzzlers. Can we actually talk about fifth edition dnd now?

>TQ
Yes, we had an NPC that the party adopted get slowly tortured by a nighthag while the wizard was scrying to locate him. The rest of us had to rush against the clock to save him before the hag finished him off. Opening the door to the chamber they were in was super high stakes. One of the players genuinely shouted when the NPC was described as lying motionless on the floor in a pool of blood.

>>97886252
>Can everyone finally shut the fuck up about wheelchairs?
It's very hard for people to resist making replies about how wheelchairs are a non-issue and that people should stop complaining.
But don't worry. I'm sure your post will be the last one.

Someone wants me to DM a faerun game for them, I've never done it before. How often do you guys change established things in the setting like the setup of governments.

>>97886446
Ask them what their expectations are and if they are fine with you taking liberties when you want to. As long as they have reasonable expectations, add what you want, just stick loosely to the general lore.

>>97886446
Heavily. The only times I've run things in established settings typically involved just stealing the official map, looking at which places had cool names, and at best skimming a wiki for some of the major cities and towns.
You'd need to run into someone who's a really big lore nerd to call you out on that sort of thing. And even if they do call you out, you just say that you're handling it differently to keep things fresh.

a wheelchair is ok if the only purpose of adventuring is TO BE ABLE TO GET RID OF IT SO YOU WALK NORMALLY
as soon as you can levitate or whatever you should get rid of it

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>5eg going to strangers' houses to tell them they aren't allowed to have character's in wheelchairs in their fantasy roleplaying game

>>97886677
>character's in wheelchairs
Once again, the problem is adventurers not random npcs

New Ravenloft book info

16 Domains of Dread, including the new cosmic horror domain Innsmouth.
17 Darklords for your party to face or flee from, equipped with challenging stat blocks.
7 subclasses (including the new Reanimator and Hollow Warden), 4 species, 4 backgrounds, 2 Origin feats, and 9 Dark Gifts for building tortured protagonists.
10 genres of horror from gothic to dark fantasy.
A bestiary of 41 monstrosities and 10 domain denizens for your party to encounter.
47 maps and 28 digital quickplay maps for Maps VTT.
Digital Pre-order Bonus: the Mists of Ravenloft Digital Dice Set, Ravenloft Play-Along Pack, and D&D Encounters: Shadows of Sithicus mini-adventure.


>>97886750
Cool well make sure that you let your neighbors know that they can't do that in their games. Have fun.

>>97886784
Domains of dread better be longer than 2 pages for each of those. Give us some shit to work with outside of vibes

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>>97886816
They are saying the book will include 17 one-shots.

Also the art looks fucking dope and Lord Soth is back! Fucking weird that they added Chthulu and Innsmouth.

>>97886830
>Soth with his helmet off
As bad as doing it with Judge Dredd, honestly.

>>97884932
>Yet /tg/ spends so much time and effort complaining about this shit

Correct, and we should, and you should too.
The entire combat wheelchair thing is a culture war operation and we're the victims. Fighting back is self defense. There was never King Chud out of nowhere posts In Defense Of No Combat Wheelchairs and then all the noble chuds pledge their swords. What happened was, the idea of the Combat Wheelchair was pushed on twitter and on blogs as a way of saying "You should allow this overtly retarded thing, or you're a bigot". Then everyone who complained could get botted downcummies and get banned by moderators and everyone clapped. As time passes, we see more and more game systems that carve out precious page space to discuss The Combat Wheelchair.

It's stupid because in a realistic world, these sort of disabilities just prevent you from being in almost all combat situations, and if you're lucky enough to be able to ride a horse you'd be able to participate in most things, but you wouldn't be able to join your allies in a dungeon meaningfully. And in a high fantasy world you'd simply have some spell to avoid it, like summoning glowing temporary limbs or simply calling on a deity to fix it with magical healing. To end up with it, you have to target it as the goal, which is retarded.

So why do all these fucking companies keep doing it? It's because they want to plant a flag. It being retarded and you not being able to complain about it *is the point*.

It's never been about some handicap at your table. What are the odds that you get one of these unfortunate people AND they, for some reason, want to have their hero be gimped like them? Pretty fucking low. And if it did happen, you'd simply find some way to make them happy in some unique way that fits your world. By contrast, we have all these companies print stuff dictating how we need to OBEY. Fuck them.

>>97886960
>As time passes, we see more and more game systems that carve out precious page space to discuss The Combat Wheelchair.
Name two, bearing in mind that there's no first-party WotC product that details a combat wheelchair.

>>97886960
Post the rules from a core book that includes the combat wheelchair from wotc

Can't believe you retards are still arguing about this. Please make a thread. You already know it's guaranteed to get 400 replies and plenty of delicious (You)s.

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I don't know who she is but I will be rolling to seduce.

>>97887142
She is the death knight darklord of Kalekeri, the India setting. The Rakasha and Arcanoloth are the spirits of her executed siblings. This art looks SOOOO much better than the VGtR art.

>>97887142
She does cannonically try to marry one of the PCs in the adventure hooks listed in the last Ravenloft book. She executes anyone who refuses as a traitor.

>>97887179
HOLY HIPS

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>spirit bard
Nice to see it back

>>97885157
I just took a shower and have a petite gym bunny asian girl I fucked yesterday and I am mad about the wheelchair bullshit. I mean it is pretty funny actually but that doesn't change the fact that it's retarded and the people pushing for it as a serious thing need to fuck off. Not that it wouldn't be a cool character, but you just know the way these people push it it would have to be a fat black tranny with fibromyalgia would have to make all the other characters look stupid.

No thanks.

>>97887336
>gym bunny asian girl
For future reference: "gym bunny" is a term that originated in the gay community, particularly on Grindr.

>>97887368
Well I'm around a lot of faggots on this website so not a surprise I picked up that slang.
Thanks for the warning though.
My point is she's in good shape. I wouldn't even brag about it but tired of being told "everyone mad about the current state of D&D is an incel" nah that's not true. I'm not a normalfag either I've been playing since the early 00s.

>>97886677
Lmao

>>97886830
>Fucking weird that they added Chthulu and Innsmouth.
Fucking kino* that they added Chthulu and Innsmouth.

FTFY

>>97886960
It's about inclusion and you can't simply just grok that to save your life.

>>97887398
If you are fucking a girl, you're a normalfag by 4chan standards. Sorry, I don't make the rules.

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>>97887398
Never called you an incel, chud. Just called you a dumbass crybaby ;)

How does adventuring in a wheelchair work? do you have a better inventory limit, a better movement speed?

>>97887640
Review the 3rd party shit and get back to us. It’s not core so idk

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>>97887000
Two? Pathfinder 2e and Daggerheart.
Pathfinder definitely has wheelchairs as part of their core thing, and then they've added more text and they've added splatbook support. "The Grand Bazaar" definitely checks all the fucking boxes including lines like "The wheelchair is considered an extension of yourself. Spells or abilities that change your bodily form also apply to the chair, and it transforms with you so long as you're using it." and support for moving at your full speed while also using a two-handed sword.
Daggerheart has a whole bit: https://daggerheart.org/core-mechanics/combat-wheelchair

Remember if you argue against this, social justice morons will spontaneously generate from any rags or dirt you have lying about, first telling you it doesn't exist, then telling you it does AND THAT'S A GOOD THING

>>97887034
Did I complain about it being in a first party WotC book? Oh, no I didn't. You had to PRETEND I said that so that you could argue with that. This is because you can't argue with any of my points. But if you PRETEND I'm wrong, then I would be wrong, and isn't that the same thing?
Oh right, no it isn't.

>>97887548
No, it's about excluding people who value verisimilitude and realism by creating an absurd situation and then hiding behind it. The entire thing exists solely so you can post a lie like that and imply anyone who disagrees with you is a big meany.

>>97887742
>5e bad because of things in other games

Jackass

>>97887742
I honestly don't care and I don't think you're a big meanie if you disagree with me. Handicapped people like being represented in media they like/love and dungeons and dragons is no exception. I get why it pisses ppl off, it was pushed so heavy handedly and ppl got their precious feelings hurt over a tabletop role-playing game, of all fucking things, but that want to be represented isn't a bad thing and never was. Ppl hopping on that point to parade their social justice warrior values was and is the problem. But no, I don't think someone is a meanie for disagreeing with me. I realize I'm in the minority here. Someday, none of this shit is going to matter one lick.

>>97887742
The wheelchair is there BECAUSE you got mad about it.
Otherwise, it was made by some literallywho with no pull.

>>97884241
>>97881477
>>97880582
Yes, but it's all social interaction checks, so it includes Insight, Performance, etc.

And after our session yesterday, I can confirm that it has led to a party member sleeping with Elmina Barthen from Phandelver and Below. So that's my bad. : .

>>97888080
Yikes.

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What is the best way to roll for initiative? Especially in a table with a large-sized party (6+)

I've been tinkering with some ways to get it rolling fast, right now I'm considering the following concept:
>DM makes a single roll for monster(s)
>DM announces the result as a "initiative DC" of sorts
>going around the table (clock-wise), players with initiative higher than the DM's make their first turn
>then DM makes his turn
>then proceeds to go the entire PC party around the table (clock-wise)
Note that on the first PC turn, only players with initiative *higher* than the DM plays

Theoretically, its overall similar to just rolling each initiative and making a single round with each person in the spot, but considering that PC turns are somewhat interchangeable and what really matters is playing before or after the DM/enemies, I'm bundling all PCs together in a clock-wise direction to make it more dynamic/better flow

Does that make sense at all?

>>97888394
The best way is to have everyone roll initiative, then be like, who is above 20? And put them in order on an initiative tracker. Then roll your monsters and put them in there. This has a bunch of advantages:
-Everyone gets their little bonus for Dexterity and various powers for initiative rolls
-Turn order being randomized prevents anything reliable or boring from forming
-Bad rolls punish, good rolls reward.
That's the best.

So if you want to deviate from this one, you have to pay. But, what are you buying? Here's a method:

All the players take their turns in whatever order they like. Then all the monsters do that. Repeat.

This pays a lot- throwing away all the cool things above- but in exchange it lets you not have to track initiative. What if the players can't decide what order they go in? In that case, you can just use their Dexterity scores, or simply how they are seated left to right.

Ok, but while that buys a lot, it pays almost everything. What's a good compromise?

Have the players all roll initiative. Add the scores together and average them.
16 or above: The players go first in whatever order they like, then the monsters.
11 or above: Half the players go first, then all the monsters, then the other half.
Otherwise: Some of your monsters go first, then half the players, then the other monsters, then the rest of the players.

>>97888394
I'm a fan of rolling for initiative at the beginning of a session and then again at the end of combat. You can add or subtract numbers for enemies as needed when it comes time for combat and jump right into things.

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>>97888632
>order on an initiative tracker
In my experience, initiative trackers are NOT a good idea. They work OK for a small party, but on a bigger party of 6+ (I do mean 6+... 6 is the minimum, but sometimes I run tables for 9~10 people), it takes waaay longer than I would like simply to figure out the initiative order

Plus, people are more likely to get distracted and not know their own turn if they are on a "random" order. But when going on table order, people can actively see their turn coming up, which makes it a lot easier to track for everyone involved

>Everyone gets their little bonus for Dexterity and various powers
This is the main reason why I haven't fully abandoned initiative rolls. I feel like its relevant to let PCs who have good initiative bonuses benefit from it

>Turn order being randomized prevents anything reliable or boring
In my campaign players are rarely the same (its a 40+ players WM game), so good optimization trumps tiny quality

>Have the players all roll initiative. Add the scores together and average them
This is crazy for 10 players, but I like the overall idea of combining something

Another concept I have considered is bundling players together, and letting only 2 PCs roll initiative (one PC rolls for left half, another rolls for right half)

But ultimately, I want to find something that is 90% efficient with a 10% of still not fully abandoning PC initiative scores. As you mentioned, its about how much you're willing to sacrifice (at this point, I'm certain I must make a big sacrifice to get things rolling faster)

>>97888639
>I'm a fan of rolling for initiative at the beginning of a session
This is interesting! I have never thought of that

Does PCs roll it or the DM rolls it hidden? Otherwise, how does that play out when a PC already knows their initiative is going to be rubbish?

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>>97887142
>>97887210
Oh yeah she got a glow up alright

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Pondering some subclass ideas and curious on feedback:

In 3.5 we got introduced to shadow caster and all the shadow related stuff in Tome of Magic. One of the PrCs is the Shadow Blade which you could get in with some fighter and rogue levels. Thing is, EK exists so it seems kind of redundent but I'd be curious if a shadow themed subclass could work for fighter or not and pawn off that sort of thing to a spell or whatever the EK can use.

Speaking of which, I personally don't like the idea of the Arcane Archer on Fighter and think it would be served better on another class. My thinking is to grind it up, make it a psionic class, call it Soul Bow and give it to ranger.

>>97889077

>>97889077
>In 3.5 we got introduced to shadow caster and all the shadow related stuff in Tome of Magic. One of the PrCs is the Shadow Blade which you could get in with some fighter and rogue levels. Thing is, EK exists so it seems kind of redundent but I'd be curious if a shadow themed subclass could work for fighter or not and pawn off that sort of thing to a spell or whatever the EK can use.

Better off just taking shadow stuff into pieces and turning it into feats.

>Speaking of which, I personally don't like the idea of the Arcane Archer on Fighter and think it would be served better on another class. My thinking is to grind it up, make it a psionic class, call it Soul Bow and give it to ranger.

I mean, more power to you, but why? The arcane archer gives magic-like abilities to a non-magical class. Rangers can already cast spells and already have smite-like spells that can be applied to weapon attacks.

>>97886750
A guy in a wheelchair can still shoot you with a crossbow. It’s his decision to be an adventurer or not.
Do you kick over disabled people you see working jobs and scream at them how they should just go home, collect subpoverty level disability checks, and die alone?

The point is if you’re not that individual in the wheelchair and with their exact disabilities, you have no right saying what a person can or can’t do. Frankly it’s not your business.

>>97888753
Players roll their own initiative. You can either roll enemy initiative with them at the same time, do so when they roll but keep it hidden, or roll for enemy initiative when the combat starts, depending on your preference.

As far as players knowing they have good or bad initiative ahead of time, I haven't had any issues with that myself but I imagine that it gives the player a little time to strategize ahead of the fight, which adds to the smoothness of combat. It also gives both you and the player a possible avenue of RP for why they rolled the way they did.

>>97888394
“Monsters - party -monster - party” fire emblem turn style initiatives are generally much worse than individual initiatives, i would heavily recommend not doing that.

It causes combat to become more focused and less reactive - you have a fully healed person and then 5 monsters take their turn at once and oh now that person is dead and they nor anyone in their party couldn’t react to stop them from dying. Expect to see that a lot with both monsters and players.
With giant party sizes (frankly 5e is not made for 9-10 people parties in the first place but that’s another issue) this will only become a more compounded problem.

The system only works when there’s players and enemies taking turns in mixed orders - what you would get when you follow the written rules and roll each individually. That said, I don’t think grouping up small amounts of monsters together is a problem when there is a lot of monsters of the same type (i.e. there’s 6 werewolves and you split them into 3 initiatives where two of them go together). But that’s still very different from party-enemy turn taking

>>97889240
>Do you kick over disabled people you see working jobs
Do you consider real life disabled people to be on par with fictional characters?
Kindly refer to >>97886043 you flip faggot.

>>97889439
What does being filipino have to do with anything?

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If someone took one look at your character, do you think they'd be intrigued?

>dm insists on using ai for his campaign
>doesn't understand why i don't want to engage with it, leaving the campaign
what's with ai bros...

>>97889439
A guy in a wheelchair today would have a pretty easy time shooting you. A fantasy guy in a wheelchair would have an even easier time shooting because there’s magic shit everywhere.
And again - frankly it’s not your damn place to tell people what they can and can’t be - regardless of their disabilities, and especially in fucking fiction

>>97889469
Probably not. I have a sort of NPC syndrome. I keep trying to work my character so seamlessly into the setting that they become inconspicuous and oftentimes not very interesting. It's a tendency I recognize but I have to fight the impulse to stop myself from carrying on.

>>97889469
Yeah I’m playing a centaur for the fun mobility. Everyone gets intrigued about horses

>anno domini 2000+20+6
>sperging out about wheelchairs again
never change 5eggs

>>97889469
They wear a cloak of billowing, so of course they'll draw attention.

Cloak of billowing is cool.

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>>97889493
>A fantasy guy in a wheelchair would have an even easier time shooting because there’s magic shit everywhere.

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>>97889469
Yeah they would. My current character is a maxed out height and weight Dragonborn Paladin. He looks like a DB version of Absolute Batman, who I physically modeled him on. Character before that was an earth genasi warlock with a Dao patron (ig you call those genielocks) and he looks like a miniature version of a Shadow of Colossus boss! Super interesting character and he's actually kinda powerful, which I normally avoid. I've been trying to get away from the power gaming character mindset for awhile now but this time, I just rolled with the concept and he turned out to be an actual front liner type of character. Will probably dip into some Sorcerer levels for an ultimate spellcaster type. A guy on the aislop thread made a pic for me and it turned out pretty good. His pact is pact of the tome and his tome is 15 freaking pounds. He is chained to it by three large chains attached to a neck collar. I really like how he turned out.

These are my gens and they are "ok". Not exactly what I wanted but it's fine, anyway. I'd literally have to draw him myself if I wanted to capture what my mind's eye sees and I can't even draw a stick figure correctly.

>>97889630
Post the lie

>>97887142
She's a pajeet

>>97889718
And? She can cook and do a belly dance? Your point? Do you have one?

>>97889687
He can't. It would require a level of introspection he's not used to.

>>97889472
Like what, NPC art? Adventure prep? Actually running the session?

>>97889804
I don't know where it ends. At least campaign information, setting stuff, images. I just don't really want none of it.

>>97889831
For character portraits and monster pics, it's fine. Anything else and I have to side eye it. I can understand your consternation.

>>97889845
I think even for character portraits and monster pics, it's icky. I'd rather take a bad drawing or a stock image than something prompted. (Or even, none at all! Theater of the mind, after all.)
>can't even find a picture of "Woman with Eyes"

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>>97889165
It isn't a wholesale rip. The idea was to use some of the ideas of Arcane Archer as a basis for Soul Bow.

The initial rough draft would have the bow abilities powered by psionic dice and the abilities would be modified when applied to a target of Hunter's Mark. This would work on top of other ideas I have for modifying parts of D&D. For example, Pyromancy is associated with psionics so instead of it being regular fire it would be fire that does fire/psychic damage

>>97889888
Okay, but you still haven't explained what the problem is with it being a fighter subclass.

>>97890012
nta but it shouldn't be because it shouldn't be, and because I said so

>>97890012
He’s autistic

Valor (2024 5e) or Sword for melee bard?
And which of the two can take more damage?

>>97889077
>>97889888
>Speaking of which, I personally don't like the idea of the Arcane Archer on Fighter and think it would be served better on another class. My thinking is to grind it up, make it a psionic class, call it Soul Bow and give it to ranger.

Every fighter archetype has a certain gimmick. EK uses magic, Cavalier protects allies, Battle Master's uses maneuvers, etc. The arcane archer's gimmick was that it was the only subclass dedicated to ranged combat. It had other abilities, like redirecting missed shots and treating every bow as a magic bow.

>>97890094
Man, the AA wasn't ever implemented very well in 5e. Disappointing, as I loved that class in 3.x.

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>>97884241
I have, during a Ravenloft campaign I ran years ago in fact which is appropriate for the thread. My players were constantly fishing for Dark Powers checks to the point I had to homebrew a rule that meant if you provoked a check you had to escalate to a greater/alternate act of evil to provoke another check (This was to curtail their attempts at doing shit like murdering a lone stranger over and over to fish for a new check, they really wanted to fail them because they thought the bonuses would be awesome). Party enters a tavern in the city of Nartok, within the Forest of Shadows after having spent the day making not-so-subtle inquiries about the local branch of what passed for the Thieves' Guild in the city, which during The Requiem and Azalin Rex's absence had all been murdered and subverted by a local gang of roughs working under Galf Kloggin's say-so. The gang catches wind of the party asking questions and they send some catspaws to go stab them in their sleep to shut them up, rather than deal with it themselves. I use a lot of randomisation tables so I rolled for this; two NPCs, one male, one female. Both homeless, both married which was a truly unlikely combination. So I decided they were married to each other and the Requiem had seen them forced from home and blackmailed by the murderous gang into doing their dirty deeds.

The catspaw couple make it to the hallway outside the party's rented pair of rooms and flub their rolls in sneaking and the party was sufficiently paranoid that they immediately burst out of their rooms and set upon the pair of level 0 commoners. First round the wife takes a crossbow bolt to the heart and instantly dies while the husband is non-lethally subdued and hogtied (he didn't see his partner die). Party drags the man into their room while one of the players says he'd 'deal with the other one'.

>>97890052
If you want to do cantrip damage and/or GWM, valor. Otherwise, sword
>And which of the two can take more damage?
Neither, but with magic initiate being an origin feat, sword bard has direct access to shield
>shield spell +5 AC
>average bardic inspiration roll is 3 on a d6

That's +8 AC for the round. At fifth level, that average is +1 making it +9 AC, recovering all bardic's on a short rest, and being able to convert spell slots into bardics so you're never actually out. That's a fuck ton of AC.

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>>97890124
Party interrogates the husband while the wife's cadaver is carted down like a sack of potatoes and out of a rear door without anyone seeing it, taking the servant's entrance. Nobody looks outside at night in most Domains of Ravenloft because it's like driving around a shady neighbourhood with the doors unlocked and the windows down. This person then takes the wife's cadaver to the front of the tavern and, in his words, "butchers her into pieces the size of croutons". He then comes back upstairs the long way via the servant's entrance that he'd used to go outside, returns just in time for the party to decide they were done interrogating the husband. Same player-turned-butcher says he'd 'deal with him', at which point he manhandles the guy, drags him down in front of all the patrons, opens the front door and bodily throws him out into the pile of what was once his wife. I do a few rolls; the husband screams hysterically at first in horror, then passes a roll to recognise a piece; this prompted a sanity check which he failed, resulting in the malady of catatonia. After figuring all of this out I begin to state his fate;

"The man realises what has happened to his wife, the one fading light in this darkening world. With her passing and his brutal realisation his mind flees in horror, leaving him an empty shell. In the years to come he might find his way to one of the many sanatoriums throughout the land and find treatment, though likely to little success. In the best of worlds however, he will never be the same."

The player responsible asks me if he can see the guy in question, to which I wearily reply "Yes, anon, you can see him from a window."

"Cool. I open the window and throw a vial of alchemist's fire on him."

>>97890149
I see, thank you.

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>>97890160
The truest horrors of that campaign were my players. Nothing else came close. The player in question provoked a colossal Dark Powers check for this, which he failed. He was playing a Rogue and he rolled on the tables, garnering +2 to Int but a severe penalty on all Int-based skill checks. None of the players wanted to provoke any Dark Powers check after this, prompting them all not to suddenly recant of their evil but to instead simply find a way to cheat their way out of provoking further checks such as becoming various forms of Undead.

Anyway, I look at the upcoming Ravenloft rulebook with nothing but disgust. Curse of Strahd was a complete fucking abortion with hardly anything worth keeping/adapting, all at the cost of sabotaging numerous Domains and cannibalising aspects of them just to rehash Barovia into something worse. I have zero faith in WotC to not fucking biff it big time, especially since I learned there's numerous Ravenloft comics where, for no good fucking reason, they messed with other Domains and Darklords (Viktor Mordenheim is now a woman with no explanation? Dominic D'honaire is gone and replaced with some jobber?). The fact they're marketing it as coming out with 16 "new" Domains of Dread but then walk it back by saying 15 of them have previously been published in other works and then the final one is actually just fucking Innsmouth with Cthulhu is the turd cherry ontop of a true shit sundae.

Maybe they'll make one or two things worth keeping but I expect to be otherwise writing the whole thing off like I did with Curse of Strahd. (Reposted because it fucked my formatting, idk why.)

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Chthulu stats dropped.

>>97890251
>Doesn't devour 1d4 adventurers per round
Lame.

>>97890251
My distaste for WotC and my expectation that they're going to biff the new Ravenloft stuff is holding strong. What an utterly dogshit statblock. It's the most dull thing I've read in ages.

>>97890149
NICE. I see your math, anon.

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>>97890184
I would love to play in one of your games. Most DMs are soft. I want to play a game where my character can go out fighting. DMs won't pull the trigger on killing a character anymore. Kill my 15/11 F/M, idc. I'll just make another character. Them's the breaks. Heroes die a whole hell of a lot. Please say you still run games. I'm losing faith.

>>97890251
>385 HP
Dropped. Should be around 5k.

Would anyone be willing to share one of their characters, or one of their player's characters? I am looking to be inspired.

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>>97890388
Haven't run a campaign for a good while now, had a lot of personal stuff going on. It takes a bit of know-how to learn when and how to sharpen the knife on your players though. That same party did a whole bunch of stuff; they dredged the Vuchar River and experimented with the silt to distill Negative Energy dust from it and then made an improvised bomb, which they tested on local peasantry to devastating effect; Azalin Rex responded by appearing before them as an animated image and commented that it was clever work and then warned them to never do that kind of thing again without his approval.

They also ran a surprisingly well organised Ocean's Eleven style mission where at Azalin's behest they infiltrated Schloss Aubrecker within Lamordia and secretly assassinated the slowly dying Baron Vilhelm von Aubrecker and performed a ritual to turn him into an undead which Azalin Rex maintained control of. Which in turn he used to suddenly take over a lot of Lamordia's industry and deny the Falkovnians any source of their military trade goods.

At some point I'd like to run campaigns again but I'm slowly rebuilding my collection of miniatures. I'm not sure what I'd run desu; WotC seems really committed to just fucking up every single setting with gusto and it's exhausting to try and separate out what changes they've made that have completely screwed things up versus things worth keeping. Honestly I'd probably be looking at doing a homebrew setting considering that the other options are mostly just "run a 3e era setting" rather than anything spawned from 5e.

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>>97890477
Here is Mort.
Mort is an artificer. He was raised by clerics and specifically hit off with the guy who prepared the corpses before funerals. (This is where he picked up a habit of "receiving donations" from the dead.)
He is both adamant about respecting the dead and yet is motivated by scientific curiosity.
He speaks in a southern accident.

>>97890519
>artificer
That's neat. What subclass? Do you have a proper build for him, or are you just doing whatever?

any good obscure/hidden gem homebrew recommendations I can load on 5etools besides the big ones (kobold, mme, tgsb)

>>97890554
I was using bonesculptor (Dr.Drohlins dictionary of dinosaurs)
He was my character he was introduced and died this session.

>>97890562
Damn. I'm sorry. Are you working on a backup at all?

>>97890564
Yep, this new one is "literally Sayaka from puella madoka magica but a barbarian"
Essentially she was an ordinary person who made a deal with an elder being. She then realizes she is now a soulless husk and breaks down. I will be playing it as a despondent in roleplay and suicidally reckless in combat. I got that fighting style that allows me to reduce the damage someone next to me takes as a reaction. So I will be one of our frontliners.

>>97890582
Wait, how are you getting a Fighting Style as a Barbarian? Fighter dip?

>>97890587
Fighting Initiate feat.

>>97890477
I went in with the idea of making a half-orc who really doesn't want the orc part of herself and came up with Sumine
Life Domain Cleric, putting expertise in medicine and making her a doctor, and making her scared of her own shadow.
Played her like a pacifist and mainly just healed at the start of the campaign since she was so scared of everything but had her come out of her shell with the other PCS, accepting that with what's happening people are gonna die and she'll have to fight back. Now in the current arc she's going through a lot of shit at once making her adapt and introducing her to other orcs, and then forcing her to go through some body horror shit due to the side effects of the area the group is in making her overall more powerful but now facing a lot of stuff she didn't like since saw herself as 'monstrous'.
her tusks grew 3 times in size, she went from 6'3 to 8'3, her skin changed to a flaky sort of texture like ash and is grey colored, her hair turned completely white, and she has claws now.
Gonna be getting new token art since that's her permanent appearance now and someone in the group was kind enough to commission someone new art for everyone.
at least she got the powerful build feat from that change among other things and can in game lift half a ton without a check.

>>97890391
Anon, hitting him with a boat was enough to take him out.

>>97890593
"Warrior initiate" should replace the savage attacker origin feat for the soldier background with fewer fighting style options compared to fighter initiate, which also grants a +1 to STR/DEX


>Dueling fighting style
>Great weapon fighting style
>Two weapon fighting style
>Thrown weapon fighting style
>Protection fighting style

>>97890251
so lame.

Give it 2014's Umber Hulk gaze as well and make one of the d8 options "shits themself while having a seizure."

>>97890628
You literally can't kill him, just put him to sleep. That boat didn't even do that. It just drove him away. He was sleepy. Idk.

>>97890481
Well, I ran a horrible amalgam of 5e, 4e, 3e, 2e and 1e for a recent small year long campaign and it worked surprisingly well. I drew a lot from 3.x and 4e and a ton of 2e magic items. It certainly gave the game a unique tone and I doubt I will ever replicate it exactly. 5e for all it's faults is easily adapted I found. I hope you get back into it (running games). Reading your player's exploits are hilarious. My players were vicious but not that bad.

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>>97890714
5e's faults are mostly to do with narrative and setting. Gameplay wise it's good; I like that it's streamlined enough that I can breeze through encounters that would take two or three times longer in other editions. Some of the optional rules were also useful; I was having issues when we grew to 7 players where the turns were taking too long to loop back around to any given player so they'd start looking at their phones while they waited and then their turn would arrive and they'd go "Okay so what's going on?" Thankfully the optional rules for both rerolling initiative every round combined with the other optional rule for altering initiative based on weapon used mostly solved that issue since nobody got into a cycle of waiting 3~ or so minutes between turns and they had to pay more attention.

But for anything relating to their official settings it's all super fucking cooked. FR is in a continual state of them sanding off the sharp corners of anything contentious, Ravenloft they're busy plugging away at actually demolishing everything good in the setting and all the other stuff has been some varying degree of bland or just generally bad. The only sane option is to either play homebrew settings or just use 4e or earlier versions of settings.

>>97890184
I assume you're the 3e Ravenloft anon from the other Ravenloft threads, I only dropped into this thread because of thr Ravenloft OP.
>Anyway, I look at the upcoming Ravenloft rulebook with nothing but disgust.
I'm pirating that shit and only using bits I like, for islands rather than the butchery they're doing to the Core in 5e.

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>>97890836
Darkon is my favourite Domain and Azalin Rex is my favourite Darklord. I read through Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft when it came out and PTSD blocked out what they did to it. Re-read it today after being prompted by this thread, got back to Darkon and had a mild crash out all over again. Ontop of all the other shit like raceswapping Isolde, genderswapping Victor Mordenheim and Vlad Drakov, getting rid of D'honaire and turning Dementlieu into a complete dogshit Domain that exists just for an undead wraith to crash out and instakill people she doesn't like at her parties, it really is just such a downgrade.

Even 4e did better for Ravenloft, it added several mid Domains and one or two actually good ones. 5e just completely shits all over it.

>>97890712
Did you read the “Darklord Restoration” bit?

>>97891067
NTA but he's such a fucking jobber that of course he needs an auto-revive. Half the CR 24 roster one CR below him are better than him by such a huge margin that it's embarrassing.

havent played in forever but my buddy from my old group from years ago wants to run a game
is it worth it for us to learn and employ the changes from 5e->5.5e?

>>97891114
Find a summary of what's added/changed in 5.5e, discuss it with your friend. Decide if you think it's a worthwhile value proposition. I know a lot of people who refuse to touch 5.5e and consider almost everything it did to be utter dogshit. Your individual tastes will vary compared to random people on the internet; hearing someone else's opinion is always going to be inferior when you can form your own. Maybe you'll like what they did or maybe you'll hate it. Maybe you'll like exactly three things and just homerule those into regular 5e.

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>>97884241
>Remove curse (lvl 2 spell)
so this only exists to cause discord within the group and make people mad, right? Either the dm has to have the foresight to ban this spell or it will inevitably be an argument about how spell says it can cure curses and the dm has to say "Oh but not this one" in order for there to be any point in including any serious curse at all. Literally just name it Remove LESSER curse or actually list curses in the book and specify that shit like lycantrophy can't just be cured by this, otherwise what's the point? I bet not a single table makes use of it in any good way and it's just legacy shit that WoTC keeps in every edition just because they don't want to make anyone mad.

>>97891140
See also create food at level 1

>>97891157
Indeed. They say that what sets them apart is that they really listen to fans and playtest a ton and change according to feedback but it's just so obvious they don't with things like this. If they do get feedback they either push that down to item #963 and never get to it or they just never bother to write it down and just ignore it.

Or maybe there really are grognard autists outthere who furiously lobby wotc to bring back in conjure food and water as a level 1 spell if they remove it, because "that's how it's always been". I suspect though that there's an extreme conservative mindset there, it's very clear in 5.5 where they just nerf things no one was using for seemingly no reason, likely only because they might have looked it over and went "just to be safe, bring that down a notch" , I mean why else would they do stuff like that? Certainly can't be derived from sifting through a lot of data, because it would just reveal that no one is evne using that spell, so why bother nerfing it.

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Why do you all play d&d 5e if you seem to hate d&d 5e so much?

>>97891177
>"that's how it's always been"
Ironically it was a 3rd level spell prior to 5e.
A lot of the people being shut down for criticising 5e tend to not like the power creep and ready availability of mechanical overwrites in player abilities, rather than woke and cringe (and when those do get mentioned it is in addendum too).

It's frustrating to see an argument get ignored, then see people complain about things that those features complained about would fix.

>We have too much money
>How do stop players always resting
>Spells happen to often
>Players break every encounter
Etc Etc Etc

Related tidbit. Spell preparation used to take 10 minutes per spell level per spell. A single 3rd level fireball would take 30 minutes to prepare. Suddenly there is a natural balancing factor for casting any spell 3rd level and above. At level 20 a full suite of spells would take 2 whole days to prepare.

>No dave, I don't want to wait 2 hours just for you to have a couple extra spells prepared. Dont waste the slots next time

>>97891211
can't get players to try a new system, and the one time you do get them to try, they just want to play more dnd

>>97891211
Because with some people there is literally no other option

>>97887174
>>97887179
>>97891211
I'm noticing that they all have bare thighs.

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>>97891230
>>97891235
I don't believe this. You all are letting yourselves get cucked by an rpg system. There are loads of groups that play other games. You all are lying to yourselves.

>>97891229
Yeah they clearly dropped the ball in trying to reduce crunch and complexity but also just decided to remove all friction and tradeoff with it, which doesn't make for a better game. Likely why games like shadowdark are doing so well, despite personally I think they remove way too much of character customization in that game for me to enjoy it, but it is a good example of removing crunch and complexity but keeping friction.

>>97884241
>new reanimator subclass
On a scale from 1-10 how much dick is it gonna suck compared to its already shitty form in the UA?

>>97891305
There are no other TTRPGs whose systems are actually, objectively superior to 5.5e

It's simply too flexible and ubiquitous to not continue enjoying. It isn't perfect, mind you, and other game systems absolutely do specific things better, but they're usually lackluster in the ways that D&D isn't. It's complex enough to be interesting but simple enough to draw in and keep new blood. Again, what really matters more than literally anything else is having a good dm and good players where everyone is on the same page about what you're all doing. Since +95% of the TTRPG player base is aware of and familiar with 5.5e, your likelihood of encountering that combination of tablemates is higher due to the sheer quantity of people using it.

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>>97889253
>Players roll their own initiative
>As far as players knowing they have good or bad initiative ahead of time, I haven't had any issues with that myself
Well that sounds good enough for me - I just wanted to make sure this was not something that frustrated players

One alternative I considered based on your idea/suggestion is the following:
>as the session begging, DM hands a initiative sheet to players
>initiative sheet = character name + 3 columns for initiative rolls
>players roll their 3 initiatives and put each on each column
>each time initiative is needed, DM uses one of the 3 initiative columns

That way, its somewhat random but already pre-determined. And it also opens up space for players to have high initiative or low initiative on the session (if they get all good/bad rolls), which can be a fun roleplay situation (such as players declaring their low initiative for that session is because their PC is hung over)

>>97889300
>causes combat to become more focused and less reactive
True. While I don't disagree, I don't think it is that much of a bad thing, considering how easier it makes the game flows. My goal at the moment is to be able to squeeze +1 combat during my 4 hour sessions (right now I can do 1~2, would like to get to 2~3). So 5~10 min I lose due to initiative each combat is already a considerable chunk of the session (over multiple combats)

>oh now that person is dead and they nor anyone in their party couldn’t react to stop them from dying
To be honest, 5e mechanics leans towards not being that worth healing allies before they go down

I'm 22 sessions into this campaign, and I haven't had any major issues with that. Especially given that going to 0 is rarely that dangerous and have effectively no punishment in DnD 5e. Also, I would say 20~30% of the fights is against a solo enemy, where individual rolls are effectively meaningless

I think overall, for this campaign I rather lean towards combat speed/efficiency rather than balance

>>97890807
>5e's faults are mostly to do with narrative and setting. Gameplay wise it's good; I like that it's streamlined enough that I can breeze through encounters that would take two or three times longer in other editions
5e's fault is that the mechanics undermine any interesting narrative. It's nice to streamline combat, but it's horrible to remove danger, resource scarcity, and meaningful exploration.

>>97891140
the funny part is if you read official modules there are plenty of "this curse can only be removed by X or a remove curse spell cast at level 5+" etc

even they know it's just a dumb spell that ruins an interesting aspect of the game

>>97891211
i work 996 and run 2 campaigns
prepping is already a huge timesink
finding players properly interview and vetting them is enormous effort
homebrew a better system or changes is easy, balancing and testing is herculean

i simply cannot afford to invest time in learning, adopting, and teaching my players a new system
5e is so simple you can lie about having played it 10 years and nobody would know the difference

that's why i keep wishing there was just a "community" 5e that would just be consensus of taking out the shit and keeping the good and fixing the broken, just like so many vidya have their community patches. Instead I have to spend the little time I have thinking of a better system than death saves and the retarded "you're stable but unconscious, go afk"

>>97891507
They could have at least made it like dispel magic.
Give a curse a spell level. Remove Curse needs to match or beat the spell level. Maybe a skill check needed with a bonus for a higher level spell level.

Even more fun, make a check that fails by 5 or more spread the curse.

>>97890807
Yeah, agree with you. That's why I added the other edition's bells and whistles to my campaign. Sure, there's lots of levers but it did keep my players on the backfoot and discouraged meta-gaming. (They were relatively new players and didn't know how not to metagame.) It was interesting but 5e just strikes me as sorta bland as-is. It's gotten a lot better over the years system-wise but they are set on gutting the settings. I had the Spelljammer stuff and it's not bad but they took almost everything interesting about it out of it. I have the Planescape box and I literally just opened it last night. I've had it for four years, still in it's shrinkwrap. I was afraid to look inside it after the Spelljammer insanity. All I managed to do was take off the shrinkwrap. I can't even get the books out yet. I already know it's going to be bad.

>>97891067
Yeah I did. I get what they were trying to do here but it just seems a bit lackluster to me when these are beings that cannot die in the first place. It's only mildly thematic, if that. There are 5th level parties that can take Cthulhu out in the first round, baka.

>>97891211
I love d&d but the producers of it sure don't seem to love us back. It's like being an adopted kid, I suppose. Yeah we're a bit mistreated but where are we going to go? GURPSdaaddy? RIFTSmommy? Nothing really seems to scratch the d&d itch for my group and yes, we do play other rpgs occasionally but we always seem to return to d&d, no matter the edition, warts and all. For my group anyways, it was our first TTRPG. Bit of a nostalgia thing, comfort thing, the devil you know thing ig. The idea of d&d is easy more attractive than it's execution and it's been like that for years now.

>>97891305
Maybe but they are comfortable lies.

>>97891491
>it's horrible to remove danger, resource scarcity, and meaningful exploration

This. So much this.

>>97891140
Remove Curse is a third-level spell.

>>97889888
I mean this isn't really the arcane archer but your version sounds really cool too.

People that deny the power creep in 5e baffle me.
Ignoring the lack of resource management, the ready available of at will cantrips that increase in power, or even things like wands getting back charges every day, simply looking at the stat bloat is ridiculous.
Using a couple of key examples
>Earlier Orc: 5 HP, AC ~13/14, equivalent of +2 to hit, damage range 1-8
>5e Orc: 15 HP, AC 13, +5 to hit, damage range 4-15, bonus action extra movement, in 2024 they also get temp HP when they bonus action and can avoid a killing blow

>Earlier Ogre: HP 20, AC 15/16, +3 to hit, 7-16 damage
>5e Ogre: HP 60, AC 11, +6 to hit, 6-22 damage, 6-16 on a ranged attack

Even with a lower AC the ogre HP is so ridiculously bloated, and the damage output is so high PCs are basically forced to short rest after being hit once or twice

I would love to see a version of 5e with more grounded HP and damage numbers with less frequent healing and more wittling (bring back resource management)

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>>97891579
What a wordy way of saying that you are lazy and have a victim complex.

>>97891589
Pathetic.

>>97891687
You should try crying about it. I mean more than you're already doing.

>>97891601
>third-level spell.
in ye olden days of yore, a 5th or 6th level caster was a rarity to find, let alone one that wasn't already saving their spells for nobles or city scale magic. So finding a priest to cast it for you was very costly.

Now when people suggest starting at 3rd level, and NPCs are readily written to be casually a 7th level whatever, finding a person with access to the specific spell (that isn't even priest exclusive) is so easy. Heck, a warlock in a bar could casually cast in then recover their slots without effort.

>all curses affecting one creature

The addition of all as a keyword confirms that they wanted these to be superficial low level threats at best. Any story involving a town or person stuck with a curse just says "You couldn't find a 5th level caster?
Heck, even a scroll would cost a measly 500 GP

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>>97891695
>cries about not liking wheelchairs, gays, and black people being more present in dnd but still participates in the community and plays the game
>gets defensive when someone calls them a loser for doing so
Jesus, that's cringe. Just play 2e, you fucking dweeb.
Don't you have any real friends that will play with you?

>party mauled the basilisk and catoblepas
Fuuuuck. Think it's time to send them into the cockatrice nest?

Put a pair of swords in a box for my DOOL WEELDER but I haven't figured out what they do yet. Opinions on these?
>Swords of Surety
>Weapon (Any sword with the Light trait), Rare (requires attunement)
>These magic swords are paired twins. If the bearer takes the attack action for this turn, and misses with their first attack, they may, as a bonus action, make that attack roll with advantage. If this causes the miss to become a hit, the attack rolls any damage dice twice, and then the Attack action ends. These swords also offer a +1 Enchantment.
I'm not actually sure if the mechanics work but I didn't wanna just say "reroll the attack"

>>97891680
It's mainly that power creep feels like the wrong word.
People hear stories of how 3.5 era D&D had really powerful high-level spellcasting or otherwise rendered hitpoints irrelevant, and in comparison to that, everything having triple the hitpoints or cantrips being better doesn't come across as much more powerful.
A 3.5 Fighter has ways to actually kill a dragon in one round, by comparison.

And then you start digging into the weeds with Reserve Feats where by 5th level a Wizard could get a 3d6 burst of fire at-will as long as they had Fireball prepared and the 2d10 damage Firebolt stops sounding so unprecedented.

5e definitely has a lot of hit point bloat, don't get me wrong. But the result is that fights just end up being dragged out, which results in things feeling less powerful rather than more.
The version of 5e with more grounded numbers and more resource management likely is just playing E6 3.5 or 2e.

>>97891842
I think in general the issue has always been "linear martials, quadratic casters."

Martials do their thing really well, but not much else, while casters can learn a variety of spells that do a lot of different things really well.

5E didn't really do Rangers nice either, since it took away meaningful specialization against enemies, and 5.5 took away what little you had of that for tracking and biome-specific group survival/travel benefits they had in 5.0.

>>97891749
I don't care if wheelchairs or blacks or any of that other bullshit is in the games I play or not. It effects me 0%. You're the one that sounds bootyblasted here. Stop posting forever. You can't even follow a simple reply chain. 4chan isn't your fucking safespace, champ. We don't like you. We're not plebbit.

>>97891796
That's pretty cool tho.

>>97889253
Rolling ahead of time feels very artificial, not a big fan. Would rather see another solution to it, like everyone rolls, whichever side gets the highest get to go first in order. Then enemies go after or something like that. For the next edition they should just remove any initiative bonus to any class ability so that you can just simplify the system, problem in 5e is if you use a homebrew initiative then people with initiative-enhancing abilities will feel like those are useless so you have to take those into account.

There must be a million systems by now that have more elegant and faster intiiative that doesn't require tracking.

>>97891881
Would passive initiative "bands" work?
Players with +10 to +6 to initiative
Fast monsters (Quicklings)
Players with +5 to +1
Average monsters (ogres, orcs)
Players with 0 to -5
Slow monsters (zombies, oozes)
Players with -5 and below

It allows both initiative bonuses to be useful and prevents monster clumping. (Hopefully)

>>97891864
>5E didn't really do Rangers nice either, since it took away meaningful specialization against enemies, and 5.5 took away what little you had of that for tracking and biome-specific group survival/travel benefits they had in 5.0.
That's basically the point I'm trying to make. For everything 5e might have added in terms of health, cantrips, magic items, etc., it tends to take away just as much by removing features or capping offensive capability.

That's why it feels wrong to call it power creep, because for however much better a Ranger is at surviving getting clubbed over the head by an ogre, they're also now worse at killing ogres.

>>97891680
I've found that people enjoy playing with the complexity of martial features you gain~ lvl 7-10 and for spellcasters to stay with something equivalent to lvl 3 spells but hate the many dice and would really like to stay within the in universe powerlevel where you are mostly fighting packs of a dozen goblins, orcs or zombies and not being gods, liking to meet npcs in town who are roughly their powerlevel and being stuff like mercenaries and what not, and then stay at that tier for the majority of the campaign, but just with more options and mechanical involvement of higher levels.

This means however that the mages become insane powerhouses with reality shattering spells that work against the tropes you want to emulate and check off and it quickly becomes that the party are these crazy godly people trying to rp as gritty mercs and you are left with the choic of either joining the arms race and having npcs with anti-magic capabilities and able to cast higher spells themselves and bloated hp goblin statblocks you try to scale and massive hp guards and it just feels bad.

I suspect I'm not the only one experiencing this, as I think the baseline for most casuals and for more hardcore dudes is to want it to feel like lotr, not a jrpg killing god-type game.

People usually say "go play wh fantasy" but that gets very hardcore and involved or "play osr shit like shadowdark" but that just has martials doing the "i attack..." and nothing more bit.

tl;dr Give me a game where level 1-10 is goblinslaying shit with spells of up to level 3 powerlevel but just more options to pick from and where monster statblocks have 1d6 hp and not more and you can fit your dice in one hand.

>>97891928
The solution is jianghu.

>>97891928
That does tend to be my experience. People like the overall vibes of levels 3-6, give or take. They don't quite like being the total novice who can die to a single goblin by getting unlucky, but they also start to feel like the campaign is basically over the first time the party wizard Polymorphs someone into a Giant Ape to suplex a dragon.

Oddly enough the closest game I've found to fitting all that is SotDL, but that's harder to pitch to people.

>>97891951
Pretty much yeah. I think the powerlevel and complexity between martials and casters is just so off in this game, it's like the eldritch knight is just so bored and begging the dm to level up so he can get to level 7 so he can cast a little firebolt together with his attack so he can finally feel like he's a spell blade class but not meaningfully becoming more powerful in-universe in terms of what it implies for the world, meanwhile the wizard is unlocking a single spell that gives him access to all these million statblocks with to turn into and the access to these powers vastly alter the world because of what their power implies. You could easily imagine a game where the level 7 mage just has more level 2 spells instead of 4 and just has more options in modifying them like a sorcerer or whatever or even only being able to pick from a certain type of spell and people would't care since you'd have insane utility as a mage that a martial wouldn't still, but now since the precedent is that they should have all this shit then you can't go back ever.

With how much complexity and utility the casters are given, the martials should have like battlemaster maneuvers, all the weapon masteries, and then some as a base. Especially considering mages have cantrips that are infinite in addition to their spells.

Given this I think a lot people would be happy to start at levels 1-3 and not beg for level ups if they just got a bit more martial features and variety to their combat earlier.
I know the martial vs caster debate being a beaten horse at this point is an understatement, but it really feels like people aren't actually considering just how lopsided it is.

>SotDL
It looked like it had potential, but ppl told me it pretty much has the same power scaling with the party quickly reaching that tier 2 powerlevel and with the same annoying spells included that they could have left out, but perhaps I am misinformed.

>>97891870
Lol why are you so mad about all this? Chill out, buddy. You'll live longer ;)

>>97892032
I'm dead by 2032 anyway so I don't really give a fuck anymore. I just don't like being accused of being part of the culture wars bullshit because I'm not involved with it in any way, shape, form or fashion. I just dgaf about all that. My 1e books are just fine and I have all the power to change anything to any edition I like and exclude the bullshit that I don't. I've played every edition and DMed every edition and all that culture wars bullshit gets skipped every single fucking time. Tg gets their panties in a wad over goddamn wheelchairs. It's pathetic frankly.

>>97891951
SotWW tho

>>97892009
Yeah. A lot of martial progression feels like it wants to come at half the existing level in order to give them enough options to actually keep up with all the options of mages. So many of the abilities could be given out far earlier and the only downside is that you'd need more features to fill out the now empty levels.

>ppl told me it pretty much has the same power scaling with the party quickly reaching that tier 2 powerlevel and with the same annoying spells included that they could have left out, but perhaps I am misinformed.
Well, I have only run one campaign of it, so I only got to see a handful of the magic traditions in use, but looking over the lists I could see how a few of the higher rank spells still bypass that.
I think what ended up making it feel more acceptable is that a spellcaster has to specialize. If you want to transform into a huge animal, you need to have the Transformation tradition, which means you've already been transforming into smaller animals for the previous 8 levels of play.

>>97892083
Probably the more valid option, though I haven't had the time to look into it as extensively. I do remember hearing it really revamped how magic was handled, aside from just going for a more generic setting, which definitely helps.

Idea: I'm running my players through a pre-made campaign and it's one of those campaigns where there's combat encounters almost every single room. Instead of rolling initiative every single time I take a first player token, give it to, say the guy with the highest dexterity and he goes first, then everyone to the right of him goes. After that encounter the token goes to the person on the right and then the next encounter we start with that person going first and then around the table so most of the time the players will go first although occasionally the monsters will go first. This won't account for ambushes or surprise attacks.

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>Hey guys, how about we go on an adventure, stop evil plans, save the kingdom, and while we're at it, hook up with anything that has a hole?

>>97892320
If you feel like playing a meme, sure. Go for it. I'll have a full chart of debilitating fantasy STDs made just for you. Dire Crabs!

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>>97892371
>I don't know if they're Avernus King or not, but they feel huge.

>>97891157
What's the issue? it takes a spell slot in a resource management campaign.
>>97891507
How is that a problem? there's nothing stopping a DM from declaring the same things neither.

See stuff like that invites possibilities, whereas you guys only see problems.

>>97890184
>Curse of Strahd was a complete fucking abortion with hardly anything worth keeping/adapting
holy fucking contrarianism, you call yourself a fan of Ravenloft? you're a disgrace, dude.

>>97892538
Being fan makes you criticize things that you once held out hope for. Else, you're an incorrigible bootlicker. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being critical. It's practically why 4chan even exists. I always want things that I care about to improve. There's nothing wrong with that.

>>97885944
I think what breaks my brain is that a wheelchair is incredibly rigid and invites questions I don't quite know the answers to. Why would they use a wheelchair instead of seeking healing? so does this wheelchair offer other utilities, increased carrying capacity? faster movement speed? automatic short resting benefits?

When it's just a magic carpet you already kinda know, it's not this wholly new thing to fantasy like an adventurer in a wheelchair. You think oh, the carpet allows levitation, at a decent speed, it cannot hold anything because it would fall off if you move too quickly, it's a tool that you would deploy reasonably in a given context, and not a signature feature that is ever present.

>>97892563
>he uses words like incorrigible about the topic of someone whose "criticism" is just 'thing is total shit and not worth using at all'

All fullcasters have way too many spells available to them at any given time, but wizards in particular should be required to actually find spells in the world to add to their spell list. The list of spells you can actually learn at each wizard level should be extremely sparse, not "pick a spell from the whole book"

>>97892568
Some characters get cursed to where healing won't actually help them. I figure that's why wheelchairs might sometimes be necessary.

is it just me or is captcha fucked

>>97892576
I resent criticizing the guy who said the new stuff is shitty. I was talking to the guy who said he wasn't a true fan of Ravenloft, which is veritably a dumb fucking thing to say.

>>97892618
Nah it's been fucked since maintenance last night. I'll have a captcha go stale before my post goes through then I have to do the captcha all over again.

>>97892611
NTA, but that'd be more reasonable if Remove Curse weren't also a relatively low level spell.
5e is really just allergic to long-term consequences across the board. They remove a lot of the disease and injury rules and make them easy to fix and so the idea a character might actually have gotten hurt in a way that magic can't instantly solve just ends up being incoherent with how the rest of the game works.

>>97892627
Yeah, but there's always DM fiat type curses. I hardly ever use such a plot device but it happens a lot, I think. I do agree with you though. Seems very incongruous with the 5e mindset.

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I really wish I could get an agnostic d&d thread going. I have so many thoughts and ideas that I want to share with you guys. I have 41 years of experience with d&d. I've met quite a few old heads here that aren't impressed with that number. LOL. Still I want to add something of quality to this board even if it's just in discussion. Anyone feel like this? Want to start a generic d&d thread? We can bitch and moan about everything d&d related. I might call it the Pissing & Moaning Dungeons and Dragons generic thread. I really want to bitch about 2e, 3.x, and 5e really badly almost every single godforsaken day of my life. I won't stfu about it. Maybe post some cool pics? I don't patronize plebbit at all so you might be safe there saying anything you fucking want to. Fuck WotC? Scream it for all I care. Fuck T$R too, for that matter. Anyone with me?

>>97892621
Oh, good luck not enjoying Ravenloft in the here and now, fan?

>>97892611
I love the idea of a fighter getting a curse that results in needing a wheelchair, however I imagine any player would lose their fucking shit if you tried to do it.
>>97892627
There's nothing stopping a DM from declaring the curse is a higher level one, and needing some prerequisite to break it. Remove curse only really works if it's a low level curse, that's the general expectation, is that it's such a small curse (a ring being stuck on your finger?) that a simple spell would fix that item. I believe you see problems where there's merely possibilities.

>>97892673
I don't quite like the idea of a D&D thread that invites OSR into it. I would rather see a faithful opposite thread; one that is only about 3e, 4e, and 5e, I think there needs to be a tonal opposite movement to OSR, that reemphasizes the fun of modern D&D.

>>97892696
>I believe you see problems where there's merely possibilities.
Yeah, there's a possibility to homebrew and rewrite a lot of things into the game. But if I was doing that, why wouldn't I add something cooler than a wheelchair if somebody wanted their character to be permanently cursed to be unable to walk?

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>>97892696
To expound on these ideas, you could imagine a higher level curse would be like an evil book, where it contains high level spellslots already available to cast, but you need to perform will saves to stave off the evil that using the book invites. You couldn't just cast remove curse on this book, because it's so ancient and its power exceeds the spellcaster's own. It would require like a remove curse cast at level 9, or maybe it simply cannot be uncursed, or it could be tied to a quest; maybe the evil of the book needs to be transferred to another object that no one intends to use, that object needs to be quite powerful, it has to be magical in properties and cannot be mundane, so they have to seal off the use of something they might like, and it's all up to the players is that worth it.

>>97892706
There's probably a certain appeal of taking a disability and turning it into a strength in fantasy.

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>>97892320
>Let's go!!!

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>>97892320
>Hey guys, how about we go on an adventure, stop evil plans, save the kingdom, and while we're at it
sure mister
>hook up with anything that has a hole?
sorry, all my characters are VIRGINS

>>97890012
Because it thematically clashes with the fighter aesthetic and doesn't have a whole lot going for it to make it more than a few spells and/or feats that got tossed into a subclass.
>>97890041
Yes, I am.
>>97890094
True, the subclass should set the tone for how the character feels so I don't see what AA does what EK doesn't do already.
>>97891650
It's not really about copying it more so like using it as ingredients for a class that I personally find pleasing to my autistic notions of fantasy.

>>97892531
>How is that a problem? there's nothing stopping a DM from declaring the same things neither.
>See stuff like that invites possibilities, whereas you guys only see problems.
because it proves the spell is badly designed you retard
the problem is we are supposed to pay for a book of rules that actually work
>it's bad so it's good because that means you can fix it!
you fucking wotc cocksuckers never cease to amaze me

>>97892718
Oh there totally is. That's why you see things like blind kung fu masters.
But they usually don't have a bright white modern day walking stick with a ball on the end, or a service dog with a high visibility handle-harness. Simply resorting to the modern-day objects would be ignoring the myriad possibilities that fantasy provides.

>>97891881
Best option is to have people declare intent first, then roll each round.

You have to say if you are going to attack or cast a spell or dodge.
Any features that modify ac can apply immediately and end at the end of round, no issue about ac carry over.

When your turn comes up if you change your mind, you have to wait until the end of the round

>>97892531
>it takes a spell slot
A first level slot is available to almost anyone, and with the right feat you can cast it once per day for free. Hunger shouldn't exist anymore

>>97892692
My Ravenloft is perfect. I don't have to use anything I don't like and neither do you. Free yourself.

>>97892696
> the idea of a fighter getting a curse that results in needing a wheelchair, however I imagine any player would lose their fucking shit if you tried to do it

I've done worse. Much worse. They can always quit the table.

>>97892618
Haven't seen captcha in years

>>97892788
Tired of that cope, muh RPG needs to overexplain everything because I, as the one who is going to create content to play, need everything done did-

How are you going to play original stuff, how you going to go and use the rules to make your own content to run? it should all just be done for you, reee.
>>97892836
>there's a solution to a problem
>this means there should no longer be a problem
No, you still have to do the thing.

>>97892935
>xhe pays to post
kwarb

>>97892538
No, I don't call myself a fan. Ravenloft is my favourite D&D setting, which is very different. Don't put words in my mouth you dumb cunt.

5e Ravenloft is a fundamental betrayal of everything the setting is about and if you like it you have dogshit taste beyond redemption, or you're throwing out some very poor quality bait.

>>97892972
i just finished the old Strahd's possession video game and the Curse of strahd 5e adventure is pretty much the same.

its just nostalgia that's making you think that.

>>97892972
I want to like it. I really do. I'm about to run a game there! I'm just gonna pepper in things from other editions and ignore anything from the new stuff that I don't like.

>>97892972
I only knew of it in passing. Could you explain the fundamental changes?

>>97892987
Sure it's the nostalgia talking, but while we're at it; point out where in Strahd's Possession exactly you'll find Baba Lysaga, Argynhostvolt, the Abbey of St. Markovia, the Amber Temple, Van Richten's Tower and the Wizard Vineyards? I must have missed those. Also can you explain where in Strahd's Possession you'll find information on most of the population lacking souls, like in Curse of Strahd?

>>97892964
>>this means there should no longer be a problem
>No, you still have to do the thing.
And people would easily do the thing. Why would people spend literally months farming when a single person can create food for 10 people every day (goodberry)?

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>>97892781
>Don't see what AA does what EK doesn't do already.

Smite-like effects that recharge on a short rest and the aforementioned redirecting shot. The piercing shot is also really cool.

pic related more magical arrow stuff they'll get from the UA

>>97893006
So, starting with Curse of Strahd; CoS is more closely paralleled to the original Barovia module for AD&D which was intended to be bolted onto any campaign as a drop-in. This is in contrast to the Hickmans' work which adapted said module into it's own unique setting, that being Ravenloft. Curse of Strahd as a result is not faithful to the Ravenloft setting because of it's nature as a bolt-on module in addition to numerous changes made.

Perhaps the biggest and most profound thing they changed was making it so that a significant proportion of Barovia's NPC populace are actually lacking souls; it's a stated function of the Domain now that if you die there, you get reborn as a new Barovian except there's more NPCs than there are souls. This might sound like a cool change except that Ravenloft as a setting is firmly focused on themes of morality and ethics moreso than anything else, so almost all of the NPCs being amoral soulless husks means that any ethical and moral concerns are largely sidelined by "Well they're not REAL people". This is what I consider a strong sign that the people responsible for writing the 5e Ravenloft content fundamentally did not understand what they were doing and what the original setting was about.

They also cannibalised several pre-existing Domains because, and this is speculation on my part, they likely were testing the waters to see if there was enough consumer engagement to justify investing in bringing back the Ravenloft setting so they just recycled stuff from elsewhere to freshen up Curse of Strahd. The Abbey of St. Markovia is a perfect example of this; Markovia was a Domain that was essentially the Island of Dr. Moreau and the Abbey is a really tiny version of said Domain; The Abbot in the Abbey is reprising the role of Dr. Frantisek Markov, whom was the Darklord of Markovia.

>>97893007
huh, were those core parts of the looking for magical items to kill strahd and escape and his love for a woman while in a land that's unforgiving and learning of the lands with the vistani?

>>97893029
>Hickmans
they're credited as creative consultants btw, hell strahd was already resurrected in the module that tsr printed because people loved strahd.

nobody cares about the lore as much as you do it seems

>>97884241
Due to soul reincarnation shenanigans, how do you think an elf supremacist that was infused with human essence would act?

>>97893036
Probably kill the one who did it.

>>97893036
beign an elf doesn't really chgange anything, no one wants to be raped by a human.

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>>97893006
>>97893029
Moving onto the newer stuff from Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, pretty much every single Domain presented has been altered for the worse. Borca made one half of the Darklord duo within a bedbound withered old man moved around by a construct robot bed. Darkon had over half of it's region deleted outright and it's Darklord was also removed (Arguably replaced by his mortal counterpart which is also awful). Numerous major characters were rewritten in ways that very, very strongly undermine the integrity of narrative at play; Isolde of the Carnival was raceswapped from caucasian, Victor Mordenheim and Vlad Drakov were genderbent into Viktra Mordenheim and Vladeska Drakov (Because female counterpart names are really hard to come up with you guys). On the subject of Viktra Mordenheim; they also did a series of 5e Ravenloft tie-in comics which are generally poor quality; I found exactly one of them to be tolerable out of the lot. The astute readers among you may recognise the author's name, here; feel free to draw your own conclusions from said author's inclusion in all this.

When you're resorting to just swapping abstract components of existing characters it betrays a fundamental lack of artistic integrity; not because you're being woke DEI or whatever the current term is, but because you're winnowing down an existing character with history, motivations, goals, desires and dreams into a bullet point list of attributes. You've taken someone's genuine attempt at creating a fictional person and made them into an NPC statblock of narrative levers and changed it into something to be changed at a whim to maximise market engagement from consumers because marketing analysis indicates that swapping these traits will yield statistically desireable results.

I could go through Domain-by-Domain and list everything wrong with them but it sounds exhausting and depressing. Even Bluetspur's God-Brain now has fucking dementia.

>>97893033
Weak bait. Best I can do is 2/10; apply yourself.

>>97893058
If you like the 2e stuff so much, then just go play that. I like the new stuff and it was well enough received to make them want it to be rereleased in the very beginning of the new edition.

I love 2e Ravenloft. I love 5e Ravenloft. Learn how to deal with change, boomer.

>>97893075
1/10. You're getting worse.

>>97893075
what do you love about it?

>ravenloft
yawn, an unrepentant faggot setting only insufferable retards like, go play bloodborne, it's the only thing good that came out of it

>>97893019
NTA, but farming for food does still have some advantages. It would allow you to have food where the focus is on something other than sustenance, or use what you grow to brew alcohol. Some spells require certain foodstuffs as spell components, and there are presumably specific herbs needed to make potions.
It's also gives you a buffer in case something bad happens to some of your goodberry casters (since a settlement only needs 10% of the population to be able to cast it), or if you have any guests or travelers.
It's also something you could potentially ship and sell elsewhere. An army might still want hardtack, jerky, and other rations because their soldiers have better things to save their spell slots for. And are at even more risk of having their goodberry casters killed.

It's definitely helpful, and you might just see cases where most people simply have gardens, and the only real farms would be those who are brewing beer. And in times of war, the wheat and grain that would be used for beer gets directed for use in hardtack for the military instead.
On top of the possibility of the military drafting peasants to serve entirely as a Goodberry provider for a unit of soldiers. Which would be yet another reason to grow food.

But, instead of trying to worldbuild around easy food spells, the default for 5e is to just say it's rare and leave it at that. Though with 5.5e making it so crafting magic items just takes the Arcana skill and a tool proficiency, all you need is raw materials and time. Which means any blacksmith given 10 days and 200 gp can create an Enspelled Weapon of Goodberry which can cast it 1d6 times per day. Same thing for Create Water.
That might be a significant chunk of money, but a skilled hireling already makes 2 gp per day, so even if they spend half that on lifestyle, they have enough within 200 days. Even unskilled hirelings could probably pool together enough for a village.

>>97893109
while I am not going to disagree with you wholely, and you make valid points with why still farm, I still stick to my point that fundamentally the setting doesn't work because of it. There is no cohesion between mechanical availability and setting limitations.

>>97893058
Amy Chu? I don't recognize her.

>>97893058
That is a lot of words to say you hate the idea of black people in your RPG

>>97893154
Zoe Quinn is the bitch behind gamergate

>>97893029
>Perhaps the biggest and most profound thing they changed was making it so that a significant proportion of Barovia's NPC populace are actually lacking souls; it's a stated function of the Domain now that if you die there, you get reborn as a new Barovian except there's more NPCs than there are souls. This might sound like a cool change except that Ravenloft as a setting is firmly focused on themes of morality and ethics moreso than anything else, so almost all of the NPCs being amoral soulless husks means that any ethical and moral concerns are largely sidelined by "Well they're not REAL people". This is what I consider a strong sign that the people responsible for writing the 5e Ravenloft content fundamentally did not understand what they were doing and what the original setting was about.
To be fair, Curse of Strahd was written by the Hickmans who essentially had very little to do with the actual expanded setting that 2e and 3e Ravenloft became. They wrote I6 Ravenloft and I10 Ravenloft 2 as basically "weekend in hell" adventures with conflicting Strahd backstories (the Alchemist Strahd and the kin-slaying Warlord Strahd), so I wouldn't be surprised they were behind the literal soulless NPC concept found in CoS and then later applied all of 5e Ravenloft in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. I do agree with you though, making a vast majority of the population soulless NPCs conjured up by the Dark Powers is pretty stupid and makes the setting less compelling. The whole soulless thing, the fact the darklords now always resurrect, and the domains basically being stuck in a status quo made 5e Ravenloft grimderp.

>>97892836
>A first level slot is available to almost any *PLAYER CHARACTER
ftfy

>>97893257
The soulless NPC populace feature is a novel and compelling cornerstone to make a whole new Domain that is narratively designed around that, which uses that aspect to recontextualise the underlying ethical and moral tones of the Ravenloft setting. Slapping it ontop of Barovia is a stupid decision however. Darklords always resurrecting I agree as being fundamentally fucking retarded; numerous Darklords are written up as being in highly perilous situations where their murder and deposal by a new Darklord replacement is one of the major keynotes; Sodo of Paridon for example is one of these. They've written Ravenloft as being perpetually in a state of imminent permanent destruction but also permanently in limbo due to the Darklords being impossible to be removed from their lynchpin positions.

>>97893257
i never really got what the intended point of adding it was.

>>97893058
>Isolde of the Carnival was raceswapped from caucasian
They also butchered her character, 2e/3e Isolde was a true force of good in the Demiplane of Dread, a literal angel who came from the upper planes and sacrificed her divine connection to punish the wicked and protect the downtrodden in a land where evil seemed to hold dominion. 5e's Isolde is a revenge driven prideful idiot with a edgy sword who was manipulated and would endanger all the Carnival if it meant she was able to cut down the Gentleman Caller. Turning her from a benevolent and wise angelic being in the form of a goth white woman to a short-sighted revenge-driven black elf woman paladin who is being manipulated by an archfey and a evil sword is certainly a choice by WotC.
>Even Bluetspur's God-Brain now has fucking dementia.
Was the God-Brain's origins in 2e/3e ever revealed? I know it outmaneuvered Lyssa and the High Master Illithid in Thoughts of Darkness, and the plan of the Gazetteers was for "S" to offer herself to it to deny Azalin the last piece of knowledge he needed, but other than that I think the God-Brain has always been enigmatic. The whole "S" metaplot that would've involved her becoming part of the God-Brain does suggest it is an amalgamation of multiple beings though.

>>97893285
Valid points on Isolde; I only pointed out the raceswap because I was making the wider contextual point that the 5e Ravenloft writers don't see the cast as characters but as nebulous assemblies of character traits they can swap in and out as they please to appeal to a wider audience. It's also worth pointing out that they no longer refer to the Gentleman Caller as such, only 'The Caller' because they presumably want to scrub any associations he has with the wider metaplot of siring Fiendish children like Malocchio Aderre.

The God-Brain was kept intentionally obscure beyond it being a truly alien intelligence because the writers at the time rightfully recognised less is more and that obscuring the truths of a character can make them more imposing, rather than revealing every single possible aspect of them. 5e Ravenloft gives the God-Brain not just dementia but also a progessive form of Illithid Prion Disease; it's described as dying from it's malady and coming up with increasingly deranged plans to save itself. So they've taken an intentionally unknowable entity and changed it to "Elderly Illithid grandpa dying of advanced dementia and mad cow disease asking his children to turn up the thermostat and also bring him more cantaloupes from the corner store".

>>97884056
This but unironically. It's absolutely hilarious to me that global average is like 5 inches.
Like, I'm a fuckin manlet. Hell, before I grew out my beard and started intentionally neglecting my skin to look older and more masculine so people would actually fuckin listen to me when I told em shit, I was a TWINK manlet.
Yet somehow I'm mogging like 90% of every other man in any given room.

Like goddamn, no wonder you're all so insecure in your masculinity. I would be too if I was shorter than a soda can.

>>97893290
>The God-Brain was kept intentionally obscure beyond it being a truly alien intelligence because the writers at the time rightfully recognised less is more and that obscuring the truths of a character can make them more imposing, rather than revealing every single possible aspect of them.
I honestly think the 3e writers would've revealed what the God-Brain was about if the Gazetteers got to volume 13 and Bluetspur, if I recall, Gwydion's was revealed with some info and Gwydion's on a similar level of otherworldliness than the God-Brain.

>>97893258
Literally anyone can have the Magic Initiate feat. Choose Druid, cast Goodberry 1/day, also 2 cantrips.
Suddenly any peasant with basic magic training can create food for 10 people each day (with minor healing). On top of that, they can discount the need for spending a day fixing things because cantrip options include Mending, dig out pits and moats faster than a group of trained labourers with Mold Earth, or even fight fires with Control Flames

>>97893374
Anon, peasants in the world don't all get to choose an origin feat when they turn 13. Parents don't build their baby's statistics with point buy, either.
Selecting an origin feat is part of player character generation.

buncha slack-jawed faggots responding to off-topic garbage itt

>>97893374
>>97893378
You don't even need the feat. Anyone can just craft a magic item that casts spells now. Unless we're going to say that NPCs are too stupid to choose to train with specific skill/tool proficiencies either.

>>97893386
You're fundamentally missing the point. I'm afraid you might have RAWtism.
PCs can do anything the rules allow them to do by having the requisite features and succeeding on the relevant ability checks or whatever.
NPCs are able to craft magic items if they're able to craft magic items. Creatures having stat blocks and proficiencies and hit dice is to assist the GM in having them play a role in the story by having a mechanical reference.

>>97893405
>They didn't train that skill
Well... why wouldn't they?
If real life had a school that said "You can learn to conjure food from the aether and magical repair holes in things" would you just not do it?

>>97893405
A mechanical reference exists to represent something tangible about the world. A PC is able to create magic items by having Arcana proficiency and the right tool proficiency, because Arcana proficiency represents their knowledge of magic, and the tool proficiency represents their ability to make things.
There isn't some special sauce that only makes that work for PCs. NPCs who craft magic items also do so because they understand magic and know how to use tools. Which would likewise be represented by giving them the relevant proficiencies in a statblock.

If the system is meant to be narrativist, then simulationist spells like Goodberry serve even less of a purpose.

>>97893431
Not every setting is Strixhaven, anon.

>>97893431
D&D doesn't have schools