The Dungeoneers And The Dragonslayers (A DND Thread)

[The cheeseman Don't you dare go Hollow!]

Just looked it up and it looks really cool. I would try it, but between school, running two campaigns and playing in one other, work, and my other hobbies, I just don't have the time.

Have you run many Genesys games? How different are they from the "standard" d20 system?

[Voidus]

Yeah I feel that, I'm just insane and overload myself with games. Not currently running any, though I will be probably after my Pathfinder game finishes up. I am playing in one though, which is part of why I want to run it as well so that GM gets a chance to play it too.

It's pretty substantially different, rolls can take a little longer to interpret sometimes but so much more narrative flair. It's not just whether you passed or failed but how much, and whether or not something bad or good happened along the way. And there are so many clever facets of game design that I love. Destiny points are a million times better than Inspiration is and have much more interesting story around them too.
One of the most interesting aspects is how Despairs and Adversary works, basically enemies of certain importance/danger upgrade the difficulty of your checks and introduce the possibility of rolling a despair, and a despair is just as likely for an incredibly skilled combatant as an unskilled one, though they're more likely to get an overall success. So you might pull off the mother of all sniper shots for example, aiming straight for a vital area but the target moves out of the way at just the wrong moment and you accidentally hit your friend with it instead. Or you were so distracted by the fight you didn't notice you ran out of ammo.

[Immortal Platypus]

4 hours ago, Voidus said:

They are supposed to be world-ending unkillable threats, but yeah sadly in 5e they're actually not all that hard for a high level party to take out. Or a single Wizard with a Fly spell, Tarrasque sadly has no ranged attacks.

Extra Attack requires you to take the Attack action, using your Action to Volley would be a separate action and does not proc multiattack.

ok. Well, now my current max is only... yeah, it's still the same  volley ability!

[Voidus]

Very very situational max

But yes, Volley is quite nice. Almost makes up for base Ranger in 5e getting the short end of the stick as far as classes go.

[The cheeseman Don't you dare go Hollow!]

Rangers in 5e are mournfully underpowered; the only really good subclasses they have are the Gloom Stalker and the Fey Wanderer.

[Eluvianii he/him]

Pirate crews are so much fun. We're only 3 players (3 active ones anyway), but the ship is getting steadily fuller and fuller with people and creatures. We have a couple npcs, 3 eggs that will potentially hatch into some mini wyvern things, and we just got a mini dragon and a parrot. Not to mention the absent players' characters. Our captain loses no time either and asks basically every npc to join us.

Not everyone can fight for balance reasons but just having this many people with so few players is really cool. Gives that illusion of a big, diverse crew. 

(or it would if we didn't have a game of houses between gods going on, but hey, treason and backstabbing is just a part of piracy) 

[Tea Leaf]

So I was starting up a camping and made a set of promises:  1. It will reach level 20 at some point, 2. It will be unique. So I decided to use real players in the other orders the first group didn't know. So... does anyone want to join? Starry days, Sunny nights. I have planned some fun ideas for it. And it will be a race for one main quest.

[Immortal Platypus]

On 3/8/2023 at 10:21 PM, Voidus said:

Very very situational max

But yes, Volley is quite nice. Almost makes up for base Ranger in 5e getting the short end of the stick as far as classes go.

Very situational, but possible! and that's what matters! now I can flex on my friends  

On 3/11/2023 at 10:00 AM, cheeseman said:

Rangers in 5e are mournfully underpowered; the only really good subclasses they have are the Gloom Stalker and the Fey Wanderer.

*pretends not to hear this*

*is strongest in campaign as a ranger*

*actually uses features unlike rest of party*

*has been accidentally miscalculating damage (adding about 7 dmg per shot) for most of the campaign*

*is still the strongest, even after the correction*

*decides to calculate current max damage without volley*

Oh, ya know about the max damage I told ya'll about with volley? Double it and that's my actual max. (I forgot to account for critical hits (I don't know if it's just our homebrew or not, but if you roll a 20, you roll double the damage dice as normal).) And if you look at the spell lightning arrow, I'm not even calculating the area affect damage in (I think. It's been a while since I calculated it and I've forgotten all of what I've put in )

[Telrao she/her]

17 minutes ago, Being of Cacophony said:

Very situational, but possible! and that's what matters! now I can flex on my friends  

*pretends not to hear this*

*is strongest in campaign as a ranger*

*actually uses features unlike rest of party*

*has been accidentally miscalculating damage (adding about 7 dmg per shot) for most of the campaign*

*is still the strongest, even after the correction*

*decides to calculate current max damage without volley*

Oh, ya know about the max damage I told ya'll about with volley? Double it and that's my actual max. (I forgot to account for critical hits (I don't know if it's just our homebrew or not, but if you roll a 20, you roll double the damage dice as normal).) And if you look at the spell lightning arrow, I'm not even calculating the area affect damage in (I think. It's been a while since I calculated it and I've forgotten all of what I've put in )

*is a Keeper of the Swarm Ranger*

*is an elf ranger*

*literally the only useful member in the party*

High five!

[Voidus]

On 3/12/2023 at 3:30 AM, cheeseman said:

Rangers in 5e are mournfully underpowered; the only really good subclasses they have are the Gloom Stalker and the Fey Wanderer.

Honestly the one people hate on the most (Beastmaster) is actually, theoretically one of the highest damage classes in the game at certain levels.

 

[Tea Leaf]

I had a friend discover a way using volley to make over 80 different attacks, on average. Supplemental item that split into a few spare attacks. Get a quiver of them, 2 levels fighter may have been part of it and well if I ever let it happen it would kill a lot of things. I nearly figured out a 16 attack E. B. but don't know if it would work. We make min maxed builds for fun in my group.

[Lotus Blossom she/her]

when you spend an entire afternoon creating DND characters...

[Cash67]

Welcome to Ep. 2 of 'Cash Homebrews the heck out of D&D!'

Anyway, I have worked with another guy I know (no he's not on the Shard) to make a homebrewed Hemalurgist. I tried my hardest to make it still feel like Hemalurgy while fitting with D&D's magic system, so let me know what you think!!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IkfNs9ZJcvCvKBQvMQIPMGV7Y5MyiEBEYkUw-4v9ACM/edit?usp=sharing

 

And @Lotus Blossom I have done this before....

....On multiple occasions

Edited April 4, 2023 by Cash67

[Frustration]

Alright, this is an update from this post here 

I know @NerdyAarakocra and @Cash67 wanted to see it, let's @Voidus too, just in case

I finally finished with the encounter.

Yes, I know it's been four months, but schedualling is hard.

 

So I decided to make the encounter a little bit harder, and split it up into multiple parts, first the party would be ambushed by multiple kobolds, a dretch, and if they stumbled into one of the traps a blight(which they did, and ended up with a vine blight on their hands). They were then able to make it too the fortress where three kobolds with crossbows stood on top of a wall and fired down on them, the door was locked and they had to break in.

 

I kid you not they took a grand total of 0 damage by the time they finished with all of that.

 

Then, came the kill chamber, fifty feet by five the entire thing covered in oil, caltrops and ball bearings, ten kobolds lining the hallway, behind arrow slits, with three flying kobolds above behind murder holes, and a fighter in plate with a shield the polearm master and sentinel feats, and a Warlock with Repelling blast at the end of the hallway.

The fighter kobold starts the round off by lighting the hallway on fire, which will burn for 2 rounds dealing five fire damage any time a creature entered or started it's turn in the flames.

 

Things go wrong instantly. The barbarian rips a door off the front and holds it in front of him to push the ball bearings and caltrops out of the way. He has an AC of 32, and enough movement to just run down the hall, turning the entire encounter into a joke. I have only three chances, the flying kobolds above have nets, if I can manage to hit him with one I can halt his movement.

And I did, I managed to crit on the last possible moment, and prevent him from clearing more than three squares.

After that fire and eldritch blast took care of the door.

 

And despite all of that the players still moved through the fight. Turns out the lowest AC was around 17, and they all had +8 or higher to hit. The fighter kobold dies almost instantly, and the warlock has to run away, left with only a few hit points. The rest of the kobolds die over the next couple of rounds, but are fortunately able to deal a decent amount of damage before they die.

 

The players break out into the courtyard and face down a minotaur skeleton that I gave the maximum number of hit points to, with two gargoyles, and two more kobolds coming in for assistance.

 

Finally, after I dealt three crits in the courtyard alone, I manage to down two players, but by that point all the enemies have been defeated.

 

All in all I learned some very valuable lessons.

1. Raw stats alone can effectively make players several levels higher than what they should be on papper
2. Turns out that having a tank that can't be hit by anything short of a crit, with +10 to all saving throws makes it really easy to tank unreasonable amounts of damage.

I'm still stunned that they were able to take this, and am going to have to think up some other horrible things to do in the future, but I say it was definately worth it.

Edited April 7, 2023 by Frustration

[The cheeseman Don't you dare go Hollow!]

I only have one question.

How in the Almighty's Tenth Name do you have a an AC of 32?!

[Frustration]

18 minutes ago, cheeseman said:

I only have one question.

How in the Almighty's Tenth Name do you have a an AC of 32?!

Well you have 30 dex and con and then grab a shield and have the Barbarian's Unarmored Defense feature.

Your AC is 10+10(Dex)+10(con)+2(shield).

[Voidus]

2 hours ago, Frustration said:

Well you have 30 dex and con and then grab a shield and have the Barbarian's Unarmored Defense feature.

Your AC is 10+10(Dex)+10(con)+2(shield).

That would require two fully maxed out stat rolls from what I recall you were using.

But yeah this is one of the reasons letting stats go above 20 can be a bad idea. AC is not meant to shift much and game design is mostly built around it capping at ~20, which means that even low levelled enemies still stand something of a chance of getting a hit in. Letting it go above that... well I have sometimes allowed it for certain oneshots where the whole point was for the players to be broken but would definitely not recommend for a campaign.

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, Voidus said:

That would require two fully maxed out stat rolls from what I recall you were using.

Yes, though he is also playing human, so they could have been 29's.

1 hour ago, Voidus said:

But yeah this is one of the reasons letting stats go above 20 can be a bad idea. AC is not meant to shift much and game design is mostly built around it capping at ~20, which means that even low levelled enemies still stand something of a chance of getting a hit in. Letting it go above that... well I have sometimes allowed it for certain oneshots where the whole point was for the players to be broken but would definitely not recommend for a campaign.

Oh definitely, one of the problems another DM noted was that their AC outpaced their HP, so when you put them up against creatures with a high enough attack modifier to actually hit them they ended up dying in almost one attack. 

I actually made a stat block for a vampiric half-dragon tarrasque litch that I want to use when they get to higher levels.

[Voidus]

Only real way to compensate is to adjust all the monster stats to the same degree which sort of defeats the purpose. This is also one of the many reasons I'm slowly closing off all my 5e games and replacing them with other systems. PF2e to a decent degree doesn't so much care if your stats are higher than average. If you fight something too high level you will still feel the pain. Whereas in 5e, like a 32 AC means even a CR30 is going to be missing you half the time, or more if you stack disadvantage on top too.

[Frustration]

2 minutes ago, Voidus said:

Only real way to compensate is to adjust all the monster stats to the same degree which sort of defeats the purpose. This is also one of the many reasons I'm slowly closing off all my 5e games and replacing them with other systems. PF2e to a decent degree doesn't so much care if your stats are higher than average. If you fight something too high level you will still feel the pain. Whereas in 5e, like a 32 AC means even a CR30 is going to be missing you half the time, or more if you stack disadvantage on top too.

Yeah, I've noticed that you either play DND as intended, or it all just breaks down. I'm probably going to have to check Pathfinder out at some point in the future.

I've also given some thought to taking another stab at making my own system, now that I know a little more.

[Voidus]

Many good options outside of D&D, and honestly this year has been a bit of a nail in the coffin for D&D to me, just too many missteps. I may come back to it someday, depending on how things shake out, but for now all my new games are in other systems.

I do also recommend people try other systems, even if you quite like D&D. There's so many good things to learn, some of which you can transfer into your own DMing or into homerules. But I love seeing how different designers handle problems. Mutants and Masterminds is very good for versatility, is designed for like superhero games but lets you basically custom make your powers by adding flavour and descriptors to some mechanical bases. Very good, and allows for such a wide range of character creation.

Genesys I think has my favourite base-mechanics and I will never stop extolling the virtues of their dice system.

[Cash67]

16 hours ago, Frustration said:

Alright, this is an update from this post here 

I know @NerdyAarakocra and @Cash67 wanted to see it, let's @Voidus too, just in case

I finally finished with the encounter.

Yes, I know it's been four months, but schedualling is hard.

 

So I decided to make the encounter a little bit harder, and split it up into multiple parts, first the party would be ambushed by multiple kobolds, a dretch, and if they stumbled into one of the traps a blight(which they did, and ended up with a vine blight on their hands). They were then able to make it too the fortress where three kobolds with crossbows stood on top of a wall and fired down on them, the door was locked and they had to break in.

 

I kid you not they took a grand total of 0 damage by the time they finished with all of that.

 

Then, came the kill chamber, fifty feet by five the entire thing covered in oil, caltrops and ball bearings, ten kobolds lining the hallway, behind arrow slits, with three flying kobolds above behind murder holes, and a fighter in plate with a shield the polearm master and sentinel feats, and a Warlock with Repelling blast at the end of the hallway.

The fighter kobold starts the round off by lighting the hallway on fire, which will burn for 2 rounds dealing five fire damage any time a creature entered or started it's turn in the flames.

 

Things go wrong instantly. The barbarian rips a door off the front and holds it in front of him to push the ball bearings and caltrops out of the way. He has an AC of 32, and enough movement to just run down the hall, turning the entire encounter into a joke. I have only three chances, the flying kobolds above have nets, if I can manage to hit him with one I can halt his movement.

And I did, I managed to crit on the last possible moment, and prevent him from clearing more than three squares.

After that fire and eldritch blast took care of the door.

 

And despite all of that the players still moved through the fight. Turns out the lowest AC was around 17, and they all had +8 or higher to hit. The fighter kobold dies almost instantly, and the warlock has to run away, left with only a few hit points. The rest of the kobolds die over the next couple of rounds, but are fortunately able to deal a decent amount of damage before they die.

 

The players break out into the courtyard and face down a minotaur skeleton that I gave the maximum number of hit points to, with two gargoyles, and two more kobolds coming in for assistance.

 

Finally, after I dealt three crits in the courtyard alone, I manage to down two players, but by that point all the enemies have been defeated.

 

All in all I learned some very valuable lessons.

1. Raw stats alone can effectively make players several levels higher than what they should be on papper
2. Turns out that having a tank that can't be hit by anything short of a crit, with +10 to all saving throws makes it really easy to tank unreasonable amounts of damage.

I'm still stunned that they were able to take this, and am going to have to think up some other horrible things to do in the future, but I say it was definately worth it.

Noooo the players survived!!!!

Even though it didn’t turn out the way you expected, I hope that you still had a lot of fun and that your players had a lot of fun. 

[Quivil]

*insert endorsement of GURPS*

[Tea Leaf]

Me: Spends years trying to make a sci fi TTRPG
Me: Reads stormlight archive
Me: Dies realizing my next idea...

Hello one and all to my worst idea yet (It has took to long to reach this point)
Who wants to join me?

Goal:
TTRPG Core rules
Cosmere compatibility

Things done:
Nothing (well actually...)

[Quivil]

12 minutes ago, The Last Fæ said:

TTRPG Core rules

which TTRPG there are lots of them