there are bunch, I saw ppl play smth in two(? maybe) already, but isn’t it extreamly wierd to just walk up to a random friendgroup and ask if I could join, especially because dnd needs prep.
I’m not saying this because anxiety, but I’d most certianly turn someone down who just appeared out of nowhere, STRANGER DANGER!
Should I ask the staff, do they handle this sorta thing? Should I put out flyers like on random trees?
I’m sry for spam, but like wdym I can just find ppl at stores?
I got my party together through a Discord chat that someone made for anyone living in our city. You should see if they have one where you live. It’s a great way to meet people for gaming and otherwise
Using your example, I meant it in the sense that the DM could have just as easily said 30 minutes of following as a cat instead of 40 and you would have 25% more wildshape resources, an entire box extra.
Things like Ki points can’t be fudged. You either use it or you don’t. This solution, while I enjoy the discourse, is going to end with the druid at my table saying that they’re only turning into a mouse for a few seconds while they scurry under the door. How do we handle that occurring 10+ times a session? At what point do we need too many house rules to govern this one rule change?
In the interest of discussion, I’ll offer an alternative. What if you had Wildshape Charges instead of Wildshape Minutes? Feel free to change the numbers, but let’s say you have 8 charges at level 5, and gain 1 or 2 charges per level. It takes 4 charges to transform into a CR2 animal, 2 charges for a CR 1, and a flat 1 charge for anything below CR 1. The amount of time you can Wildshape stays the same, or is a flat hourly amount. This will allow you to strategically plan out your Wildshape Charges while adding no additional rules for the DM or table. Thoughts?
I like the idea of “charges”. Rather than time directly, my numbers wouldn’t change but the concept would, be 1 charge is worth up to 15 min of wildshape time. It is used when it is used, they can be chained together so no need to re-transform to stay as a bear or a cat etc…
So the transformation cost would be 4xCR, min of 1. CR1 still is worth 1hr of “charge” time to transform then using charges up after that, dependant on how long you are transformed for…
As for the DM saying different time, that is a given in any situation, the DM could have as easily said that you followed for an hour, using 4 boxes.
And yes, the GM can just arbitrarily change whatever depending on how they’re feeling about it. Like is there 1 guard or 10 in the next room? Same thing. They can drain your resources in a thousand different ways, this time issue is no different. If you don’t trust your GM with that then it’s a bad play dynamic anyway.
Another way to solve the time issue could be to count the time when you’re in combat but not out of combat. You could justify it by the stress of combat putting strain on your abilities or something. I know I’d prefer that because having to count 15min intervals constantly would be worse for me than worrying about using up my abilities.
Agreed, the charges idea was a great suggestion by Toaster. It should help prevent the “but I was only wildshaped for 20 seconds” type of complaints.
Either way time is weird in D&D.
Assume that you are involved in a “long” combat at 10 rounds. Wildshape lasts hours, so yes I wildshape into a dire wolf and finish the battle in 1 minute of in game time; but being a wolf is not that useful out of combat…so I “waste” 59 minutes of wildshape time at Lvl 2 and 119 minutes at Lvl 4 etc…you could use some of the time saying that I was scouting the area around the battle for a few minutes…but still, the point stands.
Check out the YouTube channel “Matt Colville” and look for the playlist “running the game”. The first couple videos in that playlist will tell you all that you need to know.
What do you mean by “on the longer side”? Do you just mean “no one- or two-shots” or do you mean “big adventure that will last for like a year and go from level 4-10”?
In that case, you’ll need to go with only a couple of publishers. In fact, the only publishers I’m aware of who do such long adventures are Paizo and WOTC. If you want something from WOTC, I can vouch for Curse of Strahd being quite good. I can also vouch for Paizo’s Abomination Vaults, but only the story. They publish it for both D&D and Pathfinder and I’m currently running it in the latter.
Just don’t do what my DM did and forget to tell us how the light sword works after we found the hilt. We assumed it was broken and we needed to find the rest of it. And he didn’t correct us. We ended up spending several levels on a wild goose chase before he was like, “oh by the way, it’s like a lightsaber”. Still though we went to lots of interesting places in that time because there’s so much to explore in Barovia.
As a Player I didn’t like it as much as CoS but that might be personal taste. Our DM said there’s not much detail given sometimes and less external stuff to cover that fact.
Oooh ok good to know. CoS caught my eye in any case and one of the employees at a local game store has run it multiple times since the 90’s (including in 5e), so I’d have a great source of advice there
I’ve done this before when I wanted to do a “holiday” session. Basically I wanted to run Death House from CoS as a one-shot on Halloween, but only 2 of my players were available on Halloween, and also the whole party was in the middle of an actual adventure in the middle of nowhere in my actual campaign. So what I did is said that during a long rest, those two characters had a shared dreamscape which embodied the experience of going through the Death House adventure together. Side note: Death House becomes extremely scary when you only have 2 PCs, even if they are level 5. If I wanted to be able to do this in a hurry for any time some players couldn’t make a session, I would keep those one-shot compendiums from Kobold Press (“Prepared! [1/2/3]”) handy.
Little One Shots sound like a good idea as well, yeah. I like to take a step back during those sessions and really allow the players to bring out their own ideas and let the main dreamer basically Co-DM the session. I’ve yet to be disappointed with the results!
Did it turn out to be a good session in your case?
It definitely did. I wanted to make the session meaningful for the players that made it, despite the fact that the dream conceit limits the realism of letting them keep any treasure they find. So instead I homebrewed a very minor consumable effect (like a “blessing”) and gave it to them as a reward for escaping the house with their lives. As I said, Death House is brutal for a small party, so the spookyness was reinforced by the deadliness of the adventure for two people.
The martial/caster disparity is the (IMO, proven and obvious) idea that martial characters lack gameplay options compared to their caster counterparts, and that this problem only ever gets worse with level.
Also, “martial” in this case specifically refers to Fighters, Barbarians, and Rogues.
IMO, it does exist, but it’s not as “end of the world”-bad as some people make it out to be. Basically, rogues are fine because they get a crap-ton of skills that can be put to good use as long as the rogue player makes their character with even a little long-term thought. Rogues that have problems tend to focus in things like stealth, and other physical skills that casters can use spells to imitate or replace. Rogues that pick up and spend expertise in one or two soft skills (some kind of knowledge skill, insight, investigation, etc…) will never find themselves with nothing to do and will always have a niche where they can make the full casters go “holy shit!” from time to time.
Fighters and Barbarians actually have problems because they seem to have been made more with dungeoncrawling in mind, to the detrement of anything non-dungeon related. They generally lack useful soft skills, and don’t stack stats that will make using them useful because they generally don’t have ways to make a high int or wisdom terribly useful.
Fighters and Barbarians compound the skill problem by not gaining useful/impactful abilities in T3 or T4. When full casters are busy choosing and enjoying the most powerful spells in the game, fighters get another use of indomitable (which never, ever fucking works, IME), a second action surge per short rest WAY too late for it to really matter, and a 4th attack they will probably never, ever actually get because it’s at 20th level for some stupid, fucking reason (as opposed to level 17 where ALL casters, even the half-casters, get their 4th cantrip damage die).
Barbarians get even less than fighters due to most of their class budget being tied up in a massive passive ability: Brutal Critical. So all they ever get to do is crit-fish, which they’ve all been doing since level 1 anyway.
The disparity is choice and impact. Because of their lack of choices, it can seem difficult to have an impact on the game, mechanically. A good DM can make up for this in a variety of ways, but when you’re just looking at the rules or white-rooming a character, the problem does tend to become a bit obvious…if overblown.
Generally, the fix is simply to give fighters and barbarians more class abilities that involve getting to make interesting choices during play.
Also, “martial” in this case specifically refers to Fighters, Barbarians, and Rogues.
Don’t discount Monks! They’re generally regarded as the worst class in the game, as they’re essentially fighters that deal less damage in exchange for a resource that lets them use cool abilities…for a short time. Yeah, I know they’re technically? magical, but they function and present as a martial class, poorly at that.
The disparity is choice and impact. Because of their lack of choices, it can seem difficult to have an impact on the game, mechanically. A good DM can make up for this in a variety of ways, but when you’re just looking at the rules or white-rooming a character, the problem does tend to become a bit obvious…if overblown.
Also don’t discount, being able to play out-of-combat scenarios. Casters get utility like Pass Without Trace, Spider Climb, Prestidigitation, Friends, and then the fact that most of them are charisma-based for some strange reason, which is THE out-of-combat stat. I know my suggestion in particular doesn’t really address that, and is more focused on the more-abilities and/or allowing interesting choices part that you mention after that, but I do absolutely want things like 3.5e’s Moment of Perfect Mind, and whatnot.
That’s how bad monks are. I forgot they even existed :D
But seriously, they’ve been getting some good changes in the UAs, and with WotC being a bit more generous with things like expertise it makes being useful a lot easier when you’ve got a lot of random weird shit you can do, like a monk can.
Honestly, Monks are so close to being a top tier class. All they really need is for WotC to pull their heads out of their collective asses and make short rests not a fucking tooth-pulling exercise in frustration for your average group.
If it were me I’d bring back the concept of 10-minute “exploration turns”. You use one exploration turn to do something like pick a lock, break down a door, climb your speed x 5 in relatively safe conditions without a check, attempt to disarm a trap, attempt to climb a slippery or dangerous surface, examine a magic item (arcana check to figure out something basic), make a general knowledge check about a subject (would have to define a distinct difference between using knowledge checks in combat and using them outside of combat), etc…
…but, most importantly, you would use an exploration turn to try and take a short rest. Take one short rest action and you can spend one hit dice per three levels (rounding up). Take a second in a row and you can spend one hit dice per three levels. Take three of them back-to-back and you can spend another one hit dice per three levels, and any short rest recharges trigger. Your short rest is now done. You can gain the recharge benefit of the third rest action twice per long rest.
…and while that was going on the rest of the party was able to fuck around and do stuff. Which means the monk who gassed themselves in the last combat can take three rest actions to get back their ki while the rogue searches a room, disarms a trap guarding a hidden chest, and then picks the lock on the chest.
I fundamentally don’t understand why classes having a different amount of options is a problem. But then again, maybe I just have brain rot from decades of playing B/X and BECMI.
When power levels of the degree of modern TTRPGs are expected of characters, D&D sort of becomes a game all about your options and which you choose when. If certain characters have inherently MORE options to pick from in such a setting, that means they are essentially objectively better by default.
In the older editions, like the ones you’re talking about, casters had serious downsides. Between being very fragile, spells being interrupteable, and sometimes having different XP amounts, casters were kinda ‘glass cannons’, and needed a martial frontline.
In 3.5 and 5e, casters have had these harsh downsides decreased or removed, while not otherwise losing power. They are more or less strictly better than martials, in the sense they can do 90%+ of what martials can do better than they can do it, while also doing several other things. And the few things martials do do better, it’s by slight degrees.
It’s not just that casters are powerful, it’s that they’re powerful and flexible, able to be top tier in several different roles at the same time, and can change what roles they cover by resting and swapping spells.
Whereas martials can sometimes build to be top tier in one role, but they’re largely locked into that one role, or can build to be okay in several roles (and be outclassed by casters in all of them).
You put that WAY better than I did.
And yeah, At this point Casters really can just do everything martials can, better, and more. There’s just no denying that.
Yeah. It was worse in 3.5 ironically; despite casters having more downsides than 5e, spells were overall stronger. It did leave this narrow window at levels 1 and 2 where martials were basically strictly better, but caster quickly skyrocketted in power, especially if you were playing with prestige classes.
Spell power was reigned in for 5e, and pretty sharply at that (most notably from adding Concentration). But, they also washed away caster downsides, by making cantrips at will, casters not quite so fragile, and by softening Vancian casting. 5e is still absolutely more balanced than 3.5, but that’s not saying a lot; 3.5’s power level was all over the place.
Still, I feel like 5e’s levels 1-5 are pretty balanced, and the martial/caster imbalance doesn’t really become painful until like, level 12.
This is solved by bringing back Domain Level Play, and making spell components a meaningful resource again.
Most spells have a martial equivalent. Give martials access to those effects.
Most spells also used to cost something to cast other than a spell slot. When your only limitation is 8 hours of rest, magic scales wildly out of control.
Or play a system with better design instead of trying to force the wargame to be anything other than what it was designed to be.
Most spells also used to cost something to cast other than a spell slot. When your only limitation is 8 hours of rest, magic scales wildly out of control.
I think the more important balancing is just ‘making battlemaster maneuvers resourceless and available to all classes’.
But I’m not against ‘limit break’ as a short rest ‘charge’ available to most martials.
TBH, the above is basically the way PF2e handles martials; at least half of their class feats are more or less ‘resourceless maneuvers’, and many martials have access to ‘focus spells’, which are basically just short rest charges for exclusive class features, that just happen to mechanically be considered spells (though, notably, PF2e doesn’t give fighter focus spells, making them nearly 100% at-will).
Personally, I think the most important fix to the martial-caster imbalance is to nerf casters, who just are too strong, but A) that’s basically what PF2e already did, and its largely complained about (though I love it). And B) Its not strictly necessary, if you buff Martials by a large margin (though, imo, that starts to get into like, demigod territory that I don’t love).
No I absolutely agree with you on both of those points - Martials need more resourceless abilities, and casters are too strong and nerfing them is an absolutely essential step. People are too resistant to nerfs, but PF2e casters are just as competent as ever - they were made less omnipresent because the problem isn’t just in how absolutely shafted martials are(though that is definitely a big, BIG issue that WotC seems to not even be trying to hide anymore), it’s the fact that magic is too cheap for such powerful effects, while martial abilities are just as if not more expensive for less.
Honestly, the main example I turn to regarding both of those points, and WotC absolutely hating martials, is one single ability - Commander’s Strike.
When you take the Attack action on your turn, you can forgo one of your attacks[1, ah ah ah] and use a bonus action[2, ah ah ah] to direct one of your companions to strike. When you do so, choose a friendly creature who can see or hear you and expend one superiority die[3! ah ah ah]. That creature can immediately[This Count Dracula joke doesn’t apply here…] use its reaction[4! 4! Ah Ah Aaaahhh!] to make one weapon attack, adding the superiority die to the attack’s damage roll.
Have you figured out what the muppet vampire was counting? That’s right, Resources spent by this fighter ability! And the total count is FOUR. FOUR ENTIRE RESOURCES SPENT BY THE PARTY, THREE OF THE FIGHTER’S AND ONE OF THEIR ALLY’S, ON ONE ABILITY. SPELLS NEVER COST MORE THAN ONE SPELL SLOT EVEN AT 9TH! WHAT THE FUCK?? Let alone the fact that all you’re getting for it is…A single extra attack from an ally that turn. With a bonus to damage, sure, but that only applies if it hits. And to add insult to injury, it says “immediately,” so the one getting it can’t even delay it to decide the optimal target or save it for a particularly sticky situation.
The game and its players seem to just put more expectations on the non-magical people for them to be able to do anything than casters, who can just do things with no strings attached.
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